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BREAKING: Beto 2020 campaign memo found in El Paso coffee shop!

April 01, 2019
Nathan Nipper

An astute fan of the Glenn Beck Program recently found a curious document that was apparently left on a corner table of an El Paso coffee shop. Upon closer examination of the coffee-stained pages, the fan was rather surprised to discover it was a Beto campaign memo containing the rough draft of a communication from Beto to the nation explaining his campaign for president. The pages contained plenty of red ink – obviously whichever campaign adviser reviewed the communication wanted a lot of changes. They didn't mince words either, writing " Must discuss ASAP!" in red at the top of the first page. On page three, when Beto apparently planned to address the time he broke into the University of Texas at El Paso campus, the adviser bluntly wrote, "What? No." in the margin. Below is the full text of Beto's draft:

America! You may've heard – I'm running for president. That's right, I'm throwing my sombrero in the ring so to speak. And man, is it going to be fun. The road trip of my dreams. Just me, my guitar, and the open road. And a small group of traveling fans (some refer to them as the "press corps").

So, for those who don't know me yet – are you living in a cave? JK. Of course you've heard of me. You've also probably heard, thanks to some of my conservative compadres, that "Beto" is not my given name. That is true. But my truth is that I self-identify as Beto. Because Beto is the only name that fully encapsulates who I am – a millionaire, cultural appropriating Gen X-er with an open mind and an even opener heart. Just a sincere dude with an unfulfilled rock star fantasy, massive father-pleasing-baggage, and a generous helping of political opportunism and white, male, Ivy League privilege. F***, did I just over-share? I have a tendency to over-share. I also have a tendency to say f*** a lot. LOL.

You may've heard I'm married to the only daughter of a Texas real estate billionaire. That is also true. I can read between the lines, I hear the snarky whispers – did he marry for love or money? And I say, it's the 21st century, why can't we marry for both? I believe in an America where anyone can get married for the love of money.

Yes, like everyone, I've got a few skeletons in my closet. So, let's air the dirty laundry. During my Senate campaign last year, I aired my dirty laundry all the time on Facebook Lives from Laundromats all across Texas. But seriously, about that DWI when I was 26 – I honestly prefer to think of it as "Driving With Intent… to have a good time." People say I crashed into a truck and tried to flee the scene. But "hit and run" implies baseball, and I was never much of a baseball player. But I did row crew at Columbia. Not many guys with Hispanic first names can lay claim to that.

The truth is, I like beer. But not as much as that Kavanaugh guy, am I right? Let's talk about the truck that was in my path that night. Think about what that guy was likely dealing with – minimum wage job, probably barely afforded the gas that had him on the interstate. Imagine if he had had a living wage. Imagine an America where he could've afforded a faster car to get out of the way of my youthful driving, or maybe one of those fancy ones with side-view mirror blind spot warnings. Shouldn't we want side-view mirror warning lights for all? See, this is the kind of constructive conversation I want to have with you in Beto's Beanbag Bungalow.

I know we're going to become fast pals, America. Because I'm just one of you. We're just a couple bros, or, make that one bro and one lady, or one bro and a bro who identifies as a lady. Or whatever floats your boat because I want you to know I am totally down with that. But for the purposes of my scenario here, we're just a couple bros – you and me, America – kicked back on a couple of beanbags, sipping on craft beers from a local craft brewery, just hanging out in my bungalow. Think of Beto's Beanbag Bungalow as a metaphorical safe space where we can just be bros and figure out life together. We can talk through the tough issues facing our great land, and then decide where we stand based on consensus, quality polling, and wise counsel

from trusted friends at a handful of reputable national media outlets. And canvassing. Lots and lots of neighborhood canvassing. Because I don't know what I'm talking about most of the time, and neither do you. We don't have all the answers. But as long as we can agree to agree on the national legalization of pot, then the sky's the limit on what we can figure out together.

