Are you a coffin builder? It’s an interesting video and an interesting perspective. Worth the listen. Welcome to the brave new world. Is your job to create the thing that makes you obsolete and replaces you? How long before we substitute carbon for silicon?
Bullet Points:
** Property Tax – The same $400,000 home carries $7,172 a year in property tax in Illinois and $1,232 in Hawaii. That is a $5,940 spread on identical property value. These are effective rates from the 2024 American Community Survey: total real estate taxes paid divided by the total value of owner-occupied homes in each state. The national average is 0.888%, which works out to about $3,552 a year on a $400,000 home. Illinois, New Jersey, Vermont, Nebraska, and Connecticut hold the top five spots, and every one of them is above 1.35%. Texas ranks ninth at 1.245% with no state income tax, which is the tradeoff that funds its schools. Retirees comparing states usually weigh income tax first, but on a paid-off house, the property tax line is the one that never goes away. Where does your state land on this list, and how much has your bill moved in the last five years?
** Degrading everything they touch.
** Many of you don’t know that I started out in college as a microbiology major. It’s just too interesting. I decided that I didn’t want to spend my life staring through a microscope – but what if I had?
** Fauci – The important thing is that he lied to us and hid the truth for his own self-protection and aggrandizement, and that those lies caused enormous harm to many people. He mobilized the forces of the government and the media to pursue his agenda, which was to hide his responsibility and involvement. The fact he loved the adulation and power it brought him is of no real consequence, other than as a commentary on human nature.
** The BEE asks the question – What if there were no Republicans?
** Imagine taking medical advice from a doctor who needed a presidential pardon for the advice he gave…
** What does the Russian Navy do if it thinks there are hostile divers in the water?
** How to save a wife’s life (surgical remedy).
** RFK Jr says: “The reason they had to destroy hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin is that under federal law, you cannot issue an Emergency Use Authorization for a vaccine if there is an existing therapeutic drug that has been approved for that indication.” Kennedy claims that public health officials—specifically Dr. Anthony Fauci—were acting in alignment with major pharmaceutical corporations. He claimed that if cheap, widely available repurposed drugs like ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine were recognized as effective treatments, the multi-billion dollar market for COVID-19 vaccines would have legally dissolved overnight.
>>Warning Graphic<<
** Wednesday’s Fauci hearing produced one of its most stomach—turning exchanges when Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst read straight from taxpayer—funded research records into the Congressional record — and Fauci had nothing to say back. “𝘕𝘐𝘏-𝘧𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘥 𝘤𝘰𝘳𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘷𝘪𝘳𝘶𝘴 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘋𝘳. 𝘙𝘢𝘭𝘱𝘩 𝘉𝘢𝘳𝘪𝘤 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘩𝘪𝘴 𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘭𝘦𝘢𝘨𝘶𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘵 𝘜𝘕𝘊 𝘱𝘶𝘵 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘭𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴, 𝘵𝘩𝘺𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘦𝘴, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘤𝘩𝘶𝘯𝘬𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘧𝘦𝘵𝘢𝘭 𝘭𝘶𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘨𝘰𝘵 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘦𝘥, 𝘢𝘭𝘮𝘰𝘴𝘵 𝘧𝘪𝘷𝘦-𝘮𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘩-𝘰𝘭𝘥 𝘩𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘣𝘢𝘣𝘪𝘦𝘴. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘱𝘶𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘴𝘦 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘦𝘢𝘳𝘤𝘩 𝘮𝘪𝘤𝘦. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘥𝘪𝘴𝘨𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨𝘭𝘺 𝘯𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘮 𝘉𝘓𝘛-𝘓 𝘮𝘪𝘤𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘳𝘰𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘥 𝘤𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘢 𝘴𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘸𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘰𝘧 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘳𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺 𝘱𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘪𝘤𝘦.” The 𝐁𝐋𝐓-𝐋 𝐝𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 isn’t Ernst’s invention — it’s the researchers’ own shorthand for bone marrow, liver, thymus tissue implanted under a mouse’s kidney capsule, with fetal lung tissue grafted onto its back, to build ’𝐡𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐢𝐳𝐞𝐝’ 𝐭𝐞𝐬𝐭 𝐦𝐢𝐜𝐞 for coronavirus studies. Ernst noted the same NIAID—funded work had shipped these humanized and transgenic mice to China around 2017.
Welcome to Spain
Spain’s communist PM Pedro Sanchez gave amnesty to 1,000,000+ illegal immigrants, and now hordes of unvetted men are storming across the border from Africa.
