Category: Texas

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A Dark Spell Cast Upon the Rio Grande Valley

Famous son of the Rio Grande Valley, Joshua Trevino, the Chief Transformation Officer at the Texas Public Policy Institute, made a startling admission on the Hard Country podcast about Mexican Presidenta Claudia Sheinbaum. Joshua admitted he was wrong about the la presidenta, who is not a placeholder for the Morena party but a talented executive. She has better managed Mexico’s relationship with the United States than any Mexican president. Joshua observed that the Mexican government cannot guarantee public safety or clean water, but it is an expert at dealing with the United States Government.

My non-expert opinion is that Claudia Sheinbaum is a Brujas Negras (Black Witch) Curandera. Sheinbaum is a non-religious Jew and a lifelong leftist who reads every policy paper she is handed and is preternaturally alert for every second of hours-long policy meetings. She’s a disciplined, sober female version of Bill Clinton without the sex addiction or lazy disinterest in detail. The true face of evil can be found in any human who enjoys multiple, hours-long, policy meetings. It’s not natural.

Last week, I thought the Brujas Negras had struck again when I saw Grubhub had declared McAllen the most overweight and obese city in America. How had the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) suddenly become populated by food blisters? I detected the hand of bad voodoo, only to remember that polite people here never mention obesity or its downstream effects. We’ve been the fattest city in America for years, but nothing is done about it, and nobody talks about it, so it’s easy to forget.

The RGV has been shrouded in a miasma of black magic fog, the fog of woe, that allows people to ignore the obvious. The average resident should stay the hell out of Starbucks, donut shops, and double-fried taco stands. But every day, a new Starbucks, donut shop, or taco stand opens to serve people a few years away from needing daily dialysis. The Catholic Church should be battling this obvious demonic assault on the faithful. But they’re focused on illegal migrant rights because that’s where the money is. . . Or was it before DOGE uncovered the billions of dollars flowing to the dioceses from USAID to facilitate human trafficking via dozens of ‘NGOs’.

Sister Norma Pimentel, Executive Director of Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, greets a group of some 25 asylum seekers at a bus station in Brownsville, Texas. No mention is ever made about the millions of dollars USAID has given her. That fact is lost in the RGV fog of woe (photo: John Moore / Getty )

This obesity epidemic in the Rio Grande Valley has disrupted the retirement plan I established in 1985, following my first reading of Lonesome Dove. After retiring, I wanted to be an old, tricky, tough bastard living on the Rio Grande River. But there are no cattle rustlers to fight, and I wasn’t sure my plan made sense until the Narco wars started and President Trump declared them terrorists. There was no doubt that all sorts of miscreants had invaded us. I saw it with my own lying eyes for four years running. Suddenly, my dream of replicating Gus and Captain Call seemed to be answered until I researched Narco sicarios.

What happened to the tough, self-reliant Mexican peasant? Where is the self-sacrificing ethos of the Mexican soldiers who overthrew the Spanish, defeated the French, and fought with courage against the Americans?

See what I mean? These two fat bastards couldn’t run 100 yards but still think they’re bad asses. Plus they have man boobs – a clear indicator of low testosterone.

I live close enough to the Rio Grande River to see the border wall lights at night. During the evening, I sit on my back porch, scanning the river bottoms, just like Augustus McCrae or Captain Call, but without a rifle or jug of whiskey, because I don’t want my neighbors to think I’m antisocial. This is Texas, where many people still carry a pistol, but who needs a gun to deal with pudgy nitwits? Having a charged AED at the ready, along with IV fluids, is more practical given the lack of desperados swimming the Rio Grande and the physical condition of the local population.

Who carries around an automated external defibrillator and IV kits? Sheepdogs – I know quite a few of them and we are all much happier to bring a cardiac arrest victim back to life than shooting a scumbag trying to take a life. The savings in legal fees alone make that a winning proposition. I still carry a concealed pistol in honor of Gus and Captain Call. Reality may have crushed my retirement plan, but a man can still dream.

Narcos are not a problem for the law-abiding citizens of the RGV. Many have vacation properties in the Valley and send their children to school here. Lots of Mexicans send their kids to school here, a constant source of aggravation for property tax-paying Winter Texans. This is another topic rarely discussed in polite company because it raises the ugly specter of racism, even though skin color has nothing to do with being Hispanic. Fluency in the Spanish language determines who is and is not Hispanic in the RGV.

The Narcos are a problem for local politicians, lawyers, and law enforcement. They have too much money, and finding a lawyer, politician, or police chief who would not sell their soul to the devil (or a Bruja Negra) for a few million dollars is as rare. The only defense against multi-million-dollar bribes is strong religious faith. A man alone cannot reject that level of illicit wealth; he needs a strong angel riding shotgun. I have St Michael, who I found guarding my six in Afghanistan. Hopefully vulnerable RGV titans have a similar guardian to with which to battle Santa Muerte.

The appearance of tranquil, law-abiding prosperity is another consequence of the invisible black magic fog that infects the RGV. Everything appears normal, which is abnormal given the corrosive effects of abundant Narco money. Lifting that fog falls in the realm of spiritual warfare, the province of curanderas, now that the Catholic Church has abandoned normal Americans.

Aztecs are all the rage in Mexico, given the popularity of Santa Muerte, a cross between the Grim Reaper and the Virgin of Guadeloupe, Mexico’s patron saint. But the Aztecs weren’t Mexican Amerindians; they were colonizers from the North. Their Náhuatl language is unrelated to Central Mexican Mesoamerican native languages but closely related to the Ute and Comanche languages. History has become a profound, dark mystery because it is actively subverted in the name of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Understanding legitimate, verifiable history is a superpower that allows you to instantly cut through the bullshit inflicted on us by the elite managerial class.

Santa Muerte swag in Mexico City

If a culture that mocks tradition and devalues sacrifice fails to renew itself, what happens to a culture that calls for holy war against the catholic church while conducting human sacrifice? Mexican Narcos can’t grasp the concept of aspirational sacrifice because they are low-testosterone and low-IQ psychopaths. The Stoics tell us that rudeness, meanness, and cruelty are a mask for deep-seated weakness. You can add man boobs, the physical manifestation of low T, to that list.

Which brings up another crushing disappointment. Old retired guys can’t hang out in smoky bars dispensing the distilled wisdom of an aged International Man of Action. If they do, they risk looking like everyone else around here. Who wants to see another old fool with a beer gut thinking he’s a badass? Not looking like a dangerous man is no way to honor the memory of the best two fictional Texas Rangers in the Western canon, or the canon of Westerns. I’m not sure how to make that point. It is a vivid reminder not to base your aspirations on fictional characters created by the same author who wrote Brokeback Mountain.

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The Rio Grande Valley panics after another Trump win

Last Monday, Mexico acquiesced to President Trump over the South Texas Water War. President Sheinbaum promised to deliver between 324,000 and 420,000 acre-feet of water to the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) by October. The current Mexican drought, caused by Climate Change™ (unlike the hundreds of previous periods of drought), has been miraculously reversed by La Presidenta. Now there is plenty of water to go around. The RGV’s democrats freaked out because they know the capabilities of Brujas Negras and assumed she would send another Training Thunderstorm.  Instantly, the forecast for scattered weekend thunderstorms suddenly morphed into a weekend of torrential rain.

