Leopode Straus

Traditioneller Konservatismus, Nationalismus

[Handre @Handre]

Andrew Jackson destroyed the Second Bank of the United States in 1836, delivering the single greatest blow to financial tyranny in American history. You won't hear this story told correctly in any economics textbook, because it reveals how central banking works: as a government-sponsored cartel that redistributes wealth from productive citizens to politically connected bankers.

The Second Bank held a 20-year federal charter starting in 1816. It controlled the money supply, issued currency, and held government deposits. Sound familiar? Nicholas Biddle, the bank's president, wielded more economic power than any elected official. He could trigger financial panics at will by restricting credit. He bought newspapers and bribed congressmen. When Jackson opposed recharter in 1832, Biddle deliberately crashed the economy to punish him.

Jackson called it "a hydra of corruption" and he was right. The bank created artificial booms through credit expansion, then triggered busts when politically convenient. Biddle openly bragged about manipulating markets. Free market economists and Jackson both recognized the core insight: this was legalized counterfeiting with government backing, not free market banking.

The political establishment united against Jackson. Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and the entire Whig Party defended the bank. Biddle spent millions buying influence. The press attacked Jackson as an economic ignoramus. Every "respectable" voice supported recharter. Jackson stood alone with the American people.

After Jackson killed the bank, the country experienced the strongest economic growth in its history. From 1837 to 1862, America operated without a central bank. Industry flourished. Wages rose. Innovation exploded. This wasn't coincidence. When you stop subsidizing financial speculation and let productive capital find its natural home, prosperity follows.

Central banks don't stabilize economies: they destabilize them for private gain.

[Handre @Handre]

Milton Friedman's greatest regret.

The federal government discovered the perfect crime in 1943: make employers collect taxes before workers ever see their paychecks. You think you earn $60,000 per year, but you actually earn $75,000 and hand over $15,000 to politicians without ever touching it. The psychological difference is enormous.

Before payroll withholding, Americans wrote quarterly checks directly to the Treasury. Picture yourself sitting at your kitchen table, writing a $3,750 check to the IRS every three months. The pain was immediate and visceral. Politicians faced constant pressure to justify every dollar because citizens felt the extraction in real time.

Withholding transforms this concrete loss into an abstract accounting entry. Your employer becomes an unpaid tax collector, and you never experience the actual cost of government. Worse, most people celebrate their tax refunds as government generosity rather than recognizing them as interest-free loans they provided to politicians. The Treasury collects your money throughout the year, spends it immediately, then returns your own cash and receives gratitude.

This system enables the explosion in government spending you witness today. Defense contractors billing $640 for toilet seats, agricultural subsidies for corn syrup, and congressional salaries for 535 people who rarely show up to work. When taxation feels painless, voters stop demanding accountability for how their money gets spent.

Milton Friedman helped design withholding as a wartime emergency measure and later called it his greatest regret. Free market economists recognized that the psychological pain of direct taxation creates political pressure for fiscal restraint. The temporary always becomes permanent in government hands, and the emergency justification disappears while the extraction mechanism remains forever.

[Laura Loomer @LauraLoomer]

Foreign donors are bankrolling opposition to new US data centers.
Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss gave nearly $14 million to radical left activist groups like Indivisible, Sierra Club, and Greenpeace, all of which are pushing for a national moratorium on data centers. British and Danish foundations have also added millions more in funding for leftist groups to oppose Data centers.

Meanwhile, this foreign money is helping block $152 billion in American infrastructure and AI projects while Communist China ramps up its own AI infrastructure to have dominance over the United States.

Congress is now investigating.

[Leopode Straus @Leopode12]

@ProjectFearX Is it just a validation/proof-of-concept aircraft,designed to test some kind of new technology…?

[BlackListed @CyberVapor1978]

@TRobinsonNewEra We can revert back to the Crussde Era & solve the worlds problems in one night with an all out offensive

[Leopode Straus @Leopode12]

@blueorigin At this rate, we’d better not wake up one day to find China has already built the first lunar base while we’re still exploding rockets on the ground………..

[Leopode Straus @Leopode12]

Pad explosions during static fires or launches used to be an unacceptable anomaly in aerospace. Now, it’s just “test data” used to mask half-baked tech. We're not talking 1-in-a-100 failures here; it’s happening every handful of flights. This toxic “move fast and break things” culture—sacrificing engineering redlines for capital and speed—has turned launchpads into casinos. With Starship packing 5,000 tons of propellant without the tech being fully matured, blowing the entire launch tower to kingdom come is a matter of when, not if. When that tower finally comes down, don’t try to spin it as "rapid iteration"—I won't be the least bit surprised. This isn't innovation; it’s pure hubris against physics.