Thousands of migrants poured into Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta from Morocco on Thursday, July 30, 2026, in a sudden surge that left local police overwhelmed.
Reports put the numbers at 10,000+ people, mostly young military-age men. Many swam around the Tarajal breakwater using inner tubes and flotation devices. Others forced open gates or scaled fences and ran into the city.
Video captured crowds surging along the rocky coast and into the streets. Guardia Civil officers were quickly outnumbered.
Ceuta officials declared a humanitarian emergency and appealed to Madrid for army reinforcements and a border shutdown. The Spanish government responded by ordering military units to the scene to restore control and protect the frontier.
The influx echoes the major 2021 crisis at the same border and highlights ongoing pressure on the Western Mediterranean migration route. Local residents expressed fear of disorder as the small territory struggles to cope.
Spain markets itself as a welcoming and woke communist stronghold in Europe. All I can say is, “From each according to his ability to each according to his need.” The Pope has advised them to be welcoming and that “come one, come all” should be the standard in Spain (not Vatican City, of course). The Spanish will need to raise taxes to support all of the African migrants, but in a communist country the tax should be 100% anyway in order to foster the sort of Animal Farm Equality they’re looking for.
It’s not an invasion – it’s a plea for help, and I’m sure that Spain is up to the task of making military-age African males feel welcome, feeding them, housing them, caring for their medical needs, paying for cell phones and running-around money. There are a lot more African males where those came from.
Under EU rules, as I understand them, once they’re in Spain, they can go anywhere in Europe – not the brightest policy, IMHO. Italy isn’t waiting on Spain to fix it. Prime Minister 𝐆𝐢𝐨𝐫𝐠𝐢𝐚 𝐌𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐢 says Rome is ready to take “extraordinary measures,” including suspending the Schengen free-travel zone with Spain, and her own foreign minister, 𝐀𝐧𝐭𝐨𝐧𝐢𝐨 𝐓𝐚𝐣𝐚𝐧𝐢, has publicly called for it. Spain has already summoned Italy’s ambassador in response.
Don’t let them, Jules
Jules shares a memory of lemons, cowboy boots, and country music: There was an art challenge at my art group to paint something that had a memory or link to music. I started to think about Luckenbach in Texas, which is where I first found my love for country music. I absolutely loved this place with all my heart. It’s a tiny, sparsely populated town of about three people, but there is the greatest stage and outdoor music venue, which has hosted some of the greats like Waylon and Willie! I got to wear cowboy boots and a cowboy hat, visit Nashville, get completely into the country vibe and music, and want to become a songwriter/lyricist.
So for the challenge, I made this little booklet of that journey, and on the back of it are all the places I’ve been to and had the good fortune to attend: the Country Music Association (CMA) honky tonks, Nashville, Luckenbach, the Grand Ole Opry, Theresa Bluebird Cafe, and the Ryman Auditorium. These visits were a big musical journey for me into a genre I hadn’t really cared for but now absolutely love. The song that you are listening to is one that I wrote when I was here a decade ago.
Shore Lines
There is a lake at the bottom of the ocean. It has a shoreline. It has waves that lap against the edge. And almost everything that swims into it dies within seconds. Half a mile down in the Gulf of Mexico, in total darkness, sit some of the strangest places on Earth: brine pools. They are pools of water resting inside the water, so heavy with salt that they never mix with the ocean above them. That weight is why they have a real surface, a real shoreline, even waves. From a submersible, it looks like you are drifting over a moonlit lake. Then you notice the bodies around the rim.
These pools are several times saltier than seawater and almost completely starved of oxygen, and many of them leak methane and toxic hydrogen sulfide. Anything that wanders in is pickled where it falls. Crabs, fish, and eels lie perfectly intact around the edge, like a trap that never resets. The scientists who found one of them named it the Jacuzzi of Despair.
But here is the part that flips the whole story. Cross that same shoreline as a mussel, and you can feast for a lifetime. Right where the poison meets the sea, entire communities thrive. Mussels and tube worms survive on bacteria that eat methane and sulfide instead of sunlight. It is one of the only places on the planet where the food chain does not begin with the sun.
Some of those tube worms are older than the United States, growing in the cold and the dark for more than two hundred and fifty years. And the salt itself is a ghost: the dried remains of an ancient sea that evaporated here when dinosaurs were alive, buried for over a hundred million years and now bleeding back into the deep.