I’ll decipher that RGV coded message for you: “The Bad Orange Man has pissed of La Presidenta Shiebaum and she’s going to conjure up another training thunderstorm flood to punish us.

Five weeks ago, the Rio Grande Valley was suddenly inundated with several feet of rain in three hours. The rain appeared out of nowhere; the sky was clear, and the forecast matched the sky. Suddenly, thunderstorms started forming and stacking themselves so quickly on radar that they looked like the smokestack of a moving train. I explained the supernatural component of this incident in this post. Brujas Negras (black witches) are taken seriously in Mexico and the RGV, lending credence to my theorizing about spiritual warfare.

When rounds one and two produced no rain, the gaslighting continued for the rest of the weekend.

You will be shocked when I tell you it did not rain in the RGV all weekend—not a drop. Don’t shut the stable door after the horse has bolted (one of the oldest recorded English proverbs) warns not to take precautions when the damage is already done.  The flood damage was done five weeks ago. The president won the water war, and there is no reason to expect treachery from Mexico, but nobody fears treachery like treacherous.

The nanny state tricks citizens into believing it cares about them using performative gestures that accomplish nothing. Giving away three sandbags per family (six to local businesses) accomplishes what? Three sandbags won’t help when flood water crests three feet above your front door. If the floods are the work of Curanderas, why not paint your front door frame with lamb’s blood?  There are many tools in the Valley of Miracles to use in a spiritual battle. We have the Basilica of the National Shrine of Our Lady of San Juan del Valle, where you can get holy water by the gallon 24/7. Fill a humidifier with it and create an invisible fog that will repel demons, vampires, and (theoretically) flood waters sent by Brujas Negras.

There was no panic among the faithful. We took President Shienbaum at her word and were proved right. The massive amounts of rain that were supposed to hit us were pushed south at the last minute by the freak formation of a cold front to our north. The water was dumped where needed, in Mexico, where it will be collected and used to meet Mexico’s 1944 water treaty obligation.

Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez held a press conference to issue a proclamación that the treaty water will bring only “short-term stability” to the community. Why would a county judge hold a press conference to minimize an accomplishment no American president has accomplished since 1944? It is not like the citizens of South Texas, who voted overwhelmingly for President Trump, are interested in commentary from elected democrats. I’d like to hear his honor explain the constitutional basis for his draconian COVID mandates. But that won’t happen because he doesn’t answer to the public, and the constitution has no provisions for stripping personal liberties in response to a virus that 99.9% of the population survives. During a real pandemic with a high infection fatality rate, the public health apparatus will be focused on the disposal of bodies. The public won’t need to be forced into doing a damn thing because the evidence of a real pandemic doesn’t require gaslighting to digest. The public health response will take organization, cooperation, and leadership to motivate citizens to form teams for unpleasant tasks like dealing with thousands of human remains.

We are not experiencing that kind of leadership from the democratically dominated judiciary. The video pasted below explains why:

Spiritual Warfare is a topic that is gaining traction in normie podcasting and social media. The Shawn Ryan Show has recently featured a series of guests from the Special Forces community, porn industry, and (the most unpopular segment of society) journalists who have been called to Christ in a variety of ways. These men have remarkable back stories; only one, former SEAL, Jared Hudson, is a lifelong practicing Christian, the rest were sinners just like you and me. Jared Hudson is an impressive man who founded The Shooting Institute (TSI), providing tactical training to law enforcement, military, and civilians, and Covenant Rescue Group (CRG), a nonprofit combating human trafficking and child exploitation. He offers free tactical training to police departments. In return, they use his CRG model to run a child exploitation sting targeting human traffickers. Their methodology has a 100% success rate, and you would think it was being used across the fruited plains, but you would be wrong. The sexual exploitation of children is not something police agencies prioritize.

Recognizing the face of good is essential to easily seeing the face of evil.

The CRG website correctly points out that Human Trafficking and child exploitation are among the darkest evils our world has ever known. Over 350,000 unescorted children crossed our border during the Biden administration and were handed over to “charities” like Catholic Charities or Southwest Key Programs and then disappeared. Nobody knows where they are or what happened to them except for men like Jared Hudson, who rescues those children with his police training program. The border remains closed, but evil never takes a holiday; below is the face of evil.


The face of evil. Gloria Lopez-Corona was arrested for attempting to smuggle a druged 5-year-old boy she did not know across the border.

Gloria Lopez-Corona, a Mexican national, had a child hidden under blankets in the back of her car when she attempted to cross the San Luis port of entry. ICE officers were unable to wake the child and noted the boy was years older than the birth certificate, which Corona produced when questioned. It did not take long for her story to crumble, and she admitted she had no idea who the boy was or where he was heading. She also had no problem drugging the kid or turning him over to pedophiles.

What kind of woman smuggles a drugged child across an international border? If she is not, by definition, a demon of the worst sort, then what is she? Why are the democrats and liberal judiciary encouraging this type of gross criminality? Here is another face of evil:

More evil – Patrick Scruggs, a former January 6th federal prosecutor, stabbed a man after a vehicle accident in Florida.

Watching the video of former J6 federal prosecutor Patrick Scruggs viciously assaulting a man after a car accident is heartbreaking for me. It shows a man demon possessed, which isn’t surprising given his former job. It is disheartening that nobody shot him about 15 times, which he richly deserved. He’s been arrested, but the chances of him being prosecuted with the level of severity he showed the people he prosecuted are not high. Nobody trusts judges in America to apply the rule of law to progressive members of the legal system. Maybe we will be surprised, but I doubt it.

The Dread Coward Roberts‘ Supreme Court could end democratic judicial madness this Wednesday. The Democratic Party’s District Court judges have been issuing sweeping orders enjoining the government’s attempts to deport illegal criminal immigrants before even hearing the administration’s side of the case. We have never seen anything like this in our history. What are the chances the dread coward will re-establish the rule of law by smacking down district judge overreach? Not high, but there is always a chance that good will trump evil; it’s time to pray that The Dread Cowards Roberts finds the courage to support the American people, not wealthy oligarchs running the Democratic party.

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The Water War Goes Supernatural

As I have covered in my last two posts, Mexico has consistently failed to meet its water treaty obligations since they were established in 1948. Several times a year, every year since 1948, politicians in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) speak out about this injustice to coax more federal relief dollars for our farmers and sugar mill operators. Check that our last sugar mill closed last year, a victim of South Texas drought and Mexican perfidy. This year it was State Senator Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa’s (D-McAllen) turn to bitch about the missing Mexican water, which he did last week. Then, out of the blue, the President of the United States stopped American water shipments to Tijuana, citing Mexican recalcitrance over fulfilling their obligations under the  1944 International Boundary and Water Commission as the reason.

At this point, Valley locals who travel to Mexico often to visit with family and friends began to worry. Mexico had just installed (elected isn’t the proper word) its first female President, Claudia Sheinbaum. In a male-dominated, masculine society like Mexico, when you see a woman ascend to the president’s office, it means the office is ceremonial and disconnected from power, or the woman has serious, powerful, hard-to-explain power behind her. This morning, as curanderas throughout the Rio Grande Valley cleaned up behind receding flood waters, they were all saying the same thing: “I told you this would happen”.