[Leopode Straus @Leopode12]

@SecretaryBurgum @POTUS America is heading down the same path as the Soviet Union……………….

[Leopode Straus @Leopode12]

America is heading down the same path as the Soviet Union.

[Duck Burger @DuckBurger4]

Did they executed every single rocket scientist after the end of the space race of something? Why are they basically redoing everything from scratch? By 50s having your rockets blowing up were already considered a deep embarrassment, but now it's standard operation.

[Leopode Straus @Leopode12]

Pad explosions during static fires or launches used to be an unacceptable anomaly in aerospace. Now, it’s just “test data” used to mask half-baked tech. We're not talking 1-in-a-100 failures here; it’s happening every handful of flights. This toxic “move fast and break things” culture—sacrificing engineering redlines for capital and speed—has turned launchpads into casinos. With Starship packing 5,000 tons of propellant without the tech being fully matured, blowing the entire launch tower to kingdom come is a matter of when, not if. When that tower finally comes down, don’t try to spin it as "rapid iteration"—I won't be the least bit surprised. This isn't innovation; it’s pure hubris against physics.

[Leopode Straus @Leopode12]

@SawyerMerritt 40k spent on the car, 600k spent on the badge……..

[Saggezza Eterna @FinalTelegraph]

UNMASKED: The Shocking Evidence Obama Secretly Engineered The Destruction Of America From Within!

The current collapse of Western civilization is the direct, catastrophic result of a calculated blueprint designed to bring America to its knees. It was Barack Obama who ushered in this entire civilizational crisis. For twenty years, he sat in a radical Liberation Theology Church condemning America and professing Marxism, absorbing an ideology rooted in anti-American hatred. As an Illinois Senator, he was the ONLY individual who would speak in favor of infanticide, exposing a deep moral bankruptcy long before entering the Oval Office. Upon seizing power, his covert warfare against our heritage went overt. He purposefully omitted "endowed by our Creator" from his recitation of The Declaration Of Independence, signaling a deliberate plot to sever our nation from its divine foundations and replace American sovereignty with globalist tyranny.

His administration launched an aggressive, coordinated assault against the Christian soul of this country. Obama mocked the Bible and Jesus Christ's Sermon On The Mount while repeatedly referring to the 'HOLY' Qur'an with absolute reverence. He ordered Georgetown Univ. and Notre Dame to shroud all vestiges of Jesus Christ BEFORE he would agree to go there to speak, and he has NEVER requested the mosques he has visited to adjust their decor. He refused to attend the National Prayer Breakfast, but hastened to host an Islamic prayer breakfast at the White House. To show his utter contempt for our traditions, he was the first President to withhold a Christmas Greeting from the White House, going so far as to hang photos of Chairman Mao on the White House tree. He routinely departs for Hawaii over the Christmas season to completely avoid past criticism for his total absence from seasonal White House religious events.

The structural infiltration of our government under his watch was a complete subversion of national security. Obama appointed anti-Christian fanatics to his Czar Corps and deliberately appointed rabid Islamists to Homeland Security, compromising our defenses from within. He downgraded our highest scientific achievements by declaring that NASA's "foremost mission" was an outreach to Muslim communities. At the policy level, he exempted Muslims from penalties under Obamacare that the rest of us have to pay, establishing a two-tiered system of citizenship. He ordered the United States Postal Service to honor the MUSLIM holiday with a new commemorative stamp while degrading traditional American milestones. Furthermore, he directed public funds to implement mandatory Arabic language and culture studies in Grammar schools across our country, forcing foreign indoctrination onto American children.

On the world stage, he systematically degraded American stature to appease foreign adversaries and radical regimes. Obama traveled the Islamic world denigrating the United States Of America, apologizing for our exceptionalism. He bowed in submission before the Saudi King, humiliating our republic before foreign royalty. When queried in India, he refused to acknowledge the true extent of radical global Jihadists, and instead profusely praised Islam in a country that is eighty-two percent Hindu and the historic victim of numerous Islamic terrorists assaults. His double standards regarding human rights were monstrous. He refused to speak out concerning the horrific executions of women throughout the Muslim culture, but yet, has submitted Arizona to the UN for investigation of hypothetical human rights abuses for merely securing its border.

His own explicit statements and financial records permanently unmask his true loyalties to the global public. It was Obama who spoke these words at an Islamic dinner, stating clearly, "I am one of you." It was he who on ABC News referenced "My Muslim faith" in a moment of unscripted truth. He assured the Egyptian Foreign Minister that "I am a Muslim," and he explicitly wrote in his own book that in the event of a conflict, "I will stand with the Muslims." He lived this allegiance daily, following the Muslim custom of removing all forms of jewelry during Ramadan. This subversion was fully funded by American taxpayers. He gave one hundred million dollars in U.S. taxpayer funds to rebuild foreign mosques, and he funneled an astronomical nine hundred million dollars in U.S. taxpayer dollars directly to Hamas.