Is a poisoned pool in the Gulf of Mexico the closest preview we have of life on Europa and Enceladus, the ice moons of Jupiter and Saturn that hide vast oceans beneath their frozen shells? If life can run on chemicals in the dark down here, it may be doing the same thing out there. The ocean keeps its secrets
Identify the Ship
1
Two graphics
You have a hull number to work with.
2
Identify the Aircraft
3
Two graphics
Identify the Handgun
4
A Parting Shot from Roseann Barr
End
Property tax – my house in Tennessee has both a state tax and a county tax. The county tax is about the same as the state tax. Moving to Missouri should cut my total property tax burden. Observation while driving between Tennessee and Missouri: when the road goes over a bridge or overpass, the Tennessee versions have a more pronounced bump, sometimes it’s almost a jolt.
Is the jolt connected to the property tax? I’d think that the road tax/car registration and gasoline tax (and whatever other excises taxes are involved) would be more on point. But I don’t know.
It is not uncommon for people to move from the worker’s paradise in California to Arizona (where taxes are much lower) – about 20% less expensive to live in AZ. Once in Arizona they demand more government services (which equates to higher taxes because there is no free lunch).
Here in northern Nevada, the vast majority of rural roads are unmaintained, usually gravel. Folks move to properties on these roads as the properties are much cheaper and there’s less traffic. The county has official tables of what roads are maintained and to what level. Not on the list, no maintenance. Residents are responsible for road maintenance. Which, of course, they don’t want to contribute to or do for themselves.
Ambulance, fire, and police response times take longer because of the rough surfaces and lack of signs.
People complain, and the county tells them to pound sand, literally. You want maintenance or pavement, pay up.
I maintain my road.
Rural folks never wait around to fix up roads, anyone who doesn’t understand that is missing the point of being rural. Besides, yer missing out on some nice tractor therapy.
That is a useless chart. Property taxes are local. Richmond and Henrico, Virginia exist side by side, but the Richmond city property tax is twice the Henrico County tax. Rural Powhatan County is even higher than Richmond due to building infrastructure that the yankee migrants demand.
A friend moved to Texas from North Carolina. He found that the even though Texas does not have an income tax, the Pearland water, education, property, and other taxes exceeded what he paid in NC by a large margin.
The point is, check all taxes before you move.
X2
That list is off by $1200 for GA state taxes. I have county and city taxes as well. Then there is the sales tax for the county. They just voted a new 1 cent SPLOST tax to push our sales tax two and a half cents more than metro Atlanta.
The chart only deals with State Tax. You should be proud to pay county and city taxes directly instead of going through a State Board of Equalization (revenue sharing). The sales tax too, could be a separate source of pride in your participation in funding government.
Identify the Ship:
1. Vietnamese Gepard-class frigate Dinh Tien Hoang
2. Vietnamese Petya-class frigate
Identify the Aircraft:
3. Republic XF-91 Thunderceptor
Identify the Handgun:
4. S&W Model 617 (?)
Outstanding, Surly.
1 is Vietnam People’s Navy Ship 011–Đinh Tiên Hoàng first Gepard-class frigate (Russian built)
2 Vietnam Navy ship 17?
Yes.
Coffin builders – he says that when most government income is generated from AI then the government will/may stop providing services that, in days long ago, it didn’t provide at all.
This is a problem?
You go from a corrupt government handling things to SkyNet terminators.
Perhaps AI can eliminate the need for producers. How does AI eliminate the need for consumers?
What percentage of production is human overhead? Why are we now asked to order at the kiosk instead of at the counter of national chain fast food restaurants? Soon they’ll eliminate the cooks and most of the culinary functions. I think that the human factor will be necessary for most things to work through the next 50 years. My crystal ball is very cloudy after that.
Beware the wife tax on moving for taxes. My father in law moved for taxes and remodeled a very reasonably priced house in Sun City West. The house the left in Texas nicely remodeled. He was an excellent wood worker. She got un a tiff with the dance club and wanted to move back to Texas. They brought a house in Texas and remodeled it. She was bored and wanted to move back to Arizona. They did, prices had gone up and they remodeled again. He got sick, we drove out every couple of months … . He passes and she moved back to a rent house 80 miles from family with bad traffic. She wanted to remodel that but did not and moved to a duplex close to family. She remodeled that one also. Now she wants to move to assisted living but she does not have that kind of money anymore. On his death bed my father in law said he should have put his foot down a long time ago. There are things worse than death and taxes.
Yeah. Not an uncommon story.
I think it’s time for me to come back and see if those cowboys are OK!