Curanderas are practitioners of herbal medicine, home remedies, and witchcraft. There are two types of Curanderas: Brujas Blancas (white witches) and Brujas Negras (black witches). The difference between white and black brujas is that one removes the spells and the other casts spells, but in practice, good curanderas can do both, causing as much peace or mischief as you can afford to pay for. It is easy to recognize the work of Mexican curanderas by timing and irony. Yesterday, the most powerful curandera in Mexico sent a little black magic to Chuy Hinojosa in the form of a biblical three-hour rainstorm that came out of nowhere to dump over 21 inches of rain on McAllen.

Stranded vehicles left on the frontage road in front of the McAllen Convention Center during a downpour on Thursday, March 26, 2025, in McAllen. (Joel Martinez | [email protected])

Chuy Hinojosa bitches to the press about not having enough water in the Valley, and suddenly, a scattered line of thunderstorms forecasted to sporadically drop an inch or two of rain somewhere in the Valley turned into a Training Thunderstorm. Training means that as individual thunderstorm cells form and move downwind, another cell forms upwind and moves directly over the path of the previous cell. These storm cells form so fast that when viewed on radar, the thunderstorm looks stationary or moving backward against the upper-level wind. On the radar, they look like a train; on the ground, it feels like you’re being hit by a train.

At this point, I am sure most of my gringo readers who reside far from the border are skeptical of the supernatural angle to this story. Let me provide more evidence that the train rain was the work of curanderas: Nobody can agree on what happened. According to RGV.com, McAllen received 4.96 inches of rain yesterday. The local Fox News station said McAllen was hit with 8 inches of rain.  My SanAntonio.com claimed yesterday’s rain totals for McAllen were between 13-21 inches. Good Morning America claimed we got 14 inches of rain.  Do you see the trend here? That’s how you know this wasn’t some innocent weather phenomenon. My neighbor on the corner, after saying, “I told you this would happen,” added that in 48 years, she had never seen this much rain or flooding.

The view from my front porch as the flood waters continued to rise. The rain stopped just before the water reached my top step

As usual, the poorest were hardest hit by this storm of spite, with many spending this morning recovering abandoned vehicles or cleaning out flooded homes. Many more are lined up outside various homes or apartments as the faithful consult their trusted curanderas about what the hell is going on with the weather. But I know what’s going on; I’ve seen this shit before in the Hindu Kush with the Mountain Pashtun and their Jinn. If I were an advisor for Senator Hinojosa, I’d tell him to stop bitching about the 1944 water treaty before we end up with 350 acre-feet of water being dumped on our heads.

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Water Wars are Bad, Lawyers are Worse.

State Senator Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa (D-McAllen) has introduced a resolution to encourage the U.S. State Department to ensure Mexico starts delivery of water to Texas as outlined in the 1944 International Boundary and Water Commission (IBWC). Mexico is supposed to provide at least 350,000 acre-feet of water per year, but they are currently about five years in arrears. It’s not like the government of Mexico can do much about the shortfall; they don’t control the border area or the water flowing into the Rio Grande River, and Texas won’t negotiate with drug cartels. Chuy warned: “The reality is that even commercially, the growth of the Valley is being stunted because we cannot issue any more builder’s permits because there’s no water.”

Water levels at the Falcon Dam in Starr County are dangerously low. Last week, a panel of Texas senators approved a resolution asking the U.S. State Department to force Mexico to send the state water it is owed. (Credit: Michael Gonzalez for The Texas Tribune)

Senator Hinojosa, who is quick to remind anyone who asks and many who don’t that he’s a former Marine, didn’t really mean the local municipalities are no longer issuing building permits; that would be crazy. He was using hyperbole to explain why Mexican real estate investments may experience anemic growth unless the cartels stop bogarting the water from the Rio Grande. It is an interesting sentiment that will have no impact on the current water woes of the Rio Grande Valley. A couple of large tropical storms would be useful in making up the backlog. But, hurricanes have decreased in intensity and frequency since the 1990s, so Mother Nature has little chance to make up for the Mexican water shortfall.

The real threat to financial prosperity for the constituents of State Senator Juan Hinojosa is men like Juan Hinojosa. Chuy was the quarterback for his Mission High School football team, did a stint in the Marine Corps, came home, got his bachelor’s degree from UTRGV (Pan Am University at the time), and then went to Georgetown, where he earned a law degree.  It’s the law degree that makes him dangerous. To be fair to Chuy, he did not return to the Valley, obtain a vanity business phone number like (444) 444-4444, flood the television with ads making him look like a Top Gun pilot while promising anyone, anywhere, who was hurt in an accident that he will get them a large payday in court.

Chuy Hinojosa used his good looks and Horatio Alger-style rags-to-riches story to get into South Texas Democratic machine politics, which is statistically much more lucrative than ambulance chasing. The Democratic machine endeavors to bring excessive amounts of federal tax money into the valley, so despite their many and manifest wealth-accumulating grifts, we view them as a net positive.

But tort lawyers cost Texans 38 Billion Dollars a year, which negatively impacts much more than insurance rates. The Lone Star Alliance, representing over 950 Texas job creators, citizens, and business associations, recently explained the costs of bogus lawsuits:

“Inflationary and litigation costs have decreased the availability of insurance for individuals and businesses in Texas and have forced some businesses to increase prices, lay off employees, or close. Small businesses are burdened with soaring insurance premiums that jeopardize their survival, while the constant wave of lawsuits drives up the costs of essential items like food and medical care.”

I became interested in this topic one year after my wife was hit while pulling out of a parking space at the local HEB. There was no damage to my truck, but considerable damage to her left rear quarter panel. The woman who hit her couldn’t speak English but waited patiently for the police to show up and issue a report blaming the other driver. A year later, my insurance company contacted me about a personal injury resulting from the collision. They instructed me to send any correspondence concerning the settlement to them, which caused me to call and ask them why they were using the word “settle.” They, in turn, informed me that the settlement amount is classified.

My insurance company was founded by former military officers who recognized that the new media is like artillery: it adds dignity to what would otherwise be a vulgar brawl. As is typical of military officers, they classify everything that might embarrass them, so I’ll never know how much the deadbeat who hit my wife got away with. But I’m doing my bit by raising the alarm about the costs of tolerating shifty border lawyers and their plague of nuisance lawsuits.

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The Valley of Miracles

Los Fresnos, Texas, is a small farming hamlet astride State Highway 100, the route to South Padre Island. It is famous for annoying speed traps at either end of the town, where the speed limit on State Highway 100 drops from 65 to 35. Right in the middle of Los Fresnos is a large restaurant/Mexican Bakery called Abby’s Bakery. The owners Leonardo and Nora Báez, started selling homemade pan dulce out of their van on the side of a road in Los Fresnos. They sold their pan dulce from their roadside spot for 18 years before opening a large modern restaurant/bakery.

