Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Saturday, September 12, 2026 16:11
VIEWED: 185382
PAGE 19 of 48
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
We don’t need more executive orders. We need a government that does its damn job.
Amen.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Rubio Compares Trump to 3rd World Strongman
By Brandon Morse | 7:00 PM on May 06, 2016
https://redstate.com/brandon_morse/2016/05/06/rubio-compares-trump-3rd
-world-strongman-n58885
Here’s what happens in many countries around the world: You have a leader that emerges and basically says, “Don’t put your faith in yourselves. Don’t put your faith in society. Put your faith in me. I’m a strong leader and I’m gonna make things better all by myself.” This is very typical. You see it in the Third World, you see it a lot in Latin America for decades.
Basically, the argument he’s making is that he single-handedly is gonna turn the country around. We’ve never been that kind of country. We have a president. The president is an American citizen who serves for a period of time, constrained by the constitution and the powers vested in that office. The president works for the people not the people the president and if you listen to the way he describes himself and what he’s going to do, he’s going to single-handedly do this and do that without regard to whether it’s legal or not.
Look. I think people are going to have to make up their minds. I can tell you this: no matter what happens in this election, for years to come there are many people on the right, in the media, and voters at large that are going to be having to explain and justify how they fell into this trap of supporting Donald Trump, because this is not gonna end well.
Watch the video at https://www.instagram.com/reel/DGo_2_GCZhu/
https://andrewtobias.com/little-marco-predicts/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Shut the fuck up, loser.
You are done. Your party is done. You are politically homeless.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:1) MAGA Melts Down Over Trump’s ‘Disrespectful’ Pope Post
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Shut the fuck up, loser.
You are done. Your party is done. You are politically homeless.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
“This is worse than trolling. You’re going to lose a lot of Catholic support over stunts like this.”
By Emell Derra Adolphus | May 3 2025 6:34PM EDT
https://www.thedailybeast.com/maga-melts-down-over-trumps-disrespectfu
l-pope-post/
2) Catholics Rebuke Donald Trump's AI-Generated Pope Image
May 03, 2025 at 7:23 PM EDT
https://www.newsweek.com/catholics-rebuke-donald-trumps-ai-generated-p
ope-image-2067750
3) Trump criticised after posting AI image of himself as Pope
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdrg8zkz8d0o
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:1) MAGA Melts Down Over Trump’s ‘Disrespectful’ Pope Post
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Shut the fuck up, loser.
You are done. Your party is done. You are politically homeless.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
I'm sure they did.
Fuck the pope.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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At this point I've just got to ask myself how far to the ultra-fringe-right I can push Second if given enough time.
Let's see...
We've got him posting about religion in a positive light every other day now. He was in full support of the Cheney family in the months leading up to the election. He posts online at least once per week about who should be murdered this week.
Is it any wonder why GenZ hates the Democratic Party and cringes hard any time one of them talk?
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:“That was some weird shit,” George Bush said about Trump. That doesn't mean I approve of Bush, but Trumptard 6ix weirdly thinks different. Weird shit is an excellent description of all Trumptard behavior.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
At this point I've just got to ask myself how far to the ultra-fringe-right I can push Second if given enough time.
Let's see...
We've got him posting about religion in a positive light every other day now. He was in full support of the Cheney family in the months leading up to the election. He posts online at least once per week about who should be murdered this week.
Is it any wonder why GenZ hates the Democratic Party and cringes hard any time one of them talk?
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
What George W. Bush Really Thought of Donald Trump
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/03/what-george-w-bush-really-thou
ght-of-trumps-inauguration.html
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:“That was some weird shit,” George Bush said about Trump. That doesn't mean I approve of Bush, but Trumptard 6ix weirdly thinks different. Weird shit is an excellent description of all Trumptard behavior.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
At this point I've just got to ask myself how far to the ultra-fringe-right I can push Second if given enough time.
Let's see...
We've got him posting about religion in a positive light every other day now. He was in full support of the Cheney family in the months leading up to the election. He posts online at least once per week about who should be murdered this week.
Is it any wonder why GenZ hates the Democratic Party and cringes hard any time one of them talk?
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
What George W. Bush Really Thought of Donald Trump
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/03/what-george-w-bush-really-thou
ght-of-trumps-inauguration.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Some would argue that thinking it was a good idea to run on a dual-platform of Privatizing Social Security and Banning Gay Marriage would make a mindless Lefty headline-reader-bot question how prudent it would be to use that person's words and judgement as a good choice to bolster their own argument 21 years later in 2025. Especially after doing the same thing with the Cheney family before the election turned out the way that it did. And certainly, especially when the headline-reader-bot already possesses the data that the human being they are interacting with cares not whatsoever for George W. Bush or anything he's ever had to say about any topic.
