Elections; 2024
POSTED BY: THG
UPDATED: Friday, November 21, 2025 00:12
VIEWED: 206031
PAGE 51 of 52
Quote:You are a legless and armless torso, screaming from the hospital bed: "I'm in pain!" Nurse Trump will inject morphine to ease your suffering.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I'm down with it.
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"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Democrats Can’t Hide From the Culture War
This era calls for a new strategy.
By David Faris | Dec 23, 2024
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2024/12/trump-president-2024-democ
rats-yglesias-fetterman-immigration-trans-rights-culture-war.html
So how to fight fire with fire?
Republicans have an extraordinarily efficient and effective propaganda apparatus, which is able to turn a single, seemingly random incident (or word) into a national news story and outrage generator in a matter of hours. The left has no such operation; the idea of getting down into the muck with Republican culture-war operatives is too distasteful of a prospect to seriously consider. And that needs to change. Winning the culture war doesn’t mean cutting off left-wing nonprofits and academics and letting them twist in the wind. It means going on the attack by identifying and highlighting toxic positions that are de rigueur inside the GOP’s completely batshit advocacy and state legislative universes and tying Republican candidates and officials to them.
This is a target-rich environment. You could choose more or less at random and find either Republican officials or right-wing think tanks and educational institutions advocating ideas so insane that they provoke disbelief rather than outrage. One good example is the GOP’s obeisance to Concealed Carry Reciprocity, or CCR, a proposal that would override state gun laws and impose the permissive regimes of states like Texas—which allow people to carry concealed firearms without a permit—on the rest of the country. This idea is wildly unpopular, with a 2023 Pew survey finding just 24 percent support for it. It’s nutso gun-cult stuff that Democrats could be hammering away at every day, especially since 169 House Republicans have already signed on as sponsors of a CCR bill.
There are organizations, like Media Matters for America, who do great work highlighting the bizarre policies and ideas percolating in the right-wing information universe. But they aren’t as effective without the other pillars of the nuclear culture-war triad the GOP relies on—a heavily subsidized right-wing media industry that includes lavishly funded popular publications and book publishers, a major cable news network that functions as an unapologetic extension of the Republican Party’s political operation and increasingly as a source of personnel for the federal government, and a cadre of Christopher Rufo–like operatives with made-up think tank sinecures whose jobs are essentially to weaponize supposedly loopy ideas and terms that they find on the left.
Left-wing billionaires generally seem to prefer running for president or cutting giant checks to super PACs than getting in the weeds. But they would have much greater impact if they created a parallel set of institutions to compete with the right. Maybe one of them should buy MSNBC (along with a slew of local TV broadcasters) and turn it into the left’s Fox News, and another should bankroll progressive magazines and think tanks and dramatically increase the number of people working for them as well as the reach of their ideas. They could also create watchdog groups whose members join megachurches and attend right-wing institutions like Bob Jones University, where “Young Earth creationism” is the campuswide doctrine for people who will later become board-certified nurses, doctors, and researchers. They could take the American Constitution Society—the underappreciated and underfunded counterpart to the right-wing Federalist Society—and transform it into the vehicle for a forward-looking, progressive constitutional project. The point of all of this drunken spending would be to create a sustainable culture war and political offense that can drive the national conversation and put the far right back on the defensive, where it belongs.
Who would lead that charge? A lot of billionaires that Democrats rely on, like Michael Bloomberg, are cautious institutionalists with Joe Manchin politics who seem uncomfortable fighting fire with fire. But there are a few,
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We already won the culture war.
Sit down and shut up, idiot. We're done listening to anything out of you.
Also, MSNBC is already beyond the Left's Fox News. MSNBC is the Left's NewsMax. CNN is the Left's Fox News.
Have fun with your dumb plans though, moron.
Democrats can't be the counter-culture movement anymore because they are the Establishment. Everybody hates you.
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"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur
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Quote:Americans have not lost trust in the media. Republicans have.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Democrats can't be the counter-culture movement anymore because they are the Establishment. Everybody hates you.
Republicans have spent the past few decades setting their own hair on fire and then pointing out that it's getting a little warm in here. But those of us who stay away from the conservative gasoline can haven't been affected much. We just smell the burning scalps and wonder why Republicans do this to themselves. (Kevin doesn’t live around Trumptards, for if he did, he’d know they are fucking nut-jobs, which is why they act the way they do and why life in America is a constant struggle for them. Losers who won’t comprehend they are born losers. Angry poor white trash, in other words. Brag again about your house ownership signals that you are not poor, 6ix. You are so pitiful with all the mental health and medical issues plaguing you.)
https://jabberwocking.com/americans-have-not-lost-trust-in-the-media-r
epublicans-have/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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There is so much repellently sleazy behavior documented in the House Ethics Committee report about Matt Gaetz that a reader has to stop every few pages to look away and focus on what still seems astounding: This is the man that Donald Trump wanted to be the attorney general of the United States, the highest-ranking law enforcement official in the land, the leader of the Department of Justice.
In The Matter Of Allegations Relating To Representative Matt Gaetz
Report Of The Committee On Ethics
https://ethics.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Committee-Report.p
df
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Why is Musk-Trump the "Mump Regime"?
Ask the Mumpers and the Mumpets
By Timothy Snyder | Dec 22, 2024
https://snyder.substack.com/p/why-is-musk-trump-the-mump-regime
For a new world we need new words.
Facing the coming Musk-Trump regime, we will have to be creative. It will not be enough just to rely on the standard terms that come to easily to our lips and pens ("administration," "presidency", and the like). That normalizes the abnormal.
And to repeat unreflectively the words that Musk and Trump and other mumpers use is to take part in the transformation that they bring. Opposition requires clarity and clarity requires concepts. "Mump regime" is one I propose.
As I explained in the last post, "Mump regime," Musk+Trump, keeps the two men who currently matter the most, Elon Musk and Donald Trump, in the proper order.
Musk matters more than Trump. He is the one with the money, the one to whom Trump owes debts. Musk also has a much more lively sense of his own interests and more energy generally. When the two men's ideas clash, as over China in the recent shutdown dispute, Musk gets his way.
"Mump regime" also keeps front and center the basic issue of illness. Democracy is closely connected to health. The historic path to modern political peace and the rule of law led through two stages: vaccines and institutions of public health. Americans have never broken through to a universal health insurance system, and the associated disease, death, fear and poverty is a central problem for our democracy. Now the mumpers and the mumpets are threatening to take away vaccination, which could kill millions of people. One of the diseases it would bring back is, precisely, mumps. Some of the others are far worse.
"Mump regime" is also better, at this point, than "MAGA." That term was always Trump's propaganda, and Trump simply does not matter as he once did. So “MAGA” is not only misleading but obsolete.
MAGA stands for "Make America Great Again." "Make" -- no one is going to make anything. "America" -- the people in charge are largely from elsewhere, and America is no mumper's object of concern. "Great" -- small and fractures is more likely. "Again" -- this level of oligarchy is new, as is the fascist language. We have moved on from a politics of eternity, an obsession with an imaginary past, to a politics of catastrophe.
"Mump regime," on the contrary, helps us to confront a real future. We are heading for a situation in which the fracturing of the government is deliberate and the weakness of the society desired. Some people talk of being the change they want to see in the world; the mumpers are the catastrophe their ideology tells them is inevitable.
And "Mump regime" prepares us mentally for the very real possibility that this form of politics can go on without Trump.
Musk himself is obviously completely unconcerned by the results of elections; it means nothing to him that people voted for Trump. Indeed, the fact that he was able to use a meaninglessly small portion of his wealth to get Trump in office can only breed contempt of both the man and his electorate.
Musk’s current public humiliation of Trump may very well be part of a plan. Make the man look weak; and then make him look crazy; and then invoke Article 25 of the Constitution and put him to bed. I am not saying that I am sure that this will happen: but rather that it is the kind of thing that would be normal in a Mump regime but would be all but unthinkable in a "presidency" or an "administration."
Trump is a fake rich person, and Musk is the richest person on earth (except, possibly, Putin). Trump is crazy like an improv comedian, but Musk is crazy like a guy with satellites. Musk surely understands, even if Trump does not, that the welter of policies we will see in the first six months of the Mump regime will be contradictory and chaotic.
Much mor
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Congress passed a spending bill with one provision stripped out that was extraordinarily important to Musk, an “outbound investment” provision that restricted the ability of Americans to invest in technology factories in China. Musk is building big factories in China and wants to build an AI data center there, even though it could endanger U.S. security. Musk’s complaints about the spending in the bill were cover for his determination to tank the provision that would limit his ability to move technology and business to China. And it worked. The outbound investment provision was stripped out of the bill before it passed.
https://andrewtobias.com/musk-part-ii/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Americans have not lost trust in the media. Republicans have.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Democrats can't be the counter-culture movement anymore because they are the Establishment. Everybody hates you.
Republicans have spent the past few decades setting their own hair on fire and then pointing out that it's getting a little warm in here. But those of us who stay away from the conservative gasoline can haven't been affected much. We just smell the burning scalps and wonder why Republicans do this to themselves. (Kevin doesn’t live around Trumptards, for if he did, he’d know they are fucking nut-jobs, which is why they act the way they do and why life in America is a constant struggle for them. Losers who won’t comprehend they are born losers. Angry poor white trash, in other words. Brag again about your house ownership signals that you are not poor, 6ix. You are so pitiful with all the mental health and medical issues plaguing you.)
https://jabberwocking.com/americans-have-not-lost-trust-in-the-media-r
epublicans-have/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
You mean that half of Democrats believe the news and are stupid.
Yeah.
Learn how to read a graph, idiot.
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"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur
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Republicans don’t know who their daddy is: Musk or Trump?
By Amanda Marcotte | December 24, 2024
https://www.salon.com/2024/12/24/elon-musk-can-easily-use-donald-great
est-advantage-against-him/
The more Donald Trump denies he’s being controlled by billionaire Elon Musk, who purchased the president-elect with over $250 million in campaign spending this year, the less anyone believes him. Last week’s spending battle was complex in the details, but not in the main takeaway: The Tesla CEO is leading the aging and tired Trump by the nose. Trump’s sole ask of congressional Republicans going into budget negotiations was to end the debt ceiling, at least for a couple of years, to spare him the headache of negotiating it while in office. Then Musk started flipping out on Twitter about all manner of line items, seemingly spun up by random social media users named after feline waste products. Both Trump and the GOP meekly followed suit, nearly bringing government to a halt while scrambling to cut a bunch of stuff to appease Musk, who didn’t even understand most of the arguments he was making.
In the end, both Musk and Trump failed to kill the bill. Musk did slightly better, getting some of his specific funding proposals, but he failed at the big-picture goal of decimating the budget. Trump, however, failed miserably, losing most GOP votes for his one goal of shutting down the debt ceiling. Most importantly, the process thoroughly exposed Musk’s hold over Trump. Democrats started the “President Musk” meme, and, predictably, Trump’s narcissism has led to defensiveness. First, Trump’s spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt put out a statement insisting, “President Trump is the leader of the Republican Party. Full stop.”
It wasn’t a full stop, because Trump himself stepped into the fray Sunday at a Turning Points USA event, during an especially sleepy speech. “No, he’s not going to be president, that I can tell you,” Trump told the crowd. “And I’m safe. You know why he can’t be? He wasn’t born in this country.”
The generous interpretation of this comment is that Trump is attacking a strawman, as no one thinks Musk is literally going to be president. They are accusing Musk of being the true power behind the throne. A less generous interpretation is that Trump, age 78, got confused and forgot that he doesn’t have to keep campaigning. Either way, lots of folks on social media recalled the famous line from “Game of Thrones”: “Any man who must say ‘I am the king’ is no true king at all.”
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Was Biden* your Daddy, bitch?
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"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur
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Quote:Remember how only Trump can satisfy a Trumptard such as yourself? It is the same mechanism with Fascists: only Mussolini could be leader and he was from 1921 to 1945. In Russia, only Putin is imaginable as leader from 2000 to 2025. Certain kinds of people, authoritarians, must have a strongman with a strong name-brand. Democrats don't have that need.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Was Biden* your Daddy, bitch?
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"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur
https://i.redd.it/gqfu92ewpv6e1.jpeg
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The president-elect is expected to raise more money than ever for his second inauguration. He’s keeping tabs on who’s donating — and who hasn’t
By Andrew Perez, Asawin Suebsaeng | December 25, 2024
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-companies-fu
nd-inauguration-1235217360/
Large sums of please-don’t-hurt-me cash comes from corporations that have a lot of business before the government. American companies are forking out money to Trump's inauguration at a time when he's threatening to slap major tariffs on foreign goods, and his decision to grant certain companies exceptions could be make or break for their profits.
When the president-elect asked about one big-name corporation and was told it hadn’t donated, Trump replied, “Well, they better do it soon then.”
