Here’s a Suggestion – Eliminate Withholdings and Make Everyone Pay Estimated Taxes

Money is fuel. Money is power. Money is control. Government takes in money and distributes/spends it, ostensibly for the benefit of the entire nation. The Democrats have honed to a fine edge the art of increasing the take and distributing it to buy votes. As I have said so many times before, like the frog simmering in the pot, like the death from a thousand cuts, we have been conditioned to ignore the top line of our paychecks and focus only on our “take home pay.” Thus, incrementally, ever so imperceptibly, government’s take is obscured and its control expanded.

Today, government spending as a percent of GDP is 46% (see the Wikipedia article here.). 46%!!!!!! Let that sink in!

We don’t feel it, per se, because we just focus on “net take home pay”.

Now, what if withholdings were eliminated and everyone were forced to make quarterly tax payments. Your GROSS PAY, i.e. WHAT YOU ACTUALLY EARN, is deposited to your checking account every two weeks. Each quarter you would write a check to the IRS, State and Local taxing authorities for the amount you owe.

NOW YOU’RE GOING TO FEEL IT, AND IT’S GONNA HURT!

Of course, the government will never permit this…the tax code is too complicated and the amount people owe to indefinite to allow people to figure out what they owe. And too many people would evade their obligation and the government would be forced to chase their take (87,000 new IRS agents anyone????)

But boy, if everyone could see and feel how much was being taking out of what they legitimately have earned, they’d think twice about voting for Green New Deals, the amount we give in foreign aid, how much is spent on welfare and subsidies, how much is spent on government administration, etc.

Facts Simply Don’t Matter

I keep reading analyses of the economy, of the upcoming election, of the political landscape. For example, J. Robert Smith in an astute article in American Thinker, presents a fact-based, highly hopeful recitation of why it is that the GOP should win big in November.

It doesn’t matter.

Way too many otherwise thinking people will vote based on nonsense like the debt forgiveness plan, the “inflation reduction” bill, “Republicans are mean,” “Orange Man Bad”, and celebrity politics, as usual. Or, they’ll lazily vote the way they always have. That includes voters of all stripes.

No one thinks anymore. No one considers the knock on effects of their vote. People are driven by what “feels right”, by what is popular, by what will make them feel virtuous. The facts about what the Democrats and Biden have done to our country simply don’t compute for them. We can cite facts till we’re blue in the face. They will not be HEARD much less considered. The Media (see my August 25th post) will cover up the idiocy, will with world-class production values twist perception and reality to gaslight and brainwash lazy, non-thinking lemmings into thinking all is well, that failures are successes, that bad is good, that what we see with our eyes and hear with our ears are not real…that what they SHOW and SAY is what’s real.

The outcome of the November election will turn on the perceptions created by the Media in the last couple of weeks before November 8th. The only thing that will win back this country are charismatic, inspiring, so-good-they-can’t-be-ignored, made-for-Hollywood or by Hollywood personalities who will repeat slogans that will pull at heart strings, make sycophants feel valued, goad the angry, feed the egos of the dumbed-down sheeple, all the while giving sanctuary to every American whether Democrat, Republican or Independent, who cares about traditional values and returning our country to what it once was and could be again.

Is that personality De Santis? Jim Jordan? Devin Nunes? Tom Cotton? Ted Cruz? Mike Pompeo? A reformed and more statesmanlike Trump? While we have many qualified and charismatic women Republicans, I believe we need a kick-ass, take-names, testosterone-filled but articulate MAN for the next several iterations.

I truly hope that the inflation, shortages, international disrespect, internecine fighting, gaslighting, border invasion, education perversions, history destruction, get properly ascribed and attributed to Democrat policies and that Americans of all persuasions wake up by November 8th. I’m hopeful but not confident.

Who Are The REAL Enemies of the Republic?

The Media. The New York and Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and virtually every rag that models itself after one or all of them. MSNBC, CNN, FOX (yes FOX!), ABC, CBS, NBC, virtually all the “local” news channels. And the biggest criminal media enterprise of all: Big Tech and they who operate SOCIAL MEDIA. They have all served to influence perception with a Leftist, Socialist, Communist, Totalitarian, Victimhood, Bleeding Heart, Democrat, LOSER bias. And we all know PERCEPTION CREATES REALITY.