Last week, ICE raided Abby’s and hauled off every employee for being in the country illegally. They also arrested the Báez’s for harboring illegal workers on their property. The Federales discovered the entire staff lived in a tiny back room stuffed with bunk beds. Yet the owners are not facing charges for tax fraud like the owner of the Charleroi, Pennsylvania, staffing firm busted last week for putting illegal Haitians to work in food processing plants. Stranger still, nobody in the small tight-knit hamlet noticed that illegal migrants were running their favorite Mexican Bakery.

Man on the street interviews by a local TV station revealed local citizens greeted the news with shock and dismay. The citizens who could speak English were not concerned over the exploitation of Mexican workers; they were pissed that the Federales (a.k.a. ICE) were active in their town. I’m not sure what the Spanish speakers were saying but it was probably similar to the pull quote below:

“I’ve come to this bakery since I could drive just to find out that in your local community right around the corner they’re picking up people,” Los Fresnos resident Gordy Aguilar said.”

Do the citizens of Los Fresnos expect their service industry to be staffed by underpaid illegals? Are they not concerned about the social contract being violated by business owners dodging their payroll taxes? One would think the municipal authorities, who are just down the street next to the town rodeo grounds, would frown on this sort of thing, but they make a killing with the speed traps and may not really care.

At this point, the perceptive reader may wonder how a guy selling pan dulce from his van saves enough to open a bakery or restaurant. This raises questions about what kind of credit score a guy selling pan dulce on the side of the road could have. Or how does one raise the collateral to finance a bakery or restaurant from food truck sales? These are not the proper questions; there are hundreds of brand-new Mexican Bakeries just like Abby’s in the Rio Grande Valley, most owned by dudes who started out with a food truck. It’s an economic miracle that polite people ignore because we do not question miracles in the RGV.

Miracles happen constantly on the border, as they do in Mexico. For instance, Bird Flu spared Mexico, so I can buy a dozen eggs for less than a dollar just five miles from my house. If you Google bird flu Mexico you’ll see hundreds of articles from the WHO and legacy media organs claiming Mexico is in the middle of a bird flu epidemic. But they are not killing their chickens, which is keeping their egg prices down. Who are you going to believe? Your own lying eyes or the media?

We also have a powerful shrine to miracles in the RGV that was imported by the freakishly tall, dour Belgian monks of The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. They commissioned a copy from a talented Guadalajara artist of the Virgin Mary statue venerated at San Juan de los Lagos. They installed it in the Basilica of the National Shrine of Our Lady of San Juan del Valle. San Juan is next to Pharr, three exits after McAllen on the I-2 Expressway. Now the faithful can visit the shrine to seek miracles for themselves and return home with gallons of holy water, which is provided free of charge at the shrine. Holy water is the one thing nobody has on hand when they need it, so the wise supplicant stores a gallon or two for emergencies.

Manual Molina is talking with Father Hendrik Laenen, a Belgian Oblate priest, who is outside Our Lady of Refuge in Roma, Texas. For over 100 years, the Oblates served the RGV in those black vestments, long before the air conditioning, paved roads, indoor plumbing, etc… Even in this old black and white photograph you sense Father Laenen had a perpetual sunburn. Photo from R.J. Molina

On October 23, 1970, a local flight instructor crashed his single-engine plane onto the roof of the Basilica during Friday Mass. The fifty priests inside the Basilica evacuated in good order, taking all the children from the attached school with them to safety. The only fatality was the pilot, but the Basilica was destroyed in the ensuing flames. Yet the statue of Our Lady of Saint John of the Valle emerged from the wreckage untouched by the flames. That was a true miracle that may have been facilitated by a priest taking the statue with him when they evacuated, but that’s not the point. The faithful do not quibble over annoying details when it comes to miracles.

The Basilica of the National Shrine of Our Lady of San Juan del Valle.

The RGV was ready when the next round of miracles arrived in the form of NAFTA and Federal Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) grants. NAFTA created thousands of well-paying managerial jobs for Americans commuting to Mexican maquiladoras (manufacturing plants) or working for RGV-based logistic and trucking companies. That brought good money into the Valley but the motherlode was in the HSI grants.

The United States Departments of Agriculture, Education, and Housing and Urban Development have HSI grant programs. The National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Food and Agriculture also have HSI grant programs. The National Aeronautics & Space Administration, Department of Defense, National Endowment for the Humanities, Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of Transportation also have HSI grant programs. The amount of federal tax dollars that has poured into the RGV through HSI grants is impossible to estimate but easy to see in the form of brand-new schools, hospitals, municipal buildings, and everything local property taxes would cover if you lived in a Gringo community.

As federal tax dollars poured in to build infrastructure, local banks and credit unions financed an explosion of housing developments, apartment buildings, strip malls and automated car washes. The valley banks were founded partly to protect the cash of wealthy Mexicans who craved the dollar’s stability. Mexican capital continues to pour into these institutions, and Mexican investors are also happy to invest in American businesses and real estate. In the past, separating Narco money from legitimate investment pesos was almost impossible given the sophistication of Cartel money laundering schemes. But suddenly the ground has shifted.

Will the Trump administration continue to send Billions of tax dollars to the RGV via the Hydra-headed HSI system? I doubt it. Will unlimited amounts of Mexican investment money continue to flow into the valley? Not if the feds introduce DOGE-style, AI-assisted audits of local banks, hospitals, and construction companies. That level of scrutiny would turn up abnormalities indicating the involvement of cartel money. Our local cartel, the Cártel del Golfo (CDG, Gulf Cartel), has been active in the RGV since prohibition. They have invested billions with the aid of friendly RGV bankers, politicians, and law enforcement, despite the occasional arrest and prosecution of local bigwigs by the federal authorities.

But the amount of Cocaine seized by multiple agencies in the past week in the RGV indicates a new game is afoot. A McAllen woman was busted with 48 pounds of cocaine stuffed in her quarter panels at the Progresso Port of Entry on Monday. An illegal from Mexico living in Mission was found with 26 pounds of coke during a traffic stop the next day and a Brownsville senior citizen tried to get over the Los Indios bridge Mule style with 600k worth of white gold in his old truck. On Wednesday, the Border Patrol found 563 pounds of cocaine at the Sarita checkpoint in Kingsville. The next day a tour bus carrying a mariachi band across the Anzalduas Bridge to their gig in Houston was found to contain 200 pounds of cocaine in a modified gas tank.

This dramatic leap in drug seizures could easily be the result of the increased use of military ISR platforms over Mexico. Ten years ago, I saw how cutting-edge technology could harvest specific targeting information from thin air. That technology has improved significantly and I doubt many people understand the depth of current capabilities. On the other hand, it could be Narcos diming out other Narcos to maneuver for advantage under changing circumstances.

To top off an extraordinary week, President Claudia Sheinbaum pulled off a Narco Mega Extradition, handing over 29 senior leaders from every major Cartel in Mexico to the Department of Justice. Included was Rafel Caro Quintero who will be tried for the 1985 murder of DEA Agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. Quintero is facing the death penalty, and before this week, Mexico had refused to extradite any Mexican for prosecution if they faced the death penalty. We are now firmly in uncharted territory.

