Original Song: She's got me on the side

 

Original song "I'll bring you flowers"

 

 

Reflections on Trump's address to the nation December 17, 2025

President Donald Trump addressed the nation last night to talk about progress he has made for the nation since his inauguration earlier this year and to clue us in on what he is expecting for next year and for the rest of his presidency.

His most notable achievement thus far has been closing our southern border to "asylum seekers" and countless others who have snuck into our country uninvited. It is notable that former president Joe Biden claimed he was powerless to achieve such a feat, yet Trump had no trouble accomplishing a total shut down of the border in a matter of months.

Trump mentioned he was instrumental in terminating hostilities around the world, such as the war in Gaza and the conflict between Iran and Isreal. It is notable that he was successful in assisting in the release of hostages held for years by Hamas. 

He also mentioned getting inflation under control, as evidenced by a decrease in average gas prices to below $3.00 a gallon, a significant decrease from the typical $3.50 average under Biden. He also mentioned a decrease in food prices for such commodities as eggs and new inflation numbers released today showing a 3 tenth of a percent drop in inflation supports his assertion that it is moving in the right direction.

Trump spent a good amount of time extolling the virtues of his recently passed "One Big Beautiful Bill" legislation that focused on tax breaks for millions of Americans. There are many benefits that will lower the tax burden on mostly middle to low-income taxpayers.

It is notable that for the vast majority of the new tax laws, benefits available to low and middle income taxpayers are phased out for higher-income earners. The claim by Democrats that Trump is looking out for his billionaire friends when it comes to tax matters is and has always been a total myth. 

For instance, under the old tax law, you could deduct only $10,000 of state and local taxes as an itemized deduction. Trump's new law allows for a deduction of up to $40,000, but if you make over $606,333 in 2025 you can only deduct the old limit of $10,000. Just about every new tax law has similar limitations if you fall into the higher earner income brackets.

Most folks have heard of the new laws mentioning "no tax on tips, overtime and social security." While that may be true in some instances, if you read the fine print, you will see that there are limits on how much of those categories of income you can exclude from taxes. Also, as I just mentioned, if you are a higher-income earner, you may find that all or a portion of your tips, overtime pay and social security income is still taxable.

With increased standard deductions, deductions for car loan interest, higher childcare and child tax credits and the aforementioned decrease in the taxability of tips, overtime and social security, many taxpayers will see a reduction in their taxes filed this spring. Also, favorable depreciation laws will allow businesses to keep more of their income upfront, which should have a beneficial effect on the economy, at least in the short run.

We are at a point in time where similar to the beginning of a sports season, the team is assembled and coached up, so now it's time for the season to start so we can see how good a job the coach did. Like all administrations, Trump's will be graded largely on how his economy does. The One Big Beautiful Bill has been passed and its tax laws will soon be in effect. Once millions of taxpayers are able to keep more of their own money, it should have a stimulative effect on the economy. We'll know soon enough how good of a job Trump is doing.

  

 Trump supporters refuse to accept results of 2020 presidential election

I saw a reporter on CNN state that most Donald Trump supporters do not accept the recent election results, believing instead that Joe Biden's narrow victory in the presidential election was the result of fraud and irregularities in the election count and process.

The surprising thing about this is that the reporter seemed genuinely dismayed at this revelation, as did her colleagues at the network that claims to be "The most trusted name in news."  Surely, they assume they represent mainstream America, so the thought that as much as half of us think differently from the way they do is hard for them to comprehend. So, I will attempt to enlighten them and their sympathizers as to why this would be so.

I'm from the south, and there is a saying in NASCAR that "if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying." In other words, you expect some cheating in NASCAR, it is just the way things are done. And so it is with the Democratic Party.

For the last four years, the Democratic Party and their sympathizers in the media and "Big Tech" have  dished out one phony political trick after another in an attempt to remove President Trump from office. There was non-stop propaganda in the media that portrayed President Trump as a bigoted and racist leader who was little better than Adolph Hitler. Big Tech and Academia censored conservative voices by hiding social media posts from conservatives and refusing to allow them to speak on college campuses.

