From Patriot to Sucker: Is the American Dream Dying Under the Weight of Government Waste and Widespread Fraud?

I grew up in a military family and lived on military bases most of my early life, five years of which were spent on Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.  Honestly, it was the most Americana place I’ve ever lived.  Think Mayberry surrounded by minefields.  Thankfully we didn’t often encounter the minefields, but we knew they were there. 

Fourth of July was always the biggest day of the year.  We had parades with tanks and marching bands and floats and classic convertibles with pretty girls waving from the back. The rest of the day would be filled with motocross races and boxing matches, track and field events and midway games and endless food. And everything was topped off with a concert and fireworks once the sun set. 

Never a great student, I went from one grade to the next holding on by my fingertips, except for history and social studies.  I was fascinated about history and loved reading about the Greeks and Romans and Egyptians, but mostly about America and WW II, which at that time had only been over for about 30 years. We of course studied the Constitution and what led to the Revolution, but we also read about slavery and the Trail of Tears and watched Roots. America was great, even if it was imperfect.

My joining the military after school was never a question. My parents never pushed me, but it was just what you did. And so after college I spent two years in the Army, stationed in what was then West Germany. One of the most interesting things I encountered while there was an old west town the local Germans had built. It looked like something straight out of Bonanza.  Inside each of the buildings was a wide collection of Americana, most of which was oddly anachronistic, like Mickey Mouse clocks and old pinball machines and lava lamps. The interesting thing was, these people loved everything American. Despite the war that was only a generation away, America was a place of dreams, a place of adventure, a place where anything was possible. 

That didn’t surprise me because my entire life I’d known that America was great.  It was imperfect, but I knew that it was fundamentally good, and that most Americans were fundamentally good.

After leaving the Army I went to grad school and earned my MBA and began my life as an entrepreneur, which I’ve done for the last 30 years.  In all honesty, I’m a terrible entrepreneur.  I’ve had some great ideas, but most came to naught. Aside from one minor success early on – a company teaching kids about investing and entrepreneurship, where I interviewed a young Elon Musk – every one of my entrepreneurial endeavors has been a bust.

But here’s the thing, I’ve always known that my life is better because of entrepreneurs and patriots who have come before me.  Our founding fathers gave us a constitution that created the foundation for the freest nation in human history, which in turn created unprecedented opportunities for entrepreneurs and innovators to risk doing great things and then earn a reward for success.  For me, America was the land of opportunity, the place where anyone with a good idea and willing to put in the sweat and take some risks could find success. 

But sadly, I’ve started to question that… but not because of my own failings. Those I own. I was either in the wrong place at the wrong time or just didn’t do a good job selling my idea. No, it’s not my failures that have me questioning what America has become… It’s watching the millions and billions and trillions of dollars that get sent to grifters and thieves.    

I’m talking about the billions being funneled through fake or leftist NGOs that DOGE exposed.  I’m talking about the people who took PPP money during Covid and used it to live like rapper kings. I’m talking about the daycare fraud in Minnesota and the homeless grift in California and the home health fraud in Maine and elsewhere.  Not to mention the trillions wasted on countless green energy scams and the billions that go to support people who are here illegally. 

I’m talking about the people we see using EBT cards to buy lobster and steak while working people are living on Ramen noodles and hot dogs.  I’m talking about families who have been in Section 8 housing and on welfare for generations while working people are living like college students, sharing rooms and couch surfing among friends. I’m talking about colleges and companies dropping standards and accepting people not because of their hard work and merit, but because of a diversity thumb stuck on the scale.

The point of all of this is that over the last couple of years I’ve started to ask myself if I’m a sucker… and that maybe I have a lot of company.  I’ve worked hard my whole life and paid my taxes and aside from a college loan (non-forgiven) and a small PPP loan (forgiven) when Covid lockdowns hammered our business, I’ve never taken a penny from the government. Actually, my goal was always the opposite, to become sufficiently successful that I’d actually have to hire accountants to do my taxes.  And I wanted to do that by helping make other people’s lives easier or better.  That’s how fortunes have traditionally been made in America. Whether it was inventing the elevator or flash frozen food or selling Beanie Babies, you create a product or service that others are willing to voluntarily exchange their money for.  That’s America’s magic, a win-win exchange where everyone gets what they value most. 

But today I look around and I see companies laying off Americans while simultaneously bringing in millions of H1B visa workers.  I see grifting NGOs lining their pockets and using taxpayer dollars to keep Democrats in power – who then attack America at every turn.  I look at the fact that more than 50% of the money government spends is redistribution and half the country doesn’t pay income taxes.

And I wonder, why would anyone choose to follow the rules when it would be easier to simply run a scam or suckle at the government teat?  I understand that working hard and being honest is a part of one’s character, but at what point do conscientious people say “I’m done working my ass off just so everyone else can live like kings off my sweat”?

I love America and I always will, and I’m not giving up, but I have to wonder about the future. When someone like me who bleeds red, white & blue starts to question if it makes sense to do the right thing, I can’t imagine what the young people educated in the anti-American forges we call schools think.

