"Do you want to be right or make money"...Ned Davis "We can ignore reality, but we cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality." …Ayn Rand
Northern Hemisphere
Joined January 2020
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Don't hate #boomers because of thier social security benefit. First you must understand the system. Convince me that I'm wrong...c'mon #Zoomer.
IDA MAY FULLER PAID $24.75 INTO SOCIAL SECURITY. SHE GOT BACK $22,888. YOU WON'T. 👵💰
Meet Ida May Fuller. A legal secretary from Ludlow, Vermont, and the very first American to get a monthly Social Security check.
She paid in for three years. Total taxes: $24.75.
Her first check, on January 31, 1940, was $22.54. One check and she'd almost made her money back.
Then she lived to 100. By the time she died in 1975, she'd collected $22,888.92.
That's a return of about 92,400%. Bernie Madoff would have killed for those numbers. And to be fair, Ida's deal worked the same way his did: early people get paid with the money from the people who come later.
Now let's do YOUR math.
Say you earn $60,000 a year for 40 years. You and your employer pay 12.4% into Social Security. That's $7,440 a year. $297,600 over your career.
📈 Invest that same $7,440 a year at a boring 5% and you'd retire with about $900,000. Pull 4% a year and that's roughly $36,000 a year for life. When you die, your kids get the $900,000.
📉 Social Security? The average retiree check this year is $2,071 a month. About $25,000 a year. A $60K worker's check lands in that same ballpark. When you die, your kids get... nothing. The check stops. The money's gone.
Oh, and you never owned it. The Supreme Court ruled in 1960 (Flemming v. Nestor) that you have no legal right to your benefits. Congress can cut them any time it wants.
And it might not even have to vote. The government's own trustees say the retirement trust fund runs dry in 2032. Fold in the disability fund and you buy two more years, to 2034. Either way, after that, automatic cuts of around 20%.
So let me get this straight. You pay in for 40 years. You get back less than a basic index fund would pay you. You can't leave it to your kids. You don't legally own it. And it's scheduled to run short before a lot of us even retire.
Ida May Fuller got the deal of the century. You got the bill.
Worst investment in America. And it's the only one they make you buy.
Let's stop pretending. It's a tax. They call it a "contribution" so you won't notice they took it. Then every few years somebody in Washington scares you that it won't be there, so you'll beg them to take MORE.
Me? I don't want a rescue plan. I just want my money back. All of it.
So kill it. Before it steals from one more American.
And no, I'm not stealing from Grandma. You're already collecting? Great. Keep collecting. Not collecting yet? Here's your money back. Straight into a tax-free investment account with YOUR name on it. Not a checking account. Not a spending spree. An investment account. One you own. One the government can't cut, raid or spend. One you can leave to your kids.
Imagine if Wall Street sold that product. They'd be in prison. When Washington sells it, they call it a "safety net." 🦋
St. John O’Callaghan retweeted
“Yeah, there are these companies called neoclouds. They buy GPUs from NVIDIA and then rent it back out to the hyperscalers. Where do they get money for the GPUs? Excellent question. Turns out they get the money from NVIDIA themselves, along with a bunch of private credit lenders whose loans are backed by the GPU itself. Elon just said all of them might go to zero soon. Anyways, what are you doing later tonight?”
Per the bottom two red zone professions in this @VisualCap, I'll need a moment to recover from this total non-shock
Don't write off $MP.
The US currently has limited operational rare earth processing capacity but is executing an aggressive, multi-billion-dollar reshoring strategy. Washington is actively funding domestic separation, metallization, and magnet-manufacturing ecosystems.
This buildout is accelerated by a strict Pentagon procurement deadline taking effect on January 1, 2027. It will ban Chinese-origin rare earths from American weapons systems. To meet this mandate, the DoD and DOE have poured over $7 billion into corporate grants, loan guarantees, and public-private partnerships.
St. John O’Callaghan retweeted
Left wing economists are not really economists…they are political operatives. It started with Malthus…went on to Galbraith…and now it is Reich.
St. John O’Callaghan retweeted
Quote of the day:
“There is nothing which I dread so much as a division of the republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader, and concerting measures in opposition to each other. This, in my humble apprehension, is to be dreaded as the greatest political evil under our Constitution.”
— John Adams
#Diversity is our strength: who said it first? That's up for debate but the list of names who pushed the theme is not surprising. How's that working out for the west? Well...#France provides one example.
Bill Clinton used related formulations in the 1990s. In a 1992 speech he said variations on the idea that “our diversity can be a source of our strength.” In his February 4, 1997 State of the Union address he stated: “My fellow Americans, we must never, ever believe that our diversity is a weakness—it is our greatest strength.” Similar language appeared in other Clinton speeches that year (e.g., at UC San Diego).
Toronto adopted “Diversity Our Strength” as its official motto in 1998 after the amalgamation of several municipalities. Contemporary accounts note options such as “Strength in Diversity”; the chosen motto was initially tied more to municipal unity but later widely linked to multiculturalism.
