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 166 of 479
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:Signym, you are pure evil. I know it from your support for Russia murdering Ukrainians and stealing their land.
Originally posted by second:Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You mirepresent what I posted, of course.
Russia doesn't want Ukrainian land, ya mental gimp.
King of Hyperbole and Bullshit is what Second is.
Second is one of the worst people I've ever had the displeasure of knowing, but he's not evil. He's just an asshole. A massive, gaping asshole.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:Surely this is not so long ago that you have forgotten Russia changing its Constitution to make Ukrainian Oblasts into Russian property?
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Russia doesn't want Ukrainian land, ya mental gimp.
And actually, I feel ashamed and distressed that we armed Ukraine, and aimed them at Russia in an unwinnable effort to overthrow the Russian government. I knew right away that Ukraine was never gonna win bc the vulnerability of American convoys to Russian submarines made the logistics of a full- scale American mobilization impossible.
30 Sep 2022
At the ceremony on Friday, Putin said Russia has “four new regions”, calling the residents of Ukraine’s occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhia regions “our citizens forever”.
“This is the will of millions of people,” he said in the speech before hundreds of dignitaries at the St George’s Hall of the Kremlin.
“We will defend our land with all our strength and all our means,” he added, calling on “the Kyiv regime to immediately cease hostilities and return to the negotiation table”.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/30/putin-announces-russian-annex
ation-of-four-ukrainian-regions
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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'Unethical as you can get': Experts decry Trump's latest 'naked quid pro quo'
By Erik De La Garza | April 23, 2025 7:37PM ET
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-coin/
A special VIP tour of the White House or even an exclusive dinner with President Donald Trump can be yours – for a price.
The Trump-owned company that unveiled the president’s official meme coin just before his inauguration announced Wednesday that top holders of the cryptocurrency would be selected to attend a private dinner with the MAGA leader, Mother Jones reported Wednesday. The 25 leading buyers, meanwhile, will be treated to a special VIP White House tour.
“According to the coin’s official website, its top 220 holders will be invited to a special May 22 dinner at Trump’s country club outside Washington, DC,” the Mother Jones report said.
“An even more special perk is in store for the 25 biggest holders, who ‘will be invited for an ultra-exclusive private VIP Reception with the President. And separately by us to a Special White House Tour,’” it added, noting that the coin’s website was riddled with grammatical mistakes.
While the news caused the price of the meme coin to surge more than 50%, according to media reports, an ethics expert criticized the move as “a naked quid pro quo."
“The closest situation I can think of was Bill Clinton hosting major donors in the Lincoln Bedroom, but that pales in comparison to this, said Jordan Libowitz, a spokesperson for the government watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, told Mother Jones.
“This is about as unethical as you can get—essentially selling off access to the president and the White House,” he added.
While Libowitz slammed the action as unethical, he said it likely wasn’t illegal.
“There are, unfortunately, no laws that apply to the president that could be violated here, unless one of the top 25 holders was something like a foreign state’s wealth fund,” he said. Separately, Libowitz cautioned Mother Jones that “any staffer involved in selling access to the White House may have some issues.”
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 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:Signym, you are pure evil. I know it from your support for Russia murdering Ukrainians and stealing their land.
Originally posted by second:Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You mirepresent what I posted, of course.
Russia doesn't want Ukrainian land, ya mental gimp.
King of Hyperbole and Bullshit is what Second is.
Second is one of the worst people I've ever had the displeasure of knowing, but he's not evil. He's just an asshole. A massive, gaping asshole.
In the following article, Trump is compared to Rodrigo Duterte, former President of the Philippines, and now a prisoner for crimes committed while President.
Also, Putin revised Russia's Constitution to make Ukrainian land into Russian land: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/9/30/putin-announces-russian-annex
ation-of-four-ukrainian-regions
A Ticking Clock on American Freedom
By Adrienne LaFrance | April 22, 2025
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/04/america-trump-author
itarianism-global/682528/
It’s later than you think, but it’s not too late.