But we're still dealing with pretty unsophisticated AI when it comes to the Second-Bot and the mindless articles it scrapes off the internet.
Keep watching your party circle the drain and wondering why you're completely powerless to do anything about it, drone.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Phillips P. Obrien | May 04, 2025
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-update-131-was-this-the
-week
And of course he has helped put Donald Trump in charge of the USA—which is the most stupendous Russian strategic victory of the last 150 years.
So as a war leader he is a contrast of extremes. This week might have been another. Basically, Donald Trump and his team handed Putin on a plate a close-to-ideal ceasefire plan for Putin—and the Russian leader did not say yes. In doing so Putin might very well have miscalculated about Russian strength, how far the US will go to help him, and the state of Ukraine. It could be a fateful error.
The elements of the Trump plan for Russia were so generous to Putin, that its slightly baffling that the Russian dictator did not take them up immediately—particularly as the one thing he seemed to have to agree to get all these goodies was a cease-fire for 30 days or so (which the Russian military needs btw). What Trump was offering him was extraordinary when you consider it as a package:
• US de jure recognition of the illegal Russian annexation of Crimea.
• US de facto recognition of all other Russian conquests
• A plan to quickly relax or even end sanctions on the Russian economy
• The return of seized Russian assets (at least those under US control)
• A pledge that Ukraine will not join NATO
• No other substantial US security commitment for Ukraine.
The Crimea point alone was a massive concession to Putin. If the USA recognizes Russian legal control of Crimea, you can be sure that much of the rest of the world outside of Europe (and that includes China) would do so as well. It would legalize in much of the world changing borders in Europe through invasion.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Trump’s gaudy-awful Oval Office is all too American
George Will WaPo
https://eedition.houstonchronicle.com/infinity/article_popover_share.a
spx?guid=88d24d05-64cc-4c6a-b69a-c81cccb904e3&share=true
When the 47th president does something right, he repents by doing something that contradicts it. Consider his excellent executive order about the importance of aesthetic good taste in governance, and his subsequent redecoration of the Oval Office.
Issued during the blizzard of orders in his first full day in office, “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture,” was thoughtful and sensible. Making amends for this, the president has redecorated the Oval Office. The style, which is not for the squeamish, is best described (actually, it is best not described, but here goes) as: “The Atlantic-City-Aspiring-to-be-Las-Vegas School of Interior Design.” Or (intellectual whiplash warning) Founding Fathers Bling. In short: Maximalism.
The president evidently likes working inside a Faberge egg. For readers of the Washington Post, Carolina A. Miranda, a talented cultural journalist, has described the new Oval Office, stuffed with stuff:
The mantel is adorned by seven gold examples of authentic bric-a-brac. Gold floral moldings are stuck here and there. Gold angels. Gold eagles on side tables. Gold coasters. Gold medallions on the fireplace. Gilded mirrors on the doors and gilded frames for about 20 paintings, more than triple the number Biden had, so there. Gold cherubs imported from Mar-a-Lago, which is probably still is not destitute of them. Gold coasters. A large gold block paperweight inscribed with TRUMP, in case he momentarily forgets to think about himself.
Miranda finds this sinister. And she bills the decor as “un-American.” If only.
We have a national knack for wretched excess, of which Super Bowl halftime shows are, amazingly, not the most vivid eruptions. Remember Detroit’s 1950s land yachts: The 1956 Chrysler Imperial and the 1958 Lincoln Premiere were 19 feet long. What is more vulgar than 21st-century State of the Union addresses?
Benjamin Franklin pointedly wore clothes of homespun cloth to the Court of St. James’, and Thomas Jefferson sometimes wore slippers when receiving presidential visitors. Nowadays, however, Americans enjoy leavening republican simplicity with touchingly absurd attempts at grandeur: There are, surely, communities where Kiwanis Club lunches are held in Holiday Inns’ Versailles Rooms, cheek-by-jowl with hardware stores and grain silos.
What has become of the aesthete who issued the Day 1 presidential order on “beautiful federal civic architecture”? The president said: “Federal public buildings should be visually identifiable as civic buildings and respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage in order to uplift and beautify public spaces and ennoble the United States and our system of self-government.” Quite right.
Recently Paul Zepeda, an architecture student at Catholic University, writing for Civitas Outlook of the University of Texas at Austin’s Civitas Institute, noted that the current president was reversing his predecessor’s reversal of a 2020 executive order. Cue the “here-comes-Hitler” warnings. (He did have an unhealthy interest in overbearing architecture that diminished the individual relative to the state.)
And critics of the president’s January order issued somber warnings about attacks on “design freedom.”
“Design freedom,” which has often meant indifference to design, has blighted Washington with durable examples of brutalist architecture, such as the FBI Building on Pennsylvania Avenue. Might such architecture foment in citizens a sense of alienation from their government?