US business leaders set to break record on donations to Trump inaugural fund
Donations, not restricted by campaign finance laws, come as industries seek favor with incoming administration.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/dec/25/us-business-leaders-t
rump-inaugural-fund
Trump’s inauguration will cost twice as much as any other president’s:
https://jabberwocking.com/trumps-inauguration-will-cost-twice-as-much-
as-any-other-presidents/
Trump's 2017 inauguration was famously puzzling because no one could figure out what he spent all his money on. He only held three parties and a lunch, and the entertainers were the likes of The Piano Guys, Lee Greenwood, and DJ RaviDrums. So where did the rest of the money go?
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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It’s already happening. Trump is beginning to tank the economy.
Wednesday, December 25, 2024 at 11:36:23a CST
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/12/25/2293689/-It-s-already-happ
ening-Trump-is-beginning-to-tank-the-economy
There is a difference between Wall Street and Main Street. We see some stocks increasing in value in anticipation of Trump’s promised tax cuts and deregulation while the labor market may be beginning to cool.
I have a friend in a very red area of a blue state. He and his friends and co-workers and everyone they know there voted for Trump or for RFK Jr. Harris was too liberal for them and for most of the population in their county (like rural counties everywhere). My friend lost his job at a mill in September. The factory where he had previously worked reduced its workforce again last week. My friend has applications in at several other mills, and has been to the state workforce agency for help finding work. They told him there is basically a hiring freeze “because of the election.” There is uncertainty created by Trump’s promise of tariffs, his threat of deportations and the disruptions they will cause, and the appearance of instability in his next administration. These companies are not hiring. They are waiting to see the effect of the next administration on the economy.
It won’t be good. Businesses need a predictable environment for their markets. Right now they don’t see that in the near future. That Musk and Trump played around with a government shut down doesn’t instill confidence in the future.
Banks and investment firms may think things are looking up. In this example, businesses on the ground and their Trump voting workers not so much. If people are not working, they are not buying, and there are consequences for the economy. Trump and Musk are not good at stability…they are similar in that they have no impulse control and are good at disruption. They may already be disrupting the economy.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Article Title: It’s already happening. Trump is beginning to tank the economy.
Last sentence of Article: They may already be disrupting the economy.
Not to mention this entire breaking news article is based off of an anecdote for some imaginary Trump voting friend this dude has.
OMG shut up idiot.
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"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur
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Quote:6ix, you Trumptards never understand that your stupidity causes your problems. Instead, for examples I have repeatedly seen for decades, you Trumptards lie about why your wife left, lie about why you got fired, why you have financial problems, why your business suffers, why drinking, smoking, drugs, gluttony, and sexually transmitted disease couldn't be the whole reason for your poor health, why this, why that, never grasping that it is your fault for what happens to you Trumptards. Trumptards keep claiming it is Democrats doing it to you.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Article Title: It’s already happening. Trump is beginning to tank the economy.
Last sentence of Article: They may already be disrupting the economy.
Not to mention this entire breaking news article is based off of an anecdote for some imaginary Trump voting friend this dude has.
OMG shut up idiot.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Most Americans who supported Donald Trump probably thought they were voting for lower grocery prices; now he says never mind, let’s seize Greenland instead. Also the Panama Canal and maybe Canada.
I’ve seen various attempts to rationalize Trump’s sudden embrace of what looks like old-fashioned imperialism. A Panamanian hotel has sued the Trump Organization for what it says is tax evasion; Greenland has deposits of rare earths; Canada has poutine. But I think that all of this ascribes too much rationality to Trump’s posturing. I mean, does this sound like someone engaged in sophisticated geopolitics? (No, Chinese soldiers aren’t operating the canal, despite what Trump claims.):
Quote:May I say that Trump is still benefiting, maybe more than ever, from media sanewashing? How many Americans, even those who pay attention to the news, know that THIS was the president-elect’s Christmas message?
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
Merry Christmas to all, including to the wonderful soldiers of China, who are lovingly, but illegally, operating the Panama Canal (where we lost 38,000 people in its building 110 years ago), always making certain that the United States puts in Billions of Dollars in "repair" money, but will have absolutely nothing to say about "anything." Also, to Governor Justin Trudeau of Canada, whose Citizens' Taxes are far too high, but if Canada was to become our 51st State, their Taxes would be cut by more than 60%, their businesses would immediately double in size, and they would be militarily protected like no other Country anywhere in the World. Likewise, to the people of Greenland, which is needed by the United States for National Security purposes and, who want the U.S. to be there, and we will!...
https://x.com/TrumpDailyPosts/status/1872016098285240600
Anyway, does the Greenland/Panama/Canada thing reflects anything beyond brain worms?
More at https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trumps-great-illusion
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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What will happen to U.S. economic power under Trump?
Economic statecraft needs, like, a state
By Henry Farrell | Dec 23, 2024
https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/what-will-happen-to-us-economic-p
ower
There is a faction that wasn’t important in Trump I and is very important indeed in Trump II. Crypto. Important Trumpworld people like David Sacks, the incoming “crypto czar,” and Elon Musk, were made men in the “PayPal mafia” – the quarrelsome group who founded the payments platform. And PayPal had a core goal in its early days - to displace the U.S. dollar.
As Peter Thiel later described it, their collective ambition was “to create a new Internet currency that would replace the U.S. dollar.” All of the founders were “obsessed with creating a digital currency that would be controlled by individuals instead of governments.” Many years later, when Bitcoin came along, Sacks anticipated that it might fulfil PayPal’s “original vision to create ‘the new world currency.’”
Now, those people, together with less ideological crypto boosters like Howard Lutnick, the incoming Commerce secretary, will be key players in setting U.S. policy, and in shaping regulations or getting rid of them. Lutnick has deep financial ties, for example, with Tether, a crypto “stablecoin,” which provides an “incognito dollar” that is widely used for sanctions evasion. The Biden administration wanted to take action against Tether - the Trump administration, likely not so much. So too for a variety of other means of sanctions evasion, including the Tornado Cash bitcoin ‘mixer’ service, which Republican appointed judges on the Fifth Circuit have just declared off limits to U.S. sanctions authority.
In January, we are about to start discovering what the U.S. economic security state looks like, when it is run by the seat-of-the-pants, likely stripped of a lot of the state capacity it needs to actually get things done, and influenced by people who have a long standing aversion to the power of the U.S. dollar. As I said, it’s going to be a wild ride.
More at https://www.programmablemutter.com/p/what-will-happen-to-us-economic-p
ower
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:6ix, you Trumptards never understand that your stupidity causes your problems. Instead, for examples I have repeatedly seen for decades, you Trumptards lie about why your wife left, lie about why you got fired, why you have financial problems, why your business suffers, why drinking, smoking, drugs, gluttony, and sexually transmitted disease couldn't be the whole reason for your poor health, why this, why that, never grasping that it is your fault for what happens to you Trumptards. Trumptards keep claiming it is Democrats doing it to you.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Article Title: It’s already happening. Trump is beginning to tank the economy.
Last sentence of Article: They may already be disrupting the economy.
Not to mention this entire breaking news article is based off of an anecdote for some imaginary Trump voting friend this dude has.
OMG shut up idiot.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
This has nothing to do with me. Why do you keep trying to shit all over me personally when I call out the bullshit that you refuse to call out in your articles.
Your article headline states, as a fact without a shadow of a doubt, that "Trump is beginning to tank the economy." "It's already happening".
Then it's filled with nothing to support that assessment other than sourcing an unnamed low-level union worker friend of the writer and what he said about things he likely doesn't have a fucking clue about even if he is a real person. (Anybody who has been laid off before knows that they don't tell you shit about shit when it happens, they don't care at all about people whispering about all the reasons why the pending layoffs are happening outside of the HR meetings where they use every nice-sounding word in the thesaurus to let you know that you're likely going to be unemployed soon without ever using the words "fired" or "laid off", and if you weren't escorted immediately off the premises by security or police on the day you lost your job you had a good day).
After two paragraphs of this meaningless, impossible to source or verify, and almost certainly fabricated story, the article concludes with a much, much softer allegation in its last words by stating "They may already be disrupting the economy."
They may already be? Disrupting? But you just told me in the article headline that he's tanking the economy, which goes well beyond mere disruption. You told me that it's already happening.
You posted a bullshit article.
Just acknowledge that, keep that in mind the next time you read an article at the dailykos, and move on. No need to get shitty about it.
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"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur
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Republicans quietly slashed $20 billion from the Internal Revenue Service.
December 26, 2024/11:44 a.m. ET
The president-elect plans to appoint anti-tax extremist Billy Long to take over the agency next year, who repeatedly tried to abolish the IRS as a member of Congress.
The Biden administration said the cuts would end up adding $140 billion to the national debt, as they hurt the tax agency’s ability to audit big corporations and the wealthy.
Specifically, the White House said, the IRS will conduct 400 fewer major business audits each year, and 1,200 fewer audits of rich individuals.
https://newrepublic.com/post/189672/republicans-cut-irs-funding-govern
ment-shutdown
Quote:With retards, all articles are bullshit.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
You posted a bullshit article.
Just acknowledge that, keep that in mind the next time you read an article at the dailykos, and move on. No need to get shitty about it.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Americans are starting to wise up to the harsh reality that President-elect Donald Trump has no plan – and never did – to cut prices and bury inflation woes.
A day late and a dollar short, Americans are realizing that President-elect Donald Trump plans to short them a few dollars. That’s right: Since the election, U.S. consumers have become more likely to say they expect prices to rise next year.
While Trump ran his 2024 campaign on appealing promises to bring everyday prices that have skyrocketed for consumers in recent years down, he acknowledged in a Time magazine interview only after winning that election that he could do no such thing.
“I’d like to bring them down,” Trump told Time magazine. “It’s hard to bring things down once they’re up. You know, it’s very hard.”
The only thing surprising about the admission from Trump is that he said it out loud.
One thing Trump didn’t acknowledge, however, is how his economic agenda — tariffs, deportations, tax cuts, and kneecapping the Federal Reserve — could worsen the problem that voters hired him to solve. But Americans seem to be catching on anyway.
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-inflation-2670687628/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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. . . most people assume humans have historically been predators, the metaphorical big cats of the jungle. In fact, Gray says, we’ve historically been prey, the victims of predators:
“This picture of fearfulness is consistent with our understanding of human psychology. We’re hard-wired to detect threats quickly and to stay fixated on places where threats once appeared, even after they have vanished. We fear that ‘child predators’ will abduct our kids even when they are safer than ever.
“Modern humans, ensconced in towns and cities, are now mostly safe from animal predators, but we are still easily frightened. Whether we’re scrolling social media or voting for a presidential candidate, we all still carry the legacy of our ancestors, who worried about big cats lurking in the darkness.”
Thus, if you could invent a drug that would cause people to be fearful — and thus stimulate the rage that comes from fear — you could have incredible control over a population if you could simply tell them where and against whom to direct that fear-induced rage.
. . . the algorithms deployed in secret by social media purify and concentrate hate and fear spread across the broader social media site, distilling the most potent memes and messages to the top and shoving them into people’s brains.
But that’s just the beginning of the damage these top-secret algorithms are doing to our societies and politics. By increasing our individual levels of fear and rage, they create a broader social sense of fear and rage, making these emotions far more easy to exploit.
Enter stage right “populist” politicians and media sites who push people’s now-sensitized fear and rage buttons for political gain. (Not to mention the billions earned by social media billionaires pushing this psychological heroin while absolutely refusing to publish their algorithms.)
Numerous studies show that when people believe crime is a serious problem in their own communities and lives, they measurably shift toward the political right of the spectrum. Law-and-order campaigns and promises of severe punishment acquire a sudden appeal, as Joe Biden and Bill Clinton discovered in the early 1990s and politicians everywhere since the pandemic have seen.
Fear of crime — and fear more generally (of your kids being victims of trans people or renegade surgeons in public schools, for example, or of immigrants raping your wife or taking your job) — push people toward an embrace of conservative and then authoritarian politics and governance.
When media promote narratives about crime being out of control — whether true or not — they measurably drive acceptance of more reactionary crime control legislation along with rejection of efforts at rehabilitation and reform.
There may be an even wider impact of social media’s promotion of fear and rage. . . .
If a certain threshold of people being intentionally peaceful for a year or two can lower crime rates, what happens when a certain threshold of people are daily enraged by the injection of fear and hate into their psychological bloodstreams?
Could it be that social media is directly (or indirectly) responsible for much of the swing we’re seeing around the world toward bigotry, hate, and violence? That rightwing movements are emerging as a result of the impact of social media, rather than social media merely and passively reflecting the trend as the social media companies argue?
More at https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/algorithms-mind-control/
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:With retards, all articles are bullshit.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
You posted a bullshit article.
Just acknowledge that, keep that in mind the next time you read an article at the dailykos, and move on. No need to get shitty about it.
Explain to me why it's not a bullshit article or shut the fuck up then.
Do not address me directly with your idiocy.