How else can we explain how so many educated, literate, economically well-off or at least stable people can’t see the reality in front of them. Fortunately, if we are to believe SOME of the media, more and more Americans each day are “getting it”. But how could we let this happen?

A great article by Andrew W. Coy appeared recently in American Thinker entitled “What’s Going On in America“. He concisely lists the panoply of what we cannot believe. Here’s a list drawn from his words:

The FBI raid on Biden’s probably future political opponent’s personal home and threat of jail time;
Fences around the White House, FBI headquarters, the Capitol but insufficient fence on the southern border;
We are forced to take experimental vaccines (which are NOT vaccines but genetic-altering experiments that, by the way, don’t work and have been proven to generate innumerable bad side effects);
We are not allowed to work or move about the country freely;
$85 BILLION (!) of military equipment was left for terrorists and goat-herders in Afghanistan who hate us and want to see us destroyed;
So-called “leaders who made it legal for minors to have permanent, life-altering sex changes while it would be a crime to give them cigarettes, alcohol or the car keys;
China, Russia, Iran no longer fear us and Israel, Japan and South Korea no longer trust us;
Kindergarteners are forced to wear masks that don’t work, and everyone knows they don’t work;
J-6 political prisoners are still being held in D.C. jails without charges being filed against them or bail being afforded to them;
More illegal immigration in the last year than in any year since records have been kept, and the Democrats don’t care and continuously gaslight us;
We have inflation at a 40-year high and we know the people running the government aren’t stupid, so why are they doing it?:
We are no longer energy independent and beg our sworn enemies for it while we know damn well we have enough natural energy within our borders to meet our needs (who in D.C. financially benefits from this?);
We have food and basic needs shortages (e.g. baby formula);
We allow Iran the mechanism to have nuclear weapons but D.C. can’t understand Israel’s fears – the Deep State can’t be that dumb, so why are the Democrats letting this happen (Qui bono?);
The “President” and supposed Leader of the Free World is clearly suffering from dementia but we’re not allowed to notice or speak of it;
Biden tried to create a Ministry of Truth;
“Equal Opportunity” is now a racist term while “Equal Outcomes” and “Equity” are de rigeur;
Flash mobs loot downtown stores with impunity;
There is increasing unmitigated and unprovoked violence against innocents and no-one is prosecuted;
Churches, synagogues, cathedrals are closed down by government edicts but Democrat-led states openly and without shame call for fourth term abortions;
It is now ok and justified to discriminate against white men in jobs, promotions, college acceptance, but it is a hate crime to not allow transgender adults to indoctrinate our youth;
The Deep State thinks advocates the demise of America and encourage China’s rise to superiority;
The FBI/CIA/NSA routinely violate laws and the Bill of Rights with impunity and the 1st, 4th and 5th Amendments are just suggestions to them;
The Patriot Act is being used on Americans in America by the American government;
Biden will use deadly force to collect taxes, but not to defend our borders.

To this list I would add:
The destruction of integrity in our election system;
The ACTUAL racism of the Left;
The absence of any work ethic in the vast majority of Gen Zr’s as well as Y’s and Millenials;
Reckless fiscal and monetary policies aimed at redistributing wealth in this country from the have’s to the have not’s in order to buy votes and obtain permanent power;
Enviro-fascism;
Public-sector unions;
The assault on young white boys;
The Lincoln Project, 1619, CRT, LGBTQxxx in all their destructive forms;
and so on and so forth.

We said two years ago and repeat often that the damage the Democrats could and would do since the 2020 election would be immeasurable. Indeed, they’re doing it.

AND THE MEDIA IN ALL ITS FORMS IS ENABLING AND EMPOWERING THEM!

THEY are the ones we should be angry at. They’re just performers seeking fame and fortune while serving as puppets for the villains who already have those two things and are bent on satisfying their addiction to POWER.

What’s particularly sad to an old grandpa like me is that the young don’t get it. They have no basis against which to compare what’s going on today with what could be except our rantings and ravings of how abused and oppressed we increasingly are. They think this is all normal! If Kanye and Kim act as if it’s all ok, then it must be ok!