A bogus investigation was conducted as a result of a partisan dossier created by the Clinton campaign that was the precursor to a totally partisan impeachment of President Trump.

Militant radical groups like Antifa rioted in our streets with little condemnation from the Democratic Party. Left-leaning leaders like New York governor Andrew Cuomo shut down businesses and schools despite the harm it inflicted on small businesses and our economy. Much of this had political overtones. 

Most Trump supporters aren't surprised by all of this, because it has been going on for a very long time. The mainstream press has leaned left going all the way back to the Vietnam war. Until recently, they at least made an attempt to appear to be fair and unbiased, but something about Trump pushed them over the edge. Any claim by them to be fair and unbiased is an insult to our intelligence.

Big Tech and Academia have been relentless lately in their quest to silence conservative voices. They deem conservatives and Trump supporters as racist deplorables who are so evil that their opinions should not even be allowed to be heard. Joe Biden himself referred to Trump supporters as "very bad people."

If your political opposition paints you as evil and engages in every questionable practice imaginable to silence your opinion, then attempts to remove your duly elected officials from office, and then spreads vicious lies about you on a daily basis, why would one not suspect that they would rig an election?

The election medaling actually started four years ago when Trump was elected. Since then we have seen nothing but non-stop propaganda, censorship and dirty politics from the Democratic Party and their sympathizers.

This culminated with the mass mailing of voting ballots accompanied by loose regulations regarding the validation of those ballots when they were returned. Also, in key voting districts conservative election watchers were prevented from watching the counting of ballots. Election machines were adjusted to allow for loose validation of signatures on ballots. The Covid pandemic was used at times as an excuse to justify these questionable practices, but it doesn't take much imagination to realize that politics were at the core of it.  

The Left has a major credibility problem when it comes to truth and fairness. Joe Biden was hidden away from us during the campaign, rarely giving press conferences that were simply infomercials with scripted questions and rehearsed answers. We can only imagine where he actually stands on key issues. 

Joe Biden claims he wants to unite America, but until the mainstream press, Big Tech and Academia own up to what they have been up to and make amends, there is little to talk about in my opinion.  

I'm from the south, as I stated earlier. Ask any FSU football fan which coach won the most games in college football history, and they will tell you Bobby Bowden did, even though the official record belongs to Joe Paterno. Ask Bobby who holds the record, and he'll tell you he knows how many games he won.

Ask a Trump supported who won the 2020 presidential election, and they'll tell you Donald Trump did. It doesn't matter what the official count is, if Joe Biden got more votes it is just the result of dirty tricks and dirty politics perpetrated by the Democratic Party, the Mainstream Media and Big Tech.

  

 Countdown to election day - 2020

It seems another US federal election is now upon us. Even though many of us have already voted, or made up our minds, I think it might be beneficial to throw my two cents worth in on who I think will make a better president, Donald Trump or Joe Biden.

I'll start with some negatives on Joe Biden. As the recent debate demonstrated, he struggles with the truth. He stated unequivocally that he never said he would ban fracking, even though he is on tape several times saying he would do just that.

Furthermore, he said he did not benefit from dealings with foreign governments. No one disputes that his son accompanied him on a trip to China from which Hunter Biden returned with a lucrative deal from a Chinese bank. Furthermore, Joe nor Hunter Biden have disputed receiving millions of dollars from the wife of a politician in Moscow. Even if Joe did not benefit personally from these dealings, his immediate family certainly did, so his assertion that the Hunter scandal is simply Russian propaganda is untruthful.

If you do some research, you will find that Joe Biden has been embroiled in plagiarism scandals in the past. Furthermore, he has admitted to this, so it cannot be dismissed as fake news. He was also caught claiming he graduated near the top of his class in law school, when in fact he was near the bottom. 

Biden's own vice presidential candidate accused him of racism as it applied to school busing early in his career, and he has recently stated that if you don't vote for him, you are not black. In spite of this, he claims Donald Trump is the racist, not him. He also referred to Trump supporters as "not very good people" and "Chumps", while at the same time claiming he cared about all Americans.