The ultimate betrayal culminated in the deliberate surrender of our security and allies to radical Islamic extremism. Obama directed our UK Embassy to conduct outreach to help "empower" the British Muslim community rather than protecting Western interests. Back home, he instantly threw the support of his administration behind the building of the Ground Zero Victory mosque overlooking the hallowed crater of the World Trade Center. He protected terrorists by curtailing the military tribunals of all Islamic terrorists and refused to condemn the Ft. Hood killer as an Islamic terrorist. In the Middle East, he was uncharacteristically quick to join the chorus of the Muslim Brotherhood to depose Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, formerly America's strongest ally in North Africa, but remained muted in his non-response to the Brotherhood led slaughter of Egyptian Christians. By appointing his chief adviser, Valerie Jarrett, an Iranian who is a member of the Muslim Sisterhood, an off-shoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, he locked in this destruction. It was Obama the whole time who ushered in this mess we are in!

Barack Obama remains the most vile, treasonous charlatan to ever infiltrate the White House, leaving a permanent stain of malicious subversion on the history of the republic he so deeply despised and desperately tried to destroy. Jail this Canadian sympathizing Kenyen lunatic.

[Mike Lee @BasedMikeLee]

High-trust societies cannot survive uncontrolled immigration

[Breaking911 @Breaking911]

A cat that fell from a stadium roof was safely caught by fans using a large team flag, which acted as an improvised net and saved the animal.

[Leopode Straus @Leopode12]

@RepFine Deport her.

[Fox News @FoxNews]

“We gave up our yesterdays for your tomorrows.”

98-year-old World War II veteran David Yoho delivered an emotional message at the WWII Memorial in Washington, D.C. as Americans gathered to honor the more than 400,000 U.S. service members who died during the war.

Standing before the crowd in the rain, Yoho urged younger generations to remember the sacrifices made by veterans and to keep telling their stories long after they’re gone.

“Tell them it was a 16-year-old boy in the hearts and mind and body of a 98-year-old veteran of World War II.”

[Leopode Straus @Leopode12]

@gregcello Let’s do it.

[Leopode Straus @Leopode12]

In the past, SpaceX’s ultimate goal was to successfully send a group of humans to Mars, establish the first colony and the first city there, and make human civilization a multi-planetary species.
But now, their biggest goal is how to go public and raise a ton of money……………

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Imagine your boss doubled your pay tomorrow. Henry Ford did exactly that to his factory workers on January 5, 1914. The New York Times' financial editor walked into his newsroom and asked if Ford had lost his mind. It built the American middle class.

Before Ford's announcement, the auto industry paid roughly $2.34 a day for nine hours of work. Ford bumped his minimum to $5 for an eight-hour shift. More than double the pay for one less hour of work, and no factory in America had ever paid that kind of money for unskilled labor.

Twelve thousand people showed up at the Ford factory gates the following week, sleeping outside in a January blizzard. Fire hoses came out to push the crowds back. Ford had to announce that only people who had lived in Detroit for six months would be hired.

Two years later, Ford's profits had doubled. Before the raise, he had been losing nearly four workers a year for every single job on his factory floor. After, he was losing barely any. Output per worker rose 40 to 70 percent. In 1914 alone, Ford sold 308,000 Model Ts, more cars than every other carmaker put together.

A Model T in 1908 cost the average American 18 months of pay. By 1925, it cost 4 months. The car got faster to build too: twelve hours per car dropped to 93 minutes. By 1918, half the cars on American roads were Model Ts. Fifteen million rolled off the line over 19 years.

Then in 1926, Ford did it again. On May 1st, he gave his workers a five-day, 40-hour week, with no cut in pay. Other manufacturers were forced to match, and the two-day American weekend spread across the country. Twelve years later, federal law made it official.

Henry Ford was generous with his own money too. He gave away about a third of his income every year, well above the 5 percent that rich Americans typically gave back then. He also put about $14 million into building the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, which is still one of the city's largest today. The Ford Foundation, set up in 1936, was originally a way to avoid taxes and keep his family in control of the company.

The foundation got huge later, but only because Ford Motor Company stock kept rising. Even his charity money came from the business.

Ford's personal giving helped a few thousand patients at his hospital. The $5 day, the cheap Model T, and the weekend reached hundreds of millions of working families over the next hundred years. Almost everything that became normal "middle class life" in America, a steady paycheck, the weekend off, a car in the driveway, came from choices Ford made to win in business.

Bezos has a point. Ford's wages, his car, and his weekend did more for the average American family than every check Ford himself wrote to charity.