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 172 of 479
Fascinating.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Did Peter Navarro Save Democracy?
By Paul Krugman / Apr 28, 2025 at 5:36 AM
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/did-peter-navarro-save-democracy
Just a few short weeks ago the prospects for American democracy looked bleak. Donald Trump was elected despite the events of January 6th and his clear threats of retribution against those who had tried to hold him in check. The powerful and extremely wealthy lined up behind him on the inauguration dais and contributed vast sums to his inauguration party. Democrats were stunned, despondent and disorganized. The stock market was climbing. And many of us expected Trump, the ultimate nepo baby, to claim that the solid economy he inherited from Biden was his own handiwork.
Suddenly the march to authoritarian rule is looking much less unstoppable. Trump’s vindictive over-reach has quickly sparked widespread outrage within many institutions, including universities and the courts, and among regular Americans. Polls suggest that the public is making a hard turn against Trump’s tactics.
Moreover, the economy, which was arguably the decisive issue in November, has rapidly turned into a huge Trump liability. It’s actually incredible how fast public views of the economy have soured:
Source: San Francisco Fed
Just to be clear, I am very much not in the camp that urges Democrats to focus on kitchen-table issues and ignore the Trump regime’s other outrages. Polls tell us that Americans aren’t as ignorant and self-centered as some political consultants would have their clients believe. Many ordinary people are outraged at the news of renditions of legal residents to gulags in El Salvador. The public overwhelmingly opposes Trumpist defunding of medical research and attacks on universities, as well as the DOGEing of Social Security.
Democrats shouldn’t give Trump a pass on any of his destructive actions. They should, instead, tell voters that stripping people of their civil rights, annihilating education and science, destroying U.S. trade and poisoning our international relationships has one unifying goal: to destroy civil society in the name of MAGA.
That said, I believe that the administration’s metastasizing economic catasrophe is a critical development.
As I read the history of successful autogolpes, politicians who win an election and then effectively destroy the democracy that elevated them, it is almost always the case that their consolidation of power rests upon the perception of economic achievement.
Take the case of Hitler. And spare me the fake outrage: We’re well past the point where you can say that MAGA/Nazi comparisons are illegitimate.
Many people are probably aware that the Nazi takeover of Germany was made possible by the collapse of the German economy between 1929 and 1933 — a slide into deep depression that was partly due to the Brüning government’s refusal to depart from gold-standard orthodoxy. But I’m not sure how many realize that Hitler was able to consolidate power in part because his heterodox economic policies led to a strong recovery and a rapid fall in unemployment, shown at the top of this post.
Somewhat similarly, Viktor Orban took power in Hungary during the euro crisis, which led to high unemployment and painful austerity imposed by the International Monetary Fund. He was able to consolidate one-party rule in Hungary in part because he ended up presiding over a long period of economic recovery:
Orban doesn’
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Quote:Donald Trump promised Americans a “boom like no other” if they elected him president. But based on the stock market’s performance during his first 100 days in office, it depends on what you mean by “boom.” The action certainly has been explosive — just not in the way investors were hoping. By April 30, Trump will have closed out his first 100 days in office. Despite last week’s rally, the S&P 500 Index is down about 8% since his inauguration and on track for its worst run during a president’s first 100 days since Gerald Ford in 1974, following Richard Nixon’s resignation.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
The entire atmosphere surrounding all of this is completely different than it was in 2016 and 2020.
Things just kind of feel normal again.
It's like all the loudest voices either screamed themselves out or they aren't being platformed anymore and/or we just finally, collectively tuned them out for a change.
It's kind of nice, innit?
Happy Inauguration Day!
It’s a U-turn few on Wall Street saw coming after two straight years of over 20% gains and what was expected to be a pro-growth agenda. Instead, markets swung wildly as Trump slapped tariffs on basically every country where US companies operate — and then suspended some, carved out exceptions for certain industries, and ratcheted up the trade war with China.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-promised-markets-boom-100-2300008
47.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Poll after the poll shows the president with record-low approval ratings as his administration approaches the 100-day mark.
How is Trump handling disapproval? Badly, which is normal for him:
Trump Demands Investigations Into Pollsters After Humiliating Results: ‘THEY ARE SICK’
By Janna Brancolini | Apr. 28 2025 9:31AM EDT
https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-demands-investigations-into
-pollsters-after-humiliating-results-they-are-sick/
“The Failing New York Times Poll, and the ABC/Washington Post Poll, about a person named DONALD J. TRUMP, ME, are FAKE POLLS FROM FAKE NEWS ORGANIZATIONS.”
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Trump calls on Canada to vote for becoming 'cherished' 51st US state
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
Good luck to the Great people of Canada. Elect the man who has the strength and wisdom to cut your taxes in half, increase your military power, for free, to the highest level in the World, have your Car, Steel, Aluminum, Lumber, Energy, and all other businesses, QUADRUPLE in size, WITH ZERO TARIFFS OR TAXES, if Canada becomes the cherished 51st. State of the United States of America. No more artificially drawn line from many years ago. Look how beautiful this land mass would be. Free access with NO BORDER. ALL POSITIVES WITH NO NEGATIVES. IT WAS MEANT TO BE! America can no longer subsidize Canada with the Hundreds of Billions of Dollars a year that we have been spending in the past. It makes no sense unless Canada is a State!
Apr 28, 2025, 7:36 AM
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/114415618596069518
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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I listened to a very left-wing Canadian, Matt Ehret, talk about Canada, and what he said was surprising. The opinion that came thru, over and over, is that Canada is a "fake country" with a fake Constitution. The Canadian constitution supposedly mandates that Canada be managed for the good of the crown, and that Canada has been managed like that throughout most of its history. According to him, despite its vast natural resources, Canada has been kept in a pristine, "no development" state, and only Alberta shows a spark of vitality. That the Canadian railroad was built only bc a group of west coast Canadians threatened to secede. "National health care is not a national identity". He was pretty harsh on Canada.