In October 1943, after German bombs destroyed the House of Commons, Prime Minister Winston Churchill insisted on rebuilding it with its traditional rectangular, and adversarial, arrangement rather than the semicircular design favored by many legislatures (including the U.S. Congress). Churchill thought it supported the temperateness of a two-part
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One Moment That Foretold It All
Ezra Klein | May 4, 2025
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/04/opinion/trump-vance-100-days.html
I’m going to break the boundaries of the prompt and say that the most important — or at least most predictive — day of Donald Trump’s second term came before it even began: It was July 15, 2024, the day he announced that JD Vance was his choice for vice president.
The runner-ups were Marco Rubio and Doug Burgum — representatives of the Republican Party that existed before Trump’s 2016 campaign, choices Trump might have made to reassure voters who doubted or feared him. Vance was of the MAGA movement in a way Rubio and Burgum were not. Vance hated all the right people. Rubio and Burgum were seen as moderating forces; Vance pitched himself as an accelerationist who believed the biggest problem with Trump’s first term was that Trump was surrounded by people who, occasionally, said no to him. Vance was the only one of the three vice presidential contenders to say he would have done what Mike Pence would not: refuse to certify the 2020 election result.
There was little sense, in the days before Trump’s pick, that Vance held the pole position. Later reporting revealed a lobbying campaign: Rupert Murdoch and his allies tried to talk Trump out of Vance, as did Ken Griffin, the chief executive of Citadel, and even Kellyanne Conway. But Trump was swayed by other voices: Don Jr., Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson, who reportedly told Trump that if he picked Rubio or Burgum he was likelier to be assassinated by MAGA’s enemies.
This was the moment we could see the structure of Trump’s first term giving way to the structure of his second. Trump’s first administration was almost like a European coalition government: Trump governed in an uneasy alliance with a Republican Party he did not fully control or even like, with a business community in which many viewed him as a buffoon, with a staff that saw part of its role as curbing and containing the boss’s most destructive impulses, atop an administrative state that often resisted his demands. That friction frustrated Trump and many of his first-term allies. It was also why the most dire predictions for his first term largely did not come true and why so many wrongly predicted that his second term would follow the same script.
But Trump’s second term was never going to follow the same script because it has a completely different structure. This isn’t a coalition government; it’s a royal court. Trump is surrounded by courtiers who wield influence so long as they maintain his favor and not a moment longer. When is the last time he heard the word “no,” or was told, “I’m sorry, sir, you can’t”? In his first term, Trump either sought or was steered toward advisers and appointments that would reassure many of his doubters; in his second, he has prized loyalists who will do what they’re told and enforcers who will ensure that others fall in line as well.
I made this argument before the election, and it has proven true: One of Trump’s fundamental characteristics, for good and ill, is his disinhibition. He will do and say what others will barely think. In his first term, that disinhibition sat in tension with people around him who acted as inhibitors — a staff that was willing to think him wrong or even ridiculous, a congressional Republican Party that was not fully rebuilt around loyalty and sycophancy. For those who believed his first term a success, that tension was essential: Trump pushed the Republican Party and the bureaucracy to consider new policies and possibilities, but he was protected from carrying out his dumbest and most destructive ideas.
In his second term, Trump is surrounded by yes men and accelerationists. His staff has no interest in second-guessing the Grand Ayatollah of MAGA. Congressional Republicans are introducing bills to offer Trump a third term or carve his face onto Mount Rushmore. The guardrails are gone. The choice of JD Vance was when that structure came clear. It revealed that Trump’s second term would offer no concessio
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Trump’s gaudy-awful Oval Office is all too American
George Will WaPo
https://eedition.houstonchronicle.com/infinity/article_popover_share.a
spx?guid=88d24d05-64cc-4c6a-b69a-c81cccb904e3&share=true
When the 47th president does something right, he repents by doing something that contradicts it. Consider his excellent executive order about the importance of aesthetic good taste in governance, and his subsequent redecoration of the Oval Office.
Issued during the blizzard of orders in his first full day in office, “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture,” was thoughtful and sensible. Making amends for this, the president has redecorated the Oval Office. The style, which is not for the squeamish, is best described (actually, it is best not described, but here goes) as: “The Atlantic-City-Aspiring-to-be-Las-Vegas School of Interior Design.” Or (intellectual whiplash warning) Founding Fathers Bling. In short: Maximalism.