From Athens and Rome to the Abbasid Caliphate and Song China, most of history’s greatest empires collapsed because they betrayed the very things that made them great in the first place.  For America that’s freedom and opportunity.  To the degree that grift, government corruption and “largesse” have replaced hard work, risk and merit as the primary avenues for “success” the Republic’s days are numbered. Sadly, I don’t see any signs in Washington that many of the people in charge of the system are much interested in fixing it.

Follow me on X at @ImperfectUSA

The SAVE Act: Donald Trump's Place in History Will Be Defined by Whether He Saves the Republic, Period.

Recently I wrote a piece that received some pushback.  I wondered if Donald Trump was making the same mistake as George Bush Sr. did when he broke his “Read my lips:  No new taxes” pledge. 

If you read my work regularly, you’ll notice a decidedly clear bias towards warnings of doom.  It’s not my default position that life is nothing but doom and gloom. On the contrary. I actually have a website that explicitly talks about how good we have things and encourages gratitude for the American entrepreneurs and inventors who made our lives possible. In a universe where most of history was characterized by scarcity, war, slavery and early death, most Americans today have relatively extraordinary lives. 

Everything we have today came about as the result of the hard work of generations of people who left us this legacy.  From the Founding Fathers leaving us the Constitution to Grant defeating the South to Rockefeller rationalizing energy to Jobs putting the Internet in our hands, everything we have in the 21^st century came from the efforts of countless numbers of long dead people, as well as, often, our own efforts.

To the degree that one can identify the elements that made the last 250 years so different from any prior period, it was the combination of the individual freedom, free markets, private property and limited government.  Those elements laid the foundation for a nation to spread across a continent, become an industrial juggernaut and become an economic powerhouse able to promote freedom and prosperity to billions of people around the world.

That anger sometimes reflected in my writing is because the government, over the last 50 years, has done virtually everything it can to undermine that success. On almost every front, government has gotten itself involved in areas where it has no place, no constitutional authority, and regardless of how ineffective, pernicious or downright harmful its actions are, nobody ever does anything about it. The borg like government, with its tentacles attaching to ever more elements of American life, and tightening its grip, is killing the goose that laid the golden egg.  Look no farther than GDP growth. Below is a chart of average annual GDP growth by decade since 1950:

1950s: 4.2% 

1960s: 4.5% 

1970s: 3.2% 

1980s: 3.1% 

1990s: 3.2% 

2000s: 1.9% 

2010s: 2.4% 

2020s: 2.4% 

To understand how much of a problem that is, understand that in the 1950s computers were the size of a house and could do 5,000 calculations per second.  Today a computer fits in the palm of your hand and is literally billions of times faster.  Yet our GDP growth is almost half as much, but should be double.

If you want to know why, despite the fact that we are so much more efficient and have far better and more tools at our disposal, our GDP is half what it used to be, the answer is Government. Perhaps the only thing that has grown more than computer power over the last half century is government power. They have intruded on practically every single aspect of our lives, from mandating the ability to remotely turn off our cars to requiring those tags on your mattress to telling you the makeup of your neighborhood. And sadly, while they’re busy promoting the butchering of some children and the trafficking of others, they fail at the basic elements of government such as maintaining law and order, keeping our borders secure and not sending money to dead people. 

The tentacles of Government are everywhere, like a cancer that knows no bounds and for which there is no cure.  Of course, theoretically there is a cure for all of this: elections.  But the government has somehow managed to manipulate them so that regardless of who gets elected in either party, we basically get the same policies.  Sure, some things may change around the edges, but for the most part the Swamp reigns and nobody does anything about it. The budgets basically remain the same, the programs largely stay the same and the controlling elites basically rotate between government, NGOs and corporate boardrooms.    

And here’s where my piece talking about Trump betraying his voters comes into play.  I could spend my time showcasing the great things he has done, and he has done many, but I focus on the fact that if he doesn’t deal with the gun pointed at the head of the Republic, none of that matters. 

For Democrats cheating is simply their MO. Between importing new illegal voters, manipulating the voting apparatus, and fighting Voter ID, Democrats have basically wiped out GOP representation in New England despite the fact that 30-40% of the population in those areas are Republicans.  Democrats will destroy the Republic the next time they get power, and if Donald Trump doesn’t start acting like a leader with something to fight for, there won’t be anything left to fight for.

Once back in power, Democrats will kill that American goose.  They will manipulate voting rules to turn the country writ large into the dysfunctional cesspools they’ve created in Illinois, Maryland, California, etc.  They will expand the problems of San Francisco, Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, et. al. into the suburbs and eventually across the country. They will utilize every lever of government power to eviscerate the foundations of freedom that made the country great in the first place.

But it doesn’t have to be.  But unfortunately we’re watching Senate leader John Thune betray Americans on easily the lowest hanging fruit ever in American history, the SAVE act. You can say that Trump doesn’t run Congress or the Senate, which is true, but he is still the president with the largest soapbox on the planet, on an issue so powerful that even a majority of Democrats support it.  Trump should call on and or call out every GOP Senator who is standing in his way.  He should do rallies in their states and encourage citizens to reach out and sway them.  He should utilize every one of the substantial levers of power at his disposal to convince them to pass it. 