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"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur
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The Wall Street Journal
The Staggering Cost Needed for Trump’s Mass Deportation Plan
$315 billion or $162 billion or $88 billion per year for 11 years. Take your pick.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-staggering-cost-needed-for
-trump-s-mass-deportation-plan/vi-AA1wGkcf
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Donald Trump Issues Great Depression Warning
Dec 30, 2024 at 9:05 AM EST
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-issues-great-depression-warning-
2007318
Trump says blame the Democrats, not me for what happens when I’m President:
"In fact, they would prefer 'Depression' as long as it hurt the Republican Party. The Democrats must be forced to take a vote on this treacherous issue NOW, during the Biden Administration, and not in June. They should be blamed for this potential disaster, not the Republicans!"
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Donald Trump loses appeal against E Jean Carroll sexual abuse verdict
Federal appeals court upholds $5m sexual assault and defamation verdict in setback for president-elect
Mon 30 Dec 2024 11.06 EST
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/30/donald-trump-loses-app
eal-e-jean-carroll
The verdict included $2.02m for sexual assault and $2.98m for defaming Carroll in an October 2022 social media post where he called her allegations a “hoax”.
Trump’s White House is filling with alleged sexual abusers ... led by him
The appeals court said testimony from two other women who accused Trump of sexual misconduct – the businesswoman Jessica Leeds as well as the former People magazine writer Natasha Stoynoff – helped establish “a repeated, idiosyncratic pattern of conduct” that aligned with Carroll’s allegations.
“Mr Trump’s statements in the [Access Hollywood] tape, together with the testimony of Ms Leeds and Ms Stoynoff, establish a repeated, idiosyncratic pattern of conduct consistent with what Ms Carroll alleged,” the opinion stated.
The ruling follows a separate $83.3m defamation verdict that Carroll won against Trump in January over his 2019 denials of her allegations. Trump is appealing that verdict.
The case is expected to continue even after Trump takes office for his second presidency on 20 January 2025, as the US supreme court ruled unanimously in 1997 that sitting presidents have no immunity from civil litigation over actions predating their official duties.
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Donald Trump loses appeal against E Jean Carroll sexual abuse verdict
It was an appeals court in Manhattan so there is no surprise in this verdict.
This bogus appeal will be appealed and thrown out.
--------------------------------------------------
"My only fear of death is coming back to this bitch reincarnated." ~Tupac Shakur
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Quote:
Trump’s Top 10 Best Moves of 2024
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/12/30/trumps_top_10_be
st_moves_2024_152141.html
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AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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Quote:6ix, am I right that you believe Trump was never within ten feet of Carroll? "Trump has consistently denied all allegations, claiming he never met Carroll . . . "
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Donald Trump loses appeal against E Jean Carroll sexual abuse verdict
It was an appeals court in Manhattan so there is no surprise in this verdict.
This bogus appeal will be appealed and thrown out.
The court looked at the evidence and concluded that Trump did get within ten feet of Carroll. The court repeated on 77 pages of its decision that Trump is a liar and sex criminal:
Mr. Trump grabbed women without first obtaining their consent. Mr. Trump contends that
these and other asserted errors entitle him to a new trial. On review for abuse of discretion, we conclude that Mr. Trump has not demonstrated that the district court erred in any of the challenged rulings. Further, he has not carried his burden to show that any claimed error or combination of claimed errors affected his substantial rights as required to warrant a new trial. Accordingly, and for the reasons set forth more fully below, we AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca2.60504/gov.usc
ourts.ca2.60504.176.1.pdf
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:6ix, am I right that you believe Trump was never within ten feet of Carroll?
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Donald Trump loses appeal against E Jean Carroll sexual abuse verdict
It was an appeals court in Manhattan so there is no surprise in this verdict.
This bogus appeal will be appealed and thrown out.
I don't fuckin' know dude.
Do you know how many people have been within 10 feet of Trump who knew who he was that he had no clue who they were?
Carroll was just some mid-tier piece of ass in a sea of millions. Was she in a room with Trump once in the last 50 years. Maybe?
The one thing I do know is that we have a LOT of evidence of women lying in court about abuse. Even the girl who ruined the lives of those lacrosse players at Duke came out 18 years later and said she made all that shit up. Not even a slap on her fucking wrist after 18 years of ruined lives for three men. Oh.. but she apologized though, so everything is fine.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/21/us/duke-lacrosse-rape-case-victims/inde
x.html
The other thing I know is that your current President and his administration as well as the insane Democrats in lower levels with the aid of the media have persecuted Trump for the better part of a decade and even shot at him twice and he's still here.
Fuck Carroll. She's a liar. She's not getting a dime and she's probably going to be dead soon anyhow.
--------------------------------------------------
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Quote:6ix, you are unaware of what is wrong with yourself. You're like a car that was in a collision and the front end steering hasn't been fixed and keeps pulling hard to right rather than tracking straight down the road.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Fuck Carroll. She's a liar. She's not getting a dime and she's probably going to be dead soon anyhow.
A better analogy: you are the driver of this car. Pull over, 6ix.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Trump projects confidence on The Apprentice
Although very few programs are out-and-out fake, there is deception at play in every single reality program. The producers and editors are ostensibly con artists, distracting you with grand notions while we steal from you your precious time.
But the real con that drove The Apprentice is far older than television. The “pig in the poke” comes from an idiom dating to 1555: “I’ll never buy a pig in a poke / There’s many a foul pig in a fair cloak.” It refers to the time-honored scam of selling a suckling pig at market but handing over a bag (the poke) to the purchaser, who never looks inside it. Eventually, he discovers he’s purchased something quite different.
Our show became a 21st-century version. It’s a long con played out over a decade of watching Trump dominate prime time by shouting orders, appearing to lead, and confidently firing some of the most capable people on television, all before awarding one eligible person a job. Audiences responded to Trump’s arrogance, his perceived abilities and prescience, but mostly his confidence. The centerpiece to any confidence game is precisely that — confidence.
https://slate.com/culture/2024/05/donald-trump-news-2024-trial-verdict
-apprentice.html
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:6ix, you are unaware of what is wrong with yourself. You're like a car that was in a collision and the front end steering hasn't been fixed and keeps pulling hard to right rather than tracking straight down the road.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Fuck Carroll. She's a liar. She's not getting a dime and she's probably going to be dead soon anyhow.
A better analogy: you are the driver of this car. Pull over, 6ix.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
We don't need metaphors to tell you what you are.
You are a miserable little asshole and a chronic liar and thief.
Go fuck yourself.
--------------------------------------------------
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SECOND, you demonstrate what you are with every post.
I read a few of yours to hubby yesterday (he takes no interest in this website and knows nothing of your posting history) and the first thing he said was "He's sick. Mentally."
It's obvious to everyone but you.
-----------
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AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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Quote:The Trumptards I know are boisterous about their superior judgment of people, which is why they choose Trump over V.P. Kamala Harris. I, too, can see the same charms they see in Trump:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, you demonstrate what you are with every post.
Everything Donald Trump does is perfect
The most certain of all the certain things that will certainly happen in 2025 is this: Donald Trump, as president, will do everything right. He will tell us this repeatedly. His first month in office will be the most historic first month in office ever and nobody will be able to believe his incredible success, according to him.
Any bad thing Trump does will either: A) Be fantastic, actually, according to Trump; or B) Be someone else’s fault entirely.
At various points in the year, Trump will tell us about a big, tough guy who approached him with tears in his eyes and told him how amazingly perfect he has been as president. And Trump himself will agree with that assessment.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2025/01/01/2025-predi
ctions-trump-taylor-swift-amazon/76951673007/
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It was a bad year for incumbents
This was the first year ever in which every single election worldwide went against the governing party. Perhaps Kamala Harris did pretty well under the circumstances?
https://jabberwocking.com/top-20-charts-of-2024/
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The Trumptards I know are boisterous about their superior judgment of people
You've just explained 95% if your posts here, stupid.
None of your insults hold any water when they're nothing but mere projections of your own behavior.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:6ix, your entire life is testimony that Trumptards can survive into middle age despite a long series of stupid mistakes and untruthful behavior that will kill them when luck finally runs out. Because of great wealth, America is absurdly forgiving of foolishness, dishonesty, and incompetence. In a less hospitable environment than America, a country that was not in anyway created by Trumptards, despite their silly certainty that they are the very foundation of all America achieved, you and Trump would have been long dead. You two survive because of the work done by people who are actually nothing at all like you two, who get by without doing anything to keep America going strong.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The Trumptards I know are boisterous about their superior judgment of people
You've just explained 95% if your posts here, stupid.
None of your insults hold any water when they're nothing but mere projections of your own behavior.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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'Biden's biggest mistake': Columnist rebukes Merrick Garland for 'dithering like a deer'
By Travis Gettys | December 31, 2024 5:00PM ET
https://www.rawstory.com/merrick-garland-trump-2670711125/
A newspaper columnist took Attorney General Merrick Garland to the woodshed over what he expressed was Garland's failure to hold Donald Trump accountable.
The former president was impeached on his way out of office and eventually indicted four times for alleged crimes committed while he was in office, but The Philadelphia Inquirer's Will Bunch said President Joe Biden's attorney general failed to meet the historical moment by prosecuting him sooner.
https://www.inquirer.com/columnists/attytood/merrick-garland-jimmy-car
ter-trump-20241231.html
"Garland, in dithering like a deer in the F-150 headlights of the American Taliban for 20 months on even investigating Trump’s Jan. 6 involvement until that House select committee laid out his case, seemed to misunderstand something fundamental about the American Experiment. That a democracy capable of embracing a demagogue isn’t truly free without the companion of justice. And the justice too long delayed by Garland and his failures was a terminal case of justice denied."
The columnist faulted Biden for misreading the room and choosing Garland in the first place instead of Doug Jones, the former Alabama senator who prosecuted the last Ku Klux Klan members who killed four Black girls in a 1963 bombing at a Birmingham church.
"In those first heady days after Biden actually took office, a craven Garland clearly hoped to burnish his reputation for nonpartisan, down-the-middle fairness by assuming that the twice-impeached, election-losing Trump would fade into political oblivion. He wasn’t alone in that wildly wrongheaded calculation, as other cowards like then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — who declined to vote or sway others to convict Trump in his post-Jan. 6 impeachment — made the same terrible bet."
The world will never know what would have happened if Garland had named a special counsel to immediately investigate the disgraced former president, who somehow managed to revive his political fortunes, win re-election, and grow so emboldened that he tapped former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) to follow Biden's attorney general. A damning House Ethics Committee report accused him of paying a 17-year-old girl for sex, ending his nomination.
"That small victory won’t be nearly enough to salvage the legacy of a 72-year-old icon of old-fashioned jurisprudence who won’t only be remembered by the history books — at least the ones that haven’t been burned by his successors — as President Joe Biden’s worst cabinet pick or even his biggest mistake, period, but as someone whose fecklessness and failure to meet the moment may prove the spark that blew up the American Experiment," Bunch wrote.
In the end, the clock ran out on three of the cases against Trump, who was convicted of 34 felonies in the New York City hush-money case, and he will enter office with broad presidential immunity given to him by the Supreme Court. Bunch blamed Biden and Garland for their failure to act sooner.
"Biden has every right to be bitter that Garland’s noble-sounding mantra of fairness allowed, in reality, for Trump to freely run against him while his son was convicted of a stand-alone gun crime not typically prosecuted. But in the end, Garland was just the leading edge of a cadre of Congress members, elite newsroom editors and publishers, and others who believed that the magic of democracy could fix everything without having to take a stand. He will be remembered as the worst Neville Chamberlain-level of appeaser in a nation that turned out to be chock full of them."
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Donald Trump and the Musk business model
By Joel Eissenberg | January 1, 2025 11:49 am
https://angrybearblog.com/2025/01/donald-trump-and-the-musk-business-m
odel
Musk, with an amount of money that was meaningless to him, was able to finance Trump’s campaign, essentially. And all the threats that Trump is now going to issue – ‘I’m going to primary people, I’m going to sue people’ – Musk is going to pay for that, not Trump. And when Trump needs money for anything, he will ask Musk.
Unless Trump breaks it off right now, he’s going to be in this kind of dependent relationship for the rest of the way, because you get used to people giving you money. Trump is a little guy, and Musk is a big guy when it comes to having money. And I think if you were a friend of Trump, you would be worried.
The given rationale for electing the “billionaire” Trump was that his wealth freed him to become a populist and speak the truth on behalf of the middle class and working class. But now, Trump has been exposed as a financial charlatan who is completely beholden to Musk. Musk, born in South Africa to South African parents cannot run for president himself, but he doesn’t need to. He has bought the presidency. On the evidence, I’d say he made a safe investment.
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:6ix, your entire life is testimony that Trumptards can survive into middle age despite a long series of stupid mistakes and untruthful behavior that will kill them when luck finally runs out. Because of great wealth, America is absurdly forgiving of foolishness, dishonesty, and incompetence. In a less hospitable environment than America, a country that was not in anyway created by Trumptards, despite their silly certainty that they are the very foundation of all America achieved, you and Trump would have been long dead. You two survive because of the work done by people who are actually nothing at all like you two, who get by without doing anything to keep America going strong.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The Trumptards I know are boisterous about their superior judgment of people
You've just explained 95% if your posts here, stupid.