The reason I point all of this out is to make the point that you cannot trust that Joe Biden will do what he says he will do once in office. Also, one of Biden's best arguments for voting for him is his character and decency, which is clearly in doubt based on the forgoing.

You might argue that President Trump has issues with the truth as well. However, you cannot dispute that he did what he said he would do once elected. He said he would be good for the economy, he would deter illegal immigration and would be effective with regards to foreign affairs. He has high marks in all of these areas.

I am afraid with Joe Biden you don't know what you are going to get once he is in office. Will he govern as a moderate as he claims, or will he pivot to the far left and advance the agenda of socialists like Bernie Sanders? 

President Trump champions conservative causes such as limited government, low taxes, strong defense and law and order. Joe Biden is for liberal causes such as big government, climate change initiatives and higher taxes that are necessary to support that agenda.

I have been around long enough to have lived under democratic and republican administrations and always took solace in the understanding that if my candidate didn't win, I could wait four years and then have another opportunity to elect the candidate that I wanted. I don't feel that way anymore, however.

The truth of the matter is, the mainstream media, Accademia, and "Big Tech" have formed an alliance with the democratic party to silence free speech in order to advance their liberal agenda. What this has led to is a situation where conservative opinions are not widely broadcast or published and in its place is liberal propaganda.

Case in point is the Hunter Biden e-mail scandal. How can anyone come to an informed decision about it if it is not even mentioned in the mainstream media? Everyone knows if it was Trump's son that was involved in such a scandal, it would be front page news everywhere, but because it involves a Biden, the whole story is ignored by the mainstream media. That is censorship, plain and simple.

Just about every story in the mainstream media for the last four years has been spun in a negative way to reflect poorly on Trump's presidency. That is propaganda, plain and simple.

If Biden wins the presidency, there is talk of stacking the supreme court in order to lean it more to the left. There is talk of granting statehood to the district of Columbia and Puerto Rico in order to enhance democratic representation in Congress. There is talk of abolishing the electoral college in order to deny representation from most of the states in our union. There is talk of granting citizenship to millions of illegal aliens to stock voters roles for democrats. 

If these things were to come about, it is entirely possible that we could end up with one-party rule and that could end conservatism as we know it. And if that happens, we will all become a slave to our government, and will have lost our freedom.

Like him or not, Donald Trump may be the only chance we have of maintaining a free and democratic America. With Trump you know what you are going to get, a strong economy, a strong America, and a free America. 

Run-up to the presidential election - 2020

I heard the assumed Democratic Party candidate for president of the United States, Joe Biden, mention that ten to fifteen percent of American citizens are "bad people". That attitude on the part of the Democratic party leader and the Left in general explains a lot of what I have observed since President Trump has been in office.

First, the Democrats tried to remove Trump from office by concocting a story about how he had elicited help from the Russians to win office. A thorough investigation by a partisan Democratic leaning commission failed to uncover any merit to the claims. Furthermore, it has been revealed in recent senate testimony that the individuals on the Left that initiated the investigation knew all along that there was no collusion. The whole thing was simply a misguided attempt to remove Trump from office

Next, the Democrats tried to remove Trump by claiming he demanded an investigation into alleged wrongdoings by Joe Biden and his son from Ukrainian officials. Again, congressional hearings found there was little merit to the alleged wrongdoing by Trump, as evidenced by his acquittal in his impeachment trial.

Recently, is has become more than evident that Democratic governors and Democratic city mayors have delayed the opening of businesses shut down by the recent Covid-19 pandemic for political reasons. How else can you explain their demand that businesses stay shuttered, while at the same time they facilitate mass protests that bring hundreds of thousands of people in close proximity to one another? Are we to believe that protests are more important than the spread of a world pandemic virus?

It is worth noting that if the recent protests result in a spike in Covid-19 cases, that may result in continuing business shutdowns, which will adversely affect our economy, and with it the reelection hopes of Donald Trump. This is further evidence that the "Blue" state and city business shutdowns are politically motivated.

It is my assertion that Joe Biden meant what he said when he claimed ten to fifteen percent of us are bad people. It is worth noting that Hilary Clinton expressed a similar sentiment when she ran for office, by calling Trump supporters a "basket of deplorables."