Take immigration for example. I can identify with border fence jumpers, because I too had to hop a fence once for a prank. And exactly like illegal immigrants who get unfairly arrested by evil ICE agents, I was apprehended by campus police just because I jumped the fence at the University of Texas at El Paso. Once I told them I wasn't actually a student there, that I'd actually been out of college for a few years, and once I told them my dad was a county judge, they were totally cool with it. Why can't we just be cool like that with our border crossers? We just need to find out who they really are, and who their dad is, and it'll be all good in the hood so to speak.

As for some of the other really hard issues of our time, critics say I avoid firm stances. But a lot of critics are just closet musicians who never got to rock out on a real stage. I've got plenty of stances…

Am I for or against a border wall? Sure.

Green New Deal or the status quo? Absolutely.

Socialism or capitalism? I'm actually for merging with Canada and Mexico to form the United States of Camerico.

Abortion? Yes, as long as it's the woman's choice.

Medicare for all? I prefer to call it Medicare for y'all, because I'm set for life. Just kidding. Of course I want free health care for all minorities.

Enough of the boring policy stuff. A little bit about my personal interests – like my terrific wife Amy, and our three kids that she raises: Ulysses, Molly and Henry. One of my campaign goals is to figure out replacement Hispanic names for each of them by the time I take office. Currently I'm leaning toward "Ariana", "Umberto", "Macarena", and "Hernando" respectively. I'm open to suggestions.

I think you already know about my taste in punk music. I also like shredding parking lots on my skateboard. In fact, as president, my first Executive Order would be ripping out the White House bowling alley and replacing it with some sweet skate ramps. I want to do things that will bring America together and I think America would agree that a skate park inside the White House would be totally dope. You can expect to see a lot of changes like that in the Beto White House.

I think you already know about my taste in punk music. I also like shredding parking lots on my skateboard.

One of my top priorities as president will be an annex to the West Wing that will serve as a rehab center for squirrels. Let me explain. During my debate last fall with Ted Cruz, I mentioned the time I went with my daughter to visit a blind squirrel that was in rehab. That

was an epic father/daughter/squirrel moment – so pure, raw, and real. There are so many squirrels on the White House grounds. And, to our nation's shame, we have yet to earmark a single dime in federal spending to help preserve these helpless creatures. They're not anywhere close to being endangered, but try telling that to the millennial squirrels who can see climate disaster on the horizon. Well, those who can see that is. That's why I want to establish our nation's first Center for Blind Squirrels, or CBS.

With their boundless energy and uncanny ability to save acorns for the future, squirrels remind me of you, America. Squirrels rely on the tree, and the tree is like the federal government. When it's healthy and strong, and not hampered by climate change, it provides everything we need for an abundant life. The squirrels don't have a care in the world, just scampering around the tree, enjoying all the entitlements that the tree incurs massive debt to provide. In fact, if I'm elected president, in my first hundred days I will direct Congress to change the national symbol of the U.S. from an eagle – which no one ever gets to see in the wild anyway – to the squirrel, which is in virtually every American's backyard. That way, every citizen will have a constant reminder of who we are as Americans – nimble, skittish, and utterly dependent on the tree.

Remember, all squirrels are welcome at the Bungalow… pull up a beanbag! Just check your convictions at the door. Because convictions are kind of like handguns. They can be super dangerous. So, they're best left with the safety on and locked in a gun safe. Or never purchased at all. You get the picture.

America, as I embark on this ultimate historic campaign road trip, I can only make you one absolute promise from the bottom of my heart… I will Facebook Live the whole thing.

In conclusion, to borrow a line from that cinematic classic from our BFFs across the pond, Notting Hill: "I'm just a boy – Beto – standing in front of a girl/boy/non-binary-America, asking him/her/it to love him."

America, as I embark on this ultimate historic campaign road trip, I can only make you one absolute promise from the bottom of my heart… I will Facebook Live the whole thing. From my morning bed-head and brushing my teeth, to my post-Whataburger bathroom trips, to my late-night-slow-burn air drum solos behind the steering wheel of my SUV, to my wife tucking me in at night with my favorite bedtime story – Dealing Death and Drugs: The Big Business of Dope in the U.S. and Mexico by Beto O'Rourke – it's going to be all Beto, all the time. At least until I gracefully bow out of the race to become Joe Biden's running mate and pretend like this wasn't the plan all along.