I miss it.
I definitely need some new boots so…
You might be forced to break away from beans on toast and embrace chicken fried steak once again.
No clue on the ships or the jet, but I’ll throw my hat in the ring for that revolver being a S&W 617 .22 cal.
It is!
Taxing property is the most obvious method of thievery by government entities. If the same method is practiced by thugs, it’s considered organized crime, and those involved go to prison. Instead of breaking the legs of someone that refuses to pay the extortion, taxing entities place a lien, use sheriff deputies to remove them from the property, and will shoot anyone that tries to protect their property.
X2…King George would be proud of the modern thieves who tax and steal private property in such creative ways.
I realize that endlessly taxing residential property is a cash cow to be milked, but I think that there should be a sunset on property tax once you acquire it for personal residential use (if you live on it). The problem with many taxes is mission creep. It starts at A and ends at Z a few years later. You can’t escape death or taxes but the method of taxation can be changed.
Locally, due to only a 10% restraint allowed by law, taxing entities will assess an additional 10% every year, unless the property owner appeals the appraisal. That can be challenging for some, but the board is not made up of the most astute of people, and dealing with a person that can defend their position is not their favorite pastime. I’ve always found I could reduce the appraised value by appealing. Regardless, not appealing the appraisal guarantees an additional hike to property taxes each year.
Sadly, most are either ignorant of the ability to lower their taxes, or too overwhelmed by the appeals process to pursue lower taxes. That’s the biggest problem. Taxing entities are like racoons. If you continue to feed them, their numbers increase, more is required, and getting rid of them is not an easy process.
It’s like a dog eating all that it can, vomiting so it can eat more. (see Hunger Games)
Property Taxes are theft, indefinitely taxing a property after taxing the original sale….but it can be done otherwise when a moral principled captain is steering the boat:
“Governor Ron DeSantis has confirmed that after finalizing the new budget, the state of Florida will have slashed spending for 4 straight years. Despite having a similar population to New York, Florida’s budget will be less than half the size of New York’s. The state’s rainy day fund will be 100% full and more than 3 times larger than it was just 7 years ago. All of this with no state income tax and upcoming cuts to property taxes. Florida continues to lead with fiscal responsibility and strong conservative governance.”
Gee, how does this happen? Simple…when government decides it works for the people, not the other way around.
***
Parting Shot: Rosanne is not wrong.
Rosanne is not wrong…
The rearview affords clarity…WTP know what happened, and why would the frontman tell us to trust the science then need 6 lawyers and take the 5th if he was innocent? Nothing will happen. Heck, Lizzo Cheney (and the other J6 seditionist’s) is nowhere to be found after slinking away…probably sipping an umbrella drink on some foreign sandy beach without a care in the world.
can Ron DeSantis make a Conservative/Republican ticket in the coming years? with Marco Rubio?
Could be, coming off his last Presidential test run maybe Trump and he chatted about ‘next time’…the guy has been a terrific governor, considering he’s only one person. I’d keep Rubio right where he is, exceptional in that role. I liken it to taking your best engineer thinking he’d make a great manager only to have him fail miserably…fish out of water. Not all can make the transition…because they aren’t supposed to.
This is more of a ballad, but it’s one of my favorites.
—
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoKvUYbGu7A&list=RDUoKvUYbGu7A&start_radio=1
Roseanne is a little over 100 years late with the overthrowing the Constitutional USA thing.
I personally think it happened in December 1913 [insert “money supply” quote attributed to Rothschild], though some claim the Republic died after the War Between the States. COVID and Jan 6th were, respectively, testing the national ovine quotient (i.e. how much of a sheep are you?) and rubbing it in our faces.
[yes yes, there was MUCH more to the COVID business than ovine quotient; that was a gross oversimplification for rhetorical purposes]
—
There are people, mostly kindhearted people of good will, who ask in bewilderment, “Why? Why would anyone DO something like that? It can’t be malice as you are claiming. We must be missing something.” No, we’re not. They (whoever “They” are) are full of Resentment. It’s not enough to have power, or wealth. It’s also necessary to humiliate your victims, to rub their faces in it. Just because WE are not full of malice and bitterness and resentment doesn’t mean other people are similarly unburdened. We are dealing with people so full of Resentment over past wrongs (both actual and imagined; many imagined, or amplified a hundredfold even when not made up from whole cloth) that they have convinced themselves that aggression initiated by them is moral and justified. It’s strike first, “because they were gonna do it to us”. It’s Projection in the psychological sense. It’s PRE-venge.
