Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 16:05
VIEWED: 185382
PAGE 19 of 479
Trump and Elon Musk Just Pulled Off Another Purge—and It’s a Scary One
Did Musk’s alleged effort to access the government’s payment systems have Trump’s blessing? Or was he going rogue? Either scenario is bad.
By Greg Sargent | January 31, 2025
https://newrepublic.com/article/191014/trump-elon-musk-treasury-purge
Typically only a small number of career officials control Treasury’s payment systems. Run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the sensitive systems control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to households, businesses and more nationwide. Tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people across the country rely on the systems, which are responsible for distributing Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions.
Former officials I spoke with were at a loss to explain why Musk would want such access. They noted that while we don’t yet know Musk’s motive, the move could potentially give DOGE the power to turn off all kinds of government payments in a targeted way. They said we now must establish if Musk is seeking to carry out what Trump tried via his federal funding freeze: Turn off government payments previously authorized by Congress. The White House rescinded the freeze after a national outcry, but Trump’s spokesperson vowed the hunt for spending to halt will continue. The former officials are asking: Is this Treasury power grab a way to execute that?
“Anybody who would have access to these systems is in a position to turn off funding selectively,” said Michael Linden, a former OMB official who is now director of Families Over Billionaires, a group fighting Trump’s tax cuts for the rich. “The only reason Musk wants to get himself in there must be because he wants to turn some things off.”
These officials describe these systems as almost akin to a series of faucets. Congress, by authorizing payments, fills the tanks and decides where the water will ultimately flow. The team overseen by the now-departing Lebryk in effect is in control of the spigots, these officials said.
What also alarms these officials is that this is unfolding even as a debt ceiling crisis looms. When the government is on the verge of defaulting on its obligations, these officials tell me, it’s Lebryk and his team who carefully monitor the situation to determine, to the greatest extent possible, on what date it will no longer be able to meet its obligations. This team monitors the water levels, these officials say, noting that this is how Treasury knows what to say in those letters that periodically warn Congress that a breach is approaching.
As it happens, this is precisely why we want career, nonpolitical civil servants to be in charge of the spigots. To put it delicately, this is some really complicated shit, and we want the process to be administered in a totally nonpoliticized way. Letting someone like Musk anywhere near it risks corrupting it quite deeply.
“The payment systems are controlled by a small number of career officials precisely to protect them and the full faith and credit of the United States from political interference,” said Jesse Lee, who was a senior adviser to the National Economic Council under President Joe Biden. Or as Linden put it: “This is exactly the kind of thing you do not want political appointees getting involved in.”
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Trump Crash Rhetoric Knocked By 'Miracle On Hudson' Pilot
Jan 31, 2025, 1:50 pm EST
Pilot Sully Sullenberger, who famously landed a damaged plane on the Hudson River in New York in 2009, said he was "disgusted" but "not surprised" by President Donald Trump's point-scoring rhetoric surrounding this week's crash in Washington.
Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger became a national hero after calmly piloting his US Airways airliner onto the water following a bird strike, in an episode remembered as the "Miracle on the Hudson."
A 2016 film "Sully," starring Tom Hanks and directed by Clint Eastwood, additionally wowed audiences with its account of his emergency landing.
https://www.barrons.com/news/trump-crash-rhetoric-knocked-by-miracle-o
n-hudson-pilot-0637547a?refsec=topics_afp-news
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The American science funding catastrophe
By Scott Aaronson | Jan 30, 2025
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8609
It’s been almost impossible to get reliable information this week, but here’s what my sources are telling me:
There is still a complete freeze on money being disbursed from the US National Science Foundation. Well, there’s total chaos in the federal government much more broadly, a lot of it more immediately consequential than the science freeze, but I’ll stick for now to my little corner of the universe.
The funding freeze has continued today, despite the fact that Trump supposedly rescinded it yesterday after a mass backlash. Basically, program directors remain in a state of confusion, paralysis, and fear. Where laws passed by Congress order them to do one thing, but the new Executive Orders seem to order the opposite, they’re simply doing nothing, waiting for clarification, and hoping to preserve their jobs.