None of your insults hold any water when they're nothing but mere projections of your own behavior.
Thank you for illustrating my point. You are so very easy to manipulate. Would you like to prove it again?
Shut the fuck up if the answer is no.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Donald Trump and the Musk business model
By Joel Eissenberg | January 1, 2025 11:49 am
https://angrybearblog.com/2025/01/donald-trump-and-the-musk-business-m
odel
Musk, with an amount of money that was meaningless to him, was able to finance Trump’s campaign, essentially. And all the threats that Trump is now going to issue – ‘I’m going to primary people, I’m going to sue people’ – Musk is going to pay for that, not Trump. And when Trump needs money for anything, he will ask Musk.
Unless Trump breaks it off right now, he’s going to be in this kind of dependent relationship for the rest of the way, because you get used to people giving you money. Trump is a little guy, and Musk is a big guy when it comes to having money. And I think if you were a friend of Trump, you would be worried.
The given rationale for electing the “billionaire” Trump was that his wealth freed him to become a populist and speak the truth on behalf of the middle class and working class. But now, Trump has been exposed as a financial charlatan who is completely beholden to Musk. Musk, born in South Africa to South African parents cannot run for president himself, but he doesn’t need to. He has bought the presidency. On the evidence, I’d say he made a safe investment.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Awwwwwwww....
Poor Angry Bear jealous of all that money he doesn't have.
:(
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:Trump Uses ‘Terror’ Attack by U.S. Army Vet to Stir Up Anti-Immigrant Hate
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Awwwwwwww....
Poor Angry Bear jealous of all that money he doesn't have.
:(
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
An erroneous Fox News report sparked a rash of anti-immigrant comments from MAGA world, including from Donald Trump and J.D. Vance themselves.
Donald Trump and J.D. Vance were among the Republicans who rushed to link the mass killing — which left 15 dead, including the suspect, and dozens injured on Wednesday—to the southern border.
Officials said later in the afternoon that it had no evidence tying the attack to the border. The FBI said the terrorist was 42-year-old Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a Texas native who spent eight years in the military. He allegedly gained access to the Ford pickup truck using Turo, an app that works similarly to Airbnb for renting vehicles from private owners.
A photo shared by the U.S. Army of Staff Sgt. Shamsuddin Jabbar, then the information technology team chief for the 82nd Airborne Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team.
More at https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-uses-new-orleans-attack-by-america
n-shamsud-din-jabbar-to-stir-up-anti-immigrant-hate/
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Trump Uses ‘Terror’ Attack by U.S. Army Vet to Stir Up Anti-Immigrant Hate
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Awwwwwwww....
Poor Angry Bear jealous of all that money he doesn't have.
:(
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Good. Rent's due. GTFO. All of you.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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President-elect Donald Trump once again toyed with the idea on Tuesday of not just implementing large-scale tariffs on foreign imports, but using them to replace the income tax system outright.
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
The Tariffs, and Tariffs alone, created this vast wealth for our Country. Then we switched over to Income Tax. We were never so wealthy as during this period. Tariffs will pay off our debt and, MAKE AMERICA WEALTHY AGAIN!
More at https://www.rawstory.com/trump-tariffs-2670719603/
So the don’t-know-much-about-history gang are at it again, asserting that the Gilded Age was an era of unique prosperity. What all such arguments require is that we memory-hole the era in which America actually achieved its most rapid progress: the astonishing boom that followed World War II.
The comparison isn’t even close. Here (using data from Historical Statistics of the United States, Millennial Edition) are percent growth rates of real GDP per capita and real wages during the Gilded Age and the postwar generation:
But here’s the thing: from the point of view of either a conventional conservative or a Trumpist the great postwar boom shouldn’t, maybe even couldn’t have happened. If you believe that progressive taxation destroys incentives, you can’t understand how the economy could have done so well during a period when the top marginal tax rate never fell below 70 percent.
More at https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/americas-forgotten-generation-of
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I see you're riding your taxation hobby horse again, SECOND.
Just bc two events take place at the same time doesn't mean a causal relationship. Like all correlations, A can cause B, B can cause A, A and B are both caused by C, or it might be a coincidence.
The post-WWII boom and high marginal tax rates were both indirectly caused by WWII.
Our prosperity was based on the fact that we were the only major industrial power left standing after the others had been bombed to smithereens and millions killed.
High taxes were imposed to pay for the war. If high raxes had NOT been imposed, we still would have been the last major industrial power left standing.
I agree that we need to equalize wealth, and I agree that the average person is getting fucked on taxes. I also agree that reducing taxes on the already-wealthy won't make us prosperous.
But prosperity and taxes are two separate issues that you CONSTANTLY conflate, and no matter how many times you repeat it, they're still separate.
Why don't you come up with a plan for how we can be prosperous again? That would be a lot more forward-looking.
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AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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What Sigs is asking you to do is to finally grow up and stop playing Checkers and move up to Chess.
What do you expect? He's still posting articles by Paul Krugman. The "Expert" who hasn't called a damn thing right in 4 years.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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I watched the American election unfold at a bar in London
By Imogen West-Knights | Jan 03, 2025
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/01/donald-trump-news-election
-republicans-london.html
With only a few weeks to go before Trump’s inauguration, we (in the UK) still aren’t talking about Trump much, and we like it that way. I get the sense that over here, people are clinging to the last moments when it will be possible to ignore him — a phenomenon I’m told has taken hold of more than a few people in the States too.
But eventually, we will have to care. What goes on in America becomes our business, one way or another. “When America sneezes, the world catches a cold,” as the saying goes, a phrase I had to Google because I misremembered it as “When America shits its pants, the whole world smells it.” Wrong, and gross, but maybe there’s something to it. What we’re worried about catching off you guys come Jan. 20 feels less like a case of the sniffles and more like, I don’t know, dysentery.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:I already did come up with a plan that is guaranteed to work. From your viewpoint, it would be an experiment that started 62 years ago in my family in Texas. From my perspective, it is a proven fact. The most important people in my life, parents/sisters/my mother's sister/her children joined the same religion. You can read about it at https://www.jw.org/en/
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Why don't you come up with a plan for how we can be prosperous again? That would be a lot more forward-looking.
There was also a control group for this experiment: the rest of the family who didn't join. Run this experiment for 62 years and the ones who didn't join are now the ones who voted for Trump.
Results: everyone in the family who joined jw.org is prosperous. Even my parents, who worked at Burger King, became rich (multi-millionaires) and lived long lives, filled with health and mental stability. Nobody in this part of the family retired from working. They are, or were, restaurateurs, teachers, nurses, engineers, even doctors and scientists in the next generation. They never cheat on taxes; they never vote; they pay no attention to politics.
What happened to the non-believers in the family, except believing in Trump? Endless problems that they are convinced only Trump can solve for them: financial, family, health, emotional/psychological, and legal. They don't work. They don't truly follow any religion despite claiming they are Christians. They don't have a purpose in life except to be bitter that the Democrats are standing in the way of an imagined America Made Great Again. America is already great, except for the parts that Trumptards control.
This always gets confusing because numerous people act and think like Trump supporters without being voters for Trump. Not at all surprising to me, their lives are crappy because of the way they live.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
I watched the American election unfold at a bar in London
By Imogen West-Knights | Jan 03, 2025
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/01/donald-trump-news-election
-republicans-london.html
With only a few weeks to go before Trump’s inauguration, we (in the UK) still aren’t talking about Trump much, and we like it that way. I get the sense that over here, people are clinging to the last moments when it will be possible to ignore him — a phenomenon I’m told has taken hold of more than a few people in the States too.
But eventually, we will have to care. What goes on in America becomes our business, one way or another. “When America sneezes, the world catches a cold,” as the saying goes, a phrase I had to Google because I misremembered it as “When America shits its pants, the whole world smells it.” Wrong, and gross, but maybe there’s something to it. What we’re worried about catching off you guys come Jan. 20 feels less like a case of the sniffles and more like, I don’t know, dysentery.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Come off it, lad.
You're talking about Trump right now. You've talked about Trump every single day for 8 years, and there has never been a single moment you haven't thought about him.
Enjoy your next 4 years.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:I already did come up with a plan that is guaranteed to work. From your viewpoint, it would be an experiment that started 62 years ago in my family in Texas. From my perspective, it is a proven fact. The most important people in my life, parents/sisters/my mother's sister/her children joined the same religion. You can read about it at https://www.jw.org/en/
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Why don't you come up with a plan for how we can be prosperous again? That would be a lot more forward-looking.
Second's plan is simple.
Join another cult!
Fuck your religion dude. Your family hates you.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:I can do hundreds of different tasks in a day and I'm not particularly fast. For example: it took less than a minute to post about Trump's latest mathematical error. Trump doesn't do arithmetic, even for something as simple and important as his plan to replace the income tax with a tariff.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Come off it, lad.
You're talking about Trump right now. You've talked about Trump every single day for 8 years, and there has never been a single moment you haven't thought about him.
Enjoy your next 4 years.
Why can’t Trump’s tariffs replace the income tax?
Year 2023
Total imports = $3,108 billion
10% tariff on imports = $310.8 billion
Income tax = $2,176 billion
Shortfall = $1,865 billion
($2,176 billion - $310.8 billion)
https://jabberwocking.com/why-cant-tariffs-replace-the-income-tax/
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
The Tariffs, and Tariffs alone, created this vast wealth for our Country. Then we switched over to Income Tax. We were never so wealthy as during this period. Tariffs will pay off our debt and, MAKE AMERICA WEALTHY AGAIN!
11:21 PM · Jan 2, 2025
https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1875049777186136481
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:You missed the point that showing self-control, behaving decently, following the law rather than impulses and shameful urges, paying your taxes, going to work, etc. is the guaranteed way to prosper in America. So many Americans do NOT prosper solely because of their poor behavior when no one is watching, not even God (in their opinion).
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:I already did come up with a plan that is guaranteed to work. From your viewpoint, it would be an experiment that started 62 years ago in my family in Texas. From my perspective, it is a proven fact. The most important people in my life, parents/sisters/my mother's sister/her children joined the same religion. You can read about it at https://www.jw.org/en/
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Why don't you come up with a plan for how we can be prosperous again? That would be a lot more forward-looking.
Second's plan is simple.
Join another cult!
Fuck your religion dude. Your family hates you.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The Second Coming | Fintan O’Toole
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2024/12/05/the-second-coming-fintan-o
toole/
Karl Marx famously wrote that “Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.” Donald Trump’s crushing victory over Kamala Harris makes him undoubtedly a world-historic personage whose impact will be felt around the world for a very long time. But his second coming is no farce. It is a brutal show of strength.
It has turned out that the drama that best encapsulates this momentous period is, after all, the shadow play of death and resurrection that unfolded in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13. As Trump was grazed by a fragment of a bullet fired by Thomas Matthew Crooks, he dropped to the ground, then rose again, fist in the air, triumphant and defiantly alive. Distilled into this moment and lit by a glow of heroism was the whole story of what had happened since Trump’s apparent political death on January 6, 2021, and of what was to come in the 2024 election: that which does not kill him makes him stronger.
There has been, in recent times, something of a pattern here: the strongman gets elected, is thrown out of office, and then makes a triumphant return. This is what happened with one of Trump’s political models, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán. It happened with Jaroslaw Kaczynski in Poland, Robert Fico in Slovakia, and Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel. And what this pattern suggests is not just that the strongman comes back—he returns as a more radically authoritarian ruler. The second time he is infused with the swagger of impunity. The man they couldn’t kill is also the man they cannot inhibit.
“Disinhibition” is a word that has recently migrated from the lexicon of psychology into that of American politics. It refers to a condition in which people become increasingly unable to regulate the expression of their impulses and urges, and this year it very obviously applied to Trump’s increasingly surreal, vituperative, and lurid rhetoric. But it now must also apply to the institutions of American government: with allies on the Supreme Court and with control over the Senate and (most probably, at the time of writing) the House of Representatives, Trump will have no one to regulate his urges.
And perhaps it applies to American society too; this is a disinhibited electorate. It is no longer, on the whole, frightened of its own worst impulses. Up to now it has been possible to take some comfort in Trump’s failure to win the popular vote in either 2016 or 2020, and in the fact that not once during his time in the Oval Office did a majority of Americans approve of the job he was doing. (This was true of no previous president in the era of polling.) It could be said with some justice that he did not really embody America.
But now he does. The comprehensive nature of his victory suggests that alongside the very large core of voters who are thrilled by his misogyny, xenophobia, bullying, and mendacity, there are many more who are at the very least not repelled by his ever more extreme indulgence in those sadistic pleasures. They know what he’s like and don’t much mind.
