ToolBoxHero

my land of the free… and the fee 🇺🇸

Concerning Social Security payments, my contributions were made for 40 years on every salary I received. Those jobs may not have always been the work I wanted to be doing at the time, BUT I always had a job. The Social Security check is now (or soon will be) referred to as a "Federal Benefit Payment?" I'll be part of the one percent to forward this. I am forwarding it because it touches a nerve in me, and I hope it will in you. Please keep passing it on until everyone in our country has read it. The government is now referring to our Social Security checks as a "Federal Benefit Payment." This isn't a benefit. It is our money paid out of our earned income! Not only did we all contribute to Social Security but our employers did too. It totaled 15% of our income before taxes. If you averaged $30K per year over your working life, that's close to $180,000 invested in Social Security. If you calculate the future value of your monthly investment in social security ($375/month, including both you and your employers contributions) at a meager 1% interest rate compounded monthly, after 40 years of working you'd have more than $1.3+ million dollars saved! This is your personal investment. Upon retirement, if you took out only 3% per year, you'd receive $39,318 per year, or $3,277 per month. That's almost three times more than today's average Social Security benefit of $1,230 per month, according to the Social Security Administration. (Google it – it’s a fact). And your retirement fund would last more than 33 years (until you're 98 if you retire at age 65)! I can only imagine how much better most average-income people could live in retirement if our government had just invested our money in low-risk interest-earning accounts. Instead, the folks in Washington pulled off a bigger "Ponzi scheme" than Bernie Madoff ever did. They took our money and used it elsewhere. They forgot (oh yes, they knew) that it was OUR money they were taking. They didn't have a referendum to ask us if we wanted to lend the money to them. And they didn't pay interest on the debt they assumed. And recently they've told us that the money won't support us for very much longer. But is it our fault they misused our investments? And now, to add insult to injury, they're calling it a "benefit", as if we never worked to earn every penny of it. Just because they borrowed the money doesn't mean that our investments were a charity! Let's take a stand. We have earned our right to Social Security and Medicare. Demand that our legislators bring some sense into our government. Find a way to keep Social Security and Medicare going for the sake of that 92% of our population who need it. Then call it what it is: Our Earned Retirement Income. 😡😡😡✅

Here’s what drives people nuts on both sides: Trump is not the cartoon character. Not the genius his fans worship, not the idiot his critics need him to be. He's just a stubborn, calculating guy who creates chaos the way a magician creates misdirection. While you’re distracted watching the fireworks, he’s already three iterations ahead with furious execution. And he doesn’t bluff the way people think he bluffs. He just couldn't care less about the part of diplomacy where everyone pretends to be polite while lying to each other’s faces. He skips that step entirely, which looks unhinged if you’re used to the old choreography but is genuinely disorienting if you’re the guy on the other side of the table who had a whole manipulation strategy mapped out. Iran found this out the hard way. What gets lost in so much noise is that Trump doesn’t actually want war. He sees it as the ugly price tag on a bigger purchase. His math on Iran is cold but not complicated: ninety million people living between poverty and the lower middle class, ruled by an elite whose entire business model depends on keeping them there. The nukes were the urgent priority, but his bet is that removing the lid will let Iranians rebuild the way Germany did after the rubble cleared. You can argue whether that math checks out, but it’s not the reasoning of someone who just wants to watch things explode. Obviously, Iran isn’t the only file on his desk. Venezuela already got the treatment. Cuba’s probably next. Syria hasn’t been forgotten either, no matter how quiet things look. By this point, few should be surprised that he circles back to unfinished business with the patience of a guy who knows he’s holding better cards and just needs to wait for overconfidant tyrants to overplay theirs. The part his opponents keep getting wrong is treating “Make America Great Again” like a bumper sticker. Wrong. It’s a *doctrine* now. It has always been. Whether you love it or find it terrifying, MAGA is the very operating system behind his relentless drive. This not just some random pixellated banner which will fade away in the next couple presidential terms. Nah, this is the right stuff that will outlast the man who built it.

@noahxaviersmits @jarvis_best You are correct. Nothing to see here but God's beauty

@jarvis_best Where did you go in Wisconsin? Get off the interstate and you’ll see plenty of this:

I have a problem and its name is Wisconsin. A thread. I hate Wisconsin. It’s like you took the absolute worst stereotypes of red states and blue states and mushed them together to create a Sheboygan hard role except dummer. The Madison libs are a walking talking Portlandia skit and the Republicans are all fat and on the verge of a very racist heart attack. Everything you heard about Wisconsin is true.