Sigh…

The 2020 Steal – Implications for 2022 and 2024

Many conservatives with whom I’ve spoken in recent months have said something to the effect of “Trump has to get off the 2020 Election thing and present a new vision for 2022 and beyond.” Sorry, but if he and we don’t keep the pressure on to expose and prepare to counteract the fraud that occurred in 2020, it will be repeated. While there are signs conservatives are prepared to stand up and fight (e.g. tail-gate parties at every ballot drop site), there is still way too much Alinsky-inspired shenanigans going on to ensure the 2022 election will be honest.

So, in that vein of keeping up the pressure, this article, penned by John F. Di Leo and published on August 15th on the always thought-provoking American Thinker, is one of those that had me nodding my head. Besides incitefully summarizing the fraudulent, lawless tactics used by the Left to manufacture 81 million votes for Biden, it addresses the impact that the otherwise laudable and critical feature of our elections, the Secret Ballot, has on the ability to AUDIT, ex-post-facto, the results.

On the one hand, we want our ballots to be secret. On the other, we want every ballot to be LEGITIMATE. As I pointed out back in November 2020, once a mail-in ballot is removed from its container (envelope), the latter usually bearing the auditable signature of a voter, and heads to the counting machine (themselves corruptible), it is impossible to determine whether the vote was legitimate. President Trump warned of precisely the potential for fraud in mail-out/mail-in ballots before the election. The Left executed their plan flawlessly, in all aspects!

WE MUST NOT LET THIS HAPPEN AGAIN! If legislators won’t get rid of ballot drop boxes, if they won’t clean up their voter rolls, if they will not stop Democrat harvesting practices…and if it takes ALL NIGHT LONG, and FOR AS LONG AS IT TAKES, we need to watch those drop boxes, as well as the COUNT, like eagles (eagles have even better sight than hawks)!!!

We are truly on the precipice. If we don’t decisively take back both the House and Senate in November, just a few short weeks away, we’re absolutely, fundamentally, possibly irretrievably, SCREWED!

Some excerpts from Di Leo’s article:

“In the “pandemic year” of 2020, Democrat bureaucrats across the country took advantage of public fears of Covid-19 to scare millions of people out of the traditional American election practice: in person, at a polling place, where each voter could at least potentially undergo an identity check as protection against vote fraud.

In 2020, numerous state, county, and city governments authorized such corruptible concepts as mass mail-in ballots, unguarded non-mail public drop boxes, and virtually unlimited ballot harvesting.

In Wisconsin, for example, the program known as “democracy in the parks” enabled Democrat activists to turn in tens of thousands of ballots that they claimed without evidence to have collected from hobos on park benches in the state capital of Madison. Nursing homes were told by the Wisconsin Election Commission that they could go ahead and cast votes on behalf of their patients, however conscious or unconscious they may be, without state officials supervising the voting to ensure that the actual voters’ wishes are the ones being recorded. Both practices are gross violations of Wisconsin state law, and likely resulted in tens of thousands of invalid votes being cast for Joe Biden in 2020… easily enough to change the statewide result in that narrow-margin election.

The same can be said of many states. There are dozens of different kinds of vote fraud, from the patronage worker bus tours of Chicago and New Orleans, to the late-night polling place openings judicially mandated in St. Louis, to the hundreds of thousands of votes cast by non-citizens, from green card holders to illegal aliens in sanctuary cities. There are states where poll workers traditionally take advantage of lulls on Election Day to cast ballots in the names of registered no-shows. There are college towns where votes are cast from dorms and student housing in the names of students who graduated and moved away years before.

Every state has a broad mix of these and other methods. No two states are identical.

There have been a host of election process investigations since November, 2020, when Donald Trump, who won 74 million popular votes, was declared to have lost to Joe Biden’s alleged 81 million, in a total purported voting population of 158 million. This would be an increase of 22 million over the turnout in 2016, in a country in which the only significant population demographic that’s increasing is that of non-citizens. It is statistically dubious, leading to the logical conclusion that a lot of those votes, certainly millions if not tens of millions, were fabricated.