Look around, take stock of where you are, and know this: Today, right now—and I mean right this second—you have the most power you’ll ever have in the current fight against authoritarianism in America. If this sounds dramatic to you, it should. Over the past five months, in many hours of many conversations with multiple people who have lived under dictators and autocrats, one message came through loud and clear: America, you are running out of time.
People sometimes call the descent into authoritarianism a “slide,” but that makes it sound gradual and gentle. Maria Ressa, the journalist who earned the Nobel Peace Prize for her attempts to save freedom of expression in the Philippines, told me that what she experienced during the presidency of Rodrigo Duterte is now, with startling speed and remarkable similarity, playing out in the United States under Donald Trump. Her country’s democratic struggles are highly instructive. And her message to me was this: Authoritarian leaders topple democracy faster than you can imagine. If you wait to speak out against them, you have already lost.
Shortly after Trump was reelected last fall, I called Ressa to ask her how she thought Americans should prepare for his return. She told me then that she worried about a failure of imagination. She knew that the speed of the destruction of institutions—one of the first steps an authoritarian takes to solidify and centralize power—would surprise people here, even those paying the closest attention. Ressa splits her time between Manila and New York, and she repeatedly warned me to be ready for everything to happen quickly. When we spoke again weeks after his inauguration, Ressa was shaken. President Trump was moving faster than even she had anticipated.
I heard something similar recently from Garry Kasparov, the Russian dissident and chess grand master. To him, the situation was obvious. America is running out of time, he told me. As Kasparov wrote recently in this magazine, “If this sounds alarmist, forgive me for not caring. Exactly 20 years ago, I retired from professional chess to help Russia resist Putin’s budding dictatorship. People were slow to grasp what was happening there too.”
The chorus of people who have lived through democratic ruin will all tell you the same thing: Do not make the mistake of assuming you still have time. Put another way: You think you can wait and see, and keep democracy intact? Wanna bet? Those who have seen democracy wrecked in their home country are sometimes derided as overly pessimistic—and it’s understandable that they’d have a sense of inevitability about the dangers of autocracy. But that gloomy worldview does not make their warnings any less credible: Unless Trump’s power is checked, and soon, things will get much worse very quickly. When people lose their freedoms, it can take a generation
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Chaos is about to take its toll
By Paul Krugman | Apr 24, 2025
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trump-is-a-virus
Focus on the real economy, where everything says that policy chaos will soon take a real toll. The Fed’s Beige Book, which looks what businesses are saying, says that “uncertainty around international trade policy was pervasive across reports.” And this uncertainty will have dire effects on the real economy.
Many forecasters now expect a recession. But the impact of erratic tariffs and tariff threats may occur even before the economy has time to slump.
Preliminary data suggest that imports from Asia, after surging as importers tried to front-run tariffs, are now collapsing. See the chart at the bottom of this post.
The CEOs of Target and Walmart reportedly warned Trump that we may be seeing empty shelves within weeks. And foreign trade won’t be revived by hints dropped at closed-door financial conferences. Companies need some certainty about policy, which they won’t get.
In other words, we may soon see a disruption of supply chains reminiscent of what happened during and after the Covid pandemic. But this time a virus won’t be responsible. It will all be about Donald Trump. And this time there won’t be a vaccine coming to our rescue. We’re stuck with this chaos agent for three years and three months.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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I think Trump feels that he needed to "blitz" the first few months to accomplish his agenda before resistance could be organized. Unfortunately for him, and us, reindustrialization can't happen in a couple of months, and setting off a trade war with China isn't the way to make it happen.
On other issues, he's at the point where resistance is having an impact, and some problems are just complex.
For example, how can you cut waste and fraud if nobody has been following accounting principles and it's impossible to see who was paid and for what? I just hope that the DOGE team are persistent and detail oriented.
It's no secret I'm for deporting ALL illegal aliens. They can't be described as "law abiding" if they broke the law to sneak in, and they're breaking our law by living here. But I'd certainly start with violent criminals and work my way down, whether they belong to a gang or not. And any illegal alien who passed thru Mexico or other countries on their way here can hardly claim asylum, since they could have asked for asylum from their transit nations. I don't think Trump needs to invoke the Alien Enemies act, and doing so just tangled up his deportation program in perfectly legitimate challenges.