The president evidently likes working inside a Faberge egg. For readers of the Washington Post, Carolina A. Miranda, a talented cultural journalist, has described the new Oval Office, stuffed with stuff:
The mantel is adorned by seven gold examples of authentic bric-a-brac. Gold floral moldings are stuck here and there. Gold angels. Gold eagles on side tables. Gold coasters. Gold medallions on the fireplace. Gilded mirrors on the doors and gilded frames for about 20 paintings, more than triple the number Biden had, so there. Gold cherubs imported from Mar-a-Lago, which is probably still is not destitute of them. Gold coasters. A large gold block paperweight inscribed with TRUMP, in case he momentarily forgets to think about himself.
Miranda finds this sinister. And she bills the decor as “un-American.” If only.
We have a national knack for wretched excess, of which Super Bowl halftime shows are, amazingly, not the most vivid eruptions. Remember Detroit’s 1950s land yachts: The 1956 Chrysler Imperial and the 1958 Lincoln Premiere were 19 feet long. What is more vulgar than 21st-century State of the Union addresses?
Benjamin Franklin pointedly wore clothes of homespun cloth to the Court of St. James’, and Thomas Jefferson sometimes wore slippers when receiving presidential visitors. Nowadays, however, Americans enjoy leavening republican simplicity with touchingly absurd attempts at grandeur: There are, surely, communities where Kiwanis Club lunches are held in Holiday Inns’ Versailles Rooms, cheek-by-jowl with hardware stores and grain silos.
What has become of the aesthete who issued the Day 1 presidential order on “beautiful federal civic architecture”? The president said: “Federal public buildings should be visually identifiable as civic buildings and respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage in order to uplift and beautify public spaces and ennoble the United States and our system of self-government.” Quite right.
Recently Paul Zepeda, an architecture student at Catholic University, writing for Civitas Outlook of the University of Texas at Austin’s Civitas Institute, noted that the current president was reversing his predecessor’s reversal of a 2020 executive order. Cue the “here-comes-Hitler” warnings. (He did have an unhealthy interest in overbearing architecture that diminished the individual relative to the state.)
And critics of the president’s January order issued somber warnings about attacks on “design freedom.”
“Design freedom,” which has often meant indifference to design, has blighted Washington with durable examples of brutalist architecture, such as the FBI Building on Pennsylvania Avenue. Might such architecture foment in citizens a sense of alienation from their government?
In October 1943, after German bombs destroyed the House of Commons, Prime Minister Winston Churchill insisted on rebuilding it with its traditional rectangular, and adversarial, arrangement rather than the semicircular design favored by many legislatures (including the U.S. Congress). Churchill thought it sNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Trump has plans to take over Canada, but without explicitly stating it, he will do it using only his amazing skills as a salesman without nuking Ottawa. Trump certainly doesn't feel the need to get a Declaration of War from Congress. Congress has not issued such a declaration since 1942, despite the Constitution requiring a declaration before Trump can invade another country:
Originally posted by Brenda:
Tacky for the Oval Office but it figures.
And this guy shouldn't be giving him any ideas for the National Mall. I happen to like that open space and I'm Canadian. Also like the Lincoln memorial which is well deserved for Mr. Lincoln. Now the Washington Monument looks like an obelisk from Ancient Egypt and it was transplanted to DC.
Trump says ‘I don’t know’ when asked if he’s required to uphold Constitution
By Matt Viser | May 4, 2025
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/05/04/trump-nbc-interview
-constitution-economy/
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Donald Trump, asked during an interview on NBC News’s “Meet the Press” whether he believes that he needs to uphold the Constitution during his presidency, responded, “I don’t know.”
Video at https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-rejects-co
ncerns-prices-economic-uncertainty-defends-agenda-rcna203512
The comment came as Trump remained adamant that he wanted to ship undocumented immigrants out of the country and said it was inconceivable to hear millions of cases in court, insisting he needed the power to quickly remove people he said were murderers and drug dealers.
“I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it,” he said.
Pressed by host Kristen Welker on whether he still needs to abide by the Constitution, he said, “I don’t know.”
“I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said,” he said, appearing to downplay the oath of office that includes a commitment to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.”
In the wide-ranging interview that aired Sunday, Trump was dismissive of his higher tariffs’ economic consequences for consumers, saying Americans would simply have to make do with fewer dolls and pencils, and higher costs for strollers. And he brushed aside the spiraling effects that a recession could bring.
He also did not rule out the use of military force to take Greenland, while saying it’s “highly unlikely” he would use force against Canada. He complimented Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio as potential successors, and he said he planned to foot the bill for adding a ballroom to the White House that would be more in line with his Mar-a-Lago estate.
The interview was remarkable at times, such as when a president elected on a pledge to lower costs and fight inflation minimized concerns about the potential for a recession and suggested that having an economic hit in the short term would be worth it if he can achieve his long-term goals.
“Everything’s okay,” he said. “I said this is a transition period. I think we’re going to do fantastically.”
He said he was not worried about the economy contracting under his watch but did not rule it out.