@jarvis_best Get off the Interstate Doc...

Wisconsin is one of the few places in the US that are actively disappointing to visit. When you think WISCONSIN you might picture in your mind a beautiful sunrise over a picturesque cheese farm. Yeah there are ZERO picturesque cheese farms in Wisconsin. 99% of Wisconsin looks like you plunked the Breezeway interchange into a field of dirt. It is not a pretty place.

@angelojello74 Exactly, thank you for being a good neighbor

Geez my post about giving my neighbor a hand with her hot water tank blew up. Leaving soon to get the new tank but I wanted to let some of you know a few things. First I was a carpenter for many years. My father taught me everything I know about construction, trades. I do know what I am doing. I’m not an idiot. I don’t need to watch a YouTube video on doing whatever. Second I’m not asking for praise. If there’s one thing I like about X is reading the good things in life. I thought this was a good thing. Most of my neighbors are elderly. In the winter my son and I will clean the snow of their driveways. We help them clean up their leaves. When the power is out we check on them. It’s not about looking for a “medal “ it’s about doing the right thing.

@deaflibertarian Chicken poop is great for gardens; rabbit poop is even better!

My sister made good money selling her chicken's poop. I'm serious. I did not know this was a thing!

@TJandCasper I'm so sorry for your loss. A truck dog like Casper is the best companion and friend anyone could ever hope to have.

I am posting this morning, with an extremely shattered heart. In the wee hours this morning my beautiful boy Casper unexpectedly and suddenly passed away. He has crossed the Rainbow Bridge. Life will not be the same. I know there is a special place in Heaven for dogs, and I know Casper will be there to keep the Good Lords seat warm. Just like he did my drivers seat when ever I was out of the truck.

Covid Fraud Cases are being prosecuted: local.newsbreak.com/iowa-state/458…

@braunfarm Your local hardware store will have it

“Quick” valve stack leak repair and 3pt cylinder reseal thwarted by a missing 1/2” o-ring. Of course my local dealer doesn’t have it in stock

@xaqwsx Been there - done that!

長い物が積める軽トラックのアイデア

@ichimaru_novel Use WD-40 to remove duct tape

ダクトテープの話をしてたらWD40とかいう謎のスプレーを外人ニキに教えてもらった これとテープがあればマジでなんでもできるらしい 大丈夫？ ワイ日本人だからジョーク教えられてない？

You can talk about masculinity and what makes a man a man all you want but there really is only one test, one check. Do people ask you for help?

Just stunning

@north0fnorth Just drove through the Coulee region this afternoon. The trees are just starting to bud.

in case you don’t know, the driftless area is a region in illinois/wisconsin/iowa/minnesota that was never flattened by glaciers and thus is more similar to appalachia than the rest of the midwest. one of the most subtly beautiful parts of the country

@deaflibertarian Be glad you don't own the front-load washer...

Two Samsung appliances that are barely a year old are broken. Fridge and stove. I want the stuff they built in the 60's-80's! 😫

You gotta show the radicals that you are not what they thought you are!

Watch. This guy nails it.

Battle-Hardened Drone Returning From Iran War Struggling To Re-enter Life Of Delivering Amazon Orders buff.ly/947DoAr

@SamaHoole what's a lorries?

Every February, 70% of the commercial honey bees in the United States, roughly two million colonies, are loaded onto lorries and driven to California. They are going to pollinate the almonds. 80% of the world's almonds come from one valley in California. Over 1.3 million acres of nothing but almond trees, blooming for three weeks in monoculture, requiring more pollinators than the state can produce on its own. So the bees are trucked in from every corner of the country. Florida. New York. Montana. The bees are fed sugar water for the journey because their own honey has been removed to lighten the load. They arrive in the Central Valley to a landscape that is, for three weeks, pink and white blossom, and for the other forty-nine weeks of the year, dead. Nothing to eat. No forage. No diversity. Just almond trees and bare dirt, sprayed regularly with fungicides and insecticides that were deemed bee-safe in adult bees but turn out to be lethal to larvae when combined. In February 2025, commercial beekeepers reported the worst die-off on record. Around 60% of commercial honey bee colonies in the United States dead in a single pollination season. Financial losses estimated well over $139 million. Some beekeepers lost 90 to 100% of their colonies. The almonds are marketed as plant-based. Clean. Ethical. The preferred alternative. The preferred alternative requires the single largest managed pollination event in human history and it is quietly killing the pollinators faster than they can be replaced. Every glass of almond milk is, statistically, a small contribution to the largest pollinator die-off on record. This is not in the advertising.