This is hard for Democrats (and just plain democrats) to get their heads around. Both inside and outside the US, liberals and progressives have had a default assumption that, even if their government sometimes does terrible things, Americans themselves are essentially decent and benign. The Harris campaign, with its messages of joy and hope and its (bleakly fruitless) pursuit of an imagined reservoir of Republicans too well-mannered to vote for Trump, rested on the same supposition.
In retrospect, one of the most telling moments of the election campaign came on September 14 in Superior, Wisconsin. Toward the end of a barnstorming speech, Harris’s running mate, Tim Walz, told his audience: “I’ll go to my grave not understanding why, but I know it’s a fact that this is going to be a margin-of-error race.” The second
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:I can do hundreds
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Come off it, lad.
You're talking about Trump right now. You've talked about Trump every single day for 8 years, and there has never been a single moment you haven't thought about him.
Enjoy your next 4 years.
Completely unrelated to the post you quoted or the fact that neither you or your article author have not been able to stop thinking about Trump for more than 5 seconds on any given day. You think about Trump more often than men think about sex in a day.
Also, whatever you posted about Trump after that is probably a lie and whatever you said about yourself after that is definitely a lie.
I don't know. I didn't bother reading any of it. Just like I've never bothered to read any of the Jehovah's witness pamphlets. Eventually they got the hint and stopped coming to my house after years of ignoring them. Jehovah's Witnesses in Texas must be twice as annoying as they are in Indiana.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:You missed the point that showing self-control, behaving decently, following the law rather than impulses and shameful urges, paying your taxes, going to work, etc. is the guaranteed way to prosper in America. So many Americans do NOT prosper solely because of their poor behavior when no one is watching, not even God (in their opinion).
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:I already did come up with a plan that is guaranteed to work. From your viewpoint, it would be an experiment that started 62 years ago in my family in Texas. From my perspective, it is a proven fact. The most important people in my life, parents/sisters/my mother's sister/her children joined the same religion. You can read about it at https://www.jw.org/en/
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Why don't you come up with a plan for how we can be prosperous again? That would be a lot more forward-looking.
Second's plan is simple.
Join another cult!
Fuck your religion dude. Your family hates you.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
You are a Jehovah's Witness cultist.
Why did we get stuck with you?
Shouldn't you be out knocking door to door to harass people in your free time?
This wouldn't be because you're wheelchair bound and/or 500 lbs obese now, would it fatty?
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Harris’s defeat showed that grace, good humor, intelligence, and energy—all of which she demonstrated amply—will not be enough.
Kamala Harris exhibited none of the above attributes.
If the media wants to be taken seriously from now on, I suggest they put telling the truth at the top of their New Years resolutions.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:This all started when Signym posted a challenge : "Why don't you come up with a plan for how we can be prosperous again? That would be a lot more forward-looking." I gave an answer that you can't understand. There is another answer for the way to prosperity requiring adding to your vocabulary. “Disinhibition” is a word that has recently migrated from the lexicon of psychology into that of American politics. It refers to a condition in which people become increasingly unable to regulate the expression of their impulses and urges. It applies to American society too; this is a disinhibited electorate. It is no longer, on the whole, frightened of its own worst impulses.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:You missed the point that showing self-control, behaving decently, following the law rather than impulses and shameful urges, paying your taxes, going to work, etc. is the guaranteed way to prosper in America. So many Americans do NOT prosper solely because of their poor behavior when no one is watching, not even God (in their opinion).
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:I already did come up with a plan that is guaranteed to work. From your viewpoint, it would be an experiment that started 62 years ago in my family in Texas. From my perspective, it is a proven fact. The most important people in my life, parents/sisters/my mother's sister/her children joined the same religion. You can read about it at https://www.jw.org/en/
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Why don't you come up with a plan for how we can be prosperous again? That would be a lot more forward-looking.
Second's plan is simple.
Join another cult!
Fuck your religion dude. Your family hates you.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
You are a Jehovah's Witness cultist.
Why did we get stuck with you?
Shouldn't you be out knocking door to door to harass people in your free time?
This wouldn't be because you're wheelchair bound and/or 500 lbs obese now, would it fatty?
“Disinhibition” very obviously applied to Trump’s increasingly surreal, vituperative, and lurid rhetoric. Without sufficient inhibitions, people won't prosper. They won't behave well within their family, or at work, or when handling money. They won't control their eating, drinking, smoking, drugging, spending, etc. and the results are bad and get worse, but not instantaneous painful, which is why so many Americans can't make the mental connection between their “disinhibition” and their hardships and disappointing lives.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:This all started when Signym posted a challenge
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:You missed the point that showing self-control, behaving decently, following the law rather than impulses and shameful urges, paying your taxes, going to work, etc. is the guaranteed way to prosper in America. So many Americans do NOT prosper solely because of their poor behavior when no one is watching, not even God (in their opinion).
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:I already did come up with a plan that is guaranteed to work. From your viewpoint, it would be an experiment that started 62 years ago in my family in Texas. From my perspective, it is a proven fact. The most important people in my life, parents/sisters/my mother's sister/her children joined the same religion. You can read about it at https://www.jw.org/en/
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Why don't you come up with a plan for how we can be prosperous again? That would be a lot more forward-looking.
Second's plan is simple.
Join another cult!
Fuck your religion dude. Your family hates you.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
You are a Jehovah's Witness cultist.
Why did we get stuck with you?
Shouldn't you be out knocking door to door to harass people in your free time?
This wouldn't be because you're wheelchair bound and/or 500 lbs obese now, would it fatty?
No.
This started many, many, many years ago. I'm sure you were always like this long before you joined FFF.net or even watched the show. Because in the 8 years I've known you since I sobered up, you are the same Static Character you always were, so from the perspective of anybody here watching the years unfold, everyone should assume that you've always been this way and that you've never changed once, despite the fact that you're so obviously miserable 24/7/365.
You're the most judgemental person there ever was outside of Estus Pirkle.
It has been my experience that people who behave this way are the ones suffering from the most guilt and doing their damnedest to make sure nobody else knows what skeletons are really inside that closet of theirs.
Oh.... If I could be a fly on the wall and bear witness to all the evil shit you do every day when you know nobody is watching.
And yanno... I keep hearing recently the quote from Game of Thrones when Tywin Lannister says, "Any man who must say, 'I am the king,' is no true king, and how that applies to out-of-context soundbytes from Trump that MSNBC plays and frames in a false narrative.
Though the application of the quote in this context makes it a lie, the quote itself is the Truth. But that Truth doesn't just apply to Kings and to Prime Ministers and to Presidents.
That Truth can be applied to any one of us.
Any man who must remind everyone every single day of how Good and Righteous they are is neither Good nor Righteous.
We're tired of hearing that out of you, and nobody believes it anyway. You are a joke, and you need to retire this course of dialogue.
Stop behaving like a little boy.
You know about pretty much every one of my abundant character flaws, because I don't even make any attempts to obfuscate them. And I never have. I have put them out there for the world to see, and I have done so since I signed up to the site around 2006. And I have never gone back into my post history once to delete some of the terrible shit I was spouting when hitting rock bottom either. Every awful, no-good, rotten thing I ever posted is still cataloged here.
You're terrified about sharing anything real about yourself because you know that there would be people who would do EXACTLY as y
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Quote:
SECOND:
This all started when Signym posted a challenge...
"This" what?
Your lying, hatred, propaganda, and endless self aggrandizement and virtue-signaling?
No, son. That started before you even started posting here.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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Quote:Except, it didn'twork for you. At least, not in the story you told about yourself.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Why don't you come up with a plan for how we can be prosperous again? That would be a lot more forward-looking.
SECOND:
I already did come up with a plan that is guaranteed to work.
Quote:I notice you didn't mention the most important person in your life: yourself. A
SECOND:
From your viewpoint, it would be an experiment that started 62 years ago in my family in Texas. From my perspective, it is a proven fact. The most important people in my life, parents/sisters/my mother's sister/her children joined the same religion.
Went off the straight and narrow, didja, eh?
Also, not hearing anything about wife and children. Either they don't exist, or they're not JW either.
Quote:Clearly, you stopped believing when you went to fight in Vietnam. And considering your obsession with Trump, and politics, you're not JW now either.
Results: everyone in the family who joined jw.org is prosperous. Even my parents, who worked at Burger King, became rich (multi-millionaires) and lived long lives, filled with health and mental stability. Nobody in this part of the family retired from working. They are, or were, restaurateurs, teachers, nurses, engineers, even doctors and scientists in the next generation. They never cheat on taxes; they never vote; they pay no attention to politics.
So, let me recap your story for you:
You dumped your family religion and went off to fight in Vietnam, where you discovered your true calling: calmly and efficiently shooting people from a helicopter. But thanks to a helicopter accident, you busted your ankles.
So when you returned to civilian life, you tried making $ like your dad, managing a fast food franchise. But your busted ankles hurt too much to let you stand on your feet all day, so you got a degree in engineering and played a small part in designing control systems for chemical plants.
Took some of your savings and made a what-the-hell play on Texas oil and the rest is history. At least, according to you: you got lucky, and got wealthy owning the rights to a commodity producing piece of land and making other people work for you.
Moral of the story? You can be a right bastard. You can even be a sociopath who enjoys killing. You can work hard and get an education.
But if you REALLY want to get wealthy, get lucky.
Or marry someone wealthy, or inherit your parents' wealth.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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Quote:Have you seen the show My 600-lb Life?
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
You're the most judgemental person there ever was outside of Estus Pirkle.
It has been my experience that people who behave this way are the ones suffering from the most guilt and doing their damnedest to make sure nobody else knows what skeletons are really inside that closet of theirs.
Oh.... If I could be a fly on the wall and bear witness to all the evil shit you do every day when you know nobody is watching.
https://eztvx.to/shows/2870/my-600-lb-life/
The show always starts the same but the endings can be different. In the beginning, the 600-pounder can hardly move around the house, except when there is food to eat. Then they go to Dr. Now, where a nurse weighs the 600-pounder. Dr. Now gives them a diet booklet to read and the nurse schedules another weighing in two months.
Dr. Now does not brag about being lighter than the 600-pounder. This is not at all about Dr. Now. It is about being fat and an early death if the 600-pounder does not change their habits.
The homes of 600-pounders all look the same. They are poor people. The cars they own all look the same. They are poor people. There isn't much variation from one episode to the next, other than it is always a different 600-pounder who needs to change their eating habits or die young.
Some of the 600-pounders are enraged by the injustice of it all. How dare Dr. Now tell them what to eat? The Doctor shrugs. What can the Doctor do, change the force of gravity so that the 600-pounder weighs 200 pounds? That is what Trumptards want. They want the force of gravity changed so they don't have to change. They will become light as soap bubbles floating through life without trouble. Fortunately, there is Donald Trump who tells them he can control the gravity that is pulling his Trumptards down. All they have to do is believe Trump can fix their lives.
Trump is certainly NOT telling them to change themselves and go on a diet. Instead, Trump will remake America, lowering gravity, so that Trumptards don't have to diet. You are already at a perfectly healthy weight, per Trump. In vivid contrast, Doctor Now would remind Trumptards that the scales show they are very much in danger from their unfortunate lifestyles and unhealthy habits.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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As Trump's election is certified, Americans should declare war on stupidity
Shame is what keeps us in check, or at least it should. It certainly used to. Trump, devoid of shame, has gone to great lengths to eviscerate that societal check.
By Rex Huppke | 5:09 a.m. ET Jan. 5, 2025
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2025/01/05/trump-pres
idential-election-certification-embrace-stupidity/77409672007/
On the eve of Donald Trump’s election certification, the best thing sensible Americans who oppose him and the MAGA leadership can do is remember that stupidity should be embarrassing.
Trump exists in our political sphere because he persuaded people to forget that simple fact. He somehow turned dunderheads like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and, of course, himself – public figures who routinely utter abject nonsense – into people who get taken seriously.
Following the New Orleans terrorist attack on New Year’s Day, Trump ranted about immigration when the suspect killed in the attack was a U.S. citizen. That was stupid and unhelpful. For a president-elect and elected leaders who protect him, it should be deeply embarrassing.
Trump has made stupidity acceptable. It shouldn't be.
When Greene hypothesized that Jewish space lasers started California wildfires, that was not a mistake or an “oops” moment. It was stupid, and it should have been the embarrassing end of her political career.
When Kennedy encourages people to drink bacteria-laden raw milk, he should be laughed out of the country. Instead, Trump has picked him to lead the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which is utterly stupid and should be profoundly embarrassing for Trump.
Yet here we are, waiting for Trump to return to the White House and install harebrained MAGA acolytes in all positions of power, confidently and without shame.
It’s that last bit that’s the problem: “without shame.”
Bringing back shame may be powerful tool to deal with Trump
Shame is what keeps us in check, or at least it should. It certainly used to.
If we tolerate stupidity in the public sphere, it will flourish
Trump, devoid of shame, has gone to great lengths to eviscerate that societal check.
How else do you explain politicians supporting him – a convicted felon, an inveterate liar, a man found liable of sexual abuse – for a third time? The decision to put someone like Trump back in the most powerful position in America should be embarrassing. It wasn’t.
