138 Comments
May 7Liked by Don Surber

Taxation is theft

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Inflation is taxation

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Debt is slavery

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Slavery to God is freedom.

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Choose your master: evil or good; sin or righteousness; lies or truth. Salvation is freely given. I hear the devil charges interest.

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As Dylan said during his public flirtation with Christianity,

"You may be an ambassador to England or France

You may like to gamble, you might like to dance

You may be the heavyweight champion of the world

You might be a socialite with a long string of pearls

But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed

You're gonna have to serve somebody

Well, it may be the Devil or it may be the Lord

But you're gonna have to serve somebody."

Yeah, I like that.

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Mavis Staples' cover of that song is amazing: https://youtu.be/c6PV-8LvS1E

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May 7·edited May 7

Inflation is printing (electronically now) money. The Fed prints money for Politicians and their Banking ilk. New money gets to purchase stuff, raising prices, before you get your socks on in the morning. Then you get taxed more on the newly increase prices of everything.

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Nailed it Kam.

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True.

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Bullshit. Taxes are a fundamental need. The way the government uses our taxes is theft.

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No. The Founding Fathers NEVER intended for there to be an income tax. Taxes were to be collected on imported goods.

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Another curse we have Wilson to thank for.

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Did you know Wilson and Chamberlain were brothers? /sarc

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Amen Rev.

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Yes, absolutely - at least in theory.

It is only moral when government is the size of a peanut only providing the minimal services it was originally designed to provide. Fast forward to the 21st century and we have a government that is larger than the GDP of what used to be our industrial base.

Funding that behemoth is bullshit.

One more thought: The administrative state is getting richer as we all move deeper into debt and our money isn't worth a nickel. We are getting poorer by design. Their growing wealth is coming from (1) our taxes and (2) their intended inflation, which is a tax.

In this government, taxation is legal theft.

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Dems plan to raise taxes, they always do. But who they will tax more is the question. The elites get all of the tax breaks. That’s what they donate for. The boomers are sitting on a lot of cash and assets. We mostly don’t vote Dem anyway so we’re an easy mark that won’t cost them votes they don’t get anyway. We boomers have a big target on our backs. I’m guessing we won’t be allowed to pass on any of our asssets to our children. Targeted estate taxes

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May 7Liked by Don Surber

I started in the mining engineering school at WVU in the fall of 1971. Tuition was $48 per semester. My entire bill for the year was $1875, which included tuition, fees, lab fees, and ROOM AND BOARD. I worked in the coal mines in the summers and could almost exactly cover a year's costs at WVU with three months' work.

Interestingly, a few weeks later Tricky Dicky Nixon, having run out of money to fund The War and having to do it on borrowed money, suddenly had to pay America's debtors in gold, so he took us off the gold standard. This meant that Washington, now freed of any restraint, began borrowing and money-printing at a frantic pace, which has not stopped to this day. My friend Grok the Oracle tells me that currently WVU, generally one of the most reasonable state schools, is about $23,000/year. Try paying for that with a summer job. The dollar is now worth three cents.

So where did the value the gub'ment stole out of your paycheck - and, by the way, from everything you have saved, too - go? It went into the gub'ment pocket, to be spent on DEI, midnight clandestine jet airplane flights for illegal-alien voters, Ukraine, and Nancy Pelosi's Klondike bars, and to line everybody else's pockets in congress.

Every nation that has not been conquered militarily has gone down the drain due to the printing of fiat money. Here's a nice video by a very bright young lady who beats the same drum I've been beating for over forty years now. She's too young to be this smart:

https://youtu.be/0GXMr1CVjkY?si=gzp0O4IRAHSREIfo

Well, as the Ship of State slides under the waves, channeling Bogart, we'll always have Winwood.

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The money did not go to the gubmint as you say. It went to the politicians and their friends’ pockets. That’s entirely different kettle of fish.

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Traffic.......hell yeah

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I can only hope that Adam Smith was correct when he quipped that there is a lot of ruin in a country.

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I read a lot of history - mostly WWII, for some reason - but everything I read about the fall of empires and every person I read who I think has a good handle on it - tells me we are at the End of Empire. The good news is that our communication is so fast - and so far still so open (though that's changing) - that in my amateur opinion America can pull out of it.