President Trump won every county in the RGV, but the political and business elite in the Valley are die-hard Democrats. They have not worked through the seven stages of grief over their political irrelevance on the national stage. The local elites thrived on HSI grant money and narco bucks for decades retarding their ability to adapt to the challenges of an America-first future. Inshallah, the federales will come to the valley and start untangling the mess created by billions of narco bucks and poorly supervised (if not fraudulent) HSI grant monies. If they do, there is going to be hell to pay, and for once, the hard-working normies who elected President Trump will not be the ones footing the bill. And that, given what we have endured for the past eight years, would be a miracle.

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A Protest too Pharr

February started with a number of anti-immigration protests breaking out across the country. “People are feeling galvanized,” gushed USA Today as they tried to paint the anti-Trump protests as organic, spontaneous demonstrations of popular outrage. The protests in Los Angeles, Seattle, Austin, and Washington D.C. were supported by open-border NGOs like the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and We Fight Back. They are progressive leftist fringe groups who contend society can only survive by ending capitalism. American billionaires like Neville Roy Singham fund these organizations to protect us from the excesses of other American billionaires like Elon Musk. How this envy of Elon shifted into open border advocacy is hazy. Regardless Roy Singham is pissed off and has paid millions of dollars to various progressive protest organizations to get the rest of us pissed off too.

Law enforcement personnel stage on the 110 freeway during a protest calling for immigration reform Sunday, Feb. 2, 2025, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Eric Thayer)

Even McAllen, Texas, had a Saturday night anti-ICE protest on February 1st that attracted hundreds of mostly young locals. Unlike the protests in big blue cities, the McAllen protestors were peaceful and friendly. Mostly, they drove up and down 10th Street waving Mexican flags and honking their horns, which is what most of them do on a Saturday night anyway (minus the flags). When I was their age, we would have headed over the Anzalduas Bridge into Reynosa to party once we were done cruising 10th Street, but the kids these days . . . not so much. In fact, it’s safe to assume most of them never venture into Mexico because it’s too dangerous.

Local kids express their solidarity with Mexico – a country they love to talk about but never visit. How ironic would it be if Mexico became a safe, sovereign country for these kids to visit during President Trump’s term?

This past Wednesday, RGV Truth live-streamed another spontaneous anti-Ice protest down the road at the Westlico Premium Outlet Mall. Judging from the video, it looked more like a car show with a little swap meet on the side than a protest. But there were plenty of young folks flying Mexican flags from the beds of late-model customized pickup trucks that they would never drive across the Mexican border for obvious reasons. But we don’t talk about that in the RGV because it’s not polite. As we headed into another weekend of action, the mood was tense, with some shadowy miscreants calling for a Saturday night protest next door in the hamlet of Pharr.

This unique call to arms rapidly spread across social media but generated no interest.

Pharr, Texas, was famous for a riot on Cage Street on February 6th, 1971. Back then, the street was lined with bars, cantinas, and barber shops that catered to the local Mexican American population. The police station is also on Cage Street, and on the 6th of February, some local women gathered there to protest the arrest of one of their kids. Back then, the Pharr police and fire departments were staffed with white dudes, and they hosed down the protestors with a firehose, causing the bars and cantinas to empty out. When the local men confronted the cops, they opened fire with live ammunition, killing a local barber.

The Pharr Riots were a big deal in the 1970s; even back then, shooting live ammunition into a crowd of aggravated citizens was considered way out of line. Just a few years earlier, Texas Rangers Alfred Allee and Jacquin Jackson responded to a hostage situation at the Maverick County Courthouse in Eagle Pass by methodically taking the third-floor jail area apart with Browning Automatic Rifles until the hostage takers begged them to stop shooting. That was considered solid police work at the time, but not shooting a barber protesting the use of fire hoses on the local citizens.

Every small town has a unique feature that drives civic pride. For Pharr, Texas, it’s a massive freeway interchange between Highways 83 and 69 that is always expanding to accommodate explosive population growth. I think the Pharr off-ramps are in their third iteration, and they are spectacular, arching so far above the city you look down on Top Golf

With that kind of history, how could the local open-border NGOs go wrong staging the Pharr II Riots? Every Latino Studies graduate in the nation knows that the United States is systemically racist, so the oppression of brown native-born people by The Man in Pharr, Texas, has not changed in 54 years! Only everything in Pharr, Texas, has changed in the past 54 years, starting with trigger-happy white dudes on the police force.

The majority Hispanic population now runs Pharr and every other municipality in the Rio Grande Valley. And these aren’t catty punk-ass Hispanics like the councilwoman from LA caught bad-mouthing the blacks. These are legit civic leaders – the mayor of Pharr is a perfect example. Dr. Ambrosio “Amos” Hernandez is a pediatric surgeon and a principal investor in Doctors Hospital Renaissance (DHR), a massive doctors-owned hospital system with curious funding mechanisms that we don’t talk about in the Valley because that too is considered impolite. Recently, Doctor Hernandez headed the initiative to open a massive branch of the Driscoll Children’s Hospital on the DHR Edinburg campus. DHR is three miles away from the giant South Texas Health Systems Children’s Hospital. You might think that there are a lot of children’s hospitals in a geographically remote border area, but that’s another topic that polite people don’t talk about in the Valley. We have great weather and would rather talk about that.

Top Golf was opened to “drive down diabetes” but hasn’t drawn big crowds yet

Dr. Hernandez is also an accomplished businessman who raised enough investment capital to address the obesity epidemic plaguing the citizens of Phar, with a three-story air-conditioned driving range. The mayor also spearheaded the effort to transform the spot of the 1971 Pharr Riot into a food truck park called The Hub.

The Hub – a food truck park that doesn’t have any food trucks. I’m guessing the close proximity of the police station discourages the taco truck chefs from selling beer on the side. Who wants to eat food truck tacos without beer?

Saturday evening was beautiful in Pharr, with a glorious sunset and perfect weather for a protest centered on The Hub. However, the venue was empty—no protestors, food trucks, or anything. Top Golf probably attracted a bigger crowd, but that isn’t a sure bet, as it never seems busy.

This brings up another topic we don’t talk about much down here: federal HSI designation. Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI) were eligible (during previous administrations) for multiple streams of federal grant monies. Every school district, hospital system, and municipality in the RGV anticipated unimpeded access to federal HSI grants in perpetuity, but that now appears to be in doubt. The loss of federal grant monies combined with increased scrutiny into the origins of Mexican investment capital would have a catastrophic impact on the current economic development.

We Fight Back had big plans for the weekend but lacked enough cash to pay for an outrage mob. Could this be a second-order effect from turning off the USAID money spigot?

Pharr wasn’t the only scheduled protest with no protestors – of the 40 cities targeted by the Weekend of Action, only a handful had actual protests. The crowd in Austin was sparse, as was the crowd in Colorado Springs, and those were the only protests I could find in the news. I suspect it takes a lot of walking around money to generate a proper outrage mob, and apparently, that money has disappeared from the open-border NGOs. There is no organic support for a wide-open southern border, nor do rational people consider the abuse inflicted on illegal immigrants by human traffickers acceptable.