Hopefully the funding will restart in a matter of days, after NSF and other agencies go through and cancel any expense that can be construed as DEI-related. Hopefully this will be like the short-lived Muslim travel ban of 2017: a “shock-and-awe” authoritarian diktat that thrills the base but quickly melts on contact with the reality of how our civilization works.
The alternative is painful to contemplate. If the current freeze drags on for months, tens of thousands of grad students and postdocs will no longer get stipends, and will be forced to quit. Basic science in the US will essentially grind to a halt — and even if it eventually restarts, an entire cohort of young physicists, mathematicians, and biologists will have been lost, while China and other countries race ahead in those fields.
Also, even if the funding does restart, the NSF and other federal agencies are now under an indefinite hiring freeze. If not quickly lifted, this will shrink these agencies and cripple their ability to carry out their missions.
If you voted for Trump, because you wanted to take a hammer to the woke deep state or whatever, then please understand: you may or may not have realized you were voting for this, exactly, but this is what you’ve gotten. In place of professionals who you dislike and who are sometimes systematically wrong, the American spaceship is now being piloted by drunken baboons, mashing the controls to see what happens. I hope you like the result.
Meanwhile, to anyone inside or outside the NSF who has more information about this rapidly-evolving crisis: I strongly encourage you to share whatever you know in the comments section. Or get in touch with me by email. I’ll of course respect all wishes for anonymity, and I won’t share anything without permission. But you now have a chance — some might even say an enviable chance — to put your loyalty to science and your country above your fear of a bully.
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:
President Trump's planned tariffs could effectively tax the average U.S. household an extra $830 this year, an analysis from the nonpartisan nonprofit Tax Foundation finds.
Here's what your guy did...
https://waysandmeans.house.gov/2024/08/14/chairman-smith-the-biden-har
ris-administration-has-made-cost-of-living-too-expensive/
Families Falling Behind on Bills: Over one-third of families (37 percent) paid a late fee in the past year.
Everything Costs More: Prices have increased 20.3 percent since the beginning of the Biden-Harris Administration.
Americans Making Less: Real wages and benefits have fallen 3.9 percent since the beginning of the Biden-Harris Administration.
Inflation Above Fed’s Target: For 40 straight months, inflation has been above the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target.
Inflation Higher Than Wages: Inflation outpaced wages for 26 straight months under the Biden-Harris Administration.
Historic Interest Rates: Under the Biden-Harris Administration, interest rates hit their highest levels in 23 years.
Mortgage Costs 85% Higher: The monthly mortgage payment for a median priced new home has increased by $970 and is 85 percent higher than when President Biden and Vice President Harris took office in January 2021.
$1 Trillion+ Credit Card Debt: Credit card interest rates are at the highest level in more than three decades, while consumer credit debt has exceeded $1 trillion for five calendar quarters and the number of Americans struggling to pay credit card bills has increased to the highest level since March 2012. Nearly 11 percent of credit card balances are more than 90 days past due.
Shrinking Savings: Thanks to higher prices, families have spent the entirety of their pandemic savings by 2024, and they are able to save less of their income. At 3.4 percent, the personal savings rate is near its historic lows.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
(6ixStringJack, Trump can extort $10 billion from Paramount. The Winds of Change are blowing.)
Paramount may reportedly settle Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against CBS so his administration doesn’t try to block its planned merger with Skydance
Good. They've earned it.
Too bad for them that they joined a cult.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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I've got to keep relevant stuff to the top here because Second can't find one of his own 2 dozen threads to spam.
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Go fuck yourself, 6ixStringJack. Trump fired all of the upper echelon who control air traffic. He told all the lower level people to quit, 2,000,000 of them, starting at the beginning of this week. They have until the end of next week to make a decision. He is offering them 8 months of cash to quit. It is 8 months of vacation time. Some of them decided not to work the rest of the week in the control tower. Since Trump will be doing the investigation of himself and the accident, there won't be any facts if he can help it about what he did to the people who run the safety system. When some facts do come out, Trump and you will say the Truth is Fake. 6ixStringJack, Go Fuck Yourself.
