Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Saturday, September 12, 2026 16:11
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PAGE 162 of 479
The Trumptards I know at work can disassemble complex machines easily, but reassembly is very hard for them. Machines repaired by my Trumptards never run right until a human undoes the Trumptards' work and puts the machine back together properly.
Breaking the Conveyor Belt
Motivated perhaps above all by culture-war grievance, in the past month Donald Trump has tried to radically reshape a century-old system of global trade.
By Nic Johnson | April 20, 2025
Nic Johnson teaches in the Law, Letters, and Society program at the University of Chicago. https://llso.uchicago.edu/people/nic-johnson
https://nic-johnson.com/
On January 26, less than a week after his inauguration, Donald Trump took a break from a day of rest and relaxation at his Miami golf course to post on social media that Colombia would face vicious “emergency” tariffs unless the country accepted two planes of deportees. President Gustavo Petro initially balked before giving in—but even that initial hesitation had by the end of the month made him less popular among Colombians than Trump himself. The country depends on access to American markets; it can’t afford even modest brinkmanship with the US.
This early victory no doubt swelled Trump’s confidence, not least because he was shooting from the hip. At the time, most of his cabinet had not even been confirmed. His commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, and US trade representative, Jamieson Greer, wouldn’t be through the nomination process until late February, and his chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, Stephen Miran, not until mid-March.
The next six weeks of policy reflected the same scattershot impulsiveness. In February Trump announced tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China, only to delay those for Mexico and Canada once Mexico promised to send troops to the border. In March, two days after the tariffs were finally implemented, Trump revealed that there would be exemptions for “USMCA goods” from Mexico (i.e., all goods covered by the free trade deal Trump negotiated in his first term) and auto parts from Canada, one of the country’s largest export items to the US. The tariffs on China targeting de minimis imports (those worth less than $800) were rolled back when it turned out that the Post Office might not have the administrative capacity to collect them. It was a confusing time for everyone, and apparently for the Trump administration itself, full of reversals, delays, and exceptions.
Then came “Liberation Day.” Working from the assumption that the US’s trade deficit with a given country represents the “sum of all cheating,” on April 2 the administration imposed tariffs on all its trade partners, using a by now infamous formula: simply dividing the US’s trade deficit with each country by twice its imports from that country—with a minimum of 10 percent. The resulting policy was far more extreme, and far crueler, than almost all observers expected. Cambodia was hit by 49 percent levies, Serbia by 37 percent, South Africa by 30 percent. Stock exchanges all over the world immediately panicked. Only under the looming threat of a bond market meltdown and a Depression did Trump temporarily lower these “reciprocal” tariffs to 10 percent across the board—even as he escalated his tariffs on China, which as of this writing remain at a staggering 145 percent.
Should we expect a gale of chaos to continue blowing through American tariff policy for the next four years? Yes, we should. By imposing punitive tariffs and threatening to retract America’s security umbrella, Trump hopes to coerce the world into sharing what he sees as the burdens of providing public goods like the global dollar system and military protection. Within Trump’s White House, at least three factions are vying for influence on these matters. Peter Navarro, Trump’s senior counselor for trade and manufacturing, holds the most aggressive and hawkish views. The titles of his books, like The Coming China Wars (2006) and Death by China (2011), give a flavor of his approa
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Larry David is not equating Trump with Hitler. He is writing about seeing people for who they really are and not losing sight of that.
My Dinner With Adolf
By Larry David | April 21, 2025
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/21/opinion/larry-david-hitler-dinner.h
tml
Mr. David is a comedian and writer who created “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and was a co-creator of “Seinfeld.”
Imagine my surprise when in the spring of 1939 a letter arrived at my house inviting me to dinner at the Old Chancellery with the world’s most reviled man, Adolf Hitler. I had been a vocal critic of his on the radio from the beginning, pretty much predicting everything he was going to do on the road to dictatorship. No one I knew encouraged me to go. “He’s Hitler. He’s a monster.” But eventually I concluded that hate gets us nowhere. I knew I couldn’t change his views, but we need to talk to the other side — even if it has invaded and annexed other countries and committed unspeakable crimes against humanity.
Two weeks later, I found myself on the front steps of the Old Chancellery and was led into an opulent living room, where a few of the Führer’s most vocal supporters had gathered: Himmler, Göring, Leni Riefenstahl and the Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII. We talked about some of the beautiful art on the walls that had been taken from the homes of Jews. But our conversation ended abruptly when we heard loud footsteps coming down the hallway. Everyone stiffened as Hitler entered the room.