What have almost all the investigations found? Even the most cursory review of their findings shows numerous opportunities for fraud — the lack of ID checks, the opportunity for round-tabling, the lack of any chain of custody in most non-election day voting… dozens of methods putting tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of votes per state in question. Nonetheless, these reports always conclude that they cannot “prove” that fraud occurred. They can show that opportunities exist ad infinitum, but they cannot establish beyond the shadow of a doubt that corrupt actors actually took advantage of these millions of opportunities.

Why?

Because of the secret ballot.”

“In any traditional audit, from an ISO-9000 audit at the plant to an IRS tax audit at your small business, a spot check is used to see if the intended results match the real recorded results.

The secret ballot makes such an audit impossible. A definitive election audit would not check the total ballots cast against the total count; it would check the ballots as processed against the actual will of the voters. And this is impossible because we don’t know who cast which ballot. We cannot determine if John Smith and Mary Jones cast that ballot, or if a different one was substituted for theirs, because their ballot was not signed, and in fact could not be, by law.”

“Our system recognizes the risks of a publicly known ballot – the risk of discrimination, for example, by a corrupt local political machine – so the secret ballot is rightly sacrosanct.

But what this means is that few election integrity studies can ever conclusively state that they have “proven” that an election was stolen. All they can do is show the overwhelming risks in an intentionally compromised system, and trust that the reader can figure out what it means. We must prevent vote fraud in advance, precisely because we cannot usually catch and prosecuted it after the fact.

How does the press report it, though? Without fail, the mainstream media – and their clients in the political class, from elected officials to the deep state denizens who rule them – report that yet another study failed to prove vote fraud. They can report, again and again, that the claims of fraud are all “unproven,” smirking under their Covid-19 masks in the knowledge that they’re reporting the exact opposite of the study’s real findings.

Vote fraud in America has been well known for generations, but the Democrat party has successfully managed to trick the public into believing that it’s limited to known dens of iniquity like Chicago and New Orleans. They hid how widespread it was. Until 2020.

With the 2020 election, everything was exposed. The tools used against Donald Trump, from 2000 real mules to 20,000 fictional hobos, smacked of desperation. They succeeded, but at great cost: they replaced incumbent Donald Trump with a basement-dwelling dementia patient who couldn’t fill a New Hampshire diner let alone a stadium rally. The canary in the coal mine – the Trump presidency – was extinguished.”

The Bolshevik Revolution

Only slightly under the radar of the news is the story of how the FBI confiscated the cell phone of Congressman Scott Perry the other day, right after the raid on Mar a Lago. Following is a transcript I prepared of Newt Gingrich being interviewed on Laura Ingraham’s show the other night discussing the insidiousness of this action:

Ingraham: “Mr. Speaker these tactics by those who casually throw around the word fascist reminds me of the days I lived in the Soviet Union as a student. You didn’t know what they were gonna take from you at any minute of the day. They’ll take anything: a book, a backpack, anything.”

Gingrich: “I think they’re actually more Bolsheviks then fascists but I think, first of all under our constitution and the whole idea of separation of powers, by what right does the, and I say this as former Speaker of the House so I’ve been through this… by what right does a member of the executive branch come to a legislative branch elected official, into his home, and take his phone? I mean that is an act frankly of destroying the American constitution and I increasingly agree with Mark Levin who says we’re right at the edge of a post-constitutional America. I cannot overstate for our viewers as a historian and as a Speaker of the House and as somebody who’s watched this for literally my entire lifetime, we’re on the precipice of a group of truly evil people who are prepared to destroy the constitution and the rule of law and who are proving it every day. We have to quit applying to them the kind of questions that would apply to normal people. These aren’t normal people. They are liars, they are bad people doing bad things and they’re going to do more bad things until they’re stopped. And the way to stop them is at the election this fall. The constitutional will still work if the American people will show up and throw out all the people who are trying to establish what is basically a dictatorship of the state against the American people.”

Well put Newt. I’d say this is a fairly gloves-off approach to the problem. He still doesn’t exude the anger that so many of us feel as we witness the destruction of our country right before our eyes, but for Newt, it’s pretty plain language.