“Anything can happen,” he said. “But I think we’re going to have the greatest economy in the history of our country. I think we’re going have the greatest economic boom in history.”
Last week, new data showed that the U.S. economy shrank in the first three months of the year, a stark reversal after nearly three years of solid growth amid tariff-related uncertainty.
Trump swiftly blamed his predecessor, and he continued to say in the interview that former president Joe Biden was responsible for aspects of the economy, while conceding that it is “partially” the Trump economy going forward.
“I think the good parts are the Trump economy and the bad parts are the Biden economy because he’s done a terrible job,” he said. “He did a terrible jo
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The U.S. Threat Looming Over Canada
The consequences if Trump followed through on his belligerent rhetoric about a “51st state” would be catastrophic.
By Stephen Marche | May 4, 2025
Stephen Marche is the author of The Next Civil War. https://bookshop.org/a/12476/9781982123215
Download the book for free from the mirrors at https://libgen.rs/search.php?req=Stephen+Marche+The+Next+Civil+War
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/05/canadians-fe
ar-war-trump/682674/
The idea of a war between Canada and the United States was inconceivable even a few months ago. Most Americans still don’t believe it’s a possibility, or simply haven’t noticed their president’s occupationist rhetoric, or can’t imagine a world in which a neighbor they have been at peace with for 150 years is suddenly an enemy. The very idea seems completely absurd.
But Canada does not have the luxury of dismissing White House rhetoric as trolling. Canadians are imagining the unimaginable because they have to.
Donald Trump’s pointless and malicious trade war has been, by his own account, a prelude to softening up Canada economically so that it can be appropriated as the 51st state. He has brought up his plans for incorporating Canada into the union with Prime Ministers Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney in private calls. The definitive end of the status quo came with the president’s casual comment that he would sell only deliberately downgraded F-47s to allies who purchased American military hardware, “because someday, maybe they’re not our allies.” From that point on, spending on equipment from the American military-industrial complex is a form of national suicide for any country in the free world. Canada could no longer comfortably sit within the American military sphere.
In this stark moment, our nation has abruptly become an adversary of the most powerful country in the world.
An American military threat is Canada’s worst nightmare. And Canada is unprepared precisely because it never considered the U.S. to be a potential threat. Trust made Canada vulnerable. For 60 years at least, both Conservative and Liberal governments have worked toward greater integration with the United States. Our country’s trade and security policies have been built on the premise of American sanity. That assumption, it turned out, was a mistake, hopefully not a fatal one.
What would a continental conflict look like? Conventional war between the United States and Canada would be highly asymmetric, to say the least. The U.S. possesses an enormous military, comprising more than a million men and women under arms. Canada’s armed forces have 72,000 active members. Even worse, because of its deep-seated trust in the United States, Canada has built its forces around interoperability with U.S. forces, both for mutual continental protection, in binational projects such as the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), and for expeditionary forces such as the NATO mission to Afghanistan.
This vulnerability does not mean that Canada would be there for the taking. “The U.S. military does not have the capacity to seize the country,” Scott Clancy, who served as a Colorado-based director of operations for NORAD, told me recently. Clancy served 37 years in the Royal Canadian Air Force and rose to the rank of major-general, and is intimately familiar with U.S. and Canadian military capabilities. “They would have to seize specific points. And the more they went into cities, the more it would become unmanageable from an American military point of view.” A continental war would, then, likely play out as an insurgent conflict in Canadian North America—and across the U.S. homeland, as well. “Let’s say they just hold the oil fields,” Clancy said, referring to a U.S. military occupation of Canadian oil reserves. “We’re not gonna roll over. And just because you attacked Alberta doesn’t mean that we’re not gonna strike at you in New York.”
When I interviewed half a dozen experts on insurgent conflict for my book The Next Civil War, they all agreed that i
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There will be no war with Canada.
That would be over in 2 hours.
Shut the fuck up, stupid. Your party is dead and your media is next.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:“That was some weird shit,” George Bush said about Trump. That doesn't mean I approve of Bush, but Trumptard 6ix weirdly thinks different. Weird shit is an excellent description of all Trumptard behavior.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
At this point I've just got to ask myself how far to the ultra-fringe-right I can push Second if given enough time.
Let's see...
We've got him posting about religion in a positive light every other day now. He was in full support of the Cheney family in the months leading up to the election. He posts online at least once per week about who should be murdered this week.
Is it any wonder why GenZ hates the Democratic Party and cringes hard any time one of them talk?
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
What George W. Bush Really Thought of Donald Trump
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/03/what-george-w-bush-really-thou
ght-of-trumps-inauguration.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Some would argue that thinking it was a good idea to run on a dual-platform of Privatizing Social Security and Banning Gay Marriage would make a mindless Lefty headline-reader-bot question how prudent it would be to use that person's words and judgement as a good choice to bolster their own argument 21 years later in 2025. Especially after doing the same thing with the Cheney family before the election turned out the way that it did. And certainly, especially when the headline-reader-bot already possesses the data that the human being they are interacting with cares not whatsoever for George W. Bush or anything he's ever had to say about any topic.