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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:Fuck Wall Street.
Originally posted by second:Quote:Donald Trump promised Americans a “boom like no other” if they elected him president. But based on the stock market’s performance during his first 100 days in office, it depends on what you mean by “boom.” The action certainly has been explosive — just not in the way investors were hoping. By April 30, Trump will have closed out his first 100 days in office. Despite last week’s rally, the S&P 500 Index is down about 8% since his inauguration and on track for its worst run during a president’s first 100 days since Gerald Ford in 1974, following Richard Nixon’s resignation.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
The entire atmosphere surrounding all of this is completely different than it was in 2016 and 2020.
Things just kind of feel normal again.
It's like all the loudest voices either screamed themselves out or they aren't being platformed anymore and/or we just finally, collectively tuned them out for a change.
It's kind of nice, innit?
Happy Inauguration Day!
It’s a U-turn few on Wall Street saw coming after two straight years of over 20% gains and what was expected to be a pro-growth agenda. Instead, markets swung wildly as Trump slapped tariffs on basically every country where US companies operate — and then suspended some, carved out exceptions for certain industries, and ratcheted up the trade war with China.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-promised-markets-boom-100-2300008
47.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
-----------
"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:
Poll after the poll shows the president with record-low approval ratings as his administration approaches the 100-day mark.
Not even close to true.
Joe Biden* 1st (only) term aggregated Job Approval average by year:
2021 +4.2
2022 -12.9
2023 -11.7
2024 -15.7
1st Term -9.3
The spread for Joe Biden*'s average approval rating for 4 full years (or 1,459 days) was over two points worse than Trump's is on this single day, or any day of this 2nd term so far. And that's despite having a +4.2 spread for the 1st year to balance some of that out.
Joe Biden* left office with a -18.1 approval aggregate spread.
Trump's current approval aggregate: -7.1 after 4 straight Liberal polls in negative double digits, at least half of them being from outfits that are currently being sued for libel. Not one of them singularly is worse than Joe's aggregate was for the entirety of 2024.
So what the fuck are we even talking about now, Headline-Reader?
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/donald-trump/approval-
rating
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/joe-biden/approval-rat
ing
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:i.e. the Federal government has a legitimate interest in what states or cities do with Federal grants
"Here We Are Again": Federal District Courts Piling On Injunctions To Stop Trump
Monday, Apr 28, 2025 - 07:05 AM
Authored by Jonathan Turley,
“Here we are again.”
Those words of Senior U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick may be the only uncontested line in his opinion this week, enjoining the Trump Administration from withholding federal funds to “sanctuary jurisdictions.”
In President Trump’s first term, efforts to implement sweeping changes on immigration and other issues were met by a slew of injunctions.
In 2017, one of those orders was from Judge Orrick, an Obama appointee in San Francisco.
Trump has already faced a record number of national injunctions by district courts.
His administration has objected to forum- and judge-shopping by political opponents by bringing the majority of such challenges in overwhelmingly Democratic states like California.
Such injunctions did not exist at the founding, and only relatively recently became the rage among district court judges. Under President George W. Bush, there were only six such injunctions, which increased to 12 under Obama.
Both Democratic and Republican presidents have complained about district judges tying down presidents like so many judicial Lilliputians. However, when Trump came to office, the taste for national injunctions became a full-fledged addiction. Trump faced 64 such orders in his first term.
When Biden and the Democrats returned to office, it fell back to 14. That was not due to more modest measures. Biden did precisely what Trump did in seeking to negate virtually all of his predecessors’ orders and then seek sweeping new legal reforms. He was repeatedly found to have violated the Constitution, but there was no torrent of preliminary injunctions at the start of his term.
Now, however, with less than 100 days in office, Trump 2.0 has already surpassed that number for the entirety of Biden’s term.
The Supreme Court bears some of the blame for this. Although a majority of justices, including liberal Justice Elena Kagan, have complained about district courts’ issuance of national injunctions, the high court has done little to rein in district court judges. On May 15, the justices are poised to consider the issue in a case involving birthright citizenship. Many hope that the justices will bring what they have consistently failed to supply to lower courts: clarity and finality.
Some judges have already seen their stays lifted by appellate courts.
However, in just one day this week, three more major injunctions were issued on sanctuary cities, voter registration, and deportations.
Some of these orders appear premature and overbroad.
Take Judge Orrick’s order. Again, Trump is targeting cities offering sanctuary to unlawful immigrants as imposing high costs on the country, including increasing burdens for federal programs and grants to these cities.
Quote:
Orrick previously stopped that effort in the first Trump term, and he was affirmed by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. However, the orders are not identical, and so far no action has been taken against these cities.
Under one of the orders, titled “Protecting the American People against Invasion,” Trump has ordered the attorney general and the secretary of Homeland Security to “evaluate and undertake any lawful actions to ensure that so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions, which seek to interfere with the lawful exercise of Federal law enforcement operations, do not receive access to Federal funds.”
Orrick noted that the term “sanctuary jurisdiction” was not defined and dismissed the express reservation that such actions can only proceed to the extent that they are allowed under law.
The irony is that the opinion itself is overly broad and imprecise. There areNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
We need to get people out before they're here long enough to take over the government inside through elections.
If you're not doing so, you should really be following what's going on in the UK right now.
I'm afraid that if the citizens of the UK don't wake up and do something now, London is going to be the Muslim capital of the world before I'm dead.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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