AFA "ending the war in Ukraine" ... no matter what Trump does, whether he continues to support Ukraine or not ... whether the Europeans keep supporting Ukraine or not ... the war will end in a Russian military victory as long as Zelensky keeps fighting. The only difference will be how long the war lasts, how much of Ukraine will be destroyed, and how many men on both sides will be killed.
Anyway, Trump needs to think things thru at this point, and start planning for contingencies, instead of hoping he can bargain or bully his way out of any messes. I know it's not his style .... give the man some Adderall for chrissakes and hope he takes advice from the more level headed people on his team, because he's in a new phase of his Presidency. Time for a scalpel, not a chainsaw.
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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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The US has quietly gotten into another war in the Middle East
With near daily strikes against Yemen’s Houthis, is there an end in sight?
By Joshua Keating | Apr 24, 2025, 6:00 AM CDT
https://www.vox.com/world-politics/410186/trump-yemen-houthis-rough-ri
der
Is the US on the verge of entering another Middle East War?
A little more than a month in, it’s still too soon to declare a quagmire.
But the resources devoted to the conflict have been significant. The Pentagon has moved a second aircraft carrier group to the region to join one already there. It has also relocated at least two Patriot missile batteries as well as a THAAD missile defense system — one of the most advanced systems in the US arsenal — from Asia to the Middle East.
The New York Times has reported that in just the first three weeks of the campaign, the US used $200 million worth of munitions, and that military officials are concerned about its impact on stocks the Navy would need in the event of a Chinese attack on Taiwan.
Contrary to the hopes of many in the Trump administration — including Vice President JD Vance — who argue the US should be shifting its focus from the Middle East to prepare for a potential conflict with China, the US is shifting resources from Asia to the Middle East.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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If Trump’s hatred of Zelensky feels personal, that’s because it is
As the US president lashes out at the Ukrainian leader once again, it can sometimes feel as though personal hostility is clouding his judgement. Sam Kiley examines a long-held grudge against Zelensky – and how it may be getting in the way of defending democracy against tyranny
By Sam Kiley | Thursday 24 April 2025 18:59 BST
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/trump-zelensky-putin-u
kraine-peace-deal-b2739023.html
Donald Trump has already cast himself as a “great man’ of history. His influence is felt not only now, but will likely endure for decades. Yet, as he stands astride Europe, upending nearly a century of alliances, he finds himself eclipsed by a man of smaller physical stature. And it’s getting to him.
Yesterday, America’s ‘big man’ once again lashed out at the diminutive Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. Warning that Zelensky would “lose his country” if he refused to accept a peace deal, Trump accused him of prolonging the “killing field” after Zelensky declined to cede Crimea to Vladimir Putin as part of a potential settlement.
Claiming the territory had been lost for good in 2014 and was not up for discussion, Trump reserved his harshest criticism not for the aggressor who invaded a neighbouring sovereign state, but for the leader defending it. And if it all feels personal, that’s because it is.
The narcissism of America’s 47th president has long been one of Vladimir Putin’s greatest assets. As a former head of the Federal Security Service – successor to the KGB and expert in personality profiling and manipulation – Putin understands that the fragile ego behind the resolute desk is a potent weapon for the Kremlin.
In his latest attack on the widely respected Zelensky, Trump echoed Russia’s claims to Crimea – once the headquarters of the Soviet Black Sea Fleet, ceded to Ukraine in 1954.
Trump likes to imagine himself in the 19th-century mould of the “great man” – a history-maker. It explains his fascination with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un during his first administration, and his repeated and blatant oiling up to Putin today. But while Trump revels in membership of the “great man” club, he resents true heroes. To him, even American soldiers who gave their lives in service are “losers”.
Zelensky, by contrast, has captured the global imagination as a symbol of underdog courage against the Russian bear – and Trump detests him for it. The standing ovations and roars of praise that follow the Ukrainian leader, even on Capitol Hill, must make Trump’s ears bleed.