But we're still dealing with pretty unsophisticated AI when it comes to the Second-Bot and the mindless articles it scrapes off the internet.
Keep watching your party circle the drain and wondering why you're completely powerless to do anything about it, drone.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
No reply to this one, huh bigmouth?
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Trump’s assault on the media is being welcomed by authoritarians around the world
By Michael Savage | Sat 3 May 2025 02.00 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/ng-interactive/2025/may
/03/a-cocktail-for-a-misinformed-world-why-china-and-russia-are-cheering-trumps-attacks-on-us-media
As Donald Trump’s executive order in March led to the shuttering of Voice of America (VOA) – the global broadcaster whose roots date back to the fight against Nazi propaganda – he quickly attracted support from figures not used to aligning themselves with any US administration.
Trump had ordered the US Agency for Global Media, the federal agency that funds VOA and other groups promoting independent journalism overseas, to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law”. The decision suddenly halted programming in 49 languages to more than 425 million people.
In Moscow, Margarita Simonyan, the hardline editor-in-chief of the state broadcaster RT described it as an “awesome decision”. The Global Times, an English-language Chinese state media publication, crowed that the broadcasters had been discarded by the White House “like a dirty rag”, ending their “propaganda poison”. Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, whose regime has been accused of repressing political opposition, described Trump’s move as “very promising”.
Domestically, Trump has continued to target the media, whether by taking outlets including CBS News and ABC to court, attempting to block political access to the White House by the Associated Press, or defund National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service – institutions he has described as “radical left monsters”.
For many senior media figures around the world, there has been a tipping of the scales as authoritarian regimes are emboldened by a US administration not only attacking the media at home, but also withdrawing from the fight for free information overseas.
As the world marks Press Freedoms Day on May 3, observers are now warning that in countries where free media is weak, America’s withdrawal from this geopolitical balancing act will have far-reaching effects.
As well as VOA, which was founded in 1942 at the height of the second world war and broadcasts in nearly 50 languages, Trump has withdrawn funding from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), which was founded during the cold war and broadcasts to countries including Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Lawyers warn that the president's assault on the legal profession threatens the rule of law itself.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Donald Trump Is Using the Presidency to Get Rich
“The amount of money flowing into the Trump family coffers is of a scale and scope that just sort of blows the mind in any context,” the staff writer Susan B. Glasser says.
With Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos | May 3, 2025
https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/political-scene/donald-trump-is-usin
g-the-presidency-to-get-rich
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Trump Says He’s Instituting a “100% Tariff” on Films Produced Outside of the U.S. Because the “Movie Industry in America Is Dying”
The president posted that Hollywood and other areas are "being devastated" due to "a concerted effort by other Nations," which constitutes a "National Security threat."
By Kimberly Nordyke, Aaron Couch | May 4, 2025 8:39pm
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/trump-tariff-movie
s-produced-outside-america-1236206949/
“The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death,” he wrote. “Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated. This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda!”
“Therefore, I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands. WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”
“What they’ve done is other nations have been stealing the movies, the moviemaking capabilities from the united States,” he said, adding: “I’ve done some very strong research over the past week, and we’re making very few movies now. Hollywood is being destroyed. Now, you have a … grossly incompetent governor that allowed that to happen, so I’m not just blaming other nations, but other nations have stolen our movie industry. If they’re not willing to make a movie inside the United States, then we should have a tariff on movies that come in. And not only that, governments are actually giving big money. They’re supporting them financially. That’s sort of a threat to our country in a sense.”
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The crisis isn’t Trump. It’s the Republican Party.
Anne Applebaum wrote the book on why people choose to collaborate with authoritarian regimes. So what does she think of the GOP?
by Ezra Klein | Nov 13, 2020 (Five Years Past)
https://www.vox.com/21562116/anne-applebaum-twilight-of-democracy-gop-
trump-election-fraud-2020-biden-the-ezra-klein-show
The most alarming aspect of the past week is not Donald Trump’s anti-democratic efforts. He is doing exactly what he has always done, exactly what he said he would do. It’s the speed at which Republican elites have consolidated support around him. Without the Republican Party’s support, Trump is just the loser of an election, ranting ineffectually about theft as a way to rationalize defeat. With the Republican Party’s support, he’s a danger to the country.