[NOTE: The preceding Memo was a parody written by MRA writer Nathan Nipper – not Beto O'Rourke. April Fools!]

Trump v. Slaughter: The Deep State on trial

JIM WATSON / Contributor | Getty Images

The administrative state has long operated as an unelected super-government. Trump v. Slaughter may be the moment voters reclaim authority over their own institutions.

Washington is watching and worrying about a U.S. Supreme Court case that could very well define the future of American self-government. And I don’t say that lightly. At the center of Trump v. Slaughter is a deceptively simple question: Can the president — the one official chosen by the entire nation — remove the administrators and “experts” who wield enormous, unaccountable power inside the executive branch?

This isn’t a technical fight. It’s not a paperwork dispute. It’s a turning point. Because if the answer is no, then the American people no longer control their own government. Elections become ceremonial. The bureaucracy becomes permanent. And the Constitution becomes a suggestion rather than the law of the land.

A government run by experts instead of elected leaders is not a republic. It’s a bureaucracy with a voting booth bolted onto the front to make us feel better.

That simply cannot be. Justice Neil Gorsuch summed it up perfectly during oral arguments on Monday: “There is no such thing in our constitutional order as a fourth branch of government that’s quasi-judicial and quasi-legislative.”

Yet for more than a century, the administrative state has grown like kudzu — quietly, relentlessly, and always in one direction. Today we have a fourth branch of government: unelected, unaccountable, insulated from consequence. Congress hands off lawmaking to agencies. Presidents arrive with agendas, but the bureaucrats remain, and they decide what actually gets done.

If the Supreme Court decides that presidents cannot fire the very people who execute federal power, they are not just rearranging an org chart. The justices are rewriting the structure of the republic. They are confirming what we’ve long feared: Here, the experts rule, not the voters.

A government run by experts instead of elected leaders is not a republic. It’s a bureaucracy with a voting booth bolted onto the front to make us feel better.

The founders warned us

The men who wrote the Constitution saw this temptation coming. Alexander Hamilton and James Madison in the Federalist Papers hammered home the same principle again and again: Power must remain traceable to the people. They understood human nature far too well. They knew that once administrators are protected from accountability, they will accumulate power endlessly. It is what humans do.

That’s why the Constitution vests the executive power in a single president — someone the entire nation elects and can unelect. They did not want a managerial council. They did not want a permanent priesthood of experts. They wanted responsibility and authority to live in one place so the people could reward or replace it.

So this case will answer a simple question: Do the people still govern this country, or does a protected class of bureaucrats now run the show?

Not-so-expert advice

Look around. The experts insisted they could manage the economy — and produced historic debt and inflation.

The experts insisted they could run public health — and left millions of Americans sick, injured, and dead while avoiding accountability.

The experts insisted they could steer foreign policy — and delivered endless conflict with no measurable benefit to our citizens.

And through it all, they stayed. Untouched, unelected, and utterly unapologetic.

If a president cannot fire these people, then you — the voter — have no ability to change the direction of your own government. You can vote for reform, but you will get the same insiders making the same decisions in the same agencies.

That is not self-government. That is inertia disguised as expertise.

A republic no more?

A monarchy can survive a permanent bureaucracy. A dictatorship can survive a permanent bureaucracy. A constitutional republic cannot. Not for long anyway.

We are supposed to live in a system where the people set the course, Congress writes the laws, and the president carries them out. When agencies write their own rules, judges shield them from oversight, and presidents are forbidden from removing them, we no longer live in that system. We live in something else — something the founders warned us about.

And the people become spectators of their own government.

JIM WATSON / Contributor | Getty Images

The path forward

Restoring the separation of powers does not mean rejecting expertise. It means returning expertise to its proper role: advisory, not sovereign.

No expert should hold power that voters cannot revoke. No agency should drift beyond the reach of the executive. No bureaucracy should be allowed to grow branches the Constitution never gave it.