The reality is, the SAVE act (which isn’t perfect, as it currently doesn’t outlaw the insane policy of letting illegals have Social Security numbers) and its companion deportations, are where the tire hits the road relative to a free Republic. Literally, if we do not put in place guarantees for honest elections now, the country will be as blue as the California House delegation within a decade. 

The SAVE act is not sufficient to guarantee honest elections, but it’s a first step. As for my regular warnings of doom, I wish I could spend my time commenting on the new arch going up in Arlington or the new White House ballroom, but the reality is, those are of no real consequence.  If Donald Trump doesn’t focus on guaranteeing secure elections, neither will matter because both will end up as symbols not of a great hero who saved the Republic, but rather of the man who failed to save it when he had the chance. 

Follow me on X at @ImperfectUSA

Did We Just Witness Donald Trump’s ‘Read My Lips, No New Taxes!’ Moment?

In life, it’s hard to know whom to trust. When you’re betrayed, it often feels like a knife to the heart. The reality is, try as we might, and as much as we think we know someone, sometimes we just don’t, which is how we get divorces or broken friendships and estranged families.

As that’s the case with people we know, how much should we trust politicians?

Given that most of them are lawyers, we already know that many are good at twisting the truth, so we should probably be skeptical of anything they say. But the reality is, we don’t get the kinds of opportunities to get to know politicians the way we do spouses, friends, etc. We therefore largely must go by what we read about them and, of course, what they say.

For most of America’s history, trusting politicians was relatively unimportant. What I mean is that in the universe of things that affected our lives, other than on major things like war or taxes, government was, by design, pretty far down on the list of catalysts for most of our history. As such, people would pay attention to politics at election time, then not really worry about it much until the next cycle. Government was, after all, pretty small and, for most people, a distant concern.

Today, we’re at something of a polar opposite to that laissez-faire, small government America. As they control so much of our lives, it matters whether politicians are trustworthy and whether they betray their voters.

Probably the single biggest betrayal by an American politician—or at least president—was George Bush in 1990. During the campaign of 1988, he made a pledge at the Republican National Convention in New Orleans of “Read my lips: No new taxes.” That line resonated more than any single element of that campaign, and as a result, Bush won the popular vote by 8 points and took the electoral college 426 to Michael Dukakis’s 111, the last time any president received more than 380 votes.

Unfortunately for America, Bush broke that promise. After not being able to come to a budget agreement with the Democrat Congress, in 1990, Bush agreed to new taxes. The result was that, despite a 3% GDP growth and inflation sitting at 3%, Bush lost his 1992 bid for reelection. It’s true that H Ross Perot was on the ballot and threw a wrench in the works, but the reality is that the only reason Perot was even remotely viable was voter disgust with Bush’s broken promise.

Now, conservatives are rightfully worried that Donald Trump may be getting ready to have his “Read my lips: No new taxes!” moment, but it has nothing to do with taxes. I’m of course talking about statements such as this: “Immediately upon taking the oath of office, I will launch the largest deportation program in American history.” (He didn’t) And this: “I consider it an invasion of our country… We’ll get National Guard, and we’ll go as far as I’m allowed to go, according to the laws of our country.” (He hasn’t) And this: When Kristen Welker asked Trump in an NBC News interview whether his plan was to deport everyone without legal status, he responded. “I think you have to do it.” (Nope)

With the relatively tiny number of deportations thus far, pullback in Minnesota, and the administration’s softening its deportation stance on selected industries, supporters are starting to wonder if Trump is giving the insurrectionists on the left a “heckler’s veto” while capitulating to the Chamber of Commerce wing (AKA grifting RINOs) of the Republican party.

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While Trump may not be on the ballot in November and in 2028, the reality is, if he does not follow through on his promises, the GOP will likely lose Congress in November, and whoever the GOP nominee is, he will have a very steep climb in 2028.

In July 2025, support for deporting every illegal alien was at about 60% nationally. Today, according to the left-leaning Pew organization, the number is about half that. While the Pew numbers no doubt undercount the position’s support, the reality is, it’s likely significantly below what it was six months ago.

And it’s Trump’s fault. Here’s how:

1.    Democrats were always going to politicize deportations, and other than Stephen Miller, Trump has not fielded a strong team to communicate exactly why the deportations are necessary.

2.    The media was always going to give any conflict the Ken Burns / George Floyd treatment, and anything involving children was going to get the “Kids in Cages” framing. Again, Trump has done far too little to communicate the reality of what they are doing, and that includes highlighting the costs of “non-criminal” illegals to the nation.

3.    Finally, and most importantly, the left is well-trained, well-funded, disciplined, and motivated to basically begin a civil war over immigration because leftists understand that Democrat power is fundamentally tied to illegal immigration. They know that the violence they instigate will be portrayed as Trump’s.