Some Republicans, like Lindsey Graham, have wholeheartedly endorsed Trump’s claims. On Monday, the South Carolina senator said that Trump should not concede the election and that “Republicans win because of our ideas and we lose elections because [Democrats] cheat.” Others — including Vice President Mike Pence and Sens. Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley — have signaled solidarity with the president, while not quite endorsing his conspiracy theories. The message is clear: When faced with the choice of loyalty to Trump and the legitimacy of the democratic process, Republicans are more than willing to throw democracy under the bus.
Anne Applebaum is a staff writer for the Atlantic, a senior fellow of international affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and most recently the author of Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism. In it, Applebaum, once comfortable in center-right elite circles, grapples with why so many of her contemporaries across the globe — including right here in America — have abandoned liberal democracy in favor of strongman cults and autocratic regimes.
We discuss why most politicians under increasingly autocratic regimes choose to collaborate with the regime, how Graham went from outspoken Trump critic to one of Trump’s most vocal supporters in the US Senate, why the Republican Party ultimately took the path of Sarah Palin, what we can expect to happen if and when a much more capable demagogue emerges, and much more.
Ezra Klein
How do you think we would cover what Trump and the Republican Party are doing and saying right now if it were happening in another country?
Anne Applebaum
If this were happening in another country, we would be talking about a populist authoritarian seeking to create disillusion with democracy in his country in order to have a base of supporters who will help him return to power. But I don’t think we have to talk about it as if it were another country. I’m very happy to use the same language that I would use if this were happening in Brazil or Argentina or anywhere else.
Ezra Klein
I think that Americans — and I would include myself in this — have had an implicit exceptionalism in the way we understood our country’s immunity to some of the political trends and dangers that afflict other countries. As if authoritarianism can’t happen here, as if our parties can’t turn against democracy here. That just no longer seems true.
Is it time for Americans to be disabused of the idea that there is any special protection to our system, our political culture?
Anne Applebaum
This is a conclusion that I came to several years ago through the agonizing personal experience of living in Poland and watching one of the political parties here become a populist authoritarian party. Watching it try to undermine democracy, undermine the courts, undermine the media once it came to power. And then, glancing over at the United States and realizing that I was seeing many of the same things.
I think you’re absolutely right. I think it’s partly American exceptionalism. It’s also partly our incredible luck over the past six or seven decades. We had a stable democracy, we
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A Note From the Netherlands
The Dutch have nice things. Why can’t we?
By Paul Krugman | May 05, 2025
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/a-note-from-the-netherlands
Our local hosts will be taking us around to see some sights, so I only have time for a brief, impressionistic post.
Robin and I are currently in Leiden, which is a lovely town not far from Amsterdam. And after spending yesterday walking around, we both felt depressed. Why? Because the Dutch have so many nice things that we deny ourselves at home.
Disclaimer: Yes, we’ve spent our time here in affluent, attractive areas. I know that there are depressed areas in the Netherlands, some of them not far from here. Still, I don’t think it’s wrong to say that life for most people here is pretty good, with far fewer people in misery than there are in America. And life isn’t just less nasty and brutish; it’s also longer, with Dutch life expectancy 4 years higher than ours.
Urban life is especially appealing. Leiden, and I’m told many other Dutch cities, is spectacularly walkable — and people do indeed walk. They also ride bicycles, thanks both to dedicated bike lanes everywhere and a culture in which commuting and shopping by bike is normal for people of all ages.
Oh, by the way, a computer shop in downtown Leiden quickly repaired my laptop. But I guess that I’m worse off according to Trumponomics. After all, I paid them 80 euros, and all I got in return was my digital life back.
More subjectively, people here don’t seem to be gripped by the political anxiety that has infested America since Trump took power again. Yesterday was Liberation Day, which in the Netherlands means the day the Nazis were driven out — by the Canadian army! — rather than the day they hiked tariffs. We watched the ceremony with Dutch friends, and it was beautiful and moving. It is nice to be in a country where everyone agrees that the Nazis were bad.
To be fair, I can’t take the pulse of feelings here especially well, since one unfortunate thing about the Netherlands, from my point of view, is that people speak Dutch. But looking around here is a reminder that life in an advanced economy can be pleasant. If Americans feel that they’re teetering on the edge of the abyss, we only have ourselves to blame.
I’m still eager to get back to the United States. Indeed, traveling ends up reminding me how American I am, how much I love the good things about my country. But we could live better lives than we do, and it’s sad that we choose not to.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The most disturbing aspect of Trump’s first 100 days
Too many American businesses are acting like he’s already a dictator
By Matthew Yglesias | May 05, 2025
https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-most-disturbing-aspect-of-trumps
Almost everything Donald Trump does becomes a bizarre, larger-than-life spectacle.
But precisely for that reason, it’s important to remember that “normal” aspects of politics continue to be incredibly relevant to understanding Trump-era politics.