The Supreme Court now faces a choice that will shape American life for a generation. It can reinforce the Constitution, or it can allow the administrative state to wander even farther from democratic control.

This case isn’t about President Trump. It isn’t about Rebecca Slaughter, the former Federal Trade Commission official suing to get her job back. It’s about whether elections still mean anything — whether the American people still hold the reins of their own government.

That is what is at stake: not procedure, not technicalities, but the survival of a system built on the revolutionary idea that the citizens — not the experts — are the ones who rule.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

1 in 20 Canadians die by MAID—Is this 'compassion'?

Vaughn Ridley / Stringer | Getty Images

Medical assistance in dying isn’t health care. It’s the moment a Western democracy decided some lives aren’t worth saving, and it’s a warning sign we can’t ignore.

Canada loves to lecture America about compassion. Every time a shooting makes the headlines, Canadian commentators cannot wait to discuss how the United States has a “culture of death” because we refuse to regulate guns the way enlightened nations supposedly do.

But north of our border, a very different crisis is unfolding — one that is harder to moralize because it exposes a deeper cultural failure.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order.

The Canadian government is not only permitting death, but it’s also administering, expanding, and redefining it as “medical care.” Medical assistance in dying is no longer a rare, tragic exception. It has become one of the country’s leading causes of death, offered to people whose problems are treatable, whose conditions are survivable, and whose value should never have been in question.

In Canada, MAID is now responsible for nearly 5% of all deaths — 1 out of every 20 citizens. And this is happening in a country that claims the moral high ground over American gun violence. Canada now records more deaths per capita from doctors administering lethal drugs than America records from firearms. Their number is 37.9 deaths per 100,000 people. Ours is 13.7. Yet we are the country supposedly drowning in a “culture of death.”

No lecture from abroad can paper over this fact: Canada has built a system where eliminating suffering increasingly means eliminating the sufferer.

Choosing death over care

One example of what Canada now calls “compassion” is the case of Jolene Bond, a woman suffering from a painful but treatable thyroid condition that causes dangerously high calcium levels, bone deterioration, soft-tissue damage, nausea, and unrelenting pain. Her condition is severe, but it is not terminal. Surgery could help her. And in a functioning medical system, she would have it.

But Jolene lives under socialized medicine. The specialists she needs are either unavailable, overrun with patients, or blocked behind bureaucratic requirements she cannot meet. She cannot get a referral. She cannot get an appointment. She cannot reach the doctor in another province who is qualified to perform the operation. Every pathway to treatment is jammed by paperwork, shortages, and waitlists that stretch into the horizon and beyond.

Yet the Canadian government had something else ready for her — something immediate.

They offered her MAID.

Not help, not relief, not a doctor willing to drive across a provincial line and simply examine her. Instead, Canada offered Jolene a state-approved death. A lethal injection is easier to obtain than a medical referral. Killing her would be easier than treating her. And the system calls that compassion.

Bureaucracy replaces medicine

Jolene’s story is not an outlier. It is the logical outcome of a system that cannot keep its promises. When the machinery of socialized medicine breaks down, the state simply replaces care with a final, irreversible “solution.” A bureaucratic checkbox becomes the last decision of a person’s life.

Canada insists its process is rigorous, humane, and safeguarded. Yet the bureaucracy now reviewing Jolene’s case is not asking how she can receive treatment; it is asking whether she has enough signatures to qualify for a lethal injection. And the debate among Canadian officials is not how to preserve life, but whether she has met the paperwork threshold to end it.

This is the dark inversion that always emerges when the state claims the power to decide when life is no longer worth living. Bureaucracy replaces conscience. Eligibility criteria replace compassion. A panel of physicians replaces the family gathered at a bedside. And eventually, the “right” to die becomes an expectation — especially for those who are poor, elderly, or alone.

Joe Raedle / Staff | Getty Images

The logical end of a broken system

We ignore this lesson at our own peril. Canada’s health care system is collapsing under demographic pressure, uncontrolled migration, and the unavoidable math of government-run medicine.