FAA’s diversity push includes focus on hiring people with ‘severe intellectual’ and ‘psychiatric’ disabilities
https://nypost.com/2024/01/14/news/faas-diversity-push-includes-hiring
-people-with-intellectual-and-psychiatric-disabilities/
Quote:
The Federal Aviation Administration is actively recruiting workers who suffer “severe intellectual” disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiative spelled out on the agency’s website.
“Targeted disabilities are those disabilities that the Federal government, as a matter of policy, has identified for special emphasis in recruitment and hiring,” the FAA’s website states. “They include hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability and dwarfism.”
The initiative is part of the FAA’s “Diversity and Inclusion” hiring plan, which claims “diversity is integral to achieving FAA’s mission of ensuring safe and efficient travel across our nation and beyond.”
The FAA’s website shows the agency’s guidelines on diversity hiring were last updated on March 23, 2022.
The FAA, which is overseen by Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s Department of Transportation, is a government agency charged with regulating civil aviation and employs roughly 45,000 people.
Big Gay Pete again, huh? The idiot out of podunk Indiana who fucked up everything for years and was only hired because he enjoyed bouncing on his boy's dick.
Quote:
All eyes have been on the FAA and airline industry in recent days, after a plug door on a Boeing 737 Max 9 blew out during an Alaska Airlines flight on Jan. 5.
Good luck if you need to use planes in the near future.
The whole industry now is run by retards, idiots and the unqualified.
......................
Another close call ahead of FAA safety summit (March 15th, 2023)
Quote:(By March 15th, of 2023)
That makes 7 close calls, this year alone.
Biden nomination for FAA withdraws (March 27th, 2023)
I absolutely hate having to put a FOX link, but the other "news" articles only refer to big old mean Republicans keeping a black guy out without showing you any footage.
Here you go...
Biden's FAA pick makes shocking move after failing to answer simple questions
We got another one...
A medical plane carrying a child patient and 5 others crashes in Philadelphia, setting homes ablaze
https://apnews.com/article/philadelphia-pa-plane-crash-incident-9f5cfa
83125137bf523558cc3738a370
Now it ain't just Laken Riley you murdered when you voted for Joe Biden. How many more planes are going to fall out of the sky now because Democrats put a bunch of retards in positions they aren't qualified for?
And now you've got Mexican Airlines flying planes into civilians buildings like they were twin towers or something.
Until last night, I didn't really give a shit because I've never been on a plane and don't ever intend on using
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Quote:Most Trumptard behavior, and their failure to thrive in America, comes down to cowardliness and paranoia. Trumptards want Trump to make their nightmares go away. They are stupid enough to believe he can.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
And now you've got Mexican Airlines flying planes into civilians buildings like they were twin towers or something.
Until last night, I didn't really give a shit because I've never been on a plane and don't ever intend on using one, but now I get to think about random planes just falling out of the sky and crashing into my house?
This shit is all coming to a very quick end now.
The world you thought you were living in 6 months ago no longer exists.
--------------------------------------------------
"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 Republican Party approve anything Trump does.
Pardoning all the J6 insurrectionists? Meh. Shutting down the NIH? Yawn. Huge tariffs on two of our most steadfast allies and neighbors? Whaddayagonnado? Firing everyone associated with investigating or prosecuting J6ers or Trump himself? Well, he's the president. Halting funding for programs that you yourselves authorized a few months ago? Everyone does it. Elon Musk and his crew mysteriously taking over the Treasury's payment system? It's all fine. We trust Elon. Threatening Denmark over Greenland? Boys will be boys. Removing mpox from the CDC site because it's mostly a virus of gay men? Huh. Starting up a scam crypto empire right before the inauguration? Man's gotta eat. Opening the floodgates on two California dams in winter and sending billions of gallons of water south to soak into a dry lakebed and be wasted—all on a whim? I'll have to get back to you. Pardoning the founder of the most notorious online drug trafficking site on the planet? Uh huh. Nominating half a dozen singularly unqualified nominees to run critical government departments? The president should get the staff he wants. Ending Secret Service protection for a few people he personally dislikes? Whatevs. Gulf of America? Why not?