Analyses note examples “as far back as the 1980s (and probably earlier),” with the slogan becoming especially common in the 2010s.
Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke launched a 1989 publication titled “Diversity is Great, Mate” that treated diversity as a virtue and strength in a multicultural context.
In more recent decades, Justin Trudeau strongly popularized versions of the phrase in Canada (e.g., a 2015 speech titled “Diversity is Canada’s Strength,” in which he said diversity is “a tremendous source of strength” and “Canadians understand that diversity is our strength”).
Barack Obama, other U.S. politicians, and various leaders have used similar language. The exact wording has circulated widely in progressive political rhetoric about immigration, multiculturalism, and related topics.GcIn short, Clinton’s 1997 statement is one of the clearest high-profile early uses of the near-exact formulation, Toronto formalized a version as a civic motto around the same time, and the idea has older roots in multicultural policy discourse.
🚨 UPDATE: Speaker Johnson just dropped this line on the polls
"14 out of the last 16 October polls in those elections, they under-sampled Republicans by an average of 4 POINTS. Republicans are no longer responding to polls."
"I've been in 21 states, 39 districts just in the last three weeks...I ask for hands. Show me your hand if you've answered a poll in the last six months. There'll be like three hands among 300 people!"
"I'm telling you, these polls are off, all of them, because they're using faulty analysis." @SpeakerJohnson
CNN themselves have said if similar GOP polling errors happen for Senate seats, Republicans can EASILY end up with the majority and FLIPPING Michigan
And they could even retain the House.
The only way to make it happen is NEVER get complacent and vote STRAIGHT RED!
The key is getting out more Trump 2024 voters than the pollsters expect 🔥
"The result marks an end to nine years in power for the left-of-center New Democrats, who voiced opposition to new oil pipelines and supported a ban on tankers along the province's northern coast." #Canada
zerohedge.com/political/poli…
#France hasn't formally declared a #StateofEmergency but they have enacted measures which mimic a State of Emergency.
President Emmanuel Macron expressed "anger and shame" over the widespread violence and arson attacks (such as the destruction at the Limoges town hall) but explicitly chose not to formally declare a nationwide State of Emergency.
Let's play a semantics game for now and pretend that he has some chance left for control of the situation.
St. John O’Callaghan retweeted
If someone from Somalia with a fake identity can serve in the United States Congress for years without getting caught, imagine still believing that illegals aren’t voting in U.S. elections.
Stopping “climate change” tends to also stop an economy. #Europe
Germany is running out of refineries, and it now admits that’s a problem.
Economy Minister Katherina Reiche: “Whoever loses the refinery loses not only the supply for the gas station, but above all for the chemical complex.”
Berlin now says it wants to stop more refineries closing.
Look at the timing.
Shell stopped processing crude at its 140,000 b/d Wesseling refinery last year.
BP’s 250,000 b/d Gelsenkirchen has been up for sale since early 2025 with no buyer.
Scotland lost Grangemouth, 150,000 b/d.
Europe chose to import its diesel and jet fuel.
Now the imports are the problem.
Russian diesel exports hit a decade low.
Gulf fuel exports run at about half of normal.
US diesel costs about twice a barrel of crude.
On Friday Germany’s stockpiling agency EBV put out a tender to sell diesel, heating oil and crude from its strategic reserves.
In July it was still buying diesel to refill them.
Germany’s reserve was meant for an emergency. It’s now dipping into it as winter starts.
You can shut a refinery in a year.
Building one takes most of a decade.
St. John O’Callaghan retweeted
GLD’s 2.93% drop tracks gold’s sharp selloff to ~$4,020 (3-month lows), driven by stop cascades and funds dumping metal for cash amid the AI/chip stock rout, plus oil spikes fueling higher-rate fears.
Near-term bias leans lower if $4,000 breaks, but liquidity events like this often reverse quickly once forced selling eases. Watch Fed signals and oil next week.
St. John O’Callaghan retweeted
The only solution for curing a spoiled brat is to take their precious things away from them. If they don’t immediately get in line (they won’t), then in this case you deport them. Or you can go strait to the deport part. But then what do you do with all the 2nd and 3rd generation immigrant rioters? What do you do with the brainwashed and radicalized young people native to France? France is screwed.
OK mom. $SPCX looked good yesterday. Back up the truck on Ai today (ignore all the noise from previous week, that doesn’t matter anymore).
St. John O’Callaghan retweeted
How hard is it, really, to answer one simple question… who is on your voter rolls and are they allowed to be there? That is the whole ask. For two years the Trump administration has gone to blue states asking for their voter rolls and their welfare rolls so they could be run against the federal non-citizen database, and the answer from those Democrat run states has been no, and when the Justice Department took them to court the judges stepped in and said no too.
Let me explain how stacked this deck is. Eighteen states handed over their files. Twenty six refused. DOJ sued, and in all 26 of those states a federal judge dismissed the case, and then on October 9 a judge in D.C. named Sparkle Sooknanan wrote 78 pages to vacate the whole policy and called it "the federal government's attempt to decide who gets to vote." Read that again… checking whether a noncitizen is sitting on the rolls is now the scandal, and the states hiding the list get treated like the heroes.
