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 138 of 479
President Donald Trump said Sunday that he won’t back down on his sweeping tariffs on imports from most of the world unless countries even out their trade with the U.S. (Every country must sell less to the U.S. than the U.S. sells to that country or else there shall be high Trump tariffs on goods sold by that country.)
“I spoke to a lot of leaders, European, Asian, from all over the world,” Trump said. “They’re dying to make a deal. And I said, we’re not going to have deficits with your country. We’re not going to do that, because to me a deficit is a loss. We’re going to have surpluses or at worst, going to be breaking even.”
Trump has long denounced foreign trade deals as unfair to the U.S. He is gambling that voters will be willing to endure higher prices for everyday items to enact his economic vision.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-tariffs-recession-financial-markets-n
egotiations-retaliation-860760cdc1aa2cc58853c9aab987e36d
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Right now, Bernie Sanders sees not merely a political battle, but a moral and constitutional crisis.
I asked, "Some Republicans chuckle when they see President Trump talk about pursuing a third term. Are you laughing when you hear it?"
"No, I don't," Sanders said. "The idea of a third term? Why not? They don't believe in the rule of law. They don't believe in the Constitution. So, yeah, I would take that seriously."
"That's a serious thing to say as a U.S. senator, pseudo-democracy, not a full democracy?" I asked.
"Look, you get one vote, and Elon Musk can spend $270 million to help elect Trump. Does that sound like a democracy to you?"
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bernie-sanders-says-u-s-under-trump-is-fa
cing-unprecedented-level-of-danger/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:What the Comfort Class Doesn’t Get
Originally posted by second:Quote:"What is your message to Americans who want to retire right now and have just seen their lifetime savings drop significantly?"
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I hear a lot of screaming out of you, but nothing much else going on in reality.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated, "I think that's a false narrative. Americans who want to retire right now, Americans who have put away for years in their savings accounts, I think they don't look at the day-to-day fluctuations of what's happening." He further explained that "most Americans in a 401K have what's called a 60/40 account... [which is] down 5 or 6 percent on the year. People have a long-term view... If you look day-to-day, week-to-week, it's very risky. Over the long term, it's a good investment."
Market Plummets After Trump’s New Tariff Announcement
His remarks came just days after the Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered consecutive drops totaling over 2,200 points, following Trump's announcement of sweeping tariffs — including a 10 percent universal rate on all imports and much steeper ones for certain countries.
Critics Compare Bessent to 'Marie Antoinette' in Viral Reaction
"There's something very Marie Antoinette about maybe the wealthiest Treasury Secretary ever saying no one is worried about their 401ks that Trump just crashed."
"Every time Scott Bessent tries to downplay the damage Trump's policies are doing to everyday Americans, just remember: he's worth over half a billion dollars and lived in a $22 million mansion he called the Pink Palace."
Bessent “has a firmly established public record identifying himself as the stupidest Treasury Secretary in history.”
People with generational wealth control a society that they don’t understand.
April 6, 2025
https://archive.ph/RFgKS
. . . in the past eight weeks, life for working-class Americans has deteriorated in real ways. Millions of senior citizens are nail-biting about their Social Security benefits. People are worried for their jobs. The costs of eggs, orange juice, and utilities are on the rise. Mortgages and medical bills need to be paid. Rents will be due. Blood pressures will spike; judgments will be clouded; debts will no doubt be incurred. And the pundits and politicians, on all sides, will watch it from a safe, comfortable distance.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Trump Is Gaslighting Us
Trump is an agent of chaos
April 5, 2025
https://archive.ph/IzRB4
The first Trump administration began with a lie.
On January 21, 2017, President Donald Trump’s then–press secretary, Sean Spicer, claimed that Trump had drawn the largest audience to ever witness a presidential inauguration. Photographs clearly showed that the assertion was false; Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, had drawn a much larger crowd at his first inauguration. But it didn’t matter.
“These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration are shameful and wrong,” Spicer said.
In one sense, Spicer’s lie was trivial. But in another sense, it mattered quite a lot, because it was a lie about a demonstrable fact. Kellyanne Conway, then a counselor to Trump, memorably defended Spicer by claiming that he was offering “alternative facts,” treating observable reality like hot wax, to be molded at will.