And here is where Trump has dropped the ball most clearly. He promised to utilize the National Guard or even invoke the Insurrection Act to ensure that he can carry out his deportations in an orderly fashion. Not only has he not done so, but he has also allowed sanctuary cities and states to stand by while ICE agents are being assaulted trying to do their jobs. He’s let the leftists use violence and intimidation to derail the lawful policies most Americans voted for.

Americans have been shown over the last year that Democrat power is based almost exclusively on cheating in every way possible, from fraud in the election infrastructure to funneling billions of taxpayer dollars into their campaign coffers via NGOs to encouraging non-citizens to vote. Americans recognize that illegal immigration is the primary vehicle through which Democrats maintain their power, and they use that power to harm the interests of citizens at every opportunity.

Getting back to trust, Americans put theirs in Donald Trump to do the one thing that he talked about more than any other issue over the last four years: Deport illegal aliens, all of them.

No president in a generation has painted a more specific agenda than he has, and if he does not fulfill his promises, it will splinter the Republican party. There’s always been a fissure between the country club Republicans and the grass roots, and while the former would be fine if Trump goes back on his promise, the latter will not. They will either withhold their votes or go with third-party candidates whom they feel they can trust more than the treacherous Republicans.

Either way, such a betrayal would bring about the end of the GOP as a viable counterweight to the treacherous Democrats, to the degree that the GOP of the last 20 years had any counterweight value. With the Democrats in charge of America, Trump and his allies, both in the administration and out, would once again find targets on their backs a la the persecution of the J6ers, General Flynn, Peter Navarro, Rudy Giuliani, Tina Peters, et. al.

And it wouldn’t stop there. From individual ICE agents to local MAGA adherents to Trump’s donors, everyone associated with the movement would be crushed, using every element at their disposal from the IRS to the FBI to a sure to be resurrected Disinformation Governance Board.

As much as Trump probably dislikes the way the media portray him, he will like it a great deal less when they’ve imprisoned him and patriots blame him for the collapse of the Republic. Both are very real possibilities if he doesn’t keep his promises…

Follow me on X at @ImperfectUSA

Minnesota: Why the Left Will Win America's 2026 Civil War – With Republicans Helping Them Do So

The United States is facing an existential threat. My guess is this summer will be the most violent, damaging domestic summer since the Civil War. And I predict the left will win and come out victorious on the other side. They will, after winning this new civil war, seek to eliminate the last vestiges of republicans.

I use a small r because while some Republicans are true republicans, most are not. And when the left wins the war, those RINOs are going to “work with” Democrats to create the illusion that America is still a republic, but it won’t be. They will use every tool available to silence dissent, take control over virtually every sector of American life, and they will implement rules so that America becomes a one-party nation.

Now I say all of this with the great hope that I am wrong, but I don’t think I will be.

The cowardly Republicans are going to cave in every conceivable manner in order to try to forestall a civil war. At every level, they are going to give in to the left, they are going to “compromise” their principles, and they are going to betray their voters and our Founding Fathers.

And I mean that at every level in every branch. There is simply no universe where Republicans have the intestinal fortitude to do what’s right in the face of withering attacks from the left.

There is literally no better example of this than election integrity. Nothing animates GOP voters like election integrity. Not abortion. Not welfare fraud. Not guns. (A majority of Democrats support it as well!) Literally nothing gets rank-and-file Republicans more animated in 2026 than elections, but still, the Republicans do nothing about it.

But the catalyst for the Summer of Love circa 2026 (which is already starting) won’t be election integrity per se, but rather immigration. The challenge is that the Democrats have spread 50 million illegal aliens across the entire country. From Maine to California and everywhere in between. This will not be like the Civil War, where the two sides were mostly geographically separated. No, this is going to be like a dozen people thrown into cage matches all around the country.

And why is this going to be the Big One? Because as we’re seeing in Minneapolis, the left has perfected the business model of professional protest movementeers. They’ve been training for more than 25 years. We saw it in the WTO protests in Seattle in 1999, the IMF protests in DC in 2000, Occupy Wall Street in 2011, and the 2020 version of the Summer of Love.

They’ve literally been perfecting it for the last quarter century, and now they are preparing to strike. They are well funded, have a millions-strong army who have been exhorted to hate and violence by a treasonous media, are highly organized, proactive, and most of all, local governments around the country, even some in red states, are on their side.

The result will be a spreading of what we’re seeing in Minnesota as the temperatures rise, and it will be a perfect storm of success for them, regardless of how it turns out. On the one hand, there are countless “observers” who are willing to risk their lives to go out and attack ICE agents because they know that, if they die, they’ll be lionized as freedom fighters who laid down their lives in the defense of innocent children, regardless of the actual facts, and the propaganda value will be immeasurable to their cause.

What’s more, on the off chance that any of the protesters actually get arrested, the local DAs will release them without bail or charges, or federal judges will refuse to sign off on the arrest warrants. None of this, of course, is speculation. It’s all real and happening right now.