If we do, though, it won't be pretty. It will mean dealing with the Soros-es, the Schumers, the Pelosis, the Cheneys, the Engorans and Big-Fannys in a serious and forthright way. It will mean a real revolution, and not necessarily a shooting-type; maybe more of a Bukele-type or a Milei kind, but it WILL mean dealing seriously and perhaps with finality those who intend to destroy everything of meaning. Just my opinion; I could be wrong.

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I wish I shared your optiism, but I am afraid I do not. It is not merely a matter of the economic ruin we are experiencing, but more a matter of the utter depravity and degradation of our society. We have abandoned Biblical virtues in favor of diabolical pursuit of animal pleasures in everything. Thrift--what's that? Chastity--how recherche!

Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die is the guiding philosophy of our time here in the formerly United States of America. Of course, there are still those, like me and like you I am sure, who still adhere to The Truth, but we are mired in a swamp of anti-Christian, anti-Biblical hedonism and militant atheism. I fear we have reached the tipping point and are on the inexorable downward trajectory. I hope the trajectory is long and arcing rather than precipitous, but the speed of communication--and everything else--of which you speak is the very thing that may bring about our "long drop and sudden stop."

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We need a Milei/ Bukele combo: slash and crush!

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It better come soon, before they finish disarming us.

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Great video. Someone paid attention in school.

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Crap. He paid the nation's creditors, not their debtors. It's like "Where did they bury the survivors of the plane crash?" You don't bury survivors.

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Hah!

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Bright young lady.

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May 7Liked by Don Surber

“Prices of gold and silver have risen sharply over the past two months.” The gold and silver is the same, it’s the dollars that have changed.

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FACT Tmitsss.

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May 7Liked by Don Surber

I used to think that the baby boomers stole it. A decade ago, the national debt matched the value of retirement accounts in America. Was it a coincidence that the richest generation in world history also lived during the greatest debt growth? The census reports that white and Asian male baby boomers are more likely to have retirement accounts. (Leave it to the government to racialize saving money). So I was almost right and happen to be one of those people.

But now it is more clear. The census forgot one more qualifier: scumbag politicians.

Politicians and their “friends” have been fleecing America for decades. They got really good at it. And we expected and no one cared. Then they got greedy. The debt is growing. They know we will NEVER pay this back and don’t want to be caught when the whole thing goes south. So they are stealing as much as they can now.(why would multimillion David Trone resign from his 6or 7 figure salary to become a Congressman making $250,000? Or How do they enter politics with $83 and an old pickup truck and retire with tens of millions in the bank and 3 vacation homes?)

And when the country collapses, they‘ll all flee to their villas in Switzerland with their other WEF friends and laugh at us while we fight for scraps.

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Truman quipped that only crooks get rich in politics. Sooooo true!

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That makes 535 elected officials in Congress guilty of theft.

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as i find myself saying more frequently, i am glad to be old and sickly

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Denver, I have 30-40 more years to live. I don’t want it to be in a s-hole. But I have always lived an exciting life. Living in a Mad Max Dystopia might be the ultimate adventure.

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We started to lose our government when we allowed our elected members to make a profession and career out of politics. Our control of them has gone down ever since.

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This has been true for my nearly 8 decades of existence with no end in sight without a MAGA 2024 sweep and then the war starts.

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Ha. Just learned that Trone DID NOT leave his business and used his title as Congressmen on an application for a new store in Nevada. They are raping us

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May 7Liked by Don Surber

Right out of the WEF and commie playbook… a needy population is a compliant population.

You know it’s coming folks… how many tea leaves do you have to read!

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…and a desperate population is a dangerous population.

When the SHTF and the bottom drops out of this faux economy, there will be chaos in the streets (especially when you factor in the indigent 10 million illegals dependent upon govt largesse), it’ll create a situation ripe for a National Emergency and Martial Law.

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Just the situation the d-rats need to call out the troops, go Kent State everywhere and cancel the election. Their dream come true.

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Unless of course it happens when DJT gets elected. He could get a lot accomplished under such conditions. Sounds crazy, I know, but it’s true.

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May 7·edited May 7

One should never say ‘Never’ I guess, but I don’t believe he has that in him. It would/could happen if the d-rat auxiliaries, antifa/trannies/lgbq/m’zee’s/ immigrants go crazy (and you know they will) if he wins and is on track to put his foot into the WH.

Wow what a time to be alive… and not necessarily in a good way either!

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Every time I've questioned the Orange Man, he's been right and I've been wrong. Every time. I'd never say he doesn't "have that in him." His reserves of strength seem limitless. Let's hope we get him and get to keep him; everything rides on it.