That’s enough to make people who dislike Trump, whether because of his politics or his personality, feel powerless. I get that.
However, I’d argue the best way to reclaim power in the age of Trumpism is to stop tolerating stupidity.
Stupidity isn't about book smarts, it's about choosing ignorance
Before I go further on that, let’s be clear what I mean by “stupidity.” I’m not talking about any level of education.
Heck, most of the people Trump surrounds himself with are highly educated but dumb as fence posts.
Stupidity is speaking authoritatively about things you don’t understand at all. It’s the willingness to say something objectively false and refuse to admit you’re wrong. It’s the lack of curiosity that allows our leaders to accept bologna conspiracy theories over provable facts.
Those, to me, are traits that should be embarrassing.
Stop giving elected officials embracing stupidity a pass
But since Trump’s first presidential win, some people have been afraid to call out such traits.
The argument is, essentially: “Well, he won people over, so we shouldn’t call him dumb lest we insult his voters, who we must do our best to understand.”
That hasn’t worked out particularly well. If anything, proud ignorance has flourished.
So now, as we await whatever fresh hell a new Trump administration will bring, it’s time to stop pandering to politicians who have embraced a reality disconnected from actual reality.
Nobody's job is to make fools feel comfortable
When Trump blames an act of domestic t
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Trump has tapped an unprecedented 13 billionaires for his administration. Here's who they are
https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-tapped-unprecedented-13-billionaires-t
op-administration-roles/story?id=116872968
We have a convicted criminal billionaire about to be sworn in as president with the richest cabinet in American (and, perhaps, world) history, all with an agenda of making the rich even richer. (It’s worth noting — something almost always ignored by the mainstream press — that Trump’s conviction was for using his fortune for election interference leading to a stolen 2016 election; by hiding his affair with Stormy Daniels he kept information away from the public that he believed could have led to his loss that year.)
https://hartmannreport.com/p/saturday-report-1425-is-the-scarlet
As an example of Trump's fundamental depravity, shamelessness and inability to take responsibility for what he did:
Donald Trump Calls for Stormy Daniels Case Judge Juan Merchan to Be Disbarred
Jan 04, 2025 at 7:00 PM EST
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-judge-juan-merchan-disbarred-200
9762
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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SECOND attempts to conflate his life with his parents', and doesn't succeed.
Quote:I notice you didn't mention the most important person in your life: yourself.
SECOND:
From your viewpoint, it would be an experiment that started 62 years ago in my family in Texas. From my perspective, it is a proven fact. The most important people in my life, parents/sisters/my mother's sister/her children joined the same religion.
Went off the straight and narrow, didja, eh?
Also, not hearing anything about wife and children. Either they don't exist, or they're not JW either.
Quote:Clearly, you stopped believing when you went to fight in Vietnam. And considering your obsession with Trump, and politics, you're not JW now either.
Results: everyone in the family who joined jw.org is prosperous. Even my parents, who worked at Burger King, became rich (multi-millionaires) and lived long lives, filled with health and mental stability. Nobody in this part of the family retired from working. They are, or were, restaurateurs, teachers, nurses, engineers, even doctors and scientists in the next generation. They never cheat on taxes; they never vote; they pay no attention to politics.
So, let me recap your story for you:
You dumped your family religion and went off to fight in Vietnam, where you discovered your true calling: calmly and efficiently shooting people from a helicopter. But thanks to a helicopter accident, you busted your ankles.
So when you returned to civilian life, you tried making $ like your dad, managing a fast food franchise. But your busted ankles hurt too much to let you stand on your feet all day, so you got a degree in engineering and played a small part in designing control systems for chemical plants.
Took some of your savings and made a what-the-hell play on Texas oil and the rest is history. At least, according to you: you got lucky, and got wealthy owning the rights to a commodity producing piece of land and making other people work for you.
Moral of the story?
You can be a right bastard.
You can even be a sociopath who enjoys killing.
You can work hard and get an education.
But if you REALLY want to get wealthy, get lucky.
Or marry someone wealthy, or inherit your parents' wealth.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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(President) Elon Musk killed PBM reform without knowing what a PBM is
By Kevin Drum | January 5, 2025 – 1:04 pm
https://jabberwocking.com/elon-musk-killed-pbm-reform-without-knowing-
what-a-pbm-is/
I was puttering around on something else when I ran across this:
Quote:https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1873972860106268740
What is a “pharmacy benefit manager”? https://t.co/wQSRCreBDK
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 31, 2024
Well, Elon, a pharmacy benefit manager is a company that handles negotiations with pharma companies on behalf of health insurers. Three big ones control almost the entire market and they supposedly bring down the cost of drugs through their collective buying power.
But they're also in the business of being maximally profitable, which doesn't always match up with saving consumers money. After years of PBM abuses being reported, in 2024 Congress was finally ready to do something:
Quote:Unfortunately, the bill failed to pass. You, Elon, should know this since you were the one who killed it. It was part of last month's Continuing Resolution that you mounted a jihad against, demanding that the CR should maintain current funding and absolutely nothing else.¹ This meant ditching PBM reform because it was 500 pages long and you insisted that page count was the proper metric for judging the bill.
Bipartisan lawmakers introduced a new bill on Tuesday that aims to crack down on the business practices of drug supply chain middlemen who are widely accused of inflating prescription medication prices and harming U.S. patients and pharmacies.
....Lawmakers and drugmakers alike argue that PBMs overcharge the plans they negotiate rebates for, underpay pharmacies and fail to pass on savings from those discounts to patients. Auchincloss said those practices have allowed PBMs to trap $300 billion in revenue in the middle of the drug supply chain between manufacturers and patients.
....Among the bill’s other efforts, it requires PBMs to share 80% of rebates with patients and prohibits several other practices. It would bar requiring patients to obtain branded medications when a cheaper generic version is available, steering patients to PBM-affiliated pharmacies and excluding any in-network pharmacy from filling a prescription, among other tactics.
So PBM reform died. And now you're telling us you never even knew what it was?
¹Except for hurricane relief, farm subsidies, the Key Bridge, Virginia class subs, and pediatric cancer research.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Trump tells the world that he is Looney Tunes.
Trump’s Sunday evening tale of woe continued, in third person no less: “Ultimately, the Biden/Harris DOJ forced Bragg to concoct anything to embarrass TRUMP. But it was even more so what the CORRUPT and TOTALLY CONFLICTED POLITICAL HACK Judge did, and is doing, on this sham trial.”
He then claimed he is legally not allowed to speak about the judge’s “conflicts of interest,” even after calling Merchan a “TOTALLY CONFLICTED POLITICAL HACK” in the previous sentence.
“I even have, STILL, an Unconstitutional Gag Order where I am not allowed to speak about the Judge’s highly disqualifying Conflicts of Interest. Virtually ever legal scholar and pundit says THERE IS NO (ZERO!) CASE AGAINST ME,” he lamented.
“The Judge fabricated the facts, and the law, no different than the other New York Judicial and Prosecutorial Witch Hunts,” Trump added. (No, Mr Trump, the judge did not fabricate laws or facts.)
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-blasts-corrupt-and-broken-legal-sy
stem-ahead-of-hush-money-sentencing/
That Trump speech was absolutely Looney Tunes
It'd be like if Ebenezer Scrooge spent all night with those ghosts, woke up, saw the poor kid out his window, and instead of tossing him a coin to buy a Christmas goose, spit on him and dropped an anvil on his head.
https://www.reddit.com/r/redscarepod/comments/1e73q52/that_trump_speec
h_was_absolutely_looney_tunes/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Trump preparing to abandon yet another promise
January 6, 2025
The Great Walkback continues. First, Donald Trump said he couldn't guarantee that his tariffs wouldn't raise prices. Then he admitted that he couldn't bring down the cost of groceries after all. Today comes news that he's backing down from his sweeping tariff plan on everyone:
Quote:This stuff accounts for less than 5% of US imports — and some of it is subject to high tariffs already. Stay tuned for more abandoned Trump promises.
President-elect Donald Trump’s aides are exploring tariff plans that would be applied to every country but only cover critical imports, three people familiar with the matter said — a key shift from his plans during the 2024 presidential campaign.
....Exactly which imports or industries would face tariffs was not immediately clear. Preliminary discussions have largely focused on several key sectors that the Trump team wants to bring back to the United States, the people said. Those include the defense industrial supply chain (through tariffs on steel, iron, aluminum and copper); critical medical supplies (syringes, needles, vials and pharmaceutical materials); and energy production (batteries, rare earth minerals and even solar panels), two of the people said.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2025/01/06/trump-tariff-econom
y-trade/
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Shouting into the void, huh?
That's what it's come to.
I'm sure there's better things you can be doing with your time, Second.
--------------------------------------------------
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Quote:I've gotten satisfaction many times over many years by telling certain assholes that smoking causes cancer. They irritably respond with, "None of your business", "You can't make me stop!" or some other nitwit Trumptard retort. Where does the satisfaction come in? When they suffer and die horribly from smoking. The very real advantage to building long-term wealth by not smoking is one of many things I picked up at JW.org, without joining that religion. Trumptards' behavior is constructed mostly from habits that kill them and make them poorer but they see their behavior as expressing Freedom and Happiness.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Shouting into the void, huh?
That's what it's come to.
I'm sure there's better things you can be doing with your time, Second.
https://www.jw.org/en/bible-teachings/questions/smoking-sin/
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Trump’s Rage Over His Sentencing Suddenly Takes a Dark, Unnerving Turn
As Trump erupts over his coming sentencing for his hush-money conviction, a leading political theorist explains how his fury is sending unsettling signals about his coming authoritarian rule.
Buried in Trump’s rage was a key tell: He’s signaling that he’ll use his conviction as a pretext to carry out his own autocratic second-term designs. There are also indications that he hopes to milk his sentencing toward other ugly ends.
https://newrepublic.com/article/189843/trumps-rage-sentencing-suddenly
-takes-dark-unnerving-turn
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:I've gotten satisfaction many times over many years by telling certain assholes that smoking causes cancer. They irritably respond with, "None of your business", "You can't make me stop!" or some other nitwit Trumptard retort.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Shouting into the void, huh?
That's what it's come to.
I'm sure there's better things you can be doing with your time, Second.
That predates Trump by millions of years. The only difference is if we were cavemen I'd put you in the fucking ground for even speaking to me.
It is none of your business, and you can't make anybody do shit.
Quote:
Where does the satisfaction come in? When they suffer and die horribly from smoking.
That's because you are a garbage human being and you get glee out of watching people who disagree with you suffer.
I'll bet you were rock hard while telling everyone at the funeral that you told him so.
Nobody cares about your personal stories because you are completely full of shit, worm.
None of this ever happened.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:6ix, you are like this because you are a dimwit who, after a long time delay allowing you to forget years of living negligently, is finally facing the consequences of being a fool. You want mercy. You are terrified by the cold hands of natural law around your neck, squeezing the life out of you for what you did while drunk.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
That's because you are a garbage human being and you get glee out of watching people who disagree with you suffer.
I'll bet you were rock hard while telling everyone at the funeral that you told him so.
Nobody cares about your personal stories because you are completely full of shit, worm.
None of this ever happened.
Republicans trolled with their own January 6, 2021 comments
On Monday, Kinzinger posted a January 6, 2021 tweet from U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) that reads, “Those who made this attack on our government need to be identified and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Their actions are repugnant to democracy.”
Graham has since fully embraced Donald Trump and his allies, including those who supported his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
Kinzinger also posted two tweets from now-Speaker of the House Mike Johnson that read: “I unambiguously condemn in the strongest possible terms any and all forms of violent protest. Any individual who committed violence today should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” and, “It is beyond time to remember that while we may disagree, we are all Americans, and there is far more that unites us than divides us. I extend my deepest thanks to the United States Capitol Police for protecting the Capitol complex today and all days.”
Johnson was a top architect of efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) had written, “These actions at the US Capitol by protestors are truly despicable and unacceptable. While I am safe and sheltering in place, these protests are prohibiting us from doing our constitutional duty. I condemn them in the strongest possible terms. We are a nation of laws.”
U.S. Senator John Barrasso (R-WY) wrote, “This violence and destruction have no place in our republic. It must end now.”
Kinzinger also responded by thanking him.
He then summed up his thoughts, saying: “Jan 6th is a reminder to me: cowardice spreads like wildfire… this country needs leaders who are willing to tell the people the truth, not pander to lies.”
https://www.alternet.org/news-politics/cowardice-trump/
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:6ix, you are like this because you are a dimwit
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
That's because you are a garbage human being and you get glee out of watching people who disagree with you suffer.
I'll bet you were rock hard while telling everyone at the funeral that you told him so.
Nobody cares about your personal stories because you are completely full of shit, worm.
None of this ever happened.
Oh, you and I both know that nothing could be further from the truth.
The rest of your post was ignored.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:‘Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders,’ says Danish PM as Donald Trump Jr. arrives
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Oh, you and I both know that nothing could be further from the truth.