The Democrat leadership are indeed liars, megalomaniacs, cheaters and despicably anti-American, and while they will claim that the fundamental transformation of the country is a good enough end that any means are justified, they really are abandoning everything our forefathers put down in our founding documents that are sacred to the nation. It’s enough to bring to despair those of us who cherish the traditions and conservative principles that made America the greatest country in the history of the world.

Like Newt says, we must get rid of these cancerous leftists through the ballot box in November. I continue to hope and pray that enough integrity can be restored to our election systems that truth and Right will prevail and overwhelm all attempts by the Democrats to cheat, steal and rig them.

The Raid

Are you really surprised? Outraged, yes. Sickened, yes. Angry, yes. But surprised, no.

I can’t decide whether the Democrats are so stupid and desperate that they really believe what they are doing is right, or is it they are so evil that they think they can get away with it. As despicable as they are, I’ll go with the latter. They believe the ends justify the means. They can and will do anything because they have the overarching protection of an equally stupid and evil press. They will use implausible deniability to gaslight the public: Garland and Biden didn’t know anything about the raid, yeah, right…they probably didn’t so they could with straight faces say, “We didn’t know”, but their puppet masters and henchman sure as hell did!

What tells me that the Left’s takeover of our institutions is virtually complete is the stranglehold they have on the leadership, thus the rank and file of the FBI and other three letter agencies. I know a number of dedicated, patriotic Americans who work or worked at these agencies and I can only surmise that they are following orders at the risk of having their jobs and livelihoods taken away from them if they don’t.

When I took the vow to defend and protect the Constitution I took it not just seriously, but with a lump in my throat. I am certain many if not all of the agents who participated in the raid on Mar-a-Lago did the same. Either they were just obeying orders and were thinking about their paychecks and livelihoods, or they too have become so brainwashed as to believe all the drivel in the Democrat talking points.

If the latter, we truly are on the edge of a precipice.

People are ANGRY, I included. Writers, pundits and commentators on the Right are writing about civil war, REAL armed insurrection, armed conflict.

Of course, this is precisely what the Democrats intended. What they want is to have some pissed off Trump supporter carry a gun to Mar a Lago or FBI headquarters and start shooting. The Democrats’ response will be martial law, suspension of habeas corpus, cancellation of the November elections, and permanent control.

“Come on Grumps, you’re way overreacting!” some of you may be thinking.

Not anymore. They have a crossed a bridge too far with this stuff. They are counting on the geographic dispersion of the Right and its split  into neocons, America First Republicans and right-side independents to run roughshod over us. They are counting on the media to carpet bomb the airwaves with their propaganda and lies, and they’re counting on their globalist deep pockets to fund their tactics.

Attention spans, even among educated, thinking conservatives, are limited by the exigencies of each day. From time to time a pundit cites the list of the atrocities that have been committed by Democrats to attempt to “fundamentally transform” our nation. The list is long, and the actions and rhetoric are treasonous by any patriotic measure.

But they plow on with impunity. Either, as some say, ordinary Americans are fed up and will have wreack  vengeance in November, or they are already so weakened by the thousand cuts that they are consciously complying without thinking or skepticism anymore.

What can we do?

Sign up to be a poll watcher. Work to support America First/MAGA Republican town committee leaders where they exist and attend meetings and vote out go along/get along, weak-knee’d GOP leaders. Stand tall and don’t back down to the intimidation of the Democrat thugs who will try to bully you into compliance and submission regarding voting, controlling the agenda, etc. Take you gloves off and get your hands dirty! Speak up, speak out, protest PEACEFULLY, and make so much noise that the sycophant Leftists in the media HAVE to cover it. If you truly cannot devote the time and effort to physically get involved, WRITE CHECKS! As wasteful as political campaign spending is, today it takes ridiculous amounts of cash to print signs, fund televised appearances, send out direct mail, etc.

NO AMOUNT IS TOO SMALL!

If every conservative were to send even $10 to one or more campaigns for qualified, conservative candidates (not even the price of a burger these days!) it would amount to hundreds of millions of dollars to counter the hundreds of millions supplied by Leftist tech oligarchs, globalist megalomaniacs, power brokers and uneducated, brainwashed snowflakes desperate for attention and the approval of their peers, to the coffers of America-last, power and money driven Leftist Democrats.