He was wearing a tan suit with a swastika armband and gave me an enthusiastic greeting that caught me off guard. Frankly, it was a warmer greeting than I normally get from my parents, and it was accompanied by a slap on my back. I found the whole thing quite disarming. I joked that I was surprised to see him in a tan suit because if he wore that out, it would be perceived as un-Führer-like. That amused him to no end, and I realized I’d never seen him laugh before. Suddenly he seemed so human. Here I was, prepared to meet Hitler, the one I’d seen and heard — the public Hitler. But this private Hitler was a completely different animal. And oddly enough, this one seemed more authentic, like this was the real Hitler. The whole thing had my head spinning.
He said he was starving and led us into the dining room, where he gestured for me to sit next to him. Göring immediately grabbed a slice of pumpernickel, whereupon Hitler turned to me, gave me an eye roll, then whispered, “Watch. He’ll be done with his entire meal before you’ve taken two bites.” That one really got me. Göring, with his mouth full, asked what was so funny, and Hitler said, “I was just telling him about the time my dog had diarrhea in the Reichstag.” Göring remembered. How could he forget? He loved that story, especially the part where Hitler shot the dog before it got back into the car. Then a beaming Hitler said, “Hey, if I can kill Jews, Gypsies and homosexuals, I can certainly kill a dog!” That perhaps got the biggest laugh of the night — and believe me, there were plenty.
But it wasn’t just a one-way street, with the Führer dominating the conversation. He was quite inquisitive and asked me a lot of questions about myself. I told him I had just gone through a brutal breakup with my girlfriend because every time I went someplace without her, she was always insistent that I tell her everything I talked about. I can’t stand having to remember every detail of every conversation. Hitler said he could relate — he hated that, too. “What am I, a secretary?” He advised me it was best not to have any more contact with her or else I’d be right back where I started and eventually I’d have to go through the whole thing all over again. I said it must be easy for a dictator to go through a breakup. He said, “You’d be surprised. There are still feelings.” Hmm … there are still feelings. That really resonated with me. We’re not that different, after all. I thought that if only the world could see this side of him, people might have a completely different
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A “sudden-stop” crisis comes to America
By Paul Krugman | Apr 22, 2025
Source: xe.com
Yesterday Bloomberg posted an article titled “Markets Are Discovering the Real Trump Trade Is ‘Sell America’.” That’s about right. Look at the value of the dollar on international markets, shown at the top of this post. For a while after the election investors loved Trump, not wisely but too well. But in the face of one idiotic policy move after another, they’ve gradually fallen out of love, and now seem to be capitulating. I think they still haven’t faced up to how bad it is, but they’re figuring it out.
What we’re seeing now is something familiar to those of us who have studied economic crises in other countries, usually but not always emerging markets. For this is looking more and more like a “sudden stop.” That’s what happens when a country that has relied on large inflows of foreign capital loses the confidence of international investors. The inflow of money dries up — and the economic consequences are usually ugly.
Much more at https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/stop-in-the-name-of-trump
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:Wow! It was only one short paragraph, but you completely misunderstood it, 6ix. Once again, I see why Trumptards struggle in America. How can they understand more complicated ideas if they can't get the simplest idea, such as that Trump should not steal money from Ukraine? Here is another idea Trumptards don't understand: Do as promised (in this case, keep the promise of guaranteeing Ukraine's territorial integrity).
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Lech Walesa Letter to President Trump
Angry Bear | April 21, 2025 5:08 pm
https://angrybearblog.com/2025/04/lech-walesa-letter-to-president-trum
p
. . . We urge the USA to stand by the promises made in 1994 with the Budapest Memorandum. At that time, the USA and the United Kingdom guaranteed Ukraine’s territorial integrity in exchange for the country giving up its nuclear weapons. Those promises were unconditional – nowhere does it say that this support should be considered a financial deal.
Sincerely,
Lech Walesa, former political prisoner and president of Poland
Original at
https://www.facebook.com/lechwalesa/posts/1205977244231523?ref=embed_p
ost
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Go get some fucking nukes. See how that works out for you.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Nah. Just giving your posts the seriousness which they deserve is all.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:Elsewhere today:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Nah. Just giving your posts the seriousness which they deserve is all.
Quote:http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=36983&mid=12171
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Why anybody in the world gives one single shit about the Pope in 2025 is just beyond me.
77#1217177
6ix, you wrecked your health because of your general stupidity about other people's lives and even your own life.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Jerome Groopman on the Measles Outbreak
The New York Review of Books https://email.nybooks.com/t/y-l-ckdojl-dllrtujkjl-j/
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has for years been one of the most prominent vaccination skeptics in the United States. As Jerome Groopman documents in the Review’s May 15 issue, he has campaigned against mandates—calling the effects of vaccines on children a “holocaust”—and once said “there is no vaccine that is safe and effective.” And now, during a measles outbreak that has spread to nine states and infected more than eight hundred people, three of whom have died, rather than advocating empirically effective epidemiological measures, Kennedy has recommended “the use of cod-liver oil...and steroids, although there’s no scientific proof that either is an effective treatment” and, moreover, “proposed prescribing clarithromycin, an antibiotic, as a treatment for measles, although antibiotics have no effect on viruses.”