The rest of your post was ignored.
By Seb Starcevic and Jakob Weizman | January 7, 2025 4:20 pm CET
https://www.politico.eu/article/greenland-not-for-sale-danish-pm-mette
-frederiksen-us-donald-trump-jr/
Greenland has made it clear that it is not for sale, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said Tuesday, in response to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s fixation with buying the massive Arctic island.
Frederiksen said Greenlandic Prime Minister Múte Egede “has been very, very clear … that there is a lot of support among the people of Greenland that Greenland is not for sale and will not be in the future either.”
The Danish leader’s remarks come after Trump suggested purchasing Greenland from Denmark last month, calling a U.S. acquisition of the Arctic territory an “absolute necessity.” He also made the proposal in 2019 during his first term which drew a rebuke from Frederiksen.
Trump’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., landed in Greenland on Tuesday on what he called a private visit. But his entourage included firebrand conservative activist Charlie Kirk and the elder Trump’s personnel director, Sergio Gor. Trump Sr. described them as his representatives.
“Don Jr. and my Reps landing in Greenland. The reception has been great. They, and the Free World, need safety, security, strength, and PEACE! This is a deal that must happen. MAGA. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!” Trump wrote in a Tuesday post on his social media platform Truth Social.
Five years after slapping down Trump’s Arctic aspirations, Frederiksen reiterated once more that “Greenland belongs to the Greenlanders.”
“On one hand, I am pleased regarding the rise in American interest in Greenland,” Frederiksen said in an interview Tuesday with Danish broadcaster TV 2. “But of course it is important that it takes place in a way where it is the Greenlanders’ decision, what their future holds.”
Greenland, the world’s largest island with a population of around 60,000, was a Danish colony until it became self-ruling with its own parliament in 1979. It remains a territory of Denmark, with Copenhagen exercising control over its foreign and defense policy.
As global powers seek to expand their reach and footprint in the Arctic, mineral-rich Greenland — which hosts a U.S. military base — is coveted for its strategic value in security and trade.
Frederiksen, who in 2019 described Trump’s bid to purchase the island as “absurd,” said it was up to Greenlanders to decide their own future, calling the growing independence movement on the island “legitimate.”
“I can notice a strong wish amongst many Greenlanders to move toward independence,” she said. “It is legitimate, and therefore I think that it is important that Greenland’s future is shaped in [the Greenlandic capital] Nuuk.”
Under a 2009 agreement with Denmark, Greenland can declare independence only after a successful referendum — which its leader Egede appeared to hint, during his New Year’s address, might be held in tandem with the island’s upcoming parliamentary election in April.
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US President-elect Donald Trump has threatened "very high" tariffs on Denmark if it resists his effort to take control of Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory.
Asked during a news conference Tuesday if he would rule out using military or economic force in order to take control of the strategically-important island, he said: "No, I can't assure you on either of those two."
"I can say this, we need them for economic security," he said.
Trump also said he would use "economic force" against Canada and called the US-Canada border an "artificially drawn line".
Trump's remarks came as his son, Donald Trump Jr, visited Greenland.
Since winning re-election Trump has repeatedly returned to the idea of US territorial expansion - including taking back the Panama Canal.
During the news conference Trump said the canal "is vital to our country" and claimed "it's being operated by China". He previously accused Panama of overcharging US ships to use the waterway, which connects the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
"Giving the Panama Canal to Panama was a very big mistake," Trump said.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gzn48jwz2o
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T 
JANUARY 6 THE WAY DEMOCRATS DO IT—PEACEFULLY
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Here are the highlights of Donald Trump's press conference this morning.
• The Gulf of Mexico should be renamed the Gulf of America.
Fact check: Too late. Mississippi already proposed this a decade ago as a joke.
• He might seize the Panama Canal with military force.
Fact check: Sure he will.
• Biden has no right to keep implementing policies Trump dislikes.
Fact check: Biden’s term ends on January 20, 2025.
• “We have inflation at a level we’ve never had before.”
Fact check:
• The FBI mounted a false flag operation on January 6. Or maybe Hezbollah.
Fact check: No, neither of them did.
• He'll levy high tariffs on Denmark if it doesn't give him Greenland.
Fact check: Everyone who uses Ozempic (made in Denmark) will love this.
• “All hell will break out in the Middle East” if Hamas doesn't release its hostages.
Fact check: Does this mean Trump plans to send US troops to Gaza?
• He will use “economic force” to join Canada and the United States together.
Fact check: The joke is getting old.
• Inflation is due to high energy costs.
Fact check:
https://jabberwocking.com/trump-blathers-inanely-at-press-conference/
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I NOTICED SECOND IS STUDIOUSLY AVOIDING THE STORY OF HIS LIFE, BC IT DOESN'T TELL THE STORY HE WANTS.
Quote:I notice you didn't mention the most important person in your life: yourself.
SECOND:
From your viewpoint, it would be an experiment that started 62 years ago in my family in Texas. From my perspective, it is a proven fact. The most important people in my life, parents/sisters/my mother's sister/her children joined the same religion.
Went off the straight and narrow, didja, eh?
Also, not hearing anything about wife and children. Either they don't exist, or they're not JW either.
Quote:Clearly, you stopped believing when you went to fight in Vietnam. And considering your obsession with Trump, and politics, you're not JW now either.
Results: everyone in the family who joined jw.org is prosperous. Even my parents, who worked at Burger King, became rich (multi-millionaires) and lived long lives, filled with health and mental stability. Nobody in this part of the family retired from working. They are, or were, restaurateurs, teachers, nurses, engineers, even doctors and scientists in the next generation. They never cheat on taxes; they never vote; they pay no attention to politics.
So, let me recap your story for you:
You dumped your family religion and went off to fight in Vietnam, where you discovered your true calling: calmly and efficiently shooting people from a helicopter. But thanks to a helicopter accident, you busted your ankles.
So when you returned to civilian life, you tried making $ like your dad, managing a fast food franchise. But your busted ankles hurt too much to let you stand on your feet all day, so you got a degree in engineering and played a small part in designing control systems for chemical plants.
Took some of your savings and made a what-the-hell play on Texas oil and the rest is history. At least, according to you: you got lucky, and got wealthy owning the rights to a commodity producing piece of land and making other people work for you.
Moral of the story?
You can be a right bastard.
You can be a sociopath who enjoys killing.
You can work hard and get an education.
But if you REALLY want to get wealthy, get lucky.
Or marry someone wealthy, or inherit your parents' wealth.
Quote:I guess if you can't get your jollies shooting people from a helicopter, you do the next best thing.
Where does the satisfaction come in? When they suffer and die horribly from smoking.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:‘Greenland
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Oh, you and I both know that nothing could be further from the truth.
The rest of your post was ignored.
We weren't discussing Greenland. Stop quoting tweeting me and replying with stuff that has nothing to do with our conversation.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Did you guys enjoy watching Kamala Harris certify Trump?
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:There is one religious lesson I learned and always obey. It is the same one that Trump always violates. Trump and his Trumptards claim to follow, but don't, because tax-cheating and lawlessness feel good for Trumptards when they think they can get away with it:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
So, let me recap your story for you:
"Render unto Caesar" means to give to the earthly authority, represented by "Caesar," what is rightfully theirs, typically referring to paying taxes or respecting government laws, while simultaneously acknowledging that ultimate allegiance belongs to God; it comes from a Bible verse where Jesus says, "Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's" (Mark 12:17), essentially separating earthly and spiritual duties.
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Okay, Socrates.
STFU dude. You judgemental, mental midget.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
So, let me recap your story for you: You dumped your family religion and went off to fight in Vietnam, where you discovered your true calling: calmly and efficiently shooting people from a helicopter. But thanks to a helicopter accident, you busted your ankles.
So when you returned to civilian life, you tried making $ like your dad, managing a fast food franchise. But your busted ankles hurt too much to let you stand on your feet all day, so you got a degree in engineering and played a small part in designing control systems for chemical plants.
Took some of your savings and made a what-the-hell play on Texas oil and the rest is history. At least, according to you: you got lucky, and got wealthy owning the rights to a commodity producing piece of land and making other people work for you.
Moral of the story?
You can be a right bastard.
You can be a sociopath who enjoys killing.
You can work hard and get an education.
But if you REALLY want to get wealthy, get lucky.
Or marry someone wealthy, or inherit your parents' wealth.
SECOND:
There is one religious lesson I learned and always obey. It is the same one that Trump always violates. Trump and his Trumptards claim to follow, but don't, because tax-cheating and lawlessness feel good for Trumptards when they think they can get away with it:
Oh, well!
At least there's that!
Must make up for you being an utterly miserable person!
*****
OK, I'll stop picking in your now. Clearly, you're very angry about something. But your constant lying and trying to make other people miserable isn't gonna fix whatever's bothering you.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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Quote:Trump's lawyer was jailed for years because he delivered payments to Stormy Daniels. Trump's DOJ put him in jail. Later, Trump was convicted over the same payments. Is it too hard for a Trumptard to understand that Trump's bad actions cause Trump's legal troubles? I already know the answer from every Trumptard I asked. I also know they get into legal trouble, too, and believe the world is unfair to them, which is why they voted for Trump. He will change the world for them. Changing the world as a whole seems easier than changing themselves a tiny bit, at least to them.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Okay, Socrates.
STFU dude. You judgemental, mental midget.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/11/22/former-donald-trump-lawyer-michael-coh
en-finishes-criminal-sentence.html
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Elon Musk Biographer Details Why He Thinks Billionaire Is ‘Going Mad’
Josh Fiallo | Jan. 7 2025 10:23AM EST
https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musk-biographer-seth-abramson-detai
ls-why-he-thinks-billionaire-is-going-mad/
An Elon Musk biographer has sounded the alarm that the world’s richest man may be losing his mind.
The Harvard Law-educated biographer Seth Abramson speculated Monday that Musk might be “going mad” in a setting for all to see—brought on by his growing stress, history of mental illness, and self-described heavy drug use.
“I legitimately believe Elon Musk may be going mad,” he posted to X. “I’m a Musk biographer who has been tracking his online behavior for the last two years—and given that he’s admitted to all of mental illness, heavy drug use, and crippling stress, it is now reasonable to fear he is deeply unwell.”
Abramson, 48, added that Musk’s mental state could have consequences worldwide.
“His private struggles would not be of general concern except they have dramatic public consequences,” he said. “His holdings across many civilization-essential industries and the fact that he’s the incoming POTUS mean that his madness and increasing incitement of violence endanger us all.”
The biographer’s “informed warning,” as he described it, comes after Musk went on a posting frenzy about British politics that has ruffled more than a few feathers across the pond. A tracking website says that Musk has averaged 62 posts daily for the last week.
It appears Musk’s relentless posting—and near-constant presence near Donald Trump—may also be annoying some in the MAGA world, including its leader.
It was reported shortly after the election that Musk had a “massive blow-up” with a Trump aide inside Mar-a-Lago regarding the leaking of Trump’s cabinet picks.
More recently, The New York Times journalist and “Trump whisperer” Maggie Haberman said on a podcast this weekend that “Trump does complain a bit to people about how Musk is around a lot.”
Trump hasn’t shared such a sentiment publicly. He has instead embraced Musk, 53, as his “First Buddy”—a title and relationship that conveniently came on the heels of the South Africa native pumping at least $250 million into his campaign.
Musk has reportedly been renting out the $2,000-per-night Banyan Cottage at Mar-a-Lago, from where he has been crashing the president-elect’s dinners with tech billionaires and has also sat in on personnel meetings.
From his new South Florida digs, Musk has also shown that he plans to flex his immense influence beyond U.S. politics. He endorsed the German far-right party Alternative for Germany ahead of the country’s snap election last month and has since diverted his Twitter fingers to trying to overthrow the current British government.
Abramson suggested the outgoing Biden Administration should use its final weeks in power to put in safeguards to protect against—or at least try to limit—Musk before Trump steps foot in the Oval Office.
This “urgent action,” he said, could include ending U.S. contracts with him, filing lawsuits to block his Department of Government Efficiency initiative, and launching federal probes into his dealings.
“If no action is taken—and I suspect no action will be taken—what this man in his burgeoning madness does to America as POTUS in the coming years will be on the heads of not just him and those who support or enable him but those who ignored urgent, informed warnings like this one,” Abramson concluded.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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When Trump began overt saber-rattling against neighbors, the most obvious question to ask is whether he intends to follow through. That question, unfortunately, is difficult to answer. On the one hand, Trump almost certainly has no plan, or even concepts of a plan, to launch a hemispheric war. Seizing the uncontrolled edges of the North American continent makes sense in the board game Risk, but it has very little logic in any real-world scenario.
An easier question to answer is why Trump keeps uttering these threats. One reason is that he seems to sincerely believe that strong countries have the right to bully weaker ones. Trump has long insisted that the United States should seize smaller countries’ natural resources, and that American allies should be paying us protection money . . .
A second reason is that Trump uses his international bullying as fan service for his base.