Whatever the outcome, the left wins. If their troops are killed while fighting ICE, we’re told that the fascist Trump is guilty of the murder of innocents. If Trump invokes the Insurrection Act, he’s a dictator. If a governor calls out the National Guard, it’s a police state. Whichever way it works, the media will spin it as David versus Goliath with the law-abiding citizens and ICE characterized as the Philistines.

Minnesota is only the beginning. It’s likely the left will pursue a multi-month strategy in which they hit multiple cities simultaneously and others in isolation to distract and fragment the administration’s attention.

But the Summer of Love is just one element of the treachery that is going to go on. To appease these leftists, the Republicans are going to bend themselves into pretzels trying to prove that they are not what they are being accused of.

We’ve already seen it. Trump promised to get rid of the Department of Education. Not only is it not gone, but Republicans fully funded it. Countless programs that fund left-wing programs have also been funded, and they’ve refunded programs that Trump cut. Over at Justice, the administration has not made a single arrest related to the theft of 2020, the persecution of the J6ers, or the travesty that was Russiagate.

The reality is, Republicans, and sadly, that includes Donald Trump, are not serious about fixing America, pulling us back from the leftist precipice we have been teetering on for twenty years. If Trump were serious,

• He would put Greenland, Europe, Venezuela, Gaza, and Iran on the back burner—that doesn’t mean ignore them—and invoke the Insurrection Act.
• He would clear out and charge the protesters in Minnesota and would nationalize the National Guard in any circumstances where ICE agents are being targeted with harassment and violence.
• He would immediately begin RICO investigations of the NGOs that are funding these protests.
• He would also investigate left-wing judges who are sometimes operating hand in hand with said NGOs.
• He would ramp up deportations and allow those deported to appeal from their home countries, while freezing all funds going to states that provide benefits to illegal aliens, as well as all states and locales that act as sanctuary cities.
• And finally, he would use every power at his disposal to convince GOP legislators to make the cuts to the budget necessary to choke off the funds going to those behind all of this.

The moment he does the above, he will be labeled a Nazi, a fascist, a tyrant, and more. But the reality is, he’s already being called that, so it doesn’t really matter.

Republicans have been living in a fantasy land where Democrats are honorable people. They’re not. Democrats are in a knife fight, and they know it. They’ve taken to heart Sean Connery’s lines from The Untouchables: “He pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way!” The only difference is that Elliott Ness was on the side of the good guys; Democrats are not.

Democrats are prepared and are willing to burn down the country to maintain their power. The Republicans need to understand that and decide to stop them, using every tool available. But sadly, Republicans are too worried about being called bad names or having their sensibilities bruised to suit up and man the barricades against the wretched hordes that are the Democrats.

We are at war. The Democrats showed us their playbook in 2020, and they’re rolling it out now. I’d like to think the GOP has the stones to fight that war before it becomes an all-out, hot civil war, but I’ve not seen any proof that such intestinal fortitude exists. I hope I’m wrong.

Follow me on X at @ImperfectUSA

Russian Roulette 2026: How “principled” GOP Senators are betraying Trump, MAGA and the American people.

Back in 2016, I, along with a lot of people, made the argument that that election was critical to the future of the country.  It was and America made the right choice.  I made the same argument in 2020 and while America made the right choice the Democrats ran a coup d'état and we suffered through four years of watching whoever was controlling Joe Biden basically run the country into the ground.  Then, two years ago I made the same argument, that basically, if America made the wrong choice the Republic was going to soon find its end.  Thankfully America made the correct choice again.

But, “Come on,” you’re probably saying, “America can’t be on the cusp of collapse at virtually every election. You’re just fearmongering…”  Well, that’s not technically true.  Just because you survive three pulls of the trigger in a game of Russian Roulette doesn’t mean the next one can’t kill you.

Of course 2028 is a long way off and a lot can happen between now and then.  But the truth is, 2026 is here and while we may be playing with a smaller caliber weapon, the potential damage is almost as great… as has been demonstrated by the last few weeks, and the last few days in particular.

As it relates to the last few weeks, I’m of course talking about Nick Shirley putting a spotlight on the Democrat enabled Somalian treachery in Minnesota.  I’m not actually talking about the money being stolen from taxpayers, per se.  No, as bad as that is on its face, what’s worse is what it communicates about the modus operandi of Democrats around the country: i.e. import 3^rd world immigrants and figure out ways to enrich them at the public trough. That same kind of model is happening across the country from Maine to Maryland to California and countless states in between.  Different groups, different scams, same result: public money that makes its way into the hands of immigrants and magically comes out the other side as votes for Democrats.

To put something of a fine point on it, Kevin Bass just did a great analysis looking at states Americans are moving into or out of, correlated by those who provide benefits to illegal aliens vs. those who don’t.  Not surprisingly, 9 out of the top 10 states from which Americans are fleeing provide benefits to illegals while 9 out of the top 10 states to which Americans are heading, don’t.  Not coincidentally, 9 out of 10 of the first group are Democrat states while 9 out of 10 of the second are Republican.  The bottom line is, Democrats increasingly don’t represent the values or interests of Americans and are systematically replacing American voters with immigrants, most of whom are illegal. 