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Jimmy he’s my age and when you say ‘Dictator’ to guys like us, you mean ‘Hitler’. That’s why I don’t think he’d declare MartialLaw unless the whole country was on fire…but I’ve been wrong before.

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Amen to that. Yikes.

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DJT is not going to fix this mess, not even close. What he is going to do is be a lightening rod and continue to show the country how far into the weeds their government has gone, in the hopes we get serious enough to force the elected portion of government to start doing their job. What he will do is get rid of useless portion of the federal government and put pressure on members of congress to start acting like adults. That would be all we could ask from any one person, to be the leader that starts fixing things..

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From your lips Redd.

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Might happen just before this coming November.

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It will also likely open up the “two-way shooting range”, with no bag limit. Vigilante style justice will be imposed, as people realize that the system has gone completely FUBAR.

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a song that Instapundit has quoted a few times over the decade comes to mind: "they'll turn us all to beggars 'cause they're easier to please"

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Cloward-Piven writ large.

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I have stocked up with 15 pounds of tea leaves so we have enough to drink when the dollar collapses.

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May 7Liked by Don Surber

Whatever euphemism that makes you warm and fuzzy inside, the people deserve the government that they elect. The chickens are coming home to roost. You made your bed now you can lie in it. etc etc etc. I realize that the current government was selected. Why in Gods lil green acre did no one seemed concerned, courts wouldn't even look at the evidence. Xiden has subverted every alphabet agency, there are no more laws, the thin veil of civility is slowly but rest assured it is coming off and if I'm right there will be hell to pay. I never really believed the replacement theory, well that's looking pretty strong now. The idiot can barely walk, can't speak coherently, he has special shoes to keep him upright, and now has to have a caudry of aides around to keep him going in the correct position, and shield him from photographs of him shuffling along to his chopper to spend some more time at his beach house. The emperor has no clothes, you see it, I see it, the entire fucking world sees it. Yet for some reason unknown to me, we let this assclown continue to burn this country down. I know that he's not in charge, you know that he's not in charge. How damn long do we let this go on? All these bastards in the congress don't give a flying fuck about anyone of us. This is all Obamas doing, the great transformation, a nation full of mulattos, everyone standing around with their thumbs up their ass and the other one out for the government hand outs. The folks like Soros that fund all of this evil shit should be hung! Make plenty of gallows to hang the rest of these TREASONOUS bastards, no more NFL or Nascar etc etc to watch, Sunday hangings will be the new sport, sound familiar, Rome come to mind? The FBI, CIA, DOJ. all complicit in the murder of JFK, DJT should be very very afraid. Keep your powder dry.

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It has been said that laws are just words on paper and unenforceable unless people respect the rule of law. The "people" are us. We allow this to happen and only we can fix it.

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Awesome comment, Ron.

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May 7·edited May 7Liked by Don Surber

This country needs two things:1. More tax payers and 2. Less spending. So how do we do this?

1. Do away with the income tax and rely solely on import and a sales tax(VAT type tax). This gets us more taxpayers as everyone who buys anything has to pay some kind of tax.

2. An across the board 5% cut on every government agency and employee. Do this for a few years cutting a bit every year and I think this will go a long way to reducing our debt and hopefully generate some money to retire the debt.

I know this is pie in the sky but is it any worse than what the current system is?

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The problem with solution #1 is that engaging in lawful commerce is a right and may not be taxed without violating people's rights.

Here's the solution, which will never be implemented:

Ignore taxation altogether. Instead of asking if [someone] is paying his fair share, ask what is the government's fair share of the GDP. Right now the combined federal, state, and local tax burden is about 35%, and I think that's waaaay too high (though it's lower than in most other countries). Limit the federal government's budget to 10% of the previous year's GDP. Enforce that by declaring that any Congresscritter (TM) who votes for a larger expenditure is forever ineligible for reelection or to hold any government office or even a contractor position.

We get there by enforcing an across-the-board 5% annual reduction in federal spending until one equals the other. That will happen sooner than anyone expects because the economy, unburdened by excessive taxation, will expand at an ever-increasing rate.

It really won't matter how the revenues are produced. Simply declare that as soon as the Treasury has the calculated amount, all tax collecting ceases. There are other important details (I believe I have thought of everything), but that's the main structure.

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Why an "across the board %% cut"? That assumes each and every government agency -- and I doubt that anybody on this earth knows how many there are -- is necessary and useful. Abolish a bunch. Empty those buildings and let the homeless take them over.