Now keep in mind what Stephen Miller is actually saying here. In every blue state you can vote or get welfare just by checking a box. No proof, no cross check, nobody looking, and the moment somebody asks to look, the governors lawyer up and the courts close ranks around them. Why would you fight this hard to keep a list secret if the list was clean? If your rolls were accurate you would be first in line to prove it, you would hand the file over and dare them to find a problem. Nobody hides a clean list.
This is the institutional rot people keep pretending is a conspiracy theory. The same crowd that calls every noncitizen voting case isolated is the crowd making sure nobody can ever measure how isolated it really is… and the judiciary is happy to hold the door for them. I have watched this same play run for years now, the people who run the system get to grade their own homework and you get told to sit down, shut up and trust it.
@realDonaldTrump, Mr President, the courts have told you no 26 times. Stop asking permission. Use every lawful tool you have, tie federal election and welfare dollars to clean rolls, and make these states show the American people what they are hiding before November 3.
Pray, Stand, Speak, ACT.
Love,
What all of you good people are thinking
St. John O’Callaghan retweeted
En France, on a inventé le Concorde.
En 1969, il décollait et atteignait Mach 2 symbole de la grandeur gaullienne, conçu pour défier les Américains.
En 1972, le TGV 001 battait le record mondial à turbine (318 km/h).
En 1981, le TGV électrique reliait Paris à Lyon à 260 km/h. En 2007, il pulvérisait encore le record mondial sur rail : 574,8 km/h.
Dans les années 70, le plan Messmer lançait le plus grand programme nucléaire civil de l’Histoire : 58 réacteurs, jusqu’à 70-80 % de notre électricité, une indépendance énergétique que le monde entier nous enviait.
Dassault, Sud-Aviation, EDF, Framatome, la SNCF : nos ingénieurs étaient les meilleurs. On avait dix à vingt ans d’avance sur presque tout le monde.
Puis 1981, Mitterrand. Nationalisations massives (banques, acier, chimie, électronique, aéronautique). Semaine de 39 heures. Lois Auroux. Charges sociales qui explosent. Syndicats tout-puissants. Fiscalité punitive. Droit du travail rigidifié.
En moins de cinquante ans, le socialisme a transformé un pays d’ingénieurs conquérants en un pays de grèves, de délocalisations et de stagnation relative.
L’industrie est passée d’environ 28 % du PIB à 11 %.
Le Concorde a été abandonné. Notre nucléaire a été presque démantelé pendant des décennies faute de choix politique mortifère.
Ce n’est pas le destin, c’est le prix d’une idéologie qui a préféré redistribuer et réglementer plutôt que construire et innover.
A bon entendeur.
St. John O’Callaghan retweeted
Die Mächte im Hintergrund, die die Geschicke der Welt steuern, setzen keine erfolgreichen und klugen an die Spitze einer Bewegung oder eines Landes.
Es ist kein Zufall, dass ein schwedisches Mädchen, das geistig so eingeschränkt war, dass sie kaum drei Worte herausbrachte, ohne die von einem Zettel abzulesen, die Klimabewegung anführen durfte.
Der Präsident, der die USA anführte, als die Flugzeuge in die Türme flogen, war auch nicht zufällig ein mental eher Unbegabter, den man so einfach zu sinnlosen Wüstenabenteuern überreden konnte.
Und der ukrainische Bettelprinz, der noch vor 10 Jahren ein Clown war, der im Unterschichten-Fernsehen Transenshows gemacht hat und zur Belustigung des Pöbels mit seinem Genital Klavier spielte, sitzt ebenfalls nicht zufällig auf dieser Position.
Wer seine Geschichte kennt, weiß, dass er mit sehr viel Geld und Aufwand explizit dort platziert wurde.
Gibt man bösartigen Menschen eine Machtposition, verfolgen sie ihre Ziele rational und werden schnell unkontrollierbar.
Gibt man den geistig einfachen und den Versagern eine Machtposition, kann man sie steuern, denn sie sind nicht klug genug, eigene Pläne zu entwickeln, und sie wissen, dass sie nur Betrüger sind, die gar nicht auf den Chefsessel gehören.
Szelenski ist aber gerade klug genug, um zu verstehen, dass nach Beendigung des Krieges den Leuten sehr schnell einfallen wird, dass jemand Rechenschaft ablegen muss für die über eine Million Toten.
Sie werden sich auch daran erinnern, wie man ihre Söhne wie Hunde auf der Straße eingefangen hat, um sie an die Front zum Sterben zu schicken.
Dann werden sie einen Verantwortlichen benennen.
Also tut Selenzki alles, damit der Krieg weiterläuft, obwohl er ihn schon fünfmal hätte beenden können. Dafür verheizt er eine ganze Generation.
Denn wenn der Krieg endet, endet vermutlich auch seine Geschichte.