When the system breaks, someone must bear the cost. MAID has become the release valve.

The ideology behind this system is already drifting south. In American medical journals and bioethics conferences, you will hear this same rhetoric. The argument is always dressed in compassion. But underneath, it reduces the value of human life to a calculation: Are you useful? Are you affordable? Are you too much of a burden?

The West was built on a conviction that every human life has inherent value. That truth gave us hospitals before it gave us universities. It gave us charity before it gave us science. It is written into the Declaration of Independence.

Canada’s MAID program reveals what happens when a country lets that foundation erode. Life becomes negotiable, and suffering becomes a justification for elimination.

A society that no longer recognizes the value of life will not long defend freedom, dignity, or moral order. If compassion becomes indistinguishable from convenience, and if medicine becomes indistinguishable from euthanasia, the West will have abandoned the very principles that built it. That is the lesson from our northern neighbor — a warning, not a blueprint.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

A Sharia enclave is quietly taking root in America. It's time to wake up.

NOVA SAFO / Staff | Getty Images

Sharia-based projects like the Meadow in Texas show how political Islam grows quietly, counting on Americans to stay silent while an incompatible legal system takes root.

Apolitical system completely incompatible with the Constitution is gaining ground in the United States, and we are pretending it is not happening.

Sharia — the legal and political framework of Islam — is being woven into developments, institutions, and neighborhoods, including a massive project in Texas. And the consequences will be enormous if we continue to look the other way.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

Before we can have an honest debate, we’d better understand what Sharia represents. Sharia is not simply a set of religious rules about prayer or diet. It is a comprehensive legal and political structure that governs marriage, finance, criminal penalties, and civic life. It is a parallel system that claims supremacy wherever it takes hold.

This is where the distinction matters. Many Muslims in America want nothing to do with Sharia governance. They came here precisely because they lived under it. But political Islam — the movement that seeks to implement Sharia as law — is not the same as personal religious belief.

It is a political ideology with global ambitions, much like communism. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently warned that Islamist movements do not seek peaceful coexistence with the West. They seek dominance. History backs him up.

How Sharia arrives

Political Islam does not begin with dramatic declarations. It starts quietly, through enclaves that operate by their own rules. That is why the development once called EPIC City — now rebranded as the Meadow — is so concerning. Early plans framed it as a Muslim-only community built around a mega-mosque and governed by Sharia-compliant financing. After state investigations were conducted, the branding changed, but the underlying intent remained the same.

Developers have openly described practices designed to keep non-Muslims out, using fees and ownership structures to create de facto religious exclusivity. This is not assimilation. It is the construction of a parallel society within a constitutional republic.

The warning from those who have lived under it

Years ago, local imams in Texas told me, without hesitation, that certain Sharia punishments “just work.” They spoke about cutting off hands for theft, stoning adulterers, and maintaining separate standards of testimony for men and women. They insisted it was logical and effective while insisting they would never attempt to implement it in Texas.

But when pressed, they could not explain why a system they consider divinely mandated would suddenly stop applying once someone crossed a border.

This is the contradiction at the heart of political Islam: It claims universal authority while insisting its harshest rules will never be enforced here. That promise does not stand up to scrutiny. It never has.

AASHISH KIPHAYET / Contributor | Getty Images

America is vulnerable

Europe is already showing us where this road leads. No-go zones, parallel courts, political intimidation, and clerics preaching supremacy have taken root across major cities.

America’s strength has always come from its melting pot, but assimilation requires boundaries. It requires insisting that the Constitution, not religious law, is the supreme authority on this soil.

Yet we are becoming complacent, even fearful, about saying so. We mistake silence for tolerance. We mistake avoidance for fairness. Meanwhile, political Islam views this hesitation as weakness.

Religious freedom is one of America’s greatest gifts. Muslims may worship freely here, as they should. But political Islam must not be permitted to plant a flag on American soil. The Constitution cannot coexist with a system that denies equal rights, restricts speech, subordinates women, and places clerical authority above civil law.