Fast-forward eight years. Trump is once again president. Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, was mistakenly included on a private group chat—via Signal, a nongovernmental messaging app—in which Trump-administration officials discussed a planned bombing campaign in Yemen. Goldberg reported on the reckless and devastating breach of national security. But rather than acknowledging the mistake and promising to address it, the Trump administration reflexively followed its standard approach: attack. Smear. Prevaricate.
“He is, as you know, is a sleazebag, but at the highest level,” Trump said of Goldberg. “His magazine is failing.” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who shared the most sensitive information on the group chat, wrapped his attack on Goldberg in layers of lies: “You’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again.” He added, “Nobody was texting war plans.” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on social media, “This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin.” One high-level person after another insisted that the story was much ado about nothing. The information that had been shared, they assured us, was nothing that was dangerous to disclose.
Except that it was.
. . .
Gaslighters are manipulative and controlling, comfortable belittling and insulting others. They are accomplished at denying, lying, and projecting. And sometimes, if they’re lucky enough and skilled enough, they make it to the White House. When they do, the horrors that are usually visited on an individual are instead visited on an entire nation.
At that point, the enormous machinery of the federal government, supported by outside groups and media outlets, becomes part of a massive and relentless disinformation campaign. The aim is to provoke distrust, confusion, and disorientation, which corrodes people’s confidence in institutions and undermines their grasp of reality. The ultimate goal is to divide and weaken civil society, and to undermine its ability to mobilize and cohere.
When there is no objective truth, when everyone gets to make up their own reality, their own script, and their own facts, authoritarians thrive.
“The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda,” Garry Kasparov, a Russian pro-democracy leader, wrote in 2016. “It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”
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:"What is your message to Americans who want to retire right now and have just seen their lifetime savings drop significantly?"
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I hear a lot of screaming out of you, but nothing much else going on in reality.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
"Sorry you bought into the lie. Better luck next life."
"I bet you aren't going to listen to Paul Krugman about anything anymore."
"At least this isn't the 1800s. You probably wouldn't have lived past 40, assuming you were lucky enough to survive birth and infancy. You had a great run."
"Hope you paid off your house."
"I live off $7,000 per year in the mid-2020's."
Pick one.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:You are a true believer in Trump, a group that has tens of millions of believers. There was another group of true believers, but in a certain Saudi Arabian whose group only had tens of thousands of believers. Trump's group can do far more damage than the Saudi Arabian's group did to America:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
"Sorry you bought into the lie. Better luck next life."
"I bet you aren't going to listen to Paul Krugman about anything anymore."
"At least this isn't the 1800s. You probably wouldn't have lived past 40, assuming you were lucky enough to survive birth and infancy. You had a great run."
"Hope you paid off your house."
"I live off $7,000 per year in the mid-2020's."
Pick one.
Is Trump a Bigger Threat to America than Usama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda?
Juan Cole | 04/07/2025
https://www.juancole.com/2025/04/bigger-threat-american.html
Donald Trump has inflicted more damage on the United States’s markets than did Usam Bin Laden and al-Qaeda on 9/11.
The attacks of that date caused the US financial authorities to to close down the NYSE and the Nasdaq for a week, until September 17. This was unprecedented.
When trading resumed that week of September 17, 2001, Marc Davis explains at Investopedia, over the following five days, the Dow Jones average decreased more than 14%, the S&P 500 tumbled 11.6% and Nasdaq fell a whopping 16%. The attacks wiped $1.4 trillion of value off the US markets. Even just the first day of trading after the attacks, the DJIA plummeted 684 points, down 7.1%. At the time, that was the largest loss for a single trading session in the whole history of the exchange.
Trump’s crackpot tariffs have wiped $5 trillion of the value of US markets and that appears only to be the beginning.
Even abroad, trading was halted today (Monday) in Japan after shares on the Nikkei 225 fell nearly nearly 8%. This is 9/11- level carnage.
On September 11, 2001, a small group of terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center twin towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. One thing was sure. They wanted to inflict the maximum damage on the United States.