FIGHT!

There Is So Much Going On

that it’s difficult to choose what to write about. Once again I find myself running out of superlatives, pejoratives, adjectives and adverbs to describe the deluge/tsunami of BS saturating the airwaves, dividing our people more and more, exacerbating our laughing-stock reputation around the world, leading us down to a place similar to what Dante described in the Inferno.

First, top of mind, is the success with which the Left is dividing the Right into Trump supporters and Trump haters. I have good friends, solid conservatives, who have sworn they would never vote for Trump if he runs in 2024. The Left loves it. This is EXACTLY what they hope to do…split the Right so that in addition to their cheating, thievery, lawlessness and manipulation tactics, they will be able to somehow limit the losses this November and sew up the 2024 presidential contest. If you have any doubt about whether they can pull this off, just look at what they did to Manchin, to their own. (Oh, and by the way, I’ve never trusted Manchin as far as I can throw him. He’s political scum just like all the rest.)

Second, I heard Pelosi’s trip to Asia described as a “going out of business” sale. Nice! ANYTHING they can do to take the spotlight off their miserable failures at home the Left will do. Her trip is both a boondoggle and for show. Just watch the slobbering, tingle up the leg Leftists celebrate her “courage” and “standing up for America” nonsense. It’s disgusting to those of us who REALLY care about our country. It is a calculated political stunt, nothing more.

Third, if you’re not convinced that the COVID pandemic wasn’t/isn’t about power, control and money, you’re not paying attention and have been completed hornswoggled. The Left has so polluted/muddied up the information on this illness, its prevention, its transmission, the therapeutic responses, that you simply can’t believe ANYONE on this subject! Not your doctor, not the NIH, not HHS, certainly not the White House, not anyone in Congress, not any published discussion or exposé. I just wish you and your loved ones well as you cope. Wash your hands; don’t sneeze in other peoples’ faces or allow them to sneeze or cough in yours; stay home if you have a fever.

Fourth, inflation and what’s going on with our economy is affecting different people differently. I know plenty of well-to-do people who complain about $5 gas but whose lifestyles aren’t all that affected by it. IT DIDN’T HAVE TO HAPPEN. Trump and the Right warned that if we elected Biden we’d have open borders and the Green New Deal. We’ve got them, and we’re all paying for them to one extent or another.

Fifth, we on the Right are getting exhausted. We’re constantly spitting in the wind, trying to push back against the leftist BS leviathan, but we’re tired, and getting complacent, and just assuming that it’ll all be ok after November. No it won’t! This fight was a cold war before 2016, now it’s kinetic, gloves off, rules be damned… a street fight for the heart and soul of our country. Right now I find myself trying to encourage my conservative friends to not stop fighting, to stop coasting, to remain engaged, put up signs, call the Left out on their BS and like naughty puppies, rub their noses in what they’ve left on the rug that is our country.

I could go on and on. Good guys with guns stopping bad guys, the border completely out of control while “being closed”; monkeypox on the horizon; Fox News cancelling trump, the NY Post editorializing that Trump is a goner, a liability, useless; Biden covering over the failure of the Afghanistan debacle with the Zawahiri termination success (something which has been in the works for years and predates anything the Obama, Trump or Biden administrations have done) yet Biden says, “At my direction..” On that I once again throw the BS flag. Wokeness in the military, the continuing indoctrination of our children to accept biological and societal deviance and aberration as normal, the continued rewriting of our history, the assault on guns, the deep, deep, swamp filled with alligators and all sorts of noxious, deadly threats. What have we become? There’s no glossing over it any more…our country is a MESS and no amount of gaslighting and window-dressing is going to make us great again. The only thing that will is a complete and utter, humiliating defeat of all the disgusting memes, perversions, idiocies… downright evil the Left has been pushing.

Even without invoking God, the honest agnostic or atheist can see how wrong the Left is and how far down the slippery slope we’ve gone. We can either pray or just hope that there is enough righteous indignation left in our people that we will purge ourselves of this cancer before it takes our civilization down completely and irretrievably, to be thrown like so many other great civilizations on the ash heap of history.