I’ve seen French street mimes draw bigger crowds than this in Austin. Protesters against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement deportations gathered at the Texas Capitol on February 8, 2025. (KXAN News/Aidan Boyd)

The United States is poised for significant change in how the federal government interacts with its citizens and state governments. In places that have benefited from the transfer of American jobs to the third world (like the Rio Grande Valley), change means the end of easy federal dollars subsidizing wealthy real estate speculators. The reaction of local power brokers to the new administration was summed up by this statement from McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez.

“The McAllen Police Department has in the past and does so today deem immigration matters to be a federal jurisdictional responsibility, and as such, we do not engage in immigration enforcement activities.”

That is total bullshit. The McAllen police deemed immigration a problem when the FJB administration started releasing thousands of illegal migrants into the city back in 2021. President Trump easily won the popular vote in the Rio Grande Valley but not the votes of the entrenched Hispanic elites who run this valley. Now they are lying low, waiting to see how badly designating Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations hurts the flow of investment capital and bribe money flooding the border area from the narco-terrorist state next door. In that respect, the RGV is the canary in the coal mine when it comes to taking control of our Southern Border away from the cartels. If the Trump Administration is serious about stopping both cartel trafficking and fraudulent government disbursements, there are a bunch of powerful people in this valley who are about to face the grim prospect of federal prosecution for fraud and/or aiding and abetting terrorism.

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Charity is a Racket

The Catholic Relief Charities scam has finally gained the attention of the legacy media. Not for the billions of federal tax dollars they have been given but a video from Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee on how to avoid ICE detention.  Lawyer Barb Graham made the video, and she opens with the following:  

“All people living in the United States, including people who are undocumented, have certain rights under the United States Constitution,” 

That is total bull-Schiff. Illegal aliens have no constitutional rights because they are not citizens of the United States. But that’s not the issue that the public has focused on; it’s the 2.9 Billion taxpayer dollars that FJB gave the charities sex-traffic women and children on behalf of Mexican drug cartels. But this tawdry situation was remedied this morning by the Secretary of Homeland Security, who cut all government funding to NGOs and religious charities that have been making bank on trafficking illegal migrants. The government is not known for the timely payment of invoices, and I doubt those currently being processed will be paid.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is heading out into the wilds of New York City, leading ICE raids. After this demonstration of competent leadership, she returned to DC and cut all the funding to the NGOs who have facilitated four years of open border madness. Photo from Reuters January 28, 2025

Catholic Charities is a tax-exempt charity, which means we can see its financials on Charity Navigator. Charity Navigator loves Catholic Charities, designating them a 100% four-star charity. But there is an obvious discrepancy in the financials. A 2021 ProPublica audit of Catholic Charities USA concluded:

The group’s local affiliates were taking in a total of nearly $2.9 billion annually from the government — representing about 62% of its $4.67 billion annual revenue.

Charity Navigator lists Catholic Charities USA’s 2021 revenue as 50 million. ProPublica contends it was 4.67 Billion. Clearly, shenanigans are happening at Charity Navigator, which is a shame; I once trusted that site. But who cares about Charity Navigator? I’d like to know how Catholic Charities accounts for the disbursement of 4.67 billion dollars. That is a mountain of money; there is a slim chance that Catholic Charities can account for it.

These are Catholic Charities financials on the Charity Navigator website.
These are the federal tax dollars given to Catholic Charities according to the website usaspending.gov

Catholic Charities USA President Kerry Robinson issued a statement yesterday saying:

“The millions of Americans who rely on this life-giving support will suffer due to the unprecedented effort to freeze federal aid supporting these programs,”

Even more bull-Schiff that reveals the profound disconnect between words and action in the “humanitarian” space. It is clear from the actions of Catholic Charities that they are not concerned with the plight of poor Americans. If they were, they would not be facilitating the influx of tens of millions of dirt-poor, unskilled migrants who are controlled, exploited and abused by the drug cartels who trafficked them across the border. These migrants will drive down wages, drive up crime and housing while straining public schools and other municipal resources. All of these follow on effects impact working class Americans, not the elites who head tax exempt charities or billion dollar NGO’s.

Catholic Charities RGV is closed in McAllen, and now that Section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act has been invoked, every illegal the Border Patrol catches is bounced back across the border the same day.

So what motivates the “humanitarians” of Catholic Charities USA? It’s not caring for the poor . . . obviously. They may have a few under-resourced programs for the poverty-stricken in the Rio Grande Valley, but the FJB administration wasn’t paying them billions to spend on poor American citizens. That money was to facilitate a massive flow of unvetted aliens from 130 different countries who will draw massive resources away from the American citizens who needed it the most. Using dirt-poor migrants to enrich well-heeled, connected democrat cronies is not something the American taxpayer should tolerate, let alone fund.

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All Quiet on the Southern Front

With our national nightmare drawing to a close, I thought it a good time to check on our bad border. On the last Sunday of 2024, I took a drive along the Military Highway to check on the known rally points the Border Patrol uses to consolidate illegal border jumpers for transport to their processing facility.

 The first stop was Granjeno, home of the Junk Yard Bar. Behind the Junk Yard, there is a fence in the border wall that has been welded open by the Biden administration. But the fence and surrounding levee road were empty. Anzalduas Park, Bentsen State Park, and Penitas were also eerily quiet. On a normal Sunday afternoon drive, I would’ve encountered dozens of Border Patrol Trucks parked in these areas and a heavy State Police presence. Last Sunday, I saw none. Yesterday, I checked again and saw one Border Patrol truck, but there was no state police.

The Rio Grande Valley sector traditionally leads the nation in illegal migrant apprehensions, but this year, it has fallen to fifth place. Since the beginning of the federal fiscal year, migrant apprehensions have been down 84% compared to FY 2023. The federal fiscal year starts in October, so this is a tricky media way of masking the fact that apprehensions are down since the election of President Trump. The cartels control the migrant flow, and I don’t know why they have curtailed most of the human smuggling traffic in this sector. It could be an encouraging sign, but I don’t think the cartels are going to forgo their smuggling revenues that easily.

When I took my afternoon walk, I cruised by the bus station to see if the Catholic Relief Charities looked busy, and they were. Lots of military-aged males loitering about, which is normal. Unaccompanied minors are dropped off at the Southwest Key Programs NGO, an NGO with a fake address listed on the internet because reasons. One of those reasons is the multiple investigations for rampant sexual abuse of those children by the NGO staff.

Traffic on the Anzalduas Bridge coming from Mexico was backed up for miles on the last Sunday in December. Years ago, traffic flowed from Texas to Mexico for big holiday weekends; now, Mexicans come here and have a huge economic impact. The holiday season extends through Día de los Reyes Magos‘ or the ‘Three Wise Men’ celebration on the sixth of January.

The annual evening Hanukah celebration in Arthur Park is a McAllen holiday tradition that draws lots of local kids with a petting zoo and various rides. At 6:00 pm during the eight nights of Hanukah a prominent local Rabbi lights one of the Torah candles before having a social with the various locals who have gathered for the celebration. The Jewish community in the Rio Grande Valley has no issues – this is South Texas; we carry guns and won’t tolerate anyone abusing our neighbors over religious issues. In fact, the first European settlers in the Rio Grande Valley included Spanish Jews who had escaped the Inquisition through feigned or actual conversion. Being former Jews, they were tacitly excluded from the inner ranks in Mexico City, so they went North to establish Monterrey as Mexico’s banking capital. They pushed on into Nuevo Santander, establishing the towns of Camargo, Reynosa, and Laredo.