My ovine quotient has been, and continues to be, ZERO…and will stay that way until further notice. believe nothing government tells you, the grifters, cheats, seditionist’s, and – now outright Communists/Marxists/Socialists, have lost the privilege after decades working to undermine Constitutional freedoms afforded to We The People by The Founders. It’s not even ‘trust but verify’, it’s ‘no trust at all’.
Ex: Why is Cuomo still walking around a free man after his response to The Covid Culling PsyOp? They arrested and jailed people for not wearing masks, intentionally turned [weak-minded] friend/family member/neighbor against each other then sat back and laughed….but you or me better not go 10mph over while trying to get to the hospital in an emergency, it’ll be the book for you!
Same with property taxes as enumerated above; don’t pay this Mafia-style ‘payment’ and they take your private property. Yeah, we’re ‘free’.
IMHO: Cuomo should have been put up against a wall for target practice – as should have been more than several like him (TV announcers, entertainers, police/[enforcers]).
Wouldn’t have minded their stupidity(?) so much had they not been caught laughing.
👍
every time I look at a satellite view of the Gulf of America/Mexico, I see a bifid meteor-strike crater
It must have been a big splash, and the rock is still down there – part of the rock.
I beat the taxman 11 of 13 times. Key—be aggressive, have your shit together and stick to the facts.
The rub for me is even having to beat them at all, time to eliminate this corrupt overreach. Unfortunately there are some voters, more now than ever and often urban centered types, who enjoy their soft tyranny so crazily vote for more taxes because in their mind it doesn’t affect them, only you and me, the ones they are envious.
I just got off the phone (and yes! I am somewhat hard of hearing; I can’t, for the life of me, hear my wife across the dinner table) with a very pleasant young lady who was trying to make an appointment for me – my schedule and the doctor’s were in continual (continuous?) conflict.
She was very well educated and she was speaking English but with a very strong (to my ear at least) Hindi accent, but for the all of me, she may as well have been speaking Hindi with a strong English accent.
My Dad had a very strong Hungarian accent speaking English – or any of the languages spoken in Europe – and he spoke all of them – a hyperpolyglot – but all with a strong Hungarian accent. He took lessons with a Broadway speech coach – with major improvement.
I have no problem listening to people speak English with a heavy accent, but please don’t tell me you speak English when you apply for a job which requires you to be on the phone with a clientele 95% of which speaks only American English and you’re barely intelligible.
I don’t want to get into listening to a heavy Appalachian accent in New York – or vice versa.
Rant over!
Better than Ebonics.
Ebonics?
Tried ordering at an Atlanta airport concourse Burger King one time and could not understand the young woman behind the counter. Seems I can’t speak Southern Black and she didn’t understand Wyoming cowboy. We settled on #4.
The inside joke voiced between MrsPaulM and myself when getting off the customer service phone call clearly being handled in an India data center, “My name Peggy.” 🤣
Jules, I grew up in Nashville. Love the area, seen all the sights you’ve mentioned, lived them. Family had (and still has) businesses there since early 1900’s. Dad had a small outlet in the Opryland Hotel for a few years among other locations around the city.
Country music had a huge influence in how the city evolved, lots of money there too.
But it’s changed a lot since then. I miss Nashville and surrounds, but I’m not upset to have moved on.
I’d love to have lived there. In another lifetime.
It reminds me of Detroit.
A place that only lives in my memories now.
Ha, Detroit!
The Motor City.
What if you had a border and everyone just ignored it, would it still be a border?
Agree with KBB on the taxes… sigh… And my little town’s taxes are higher than the county by almost 50%!
That’s profound. Is there a reason? Is your city elite that they could levy such a tax?
Killdozer?
Nashville in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s were probably best. Nashville didn’t encompass all of Davidson County, the subdivisions hadn’t merged into a metropolis. Al Gore was a nobody. Country music was popular and well done, not glorified pop music. Sound studios used 24-track analog mixers and recorders when available, digital wasn’t even on the horizon. In 1985, a good college friend of mine quit school and was hired to code a 128k Mac to a 24-track recorder to drive the system. Fancy neat new technology back then.
Public schools were good, safety wasn’t an issue. Cops could properly take care of miscreants (hickory-scented scalp massage). Streets in Nashville were originally horse and buggy paths and can’t be widened because of encroaching homes and businesses.
Sigh…
https://x.com/thericanmemes/status/2083036576502718490?s=46