And if there were any question as to whether this is really going on, we don’t have to wonder, courtesy of leftist CIA agent and new Virginia governor, Abigail Spanberger.  What was her first official act as governor?  Why rescind ex-Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s executive order that required Virginia law enforcement to cooperate with ICE, of course.  Literally the first thing she did was basically turn the once red state into a sanctuary state.  Democrats, who now control both houses and the governor’s office quickly introduced a phalanx of hard left policies such as guaranteeing illegal aliens free education, making it illegal to hand count ballots and requiring government award 42% of their programs based on DEI criteria.

So what does this have to do with 2026?  Everything.

As it stands right now, 2026 is going to be a bloodbath for the GOP.  Almost across the board you see Republican voters angry and upset with the GOP.  Have they cut spending?  No.  Have they shut down the federal grift mills that funnel money to leftists?  No.  But most importantly, have they done something, anything on election integrity?  No. 

If there is any one issue that animates Americans in 2026 it’s voter ID, AKA election integrity.  Why?  Because virtually everything about government funnels into or out of it.  From Democrats importing 3^rd world voters to trillions of dollars that goes to support illegals to the cancer of local Democrat rule, it’s all part of the election integrity ecosystem. 

But the Republicans in the Senate don’t care about that.  They, like elites everywhere sit back in their cushy offices with their guaranteed paychecks, armed security and safe neighborhoods and laugh at the hard working Americans who are paying taxes to support illegals, fighting to keep their homes and looking over their shoulders for criminals loosed on the world by Democrats.  How can we tell?  Because the blind squirrel GOP over in the House accidentally tripped over a nut and sent the SAVE act to the Senate last April.  And what has the Senate done with it? Nothing.

“But,” you might say, “almost every GOP Senator states that they are in favor of the SAVE act.”  Sure they do. Even Mr. Ethanol himself Chuck Grassley did a flip flop in less than 24 hours after he stated very clearly that he would not support it. 

So there we go. We should get it. But no, we don’t. We can’t.  Why, because Americans are being forced to play Russian Roulette, only instead of one round and five empty chambers, we’re playing with all six chambers loaded… and there are a bunch of backup rounds nearby in case one falls out.  And what are those chambers loaded with you might ask?  Senators! 

In order for the SAVE act to pass, currently the filibuster needs to be overcome. But the reality is, it doesn’t.  All we need are 50 Senators to vote to eliminate the filibuster and VP Vance would break the tie.  But we can’t get those 50 Senators because there are almost a dozen GOP traitors who would rather allow Democrats to destroy America so they can pat themselves on the back that they didn’t nuke the filibuster. 

These hypocrite GOP Senators pretend they are doing the people’s work, but in reality they’re doing anything but.  From stealing elections to funding fraud to basically legalizing crime across the country, Democrats are no longer representing Americans.  They are purposefully turning America into a failed 3^rd world dystopia.  And by not eliminating the filibuster (something Democrats will do the first opportunity they get…) these Senators are basically shrugging their shoulders and saying “I didn’t do that.” But in reality, they did.  It’s like watching a man drowning and standing on the dock with a life preserver but refusing to throw it to him.  Sure, you can technically say you didn’t drown him, but you’re responsible for his death nonetheless.

For anyone paying attention over the last decade, it’s crystal clear that the filibuster serves only to block Republicans.  From the moment Harry Reid changed the rules for presidential appointments in 2013 it’s been clear where that road leads.  But treacherous Senators like Mike Crapo, Tom Tillis, James Lankford and the other grifters pretend they’re being principled by not eliminating it.  They’re not, unless their principles include eviscerating the Trump agenda, sidelining the MAGA movement and betraying the American people. Because that’s what happens in January 2027 when the Democrats take the House and perhaps even the Senate this November. 

 

Follow me on X at @ImperfectUSA

Braveheart Circa 2026, This Time In The United States Congress

Braveheart is great entertainment, if less than perfect history. Mel Gibson plays the hero, William Wallace, who battles to deliver the Scots from the hated English, who had brutally murdered his father, brother, and wife. Wallace attracts a growing following as he begins to defeat the English in several skirmishes and battles. Following the Battle of Stirling Bridge, where his heavily outmatched and outnumbered troops defeat the English, Wallace becomes something of a legend and demands that the nobility join him in the fight.

The nobles, who have holdings in both Scotland and England, while not enthusiastic about English occupation, want nothing to do with the peasant rebellion. After a tense meeting, Wallace gains a promise of noble support for the upcoming battle from their ostensible leader, Robert the Bruce.

Wallace carefully plans the battle (the Battle of Falkirk) but is dispirited when he calls for the noble cavalry to take the field, only to watch as they turn and abandon the fight. Betrayed, the English are victorious. An injured Wallace goes after the English King, only to have one of the king’s defenders intercept him. The defender unhorses Wallace, but when he approaches the Scotsman, Wallace disarms him and discovers that his opponent is none other than Robert the Bruce.

A conflicted Bruce then helps Wallace escape, and the now-mythic figure takes a cathartic vengeance on the nobles. He is then betrayed a second time and ends up dying on the rack with “Freedom” his final utterance.