“In the midst of an outbreak of a contagious disease,” writes Groopman,
Quote:
it is seductive to believe we can control it with something simple and easily available that the medical establishment has neglected or dismissed. Ivermectin, an antiparasite drug that has demonstrated no benefit against Covid, is still touted by right-wing influencers as an alternative treatment offering miraculous cures. HIV was falsely alleged to be not the primary cause of AIDS but an innocuous fellow traveler as the immune system is degraded by sex and poppers (amyl nitrate). Cod-liver oil is promoted as a prophylactic against measles despite the proven efficacy of vaccination. We are moving into a parallel universe where those who oversee public health want to take us back to a time before...the development of antibiotics that combat microbes and vaccines that prevent infection.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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You don't know shit about anything, let alone me.
Worry about fixing yourself, because you are completely broken, just like your dead political party is.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:The only reason Trump and you aren't as dead as Rush Limbaugh, the guy who said smoking doesn't kill and who died from lung cancer, is purely accidental, and that typical Democrats believe it is evil to kill evil people. Someday, the Democrats will realize that evil Trumptards must die screaming rather than be allowed hospice care and morphine to gently ease their passage into Hell.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
You don't know shit about anything, let alone me.
Worry about fixing yourself, because you are completely broken, just like your dead political party is.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Hundreds of scholars say U.S. is swiftly heading toward authoritarianism
By Frank Langfitt | April 22, 2025 5:01 AM ET
https://www.npr.org/2025/04/22/nx-s1-5340753/trump-democracy-authorita
rianism-competive-survey-political-scientist
WASHINGTON — A survey of more than 500 political scientists finds that the vast majority think the United States is moving swiftly from liberal democracy toward some form of authoritarianism.
In the benchmark survey, known as Bright Line Watch, U.S.-based professors rate the performance of American democracy on a scale from zero (complete dictatorship) to 100 (perfect democracy). After President Trump's election in November, scholars gave American democracy a rating of 67. Several weeks into Trump's second term, that figure plummeted to 55.
"That's a precipitous drop," says John Carey, a professor of government at Dartmouth and co-director of Bright Line Watch. "There's certainly consensus: We're moving in the wrong direction."
Carey said the decline between November and February was the biggest since Bright Line Watch began surveying scholars on threats to American democracy in 2017. In the survey, respondents consider 30 indicators of democratic performance, including whether the government interferes with the press, punishes political opponents and whether the legislature and the judiciary can check executive authority.
Not all political scientists view Trump with alarm, but many like Carey who focus on democracy and authoritarianism are deeply troubled by Trump's attempts to expand executive power over his first several months in office.
"We've slid into some form of authoritarianism," says Steven Levitsky, a professor of government at Harvard, and co-author of How Democracies Die. "It is relatively mild compared to some others. It is certainly reversible, but we are no longer living in a liberal democracy."
Kim Lane Scheppele, a Princeton sociologist who has spent years tracking Hungary, is also deeply concerned: "We are on a very fast slide into what's called competitive authoritarianism."
When these scholars use the term "authoritarianism," they aren't talking about a system like China's, a one-party state with no meaningful elections. Instead, they are referring to something called "competitive authoritarianism," the kind scholars say they see in countries such as Hungary and Turkey.
In a competitive authoritarian system, a leader comes to power democratically and then erodes the system of checks and balances. Typically, the executive fills the civil service and key appointments — including the prosecutor's office and judiciary — with loyalists. He or she then attacks the media, universities and nongovernmental organizations to blunt public criticism and tilt the electoral playing field in the ruling party's favor.
"The government would still have elections and would nominally be democratic," says Rory Truex, a political scientist at Princeton who focuses on China. "But those elections would no longer be free and fair."
While the vast majority of scholars surveyed say Trump is pushing the country toward autocracy, other professors strongly disagree. James Campbell, a retired political scientist at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, says Trump is using legitimate presidential powers to address long-standing problems. Campbell points to Trump's use of tariffs to try to push companies to bring manufacturing jobs back to the United States. In recent decades, economic globalization led to catastrophic layoffs of everyone from furniture makers in North Carolina to auto assembly-line workers in the Midwest as firms sent work overseas, especially to China.
"I think they've done an excellent job," Campbell says of the Trump administration.
Campbell adds that he thinks many political scientists may see Trump as autocratic because they don't like him or his politics.
"I think most of th
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Yeah, right.
And they never noticed the Covid lockdowns, mandatory vaccinations, widespread censorship and "official" disinformation (lies) about ... well, everything? From the source of the Covid virus to Hunter Biden's laptop to inflation to Biden's mental competence?
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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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