It seems that those on the Left are rather intolerant when it comes to people that do not agree with them. They view conservatives as bad people. That might explain why they resort to ruthless and unethical practices like the shenanigans I just mentioned to further their political ambitions. After all, if their opponents are bad people, that might explain why their "ends justify the means" policies seem OK to them.

Those on the Left know they can't win by playing fair. If it comes down to a debate over policy, individual freedom and limited government will win over voters every time. In order to win, the Democratic party has to resort to a myriad of tricks such as non-stop propaganda by mainstream media, a push towards things such as mail in voting, abolishing the electoral college, citizenship for likely democratic voting illegals, as well as vicious personal attacks against Republican supreme court nominees, and hypocrisy on a level seldom seen.

When Joe Biden was accused of sexual misconduct with an intern, he was quick to point out that she should be heard, but not necessarily believed. This is in stark contrast to what he said about Justice Kavanaugh, who was presumed guilty by the Left before he even had his day of testimony.  This type of hypocrisy is rich in the Democratic party.

When Joe Biden first addressed the sexual harassment allegations, there was simply a brief mention of it on CNN news. They simply mentioned that he denied the allegations. At the same time, on Fox News several days were devoted to pointing out the hypocrisy of his denial, in the wake of what transpired during the Kavanaugh hearings.

The story there was how the Left turned a blind eye to the women's "me too" movement when it interfered with their political agenda. CNN ignored the issue almost entirely, and in so doing demonstrated their political bias and willingness to advance a political agenda.

Going up against the Democrats is like battling a dirty fighter. He'll poke you in the eye, hit you below the belt and bite your ear. If they ever get their way and succeed in regaining power, the Democrats will bring change to America for sure. They will run the government like they run their party, using their dirty little bag of tricks to stack the FBI and judicial system with biased officials, use the mainstream media to give them cover while setting up a system through targeted handouts to large groups of voters to insure they never lose power going forward.

What we will be left with is a large, bloated government that will rule with an iron fist. We will be encumbered by government rules and regulations that will make it increasingly difficult for us to pursue happiness. We will become subjects of a vast unresponsive and uncaring government bureaucracy made up of pompous and corrupt individuals like you see in Venezuela.

The Democrats will have created a monster that will turn on all of us. In their zeal to right perceived injustices in the world, we will have lost the one thing that might have allowed us to make the world a better place, our freedom!


Fly above me

Coronavirus Government Relief Highlights

1.    Economic impact payments 

     -          $1,200 check to individuals who earn less than $75,000 (single) or $150,000 (married)

     -          Smaller check for many earning more than that

     -          $500 additional check for each dependent child

     -          Need to file a tax return for 2018 or 2019

     -          Money will be deposited in bank account listed on tax return (will get check if no bank account listed)

2.    Employee retention credit

          -     Applies to business shut down by government order or business whose sales have dropped by 50% from 1^st qtr 2019 numbers

            -      Credit equal to 50% of wages, up to $10,000 in credit

            -      Applies to wages after March 12, 2020 to January 1, 2021

            -      If business has under 100 employees, applies to all wages worked or not

            -      If business has more then 100 employees, applies only to wages not worked for

            -      Receive credit on quarterly payroll tax return, or by submitting form 7200

3.    Changes to tax due dates and installment arrangements           

-          Due date for all federal income tax returns extended to July 15, 2020

-          Applies to tax filing and tax payments

-          Tax installment obligations are suspended until July 15, 2020

-          Action on tax liens and levies is suspended until July 15, 2020 except for high income TP

4.    Expanded unemployment benefits      

-          Unemployment benefits expanded by 13 weeks

-          An additional $600/week in federal benefits added to state maximum benefits

-          Benefits are extended to self-employed workers and Gig workers

-          Those with a poor work history may qualify for benefits

-          Benefits apply to those laid off temporarily or indefinitely

-          Must apply for unemployment through your state unemployment office              

* No assurance is provided, please consult with your accountant or legal counsel*                                                                                                 

www.irs.gov/coronavirus