Anyone who’s ever seen the movie can remember the visceral reaction they had when the nobles turn and leave Wallace in the lurch. It’s been thirty years, but I remember it as if was yesterday. But the funny thing is, the reason I even thought of it is that I feel the exact same way today, but towards a different set of nobles.

What nobles, you ask? Why congressional Republicans, of course.

The GOP in Congress has left Donald Trump and America out to dry just as much as the nobles did to Wallace and the Scots. And the betrayals aren’t just one battle; there are countless ways the GOP is shivving the American people.

First and foremost is the lack of election reform. The argument that the 2020 election was a coup is now an established fact. From Georgia to Arizona to Minnesota and beyond, election fraud seems to have been the norm rather than the exception. Add to that the simple existence of a lack of voter ID in so many blue states, and it makes one wonder when America’s last honest election was.

Yet somehow, the Republicans in the Senate have refused to pass the SAVE Act. Ensuring honest elections is the single most important thing on their plate, but somehow they can’t seem to get it done.

Another thing the Senate GOP can’t seem to get done is abolishing the filibuster. We constantly hear that it’s a check on the other party if they return to power, but the reality is, it’s not, as Harry Reid demonstrated in 2013.

Having failed to eliminate it in 2024 because of holdouts by “independents” Manchin and Sinema, you can be certain that Democrats will eliminate the 60-vote threshold the next time they can muster 51 votes. So, instead of eliminating it now and doing good things for the American people while the GOP holds both chambers and the White House, the eunuch John Thune and the rest of the RINO grifters in the upper chamber apparently have better things to do, like give $5.7 billion to immigrants.

But of course, it’s not just voting. Across the country, activist, traitorous federal judges are seeking to usurp President Trump’s powers, yet Congress does nothing about it. Congress literally controls the federal judiciary; it’s right there in the Constitution, yet the GOP’s elected members do nothing and allow judges to exercise a stranglehold over the Executive Branch.

There’s Obamacare, too, which has been a disaster from day one but has been a fundraising bonanza for Republicans. Not only can’t Republicans repeal it, but they also can’t even keep their members in line, as 17 Republicans in the House just voted to extend the subsidies for the hated program.

Then there’s fraud. Last year, in the wake of the hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud identified by DOGE, the Senate voted not to codify the DOGE cuts, with three Republicans joining Democrats to help protect the waste.

But honestly, it’s not just Congress, it’s the White House as well. The reality is, the FBI and the Justice Department have yet to indict anyone for practically anything. 2020 election fraud? J6 persecutions? Russiagate? COVID? And more. This is in stark contrast to the Biden administration arresting practically everyone associated with Donald Trump, up to and including Trump himself.

Also at the top of the list of GOP failures is immigration. Across the country, we have states, cities, and citizens actively, sometimes violently, seeking to thwart the federal government from executing its immigration powers, to the point where governors, mayors, and police are threatening to arrest ICE personnel for simply doing their constitutional duty.

The reality is, every one of those officials is obstructing justice and should be arrested. And the professional activists who are assaulting ICE agents across the country should be as well. As America learned in 1968 and 2020, if you allow leftist mobs to obstruct lawful business or commit crimes, you get more of both.

With at least 10% of the population made up of illegal aliens and a cabal of billionaire leftists funding the protests and violence, this problem is not going away. Indeed, if Republicans don’t do something soon, the summer of ‘26 is going to make the 2020’s summer of love look like a little girl’s tea party.

But somehow, the people funding the insurrection haven’t been arrested, and few people on the ground have been arrested. Congress and the White House shirk their responsibility here at their own peril. They could easily utilize National Guard troops to control the violence. They could cut off all monies going to states, cities, or NGOs that are assisting illegals or obstructing ICE. They could cut every single dollar going to illegal immigrants via any program. But thus far, they haven’t.

The GOP is flirting with disaster, at Donald Trump’s, and ultimately America’s expense. While they’re busy faking vacations and being confused about what war is, the clock is ticking to the midterms, and much hinges on that outcome. This is particularly true as it relates to voting integrity.

Congressional Republicans see Democrats trying to destroy the country, and yet they do nothing to stop it. At some point, voters will tell themselves, what’s the point of voting for Republicans if they never fix anything?

They think they’ll be safe when the left comes back to power because they see themselves as modern-day Mr. Smith Goes to Washington characters in an Americana that is long past. Besides, they’re above power politics. They clearly haven’t been paying attention. Power politics is all the left does, and they’re willing to lie, cheat, and steal their way to victory in their goal to destroy America. Everyone sees that. But the swamp weasel RINOs pretend it’s beneath them.

The reality is, America is the last best hope for Western civilization, and voters gave Republicans the opportunity to protect it, but the Republicans are too busy doing interviews and trading stocks to bother. Their treachery is just as vile as that of the nobles who betrayed William Wallace, only worse. Voters see that and will likely respond accordingly at the polls in November.