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Like Milei in Argentina: just SLASH THEM!

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Empty those buildings and sell them to the private sector so they can start providing a product useful to the country.

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Prisons for the current federal government cretins.

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Not all of them, just the estimated 1,800,000 worthless ones😎

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Hah~ it’s a start!! 😉

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Gotta start somewhere. Im an optimist, I figure there are at least 200,000 good ones there………somewhere.

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Could probably get rid of 50% of alphabets as a start Wim.

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If I were an elected member of congress in charge of the almost $5T in revenue the government received last year, and then I agreed to borrow an additional $3.5T so I could pay the country's bills, and I did so without forcing my peers to address the debt we were creating, I'd quit and never show my face in public again.

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They have no shame and we are nothing more than pests to them.

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the cuts to government agencies must be much larger and faster. VAT the hell out of copyright royalties after the first million for any individual piece of work.

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"Why tax people if we can just print more money?"

No kidding.

As Obummer said "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States...."

The only way to do that is to destroy the middle class by stealing more of our wealth.

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“Why tax people if we can just print more money?”

To punish those that are successful & curry envy & hatred against them; a key platform of the democrat party starting with Woodrow Wilson.

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Not so much the “successful” as those who strive for a better, good and decent life: the student who wants genuinely to excel, the entrepreneur who wants to create a profitable business, the young couple who want to buy a house and raise a family. They are the real victims of the government’s unending fiscal and political machinations and corrupt mismanagement.

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Excellent point Ma’dame!!!

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There is an organized effort to destroy the country, led by the Commiecrats and facilitated by the Rinocrats. You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to think this way. You have to be a conspiracy theorist to NOT think this way. The politicians and the corporations reap the benefits of involuntary taxpayer largesse, and the taxpayers get royally screwed. If the massive spending actually produced tangible long term benefits for society at least it would have that justification. But it doesn’t. It buys the Ukraine war. It buys fake show trials against former Presidents running for office again. Trillion dollars a year for defense, but Johnny can’t fight because his $250,000,000 plane can’t fly and his multimillion dollar tanks can be destroyed by a $5000 drone from Russia. And now Johnny is supposed to be Jenny, and we’re paying for that too. The schools are bad. The healthcare is too expensive. The government attacks its most productive citizens. What exactly are we paying for? All the immigrants streaming illegally across our border. It’s not Albert Einstein coming across. It’s not even

Chef Boyardee or Shakira. It’s mostly menial labor, wealth redistribution, and trouble. You see the imported radical Muslims screaming about jihad and Hamas now? Who the hell needed that? The Commies. Not America.

Burdening the country with massive debt is a sure way to damage the currency and that usually eventually leads to bad results for countries. The dollar is worth very little compared to a dollar 50 years ago, pennies. What the cynical “experts” who create the messes are banking on. Is the strength of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency. But that’s not a guaranteed status. And many countries are working to create an

Alternate system to settle transactions that is mot based on the dollar. Yes, it will take them some time to gain traction , but it is underway.

Countries don’t like being bullied by the U.S. Treasury. They prefer to be bullied by China, but that’s a different story.

Don is right about the purpose of taxes. It’s not about the money at this point. It’s about the obedience and the control of your life.

The government wants to destroy the middle class. Without a large, prosperous middle class, it’s much easier to adopt a totalitarian posture. The billionaires are partners and the poor are dependent on government subsidies. Nobody is gonna want to risk their government grift. Destroy the middle class and America is gone.

Destroy the family, demoralize the citizenry, get them hooked on drugs, sex, and shirking responsibility. Cloward-Piven model in action.

To protect yourself from inflation you need tangible assets and non dollar denominated assets. Gold, Bitcoin, real estate, commodities and other stuff that people want/need which will not go to zero.

The stock market is fine, but it periodically crashes and most of us retail investors buy and sell at exactly the wrong time because of emotion. Right now things are going to continue up through about 2026 with real estate and a little longer with stocks. They aren’t going to let Biden crash. The Fed will help him by lowering rates.You will see it as the campaigning ramps up.,Not the time to take on big debts. Sell into a strong market. It’s ok to leave a little money on the table. Don’t wait for the peak.

Trump 2024

Because no f-g way am I eating crickets for dinner.

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Great post Tanto but chocolate covered grasshoppers aint too bad.

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You can have mine.