The local Jewish Community 2024 Festival of Lights in Archer Park. Kids love the rides and the food is not bad too.

Within three generations, the Spanish priests of Nuevo Santander had exposed and stopped all clandestine Hebrew practices by interrogating children about their home lives. The Spanish Jews stopped practicing their religion but did not mestizaje (marry local Indians), preferring to marry among themselves. That practice ended in 1846 when Maria Hilaria de la Garza, daughter of Don Francisco de la Garza Martinez, the biggest landowner in the Rio Grande Valley, married a former Texas Ranger and current successful Corpus Christie merchant Henry Clay Davis. One of the conditions of the marriage was that Henry had to move down to the northern side of the Rio Grande to manage his father-in-law’s cattle ranch.

In 1848, Henry Clay Davis built Fort Ringgold to protect the port town he built and named Rio Grande City. And that’s how the white dudes penetrated the Rio Grande Valley, marring into the old Spanish families awarded porciones (elongated quadrangles of land with frontage on the Rio Grande River) by Spain. The founder of McAllen, Texas, John McAllen, did the same thing, marrying Salome Balli Dominguez, who had inherited the Santa Anta Ranch. McAllen was a Scots-Irish immigrant who worked as a clerk in the Edinburgh store of a man named John Young, who was the first Anglo to marry Ms. Dominguez, but he died, and his employee imported from Scotland married her after what we assume was a proper interval.

John McAllen, the founder of the city of McAllen, came from the lower elevations of Scotland, given his formal education, self-motivation, and temperate drinking habits.

The Scots-Irish who married into the old-school Spanish families of the Rio Grande Valley were educated, capable men who wanted to develop their lands. They laid out towns, organized irrigation districts, and attracted enough development funding to build roads, telegraph, and railroad lines. Being dour Scotsmen, they built large, secure banks that were stingy with the loaning out creditors’ money. Secure, honest banks were ideal for wealthy Mexicans who could protect their fortunes from their predatory central government and the frequent devaluations of the Mexican peso.

Forty years ago, McAllen was the hub for nightly smuggling flights into Mexico that carried stereos, flat screen TV’s, or modern dental and medical equipment . . . things that you could not get in the country due to corruption, bureaucratic incompetence, and thievery. The Rio Grande Valley continues to benefit from Mexican investors, but much of that money now comes from the Cartels. Nobody knows how things are going to shake out between the Trump administration and the Mexican government/cartels, so for now, things are very quiet on the border. I don’t think they will stay that way for much longer.

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Here Comes the Judge

As I’ve grown older and wiser, I still haven’t wised up about joking with dated material. Last year, when physical therapists were torturing me after shoulder surgery, I would start to sing Roxanne, hoping they would stop the torture for some red light therapy. The PT techs had no idea what I was talking about. They had never heard of The Police or their hit song, Roxanne. They ignored my suggestions about using Red Light Therapy, preferring a more active, painful physical approach. For that, I’m grateful. My shoulder has healed nicely, and I’m back in the gym almost daily because I don’t have anything better to do.

Except during the election season because I volunteered to be an Election Judge. Here Comes the Judge is America’s first Meme and was a staple of the old Rowman and Martins Laugh-In show, which was popular in the late 60’s. It’s the first thing I thought of when a Hidalgo County Election Supervisor I call Neo, called me to ask if I’d like to be a judge instead of a poll worker. Neo isn’t the supervisor’s real name, but he only communicates to me through texts, which for some reason seem Matrix-like.

Democrats have the media, academia, the billionaires, the Yellow Generals, and the Deep State. We have the memes

I volunteered for election duty, hoping it would instill some long-lost confidence in our civic governance. I am terrified that the Democrats will steal this election, which, given the disaster of the Biden-Harris years, seems impossible. I live in the Rio Grande Valley, which has long been a Democratic stronghold but is now firmly Trump territory, given his massive appeal to working and middle-class Hispanic men. So, I was interested in seeing how the votes would be tabulated and if there was a chance for voter fraud or other shenanigans.

One of the many things to be thankful for is not seeing this kind of BS ever again. Propaganda is designed to demoralize, and nothing demoralizes me more than seeing a nitwit LARPing on the taxpayer’s dime.

We don’t have dominion voting machines in the valley; we use Verity Duo voting machines with touchscreen voting that produce paper ballots. Those ballots are then scanned into a separate Duo machine that is not connected to the internet or the voting machines and then end up in a locked ballot box that can only be opened at the county election office. The system seems as fraud-proof as one could make it because the paper ballots are the only thing that counts, and if the hand count varies from the scanner count, then all hell breaks loose at the county election headquarters.

The Hispanic voters in the Rio Grande Valley overwhelmingly support the Catholic Church and are not amused by Dem anti-catholic propaganda. This idiot woman cost Harris votes.

The only organized election fraud in the Rio Grande Valley comes from Politiqueras. These are teams of vote harvesters funded by Democrats that prey on the older Hispanic population in regional colonias, nursing homes, or adult daycare centers. This year, the Texas Office of the Attorney General’s Election Integrity Division is actively hunting these ballot harvesters, so I do not believe they can inject enough bogus ballots into the system to make any difference.

The Hunter Biden laptop disinformation campaign by our so-called intelligence agencies was clearly election interference, and those responsible should be held to account. But they won’t because you know why.

In Texas, there is no electioneering within 100 feet of a polling place, including clothing supporting a specific candidate or political party. I have yet to see a voter show up with a MAGA hat, and I doubt that it will be a problem if one does. Nobody mistakes me for a Harris supporter, and I’m so damn cheerful I doubt anyone will argue with me when I ask that the hat be removed while they vote. The only issue I have had is with college-aged women who want to document everything they do with their cell phones. The dad in me wants to plead with them to wear more clothes because they tend to be grossly overweight. But I simply ask they refrain from taking photographs in the voting area and they pout but put the phones away. There are no policemen assigned to our polling location, and there is no need for them. The voting public in the RGV is friendly, happy, and content with the integrity of the county voting system.

In order to be a serious country with a functioning military and state department, this kind of bullshit has to stop.

I’ve been checking in voters, and it has been a delightful experience. Voters step up to my table and present their driver’s license. I enter the first four letters of the last name, the first three of their first name, and their date of birth. Their name and address appear 98% of the time, indicating they are registered to vote. A label printer attached to my laptop prints off their name and address, and I paste that into my voters’ log, ask them to verify everything is correct, and sign. A second label contains a bar code that the Verity Duo scan machine reads, which then spits out a six-digit code for use at the ballot machines. The voter enters that code and votes, and when finished, the machine spits out a printed ballot with the voter’s name and information and the votes they have cast.

I remain concerned about voter irregularities throwing the election to the worst Presidential candidate I have ever seen. I am also worried that the deep state will not step aside and accept the will of the American people when they vote President Trump back into office. But I am glad I volunteered to work this election because it restored my faith in my fellow citizens and local government. I doubt I’ll ever have the same degree of confidence in the federal government, but four years of Trump and JD Vance would be a good start.