Follow me on X at @ImperfectUSA

The American Revolution Wasn’t Revolutionary—But the Constitution Was (And 70% of what Congress spends money on is unconstitutional)

During college one of my professors in Political Philosophy said that the only real revolutions in modern western civilization were the French and the Russian.  He was right, but I didn’t quite get it at the time.  I do now.

While the American revolution was ostensibly a revolution, in reality it was more of a divorce where the kids kept the same parents, they just lived with their Mom.  Their Dad was still their Dad, but they didn’t have much to do with him. In contrast, the French and Russian revolutions were basically the children taking their parents out back and shooting them…

The American revolution was a revolution, but it wasn’t revolutionary. But what was revolutionary was the United States Constitution. 

For the first time in history, a government was formed by a written constitution that described rights that were inherent from God (as articulated in the Declaration of Independence and the constitution of most of the original 13 states) upon which the government could not impede.  What’s more, the entire thing was created for the specific purpose of limiting the power of government. This was made clear by the Bill of Rights, which—beginning with Massachusetts—became the quid pro quo for getting the Constitution ratified. And in case anyone missed the point, the last of the ten amendments that make up the Bill of Rights states “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

That was every bit as revolutionary as the French sending King Louis XVI to the guillotine or the Bolsheviks shooting Tsar Nicholas II and his entire family in a basement.  But what’s more, unlike those other two revolutions, the American Constitution didn’t result in rivers of blood and a collapse of society.  On the contrary, it set the American experiment on its slow but methodical march to revolutionize the world and unleash the potential of man.

The American experiment worked… for almost 200 years.  Of course it didn’t work perfectly for everyone all the time, nor for some people any of the time, but for the overwhelming majority of people who have lived in the United States over the course of its existence, life has been better here than almost any other place on Earth.

But that experiment is in the process of collapsing. Why?  Simple.  Because the nation that was birthed with a constitution specifically geared towards limiting government power has metastasized into a nation where the government controls virtually everything. 

Today it’s almost impossible for a person to get out of bed and go through a normal day without out violating one or more laws.  Just the federal government alone, which was the government the Constitution sought to control the most, today has so many laws that it itself can’t tell you how many there are. Justice Gorsuch estimates as many as 300,000.  To his credit, President Trump sees the problem. 

But that is just one part of the problem.  Another, even more dire, is playing itself out on our X accounts and on TV right in front of us – except obviously, the MSM…  I’m of course talking about the criminal enterprise that is known as what seems like the entire Somali population in America. It appears that Somalians in America have stolen almost as much money from American taxpayers as the entire GDP of Somalia itself. 

This of course comes mere months after we saw DOGE discover the USAID / NGO grift machine documenting tens of billions of taxpayer dollars going to fund countless leftist programs.  Not surprisingly, both involve Democrats… but that’s an issue for another day. 

As enraging as all of this is, these treacheries are just a drop in the bucket of where America has gone off her Constitutional rails. One need to look no farther than the federal budget to understand it. Today, 70% of federal spending goes to things that did not exist when the Constitution was written. 

And we’re not talking about air traffic control towers or NASA.  No, these are programs where government basically takes taxpayer’s money and gives it to someone else. And what would those things be? Social Security, Health, Medicare, Education & Income security. (While SS is not redistribution, it is money the government demands and then controls the distribution of.) That’s fully 70% of federal funding, clocking in at a cool $4.4 trillion. A century before, domestic spending – at that time usually on roads and farm subsidies – made up less than 13% of the federal budget.  Another way of looking at this is that in 1821 federal spending made up 2.5% of America’s total GDP while today it’s in excess of 23%.

The fraud in Minnesota and via USAID are merely the most blatant examples of a system that has gone rouge.  Half of American households pay essentially no income taxes while 100 million Americans receive some sort of government assistance.  And the icing on the cake is that we’re not even spending our own money, we’re borrowing to do so, and today the national debt stands  at 100% of GDP and unfunded mandates at twice that.

Between the stultifying regulations, the income redistribution and the rampant, government sanctioned fraud dressed up like social programs, Americans have betrayed their birthright.

America became the most powerful and consequential nation in human history specifically because of her explicitly limited government. For a period of almost 200 years she stood as a beacon of freedom and hope and opportunity. 

To the outside world that illusion of greatness may remain, but the reality is, much like the French Ancien régime before the revolution, there is a cancer at its core. And that cancer is government.  Not government per se, but rather an out-of-control government that regulates too much, spends too much and controls too much.  Our government has become a leviathan in every manner possible and its tentacles and largesse have undercut the foundation upon which the nation was founded. 

With the Democrat party’s Stalinist leanings and Stasi like practices getting too difficult for free men to tolerate, the election of Donald Trump was a requisite for averting a real revolution. But it’s not sufficient.  The America that changed the world for the better, that unleashed a level of human achievement unlike any other cannot survive as a borg, which is exactly what it has become. 

If Donald Trump and the mostly useless GOP Congress really want to actually make America great again, starting in 2026 they will turn their metaphorical guns and scalpels on the government itself and begin to bring back the primary idea that made America great in the first place:  Limited government. Without that, everything else is little more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, and the outcome will be the same.