With a few exceptions I can count on one hand, no Republican has raised so much as a peep about any of this. Trump is the boss and that's that. It's a poltroonish performance of astonishing depth.
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've dealt with thousands of Trumptards and they all taught me the same lesson — every one of them. I won't tell you what it is but I will hint: Your problems are caused by your behavior, not by the President. But here is a problem that the President is causing:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
President Trump's planned tariffs could effectively tax the average U.S. household an extra $830 this year, an analysis from the nonpartisan nonprofit Tax Foundation finds.
Here's what your guy did...
Alienating allies and partners means “America First” will be “America Alone.”
By David Frum | February 1, 2025, 12:48 PM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/price-america-trump-
tariffs/681546/
Trump is single-handedly reneging on 80 years of American work to persuade others to trust and rely on the United States. He is remodeling the international image of the U.S. after himself: impulsive, self-seeking, short-sighted, and untrustworthy. First-term Trump might have been dismissed as an aberration, brought to office by a fluke of America’s archaic Electoral College. A returned Trump, this time empowered by a genuine popular-vote victory, cannot be so readily dismissed. He obviously represents something deep in American politics, something likely enduring, something that other countries must take into account.
Mexico and Canada must ultimately suffer whatever the U.S. imposes on them. They cannot relocate; they have few credible options. Mexico has learned from especially bitter experience that any attempt to strike its own international deals will be vetoed by the U.S., using force if necessary.
Canadians have had an easier time, summed up by the cynical local joke: “The Americans are our best friends whether we like it or not.” But other countries have more options.
Over the past five centuries, the Euro-Atlantic world has seen the rise of one great power after another: Habsburg Spain, Bourbon and Napoleonic France, Victorian Britain, Imperial and then Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union. Each of those powers was ultimately brought down because it frightened other powers into uniting against it.
The United States since 1945 tried a different way. It reconciled the world to its dominance in great part by using that dominance for the benefit of willing partners. The United States provided security, it opened markets, it welcomed the improving prosperity of fellow democracies and like-minded allies. Who would hazard the costs and dangers of uniting to topple such a benign hegemon—at least, so long as the hegemon remained benign?
In the 21st century, the United States faces a new kind of adversary. Past rivals might have matched the U.S. in wealth, technology, or military strength, but not in all three. China today is the nearest peer power the U.S. has faced since Americans battled the British Empire in the War of 1812. To balance China while keeping the peace, the U.S. will need more and better friends than ever before. Trump is doing his utmost instead to alienate and offend those friends.
“America First” means “America Alone.” This week’s trade wars are steps on the way to future difficulties—and, unless a great infusion of better judgment or better luck suddenly occurs, future disasters.
The geopolitical verdict on the first Trump presidency could be written with a breath of relief: “Bad as it was, it could have been worse.” On the present trajectory, the verdict on the second may not come with any relief 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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What does Trump really want?
What's the end game here?
the craziest thing is that it’s not even very clear what Trump wants to happen. the fentanyl thing is obviously an excuse, the flow of Canadian fentanyl into the US is insignificant. so what does he want? https://t.co/3ijwJUa0xr
— Armand Domalewski (@ArmandDoma) February 2, 2025
Trump doesn't want anything. He just wants the tariffs. He's convinced they can raise vast sums of money that will let him enact tax cuts later this year, and he likes that. That's it. There's no 4-D chess. He just wants the money, and he either doesn't know or doesn't care that he's raising it from Americans, not foreigners.
And why Canada, Mexico, and China? For the same reason Willie Sutton robbed banks: because that's where the money is. Those three countries account for nearly half of all US imports, so they're the ones that got held up.
There's no need to overthink this.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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