Wake up before it is too late

Projects like the Meadow are not isolated. They are test runs, footholds, proofs of concept. Political Islam operates with patience. It advances through demographic growth, legal ambiguity, and cultural hesitation — and it counts on Americans being too polite, too distracted, or too afraid to confront it.

We cannot afford that luxury. If we fail to defend the principles that make this country free, we will one day find ourselves asking how a parallel system gained power right in front of us. The answer will be simple: We looked away.

The time to draw boundaries and to speak honestly is now. The time to defend the Constitution as the supreme law of the land is now. Act while there is still time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.

The Crisis of Meaning: Searching for truth and purpose

Mario Tama / Staff | Getty Images

Anxiety, anger, and chronic dissatisfaction signal a country searching for meaning. Without truth and purpose, politics becomes a dangerous substitute for identity.

We have built a world overflowing with noise, convenience, and endless choice, yet something essential has slipped out of reach. You can sense it in the restless mood of the country, the anxiety among young people who cannot explain why they feel empty, in the angry confusion that dominates our politics.

We have more wealth than any nation in history, but the heart of the culture feels strangely malnourished. Before we can debate debt or elections, we must confront the reality that we created a world of things, but not a world of purpose.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

What we are living through is not just economic or political dysfunction. It is the vacuum that appears when a civilization mistakes abundance for meaning.

Modern life is stuffed with everything except what the human soul actually needs. We built systems to make life faster, easier, and more efficient — and then wondered why those systems cannot teach our children who they are, why they matter, or what is worth living for.

We tell the next generation to chase success, influence, and wealth, turning childhood into branding. We ask kids what they want to do, not who they want to be. We build a world wired for dopamine rather than dignity, and then we wonder why so many people feel unmoored.

When everything is curated, optimized, and delivered at the push of a button, the question “what is my life for?” gets lost in the static.

The crisis beneath the headlines

It is not just the young who feel this crisis. Every part of our society is straining under the weight of meaninglessness.

Look at the debt cycle — the mathematical fate no civilization has ever escaped once it crosses a threshold that we seem to have already blown by. While ordinary families feel the pressure, our leaders respond with distraction, with denial, or by rewriting the very history that could have warned us.

You cannot survive a crisis you refuse to name, and you cannot rebuild a world whose foundations you no longer understand.

We have entered a cultural moment where the noise is so loud that it drowns out the simplest truths. We are living in a country that no longer knows how to hear itself think.

So people go searching. Some drift toward the false promise of socialism, some toward the empty thrill of rebellion. Some simply check out. When a culture forgets what gives life meaning, it becomes vulnerable to every ideology that offers a quick answer.

The quiet return of meaning

And yet, quietly, something else is happening. Beneath the frustration and cynicism, many Americans are recognizing that meaning does not come from what we own, but from what we honor. It does not rise from success, but from virtue. It does not emerge from noise, but from the small, sacred things that modern life has pushed to the margins — the home, the table, the duty you fulfill, the person you help when no one is watching.

The danger is assuming that this rediscovery happens on its own. It does not.

Reorientation requires intention. It requires rebuilding the habits and virtues that once held us together. It requires telling the truth about our history instead of rewriting it to fit today’s narratives. And it requires acknowledging what has been erased: that meaning is inseparable from God’s presence in a nation’s life.

Harold M. Lambert / Contributor | Getty Images

Where renewal begins

We have built a world without stillness, and then we wondered why no one can hear the questions that matter. Those questions remain, whether we acknowledge them or not. They do not disappear just because we drown them in entertainment or noise. They wait for us, and the longer we ignore them, the more disoriented we become.

Meaning is still available. It is found in rebuilding the smallest, most human spaces — the places that cannot be digitized, globalized, or automated. The home. The family. The community.

These are the daily virtues that do not trend on social media, but that hold a civilization upright. If we want to repair this country, we begin there, exactly where every durable civilization has always begun: one virtue at a time, one tradition at a time, one generation at a time.

This article originally appeared on TheBlaze.com.