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Yeah- no. 🤢

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We’ve almost completely sworn off eating out anywhere. Only an occasional breakfast or lunch. When the average dinner entree hit $40+++so it was almost impossible to keep dinner for two with a drink glass of wine or dessert for under $100 plus lousy service and mediocre food I said the hell with it. I can I invite a couple friends over and a better meal more pleasant evening for less.

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May 7Liked by Don Surber

Bottom line: The administrative state is tired of waiting for their world takeover. Trump is frustrating the hell out of them. So, they are smashing all of society under them as they ratchet their four-jawed vice on all of us. We are being crushed with a broken monetary system, food and supply chain destruction, invasion of enemy armies through our southern border, and the release of life-threatening viruses that were engineered to be bioweapons against us.

Pray for a miracle . . . .

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Which ever begs the question: how do they think they shall escape the ruin that they themselves feverishly endeavor to bring upon us all?

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First, given the world destruction they have achieved without firing a shot, and even getting compliance from our elected officials on many matters, I’m sure they have a plan and I wouldn’t bet against it.

More specifically, the vaccination poison and pending plandemics may take 75% of the world’s population out of the picture. The rest will live in a controlled sub-society to produce for them.

It will be a much smaller, totally controlled world. This is where the phrase "you will own nothing and be happy" comes from.

The final destruction of the US is their #1 objective now. Achieve that, and it is a short cruise to their utopia in a generation from now.

Trump is the only thing in their way. He faces an enemy that will leverage “by all means necessary” change agents. Any sane, thinking person watching the lawfare trials that have little push-back can’t honestly come to a different conclusion. It isn’t about Alvin Bragg or Fani Willis. They are pawns of the administrative state that owns them.

We are being crushed from every direction. They aren’t isolated events. It is a comprehensive plan.

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I like miracles, but hope is not a strategy. How's that old song go? Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition?

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At this point, Trump is the strategy and prayer is not hope. It is also strategy.

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May 7Liked by Don Surber

it's not just the wretched bidet administration that's doing this. it's congress - both parties - that has completely neglected its budgetary responsibilities. all federal elected and appointed officials (excluding only Rand Paul) must be removed from office and deported to somewhere like gaza or yemen.

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May 7Liked by Don Surber

A balanced budget amendment will not reign in spending, it will merely provide a politically blame-proof excuse to raise taxes to historic levels without the career crushing record of having voted for such. Expect 75 to 90% tax brackets, perhaps a wealth tax, and taxes on unrealized capital gains. A national property tax would likely be on the table. The ship is already sinking. A balanced budget amendment will be like drilling holes in the hull to drain the water.

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"The amount of money FJB is borrowing to give the appearance of economic growth is greater than the value of all the steel, all the automobiles, all the airplanes, all the gadgets, and all the other doohickeys Americans make."

Except that far too much of that "American" manufacturing is done in China - or some other southeast Asian country.

"CNBC reported, 'Long-predicted consumer pullback finally hits restaurants like Starbucks, KFC and McDonald’s.'"

<sarc>Awwww...poor Starbucks...</sarc> 🙄

"'...it looks like the competition for a smaller pool of customers has grown fiercer as the diners still looking to buy a burger or cold brew become pickier with their cash.'"

Sooner or later, market forces WILL win out.

Clearly, the market bore Starbucks' embrace of the rainbow authoritarians' militant agenda and hostility toward its own shareholders and customers who were of a more traditional bent. We were content to be tolerant of those who chose that lifestyle for themselves until it wasn't enough - as soon as the sodomite mafia had the power of corporate enterprises like Starbucks, Disney, Apple, et al. behind them, it was clear that not only was our patronage not needed, it wasn't wanted.

Hence, the exodus of shareholders and customers began (I moved my shares from Starbucks to DD) - but not enough of us to make a difference.

Maybe the effect of a publicly traded company's public posture and progressive virtue signaling on its fortunes is negligible, but if Bud Light is any indication, those that DO alienate potentially more than half of its propspective customers pay a price - at least, indirectly when market forces finally catch up.

"The question is, how long can this last?"

It will continue until it cannot - then, watch out.

I don't use a hookah to smoke anything, but doing nothing is the option to choose. Electing new representatives and senators isn't the answer, either, because once in Washington, DC, they give in to the seduction of the swamp.

Nope - market forces are forever, and they mean business - quite literally.

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The fundamental problem is that no one in the Congress -- or anywhere else, for that matter -- has a useful grasp of the most basic principle of taxation in a free republic: Rights May Not Be Taxed.

“And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers.”

-- Thomas Jefferson

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