Al-Qaeda militants were driven by a form of Third Worldism, convinced that the US superpower was impoverishing people by taking their petroleum and other resources for pennies on the dollar, using bullying tactics to talk down the price of energy to benefit its own economy. They saw the US as a bulwark of dictatorships in the region, including in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. They bitterly resented the Israeli occupation of the Muslim holy city of Jerusalem, with its threat to the al-Aqsa Mosque complex, the third holiest site for Muslims. But despite their adoption of an Islamic veneer, the religious tradition of the Prophet Muhammad, the Qur’an, and high ethics and philosophy did not drive them. Indeed, many were lawless young men seeking a James Bond lifestyle, visiting strip clubs and bars, buying golden cigarette lighters, and justifying their libertinism on the grounds that they were sacrificing for a higher cause. Bin Laden admitted that they were “not like other Muslims,” by which he likely meant that they were antinomians and did not consider themselves under the law. The monstrous act of terror that killed nearly 3,000 innocent people, including Muslims, was strictly forbidden in Islamic law. They did not care about Muslim ethical principles. They constructed a cult for themselves in which they had drunk the Koolaid and were determined to pour it down the throats of thousands of others.
I spent many years studying al-Qaeda and telling anyone who would listen how I thought it could be defeated. I regularly went out for consulting in Washington, D.C. and am proud of those efforts. Most of its grievances were based on errors of fact or interpretation or both. And anyway, those grievances cou
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Markets Swing Wildly After Trump Holds His Ground on Tariff Plan
S&P 500 briefly hits bear-market territory and oil falls; President Trump stands firm despite alarm on Wall Street
Last Updated: April 7, 2025 at 2:30 PM EDT
https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-trump-tariffs-trade-war-
04-07-25
A false dawn on the tariff front fueled a brief midmorning rally Monday, with the S&P 500 surging some 7% from its low on the day, before the administration clarified that there will be no delay in implementing new levies.
The episode, which touched off wild swings throughout the trading day, highlights the increasing desperation on Wall Street as the trade-war rout of 2025 extends into a new week.
In afternoon trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.8%, about 330 points. The Nasdaq Composite turned fractionally higher and the S&P 500 was flat, with all three indexes rallying after 1 p.m. ET.
The earlier rally followed erroneous headlines that President Trump was considering a 90-day pause in tariffs. The initial reaction showed how much desire there is among investors to return to the well-trod territory of administrations that want to assist markets and stock declines that are quickly followed by sharp bouncebacks.
This time, some major investors are starting to sound off publicly about what they see as the dangers in the shift to large tariffs. So far, though, it's clear that President Trump and his advisers aren't humming the same tune.
Trump said Monday he plans to add an additional 50% tariff on China starting Wednesday if the country doesn’t withdraw its retaliatory tariff increase on the U.S. “Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated!” he wrote.
Stocks took their latest leg down in response. The S&P stood close to bear-market territory, defined as a 20%-plus decline from a recent peak. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell into a bear market last week.
Wall Street's "fear gauge," the VIX, leapt as investors braced for further volatility ahead, and global markets recoiled. The index has more than doubled in the last month.
Treasurys were volatile, as investors considered how tariffs could both slow short-term growth and rekindle inflation, complicating the task of the Federal Reserve. Futures prices showed traders stepping up bets on multiple rate cuts this year. Early Monday, Trump renewed his call for the Fed to ease policy and said his policies were bringing down oil prices and interest rates.
In Asia, where many economies are highly trade-reliant, stocks plunged. Hong Kong's main equity benchmark lost 13%, in its worst day since the Asian financial crisis. Indexes in Shanghai, Taipei and Tokyo fell between 7% and 10%.
In Europe, the Stoxx Europe 600 sank more than 4%. Bitcoin and oil prices fell.
Last week, U.S. stocks lost $6.6 trillion in value during a two-day washout after Trump announced larger tariffs than Wall Street expected and China said it would match the duties on all U.S.-made goods.
Here’s what else you need to know:
• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the first world leader to hold in-person talks with Trump about the tariffs. U.S. officials said more than so countries had reached out to start negotiations.
• The Chinese Communist Party’s flagship newspaper said Chinese policymakers were well-prepared to cope with U.S. tariffs by using policy tools including monetary’ and fiscal easing.