And Trump has form when it comes to Zelensky – and his infuriating insistence on principle. The Ukrainian president, elected by a landslide, was first painted as a traitor to Trump’s cause when he refused to assist in digging up dirt on Hunter Biden, the son of Joe Biden – then the likely Democratic candidate.
Trump viewed Zelensky as an ungrateful recipient of American aid for failing to launch an investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine in July 2019. Trump was later impeached by Congress over allegations he had threatened to withhold nearly $400m in US military aid unless Zelensky helped his re-election campaign. Although acquitted by the Senate, the damage was done – and the grudge was born. Since then, we have witnessed its ugly expression time and again.
It is hard to imagine another world leader subjected to the kind of personal and vicious public attack Zelensky endured in the White House.
So the question remains: has this personal animosity pushed America to the brink of choosing tyranny over democracy?
Trump’s ties to Moscow stretch back to 1987, when he first visited the Soviet capital to explore investment opportunities. Although he never completed any deals in Russia, his enterprises have reportedly received backing from Russian financiers. Putin was in east Germany in 1987, but it is certain that Trump was of considerable interest to his colleagues in the Soviet regime that first invited him to Moscow
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The Huge, Crucial Difference Between Neville Chamberlain And Donald Trump
By Andrew Tobias | April 24, 2025
https://andrewtobias.com/huge-difference/
Ukraine’s fate echoes Czechoslovakia’s in Chamberlain’s appeasement
In September 1938 . . . Adolf Hitler had massed hundreds of thousands of troops on the border of Czechoslovakia to reinforce a low-intensity war designed to force Prague to cede the Sudetanland. In an effort to preclude great power war, Chamberlain, in collusion with France and Italy, forced Prague to sign the Munich Agreement which provided for Hitler’s annexation of that territory.
Chamberlain returned to London declaring the achievement of “peace for our time.” The reality was that instead Munich catalyzed the dynamics that unleashed World War II. Today, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and President Donald Trump’s approach to ending that unjustified attack echoes eerily . . . Chamberlain’s mistaken response to violent aggression.
Trump risks becoming Neville Chamberlain to Putin’s Hitler.
The huge difference being that — unlike Chamberlain — Trump likes autocrats, has no problem seeing democracy die, would kinda like to maybe do a little annexation of his own. So that in his third term* — who knows? — maybe he rules Canada and Greenland, too.
The author, Ian J. Brzezinski, continues:
. . . Like Hitler in 1938, Putin presents Russia as a country unfairly treated by history and, like Hitler, he is determined to reconstitute its great power status through territorial expansion. The central focus of this imperial campaign is Ukraine, which he falsely asserts is “not a real country” but rather an off-shoot of Russian culture and history. Hitler likewise asserted to Chamberlain that Czechoslovakia was not a real nation. Both Hitler and Putin conducted aggressive campaigns of subterfuge and violence to weaken their targets. Each accused Prague and Kyiv, respectively, of extremist actions against German and Russian minorities, respectively.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Fight Fiercely
By Scott Aaronson | April 24th, 2025
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8820
I opened the lecture by saying that, while obviously it would always be an honor to give the Yip Lecture at Harvard, it’s especially an honor right now, as the rest of American academia looks to Harvard to defend the value of our entire enterprise. I urged Harvard to “fight fiercely,” in the words of the Tom Lehrer song.
I wasn’t just fishing for applause; I meant it. It’s crucial for people to understand that, in its total war against universities, MAGA has now lost, not merely the anti-Israel leftists, but also most conservatives, classical liberals, Zionists, etc., with any intellectual scruples whatsoever. To my mind, this opens up the possibility for a broad, nonpartisan response, highlighting everything universities (yes, even Harvard) do for our civilization that’s worth defending.
For three days in my old hometown of Cambridge, MA, I met back-to-back with friends and colleagues old and new. Almost to a person, they were terrified about whether they’ll be able to keep doing science as their funding gets decimated, but especially terrified for anyone who they cared about on visas and green cards. International scholars can now be handcuffed, deported, and even placed in indefinite confinement for pretty much any reason, including long-ago speeding tickets, or no reason at all. The resulting fear has paralyzed, in a matter of months, an American scientific juggernaut that took a century to build.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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