Trump’s most recent gestures reveal his symbolic intent. To be sure, you can construct a coherent policy rationale for some kind of international deal involving Greenland. But there is little evidence that Trump is interested in any kind of practical deal. He wants to menace allies. You don’t dispatch Donald Trump Jr., whose professional expertise, to the extent he has any, is monetizing the Trump brand, to advance a real diplomatic or military strategy. You send Don Jr. to entertain the base. Meanwhile, renaming the Gulf of Mexico isn’t even plausibly related to any economic or territorial objective. It’s pure symbolic bluster.
Much more at https://www.msn.com/en-us/politics/international-relations/the-politic
al-logic-of-trump-s-international-threats/ar-AA1x7UYe
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Something strange is happening in the bond market. Is it Trump?
Quote:https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/is-there-an-insanity-premium-on-int
Look at the dynamic over the past few days. Jeff Stein of the Washington Post reported that people around Trump were planning a fairly limited, strategic set of tariffs rather than the destructive trade war against everyone Trump has been promising; Trump quickly responded with a Truth Social post calling the report “Fake News” and declaring that he does too intend to impose high tariffs on everyone and everything.
In short, Sources: “Trump isn’t as crazy as he looks.” Trump: “Yes I am!”
Then, as if to dispel any lingering suspicions that he might be saner than he appears, Trump held a press conference in which he appeared to call for annexing Canada, possibly invading Greenland, seizing the Panama Canal and renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. This morning CNN reported that Trump is considering declaring a national economic emergency — in a nation with low unemployment and inflation! — to justify a huge rise in tariffs.
What does this have to do with interest rates? There’s near-unanimity among economists that Trump’s announced agenda of high tariffs, tax cuts and mass deportations would be highly inflationary, although probably not right away; whatever Trump does, inflation will probably remain low for much of this year. Still, if he were to go through with any substantial part of that agenda, the Fed would definitely have to put further interest rate cuts on hold. In fact, it might well feel the need to raise rates again.
True, Trump — who declared yesterday that rates are still too high — would fly into a rage if the Fed were to raise rates. In fact, he might well demand that the Fed continue cutting rates. And given the way almost every prominent American institution has been prostrating itself, are we sure — really, really sure — that the Fed would be able to maintain its independence? Can we envision Fed officials hiding in their offices as a MAGA mob storms the Eccles Building? Actually, yes.
But if the Fed does let itself be pressured, that would eventually mean higher, not lower rates. Many economics students learn about how Richard Nixon pressured the Fed to keep rates low before the 1972 election, despite growing inflation concerns. The end result was to help send inflation and interest rates soaring.
erest
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Trump's minions are laying the groundwork for military action
Donald Trump appears to have taken some inspiration from Vladimir Putin's Ukraine invasion
By Heather Digby Parton | January 8, 2025 10:02AM (EST)
https://www.salon.com/2025/01/08/minions-are-laying-the-groundwork-for
-military-action/
We have every reason to believe that he's serious about some kind of military action in Mexico. (And don't be surprised if he proposes a Venezuelan invasion. He wanted to do it in his last term.)
Nobody voted for any of this. It wasn't even a "vibe" in last November's election.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Trump's minions are laying the groundwork for military action
Donald Trump appears to have taken some inspiration from Vladimir Putin's Ukraine invasion
By Heather Digby Parton | January 8, 2025 10:02AM (EST)
https://www.salon.com/2025/01/08/minions-are-laying-the-groundwork-for
-military-action/
We have every reason to believe that he's serious about some kind of military action in Mexico. (And don't be surprised if he proposes a Venezuelan invasion. He wanted to do it in his last term.)
Nobody voted for any of this. It wasn't even a "vibe" in last November's election.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
I'm fine with it.
If we're going to spend money on the military, we might as well spend it fighting an actual enemy.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:Pope Francis says Donald Trump is not a Christian because Christians build bridges, not walls.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I'm fine with it.
If we're going to spend money on the military, we might as well spend it fighting an actual enemy.
You gotta be pretty goddamn evil to be denounced by the Pope.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/pope-says-trump-is-not-christian
-for-plan-to-build-a-wall-on-u-s-mexico-border
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Pope Francis says Donald Trump is not a Christian because Christians build bridges, not walls.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I'm fine with it.
If we're going to spend money on the military, we might as well spend it fighting an actual enemy.
You gotta be pretty goddamn evil to be denounced by the Pope.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/pope-says-trump-is-not-christian
-for-plan-to-build-a-wall-on-u-s-mexico-border
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Pope Francis is a DEI, kid-fucking plant.
Nobody cares.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:You are special, 6ix.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Pope Francis is a DEI, kid-fucking plant.
Nobody cares.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:You are special, 6ix.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Pope Francis is a DEI, kid-fucking plant.
Nobody cares.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Maybe we should put it in the predictions thread.
You're not Catholic. No shame in admitting that you think the chances are greater than a coinflip that he's had more than his fair share of altar boys.
Besides... Nobody's given one single shit what any pope had to say about anything since Sinead O'Connor ripped up John Paul's glamour shots. Especially not any of you godless Democrats.
--------------------------------------------------
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The problem of pardons
Kurt Gödel, the great logician and philosopher, claimed that a loophole exists in the US Constitution that would allow the president to establish himself as dictator. The story goes that he was about to expound on this theory at his hearing to obtain US citizenship but was cut off by Albert Einstein, lest his speculations ruin what should have been a routine proceeding.
I’ve been interested in this question since I first heard the story in college.
And to me it seems that Gödel must have been thinking of the pardon power. This has frequently been abused, mostly in banal ways, by lame-duck presidents to pull selfish stunts with no grounding in the public interest. Nothing particularly terrible has ever occurred due to presidential pardons. And yet, it is an extraordinarily broad power with no real checks or limiting principles.
Suppose Kash Patel shows up at FBI headquarters and says he wants to identify the most hardcore MAGA special agents and recruit them to a small elite team. What’s their job? To do illegal wiretaps against Trump’s political enemies in order to blackmail them. Someone on the team says, “Director that’s illegal! I’m all for egregious abuses of power, but I also don’t want to get in trouble.” And he says,” don’t worry, POTUS has you covered with pardons.”
Meanwhile, DC is not a state, which means that we technically don’t have any state laws or state court system. Of course, in practice, we do have a local criminal code and local courts that enforce it. But constitutionally speaking, these are federal laws and federal courts, and all our local prosecutions are handled by a US attorney rather than an elected district attorney. And this means the president could pardon people for random muggings or assaults or murders in DC. Which is to say that if one of the president’s aides were to shoot an opposition member of Congress (or just an intra-party critic) on the street, the president could pardon him. It’s not just that the country could become a dictatorship in this way (any country can become a dictatorship), but it would be perfectly within the bounds of the constitution.
Needless to say, I would be extremely surprised if Trump has Hakeem Jeffries assassinated later this month. But bad actors (as Republicans know better than Democrats when talking about “normal” crime) probe boundaries to see what they can get away with. Trump got in hot water after 1/6, but ultimately he got away with it. He won the nomination, and he won the general election. He’s stated his intention to pardon the perpetrators, and by all accounts, he’s going to do it. If he gets away with that with minimal intra-party pushback or criticism, he’ll try more stuff. And we’ll see what happens.
More at https://www.slowboring.com/p/four-years-later?r=87ery&utm_campaign
=post&utm_medium=web
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Elon Musk: A trillion here, a trillion there; whatever
By Tami Luhby | January 9, 2025
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/09/politics/elon-musk-backtracks-federal-b
udget-cuts/index.html
Elon Musk’s claim that he could cut $2 trillion from the federal budget showed he couldn’t do arithmetic. Elon has finally acknowledged this, but he tries to make a virtue of necessity:
Quote:Look, here’s what’s gonna happen. Congress will eventually pass a bill that will cut a few billion from federal programs while making earlier tax cuts for the wealthy and businesses permanent. As a result, the deficit and debt will skyrocket. When the GOP loses their Congressional majorities in the midterms, they can go back to flogging Democrats for the deficits they created. Rinse and repeat.
Elon Musk has walked back his previous claim that he could cut at least $2 trillion from the federal budget, saying Wednesday that half that amount would be “an epic outcome.”
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The problem of pardons
Kurt Gödel, the great logician and philosopher, claimed that a loophole exists in the US Constitution that would allow the president to establish himself as dictator. The story goes that he was about to expound on this theory at his hearing to obtain US citizenship but was cut off by Albert Einstein, lest his speculations ruin what should have been a routine proceeding.
I’ve been interested in this question since I first heard the story in college.
And to me it seems that Gödel must have been thinking of the pardon power. This has frequently been abused, mostly in banal ways, by lame-duck presidents to pull selfish stunts with no grounding in the public interest. Nothing particularly terrible has ever occurred due to presidential pardons. And yet, it is an extraordinarily broad power with no real checks or limiting principles.
Suppose Kash Patel shows up at FBI headquarters and says he wants to identify the most hardcore MAGA special agents and recruit them to a small elite team. What’s their job? To do illegal wiretaps against Trump’s political enemies in order to blackmail them. Someone on the team says, “Director that’s illegal! I’m all for egregious abuses of power, but I also don’t want to get in trouble.” And he says,” don’t worry, POTUS has you covered with pardons.”
Meanwhile, DC is not a state, which means that we technically don’t have any state laws or state court system. Of course, in practice, we do have a local criminal code and local courts that enforce it. But constitutionally speaking, these are federal laws and federal courts, and all our local prosecutions are handled by a US attorney rather than an elected district attorney. And this means the president could pardon people for random muggings or assaults or murders in DC. Which is to say that if one of the president’s aides were to shoot an opposition member of Congress (or just an intra-party critic) on the street, the president could pardon him. It’s not just that the country could become a dictatorship in this way (any country can become a dictatorship), but it would be perfectly within the bounds of the constitution.
Needless to say, I would be extremely surprised if Trump has Hakeem Jeffries assassinated later this month. But bad actors (as Republicans know better than Democrats when talking about “normal” crime) probe boundaries to see what they can get away with. Trump got in hot water after 1/6, but ultimately he got away with it. He won the nomination, and he won the general election. He’s stated his intention to pardon the perpetrators, and by all accounts, he’s going to do it. If he gets away with that with minimal intra-party pushback or criticism, he’ll try more stuff. And we’ll see what happens.
More at https://www.slowboring.com/p/four-years-later?r=87ery&utm_campaign
=post&utm_medium=web
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Well you just laid out the exact actions of the Democratic party under Clinton/Obama/Biden* leadership.
Thanks for that.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Elon Musk: A trillion here, a trillion there; whatever
By Tami Luhby | January 9, 2025
https://www.cnn.com/2025/01/09/politics/elon-musk-backtracks-federal-b
udget-cuts/index.html
Elon Musk’s claim that he could cut $2 trillion from the federal budget showed he couldn’t do arithmetic. Elon has finally acknowledged this, but he tries to make a virtue of necessity:Quote:Look, here’s what’s gonna happen. Congress will eventually pass a bill that will cut a few billion from federal programs while making earlier tax cuts for the wealthy and businesses permanent. As a result, the deficit and debt will skyrocket. When the GOP loses their Congressional majorities in the midterms, they can go back to flogging Democrats for the deficits they created. Rinse and repeat.
Elon Musk has walked back his previous claim that he could cut at least $2 trillion from the federal budget, saying Wednesday that half that amount would be “an epic outcome.”
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Nobody is a fan of Tami's fan-fiction.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Trump’s Obsession With Greenland Is Funny. But It’s Sending a Dangerous Message to the Exact Wrong People.
Putin and Xi are listening.
By Fred Kaplan | Jan 10, 2025 5:45 AM
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/01/trump-greenland-gulf-of-am
erica-panama-canada-putin-xi.html
Trump’s rants have a dangerous effect. His rhetoric is not different from Vladimir Putin’s on Ukraine or Xi Jinping’s on Taiwan. Russia and China arguably have sounder — more historically and culturally grounded — claims on Ukraine and Taiwan than the United States has on Greenland, Canada, or Panama. Trump probably won’t send an army to intimidate or conquer foreign lands, but his implicit claim that he has the right to do so sends a message to Putin and Xi that Trump wouldn’t mind if they went ahead and enacted their claims on Ukraine and Taiwan.
Meanwhile, the once and future president alienates Canada and Mexico, our democratic neighbors and two of our closest trading partners. He is alienating all of South America by invoking horrible (and not so ancient) memories of gringo domination. He insults two charter members of NATO who have long stood as reliable strategic partners. And he is emulating — and flashing what could fairly be interpreted as a green light to — the world’s two dictators who are most able and tempted to upset the international norms about preserving sovereign borders.
And his second term in office hasn’t even begun.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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No immigrant has taken your job. You were laid off by a capitalist who required cheap labor and took advantage of that immigrant to increase his profits, and nothing makes him happier than to hear you blame the immigrant and not him.
https://x.com/mhdksafa/status/1575493724368273409
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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