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The FRI Guide to Dangerous Places: The United States of America

The United States has never been weaker or more vulnerable in my lifetime. The President is clearly incapacitated, yet he refuses to step down; our DEI-centric military lacks the manpower, weapons, or leadership to be a credible deterrent. I enlisted in the Navy in 1978, during the days of low morale, high drug use, and the “hollow force”. Back then, we had (literally) twice the number of ships, tanks, artillery pieces, amphibious vehicles, and infantry battalions, but the units were undermanned and poorly led. Marine officers carried loaded sidearms while on duty and had every expectation of needing them.

Ole Doc Lynch pulling liberty on Saint Patrick’s Day, 1984, in Haifa, Israel. Brawling in shady bars was an expectation back then but the Israelis were so damn nice to us that I don’t think anyone got into a ruckus. Hard men aren’t necessarily violent, just violent when necessary.

In the late 1970s, the military fell on hard times when full of hard men who, when they had their sailors at sea, or their Marines out in the field, established good order and discipline the old-fashioned way; with their fists. I did it myself because it was the only way to get your peers to stop blasting music after 2300 in the Bethesda Naval Hospital enlisted barracks. The modern military may still have a few hard men, but they would never receive tacit support or encouragement from their chain of command to use traditional old-school discipline to establish and maintain good order and discipline.

We live in soft times, more disconnected from nature than ever before, with a military full of soft men/women/undecided who are uninterested in and unfamiliar with interpersonal violence. The current military is incapable of repeating the miraculous transformation into a highly competent, well-funded, and drug-free force that occurred during President Reagan’s military revitalization in the early 80s. Public confidence in the military, extraordinarily high since the mid-1980s, is trending back down to where it was after Vietnam. Confidence in all the institutions that matter, the press, congress, the legal system, academia, “The Science™,” and Medicine are at historic lows. It’s so bad that regional law enforcement agencies will no longer share information with the FBI, which they do not trust.

Proving the FBI has IFF (identify friend or foe) issues, two FBI agents paid a visit to a friend of mine yesterday, who is the hardest Marine Corps infantry officer I’ve ever known. Asad Khan was a legend in the Marine Corps known for an impressive work ethic, exacting standards, and tactical savvy. I was a huge fan, and when I was suddenly bumped up to the 1/8 operations officer while still a young captain, Major Khan graciously gave me a copy of the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP), saving me untold hours of tedious staff work. He wasn’t a dick about it either despite knowing that I knew he would never take another battalion’s SOP knowing he could write a better one.

That’s as close to a smile as you’ll get from Asad when he’s wearing the uniform. Not that he smiles much on his podcast now that I think about it. . . .

Asad led the first Marines into Afghanistan, landing in Bagram, where they boarded rented buses to drive to Kabul and reclaim the American embassy. On the way there, they ran into a one-tank roadblock in a wadi crossing with a sign demanding payment to pass. LtCol Khan, a fluent Pashto speaker, walked over to the tank, knocked on the crew hatch, and asked the lone occupant inside what he needed. The old man said Shoes. Khan gave him chow and water and told him to wait there until he returned with shoes, and in the meantime, to put the main gun in neutral position and let the Americans coming behind him pass unmolested. The old man agreed and was inside the tank days later with Asad, who returned with shoes, clothes, a coat, and some money. Khan was both hard and smart – I don’t think any other Marine officer of our generation could have navigated that situation so well back in 2001.

I ran into Asad several times in Afghanistan. I met his son in Kabul when he showed up with then-Colonel (now retired LtGen) Dave Furness, who worked in the congressional liaison office then. Asad hosts the Sentinel podcast on YouTube, and you should listen to a few episodes to get a feel for what the FBI considers “anti-American” these days. You can listen to him describe the FBI visit here, and when you’re done, you tell me if you’d like to see Asad investigated by the Feds or moving into the house next door.

Some pictures are truly worth a thousand words

We are watching the government/media/academia axis of evil employ brute digital force to whitewash the disastrous incompetence of the Biden regime and its new leader, Kamala Harris, in real time. Already, the allegedly nonpartisan GovTrack has deleted her ranking as the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate. Axios spent years calling Kamala the Border Czar, now insists that they never said that, and she was never really the border czar. Amazon has suddenly banned an unflattering book on Kamala as the media’s Soviet style airbrushing of the most unpopular Vice President in history continues.

The Orange and Velvet revolutions foisted on various countries by the U.S. Department of State targeted regime legitimacy through incremental non-violent means to generate a preference cascade leading to regime collapse. It is useful to remember this when reviewing the mountain of disinformation, hoaxes, and conspiracy theories we have had to endure since Donald J Trump announced his candidacy in June of 2015. A trendy acronym from the recent past explains the ramifications of gaslighting American citizens: POSIWID: The Purpose Of a System Is What It Does. If the ends pursued by the Regime are functionally identical to the ends of warfare, then the Regime is waging war. Ask LtCol Asad Khan USMC (Ret) about it, I’m sure he has an interesting take.

The purpose of regime media propaganda is to demoralize to opposition

Years ago, progressive America declared war on biology with their refusal to accept the reality that gender is not a social construct and men and women are not interchangeable. Biology in this context is a synonym for nature, and it’s Mother Nature who determined that women would never be as physically capable as men because they are designed and built differently. The emotional difference between the sexes was demonstrated during the FBI/Secret Service congressional hearings. US Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle took such a beating that she resigned the next day, but she lost her job not because she’s a woman, but as a woman, she never had to learn how to fight at the apex predator level. Showing poor tactical awareness,s she allowed herself to be ambushed at the Republican convention when she arrogantly strode the floor, assuming she had the juice to do so unmolested. When confronted by her ridiculous prior statements concerning roof slopes, she was clearly embarrassed. When attacked by both sides of the aisle, she was unable to mask her emotions.

Mother Nature is tough on the small, the weak, the stupid, and the defenseless.

FBI Director Christopher Wray strode into the Capitol and not only obfuscated shamelessly, he also smirkingly added this poison pill to his testimony:

“I think with respect to former President Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that, you know, hit his ear.” 

Utter rubbish concocted out of thin air that was walked back the next day, but it wasn’t meant to be taken literally. That was Wray sending Congress a two-word message, the first word starts with F, and the second is You. He was telling Congress they didn’t intimidate him, and he would counterattack anyone who crossed him. That kind of naked bureaucratic power can only be wielded effectively by men who fought their way to the top of a meritocratic system. Women reach the top of federal agencies by other methods, not by consistently outperforming their male peers every step of the way for decades on end.

Regardless of who is in charge of our massive federal bureaucracies, they are not going to allow the Trump/Vance ticket to gain landslide-sized momentum unmolested. Their bizarre attempts to stop him have already surpassed the surreal, but have only made him stronger. The next four months are at the very least going to be weird, but I’m afraid the progressive establishment will reach for the last tool they have: political violence. Our country is leaderless, and the people are adrift in uncharted waters, with DEI hires at the helm and FBI agents at the door; this can’t possibly end well.

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