• Influential Wall Street voices raised concerns. JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon warned about the effect of tariffs on growth, prices, and the economic alliances that have underpinned America's “extraordinary standing in world affairs.”
• Meanwhile, billionaire investor Bill Ackman called for a 90-day pause on the implementation of the tariffs, saying they are a mistake.
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 a true believer in Trump,
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
"Sorry you bought into the lie. Better luck next life."
"I bet you aren't going to listen to Paul Krugman about anything anymore."
"At least this isn't the 1800s. You probably wouldn't have lived past 40, assuming you were lucky enough to survive birth and infancy. You had a great run."
"Hope you paid off your house."
"I live off $7,000 per year in the mid-2020's."
Pick one.
No. I'm not.
I've never once exhibited 5% of the religious fervor that are on display here for the Democratic Party every day by you and the other idiot. I can go a whole month without even mentioning Trump's name. You can't go a single day without him plaguing your every thought.
I don't know how any of this is going to work out. I've already said that I've never seen this movie before. The one thing I care about and I'm rooting for is a better life for Americans in the future. Your party fucked everyone from every direction for long enough.
Don't ask me to feel sorry for people in their 60's that weren't smart with their money while the gettin' was still good. You will get no tears from the GenX guy who owns his house outright and has only grossed less than $250,000 in his entire life.
Because I'm just sitting here laughing at all of you lemmings and your lifetime of mindless consumerism and consumption. Filling the only roles that most of us were destined for like good little soldier ants.
If they want to bitch they don't have enough money in their retirement account, the first thing they really need to be doing is figuring out a budget that isn't in the clouds. Then they should take a real hard look at how they spent their entire lives wasting money away on bullshit that they didn't need and wishing that they'd done better.
Maybe they should think twice about buying that McMansion in retirement, and spending another $60,000 to immediately knock out the jacuzzi and put in a giant walk in shower in its place. And good luck to them who already made that mistake and have to spend $8,000 every winter heating the 30 foot cathedral ceiling on top of their $25,000 per year property tax bill.
94% of the stock market is owned by 8% of the people. 50% of people are in at least $7,000 worth of credit card debt and have zero assets and can't even afford to pay for a $1,000 emergency without taking out more debt to pay for it.
We don't relate with your kind at all, and we don't want to.
Fuck your stock market.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:I have heard that from every Trumptard I have fired. They were told to stop doing what would eventually get them fired. When told for the last time why they are being fired, they can't recognize themselves for being lazy / stupid / obnoxious / incompetent / dishonest / crazy / etc. Trump has all of those defects, plus a few more such as rapist, tax-cheater, and nonstop liar who loves the sound of his own voice.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
No. I'm not.
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:I have heard that from every Trumptard I have fired.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
No. I'm not.
I'd stop mentioning that online if I were you.
But of course, if I were you, I'd be a 27 year old chronic beat-off living in my mom's basement, too cowardly to put on my black garb and set shit on fire with whatever's left of my dead-beat 27 year old chronic beat-off friends who haven't died of overdoses or killed themselves yet.
I've heard whispering that there might be some upcoming court cases involving people who voted for Trump who got fired from their employer for their politics.
Not a great environment for any person who owned a business and went online bragging all the time about who they fired becuase they didn't agree with their politics...
What with Elon Musk updating all of our tech, allowing the remaining mandatory departments to seemlessly communicate all sorts of things in micro-seconds that used to take 6 months of filing paperwork through the tunnel of three other agencies that only existed to put a stamp on something and hand it off to the next superfluous government employee at the next superfluous agency; rinse and repeat.
... and a Supreme Court that is ready to make that a president going forward if it's brought to them...
... with an aimless and desperate Democratic Party fast-tracking all of their greatest hits through the lower courts and pushing them right on up to only get shot down again, and again, and again. All in hopes that they can finally get Trump on one thing. That one thing finally sticks...
You guys are fucking cooked buddy. You still don't even realize how the government is never going to operate the way that it did before. That world is gone now.
If you really were a business owner and had any money, you would be the saddest billionaire on the planet with the way you choose to live the last few years of your life.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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