Barack Obama’s single most effective line of attack on Mitt Romney focused on Republican plans to privatize Medicare, and the boring fact that Trump backed away from the GOP’s least-popular idea was an important factor in his rise to power. Similarly, the 2022 midterms were heavily influenced by public backlash to abortion bans, and a crucial strand of the 2024 campaign was Trump backing away from GOP policy commitments in this regard.
Like most newly elected presidents, Trump enjoyed a honeymoon of positive approval ratings after he won the election.
He also had strong political winds at his back. The inflation of 2022-2023 had broken the public’s faith in the Democratic Party’s economic stewardship. A lot of people were upset about the volume of immigrants who’d arrived through irregular channels and exploited loopholes in the asylum system. Trump had largely restored the Republican Party’s traditional status as the preferred political ally of big business. Even though the sharp rise in shootings and murders of 2020-2021 had already faded, crime — a perennially good issue for Republicans — had become salient as a topic of public debate. As I wrote last November in “How Donald Trump Could Succeed,” there was a clear path for him to become a popular and successful president. And as I wrote on Inauguration Day in “Nobody Knows What Trump is Going to Do,” there was an extraordinary lack of clarity regarding the policy agenda he would actually pursue, because he was constantly contradicting himself.
What Trump ultimately decided to do is what most contemporary presidents have done: He’s interpreted a backlash against the other party’s most strident policy activists as an endorsement of his side’s most strident activists.
The response has been predictable, with thermostatic backlash on the issues and plummeting approval ratings for Trump.
This does not, on its own, solve all of the Democrats’ political problems, especially in the Senate, but those problems too are a pretty normal part of politics. Having lost the prior election, Democrats seem leaderless because they literally are leaderless. Being in the minority in Congress leaves you whining on the sidelines, which looks weak and ineffectual because, again, it literally is weak and ineffectual. Democrats now need to do the basic blocking and tackling work of recruiting midterm candidates, writing a policy agenda, and holding a presidential primary, all of which will play out in time. There’s no guarantee that any of this will turn out well, but there are also plenty of obvious opportunities for it to do so.
But despite much of this having broadly normal contours, I think there’s one under discussed way in which it has been not normal.
Trump is making economic policy decisions that have not only engendered backlash from the mass public, they’ve been bad in specific ways for business. There’s obviously nothing inherently wrong with a politician making a call that’s bad for a particular company or industry. But normally when that happens, the leaders of the companies that are harmed complain vociferously and try to mobilize political support for their own interests. Under Trump, though, corporate America is acting like they absolutely agree with all the darkest warnings about democracy being on the ballot in 2024. They seem to have decided that America is now a dictatorship, where if you publicly complain about Trump you’ll be sent to the gulag.
I don’t want to defend Trump on this score, because he really is a madman who enjoys abusing power. But this is still the United Stat
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The most disturbing aspect of Trump’s first 100 days
Too many American businesses are acting like he’s already a dictator
By Matthew Yglesias | May 05, 2025
Are you fucking kidding me?
12 straight years of every corporation under the sun blowing Democrats. A rainbow flag around every one of their logos for a whole month, and bans for anyone on Twitter and YouTube anywhere else who has a problem with it. But they only put the rainbow flag around their logos in countries that ban you or lock you up for saying something about it, and none of them had any fucking balls to do it in China or the Middle East.
EVERYTHING government and business have been acting as if Democrats were dictating everything.
Go fuck yourself dude. They're finally shutting the fuck up and getting out of our lives.
Company makes X product and/or provides X service. That is all that is necessary out of Company.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The crisis isn’t Trump. It’s the Republican Party.
Well, that's mixed messaging, Vox.
Are you sure that Vox isn't acting like Trump's a dictator now too?
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Trump Says He’s Instituting a “100% Tariff” on Films Produced Outside of the U.S. Because the “Movie Industry in America Is Dying”
The president posted that Hollywood and other areas are "being devastated" due to "a concerted effort by other Nations," which constitutes a "National Security threat."
By Kimberly Nordyke, Aaron Couch | May 4, 2025 8:39pm
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/trump-tariff-movie
s-produced-outside-america-1236206949/
“The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death,” he wrote. “Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated. This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda!”
“Therefore, I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands. WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”
“What they’ve done is other nations have been stealing the movies, the moviemaking capabilities from the united States,” he said, adding: “I’ve done some very strong research over the past week, and we’re making very few movies now. Hollywood is being destroyed. Now, you have a … grossly incompetent governor that allowed that to happen, so I’m not just blaming other nations, but other nations have stolen our movie industry. If they’re not willing to make a movie inside the United States, then we should have a tariff on movies that come in. And not only that, governments are actually giving big money. They’re supporting them financially. That’s sort of a threat to our country in a sense.”
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Good.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Trump sons’ deals on 3 continents directly benefit the president
May 5, 2025 at 1:27 pm
The president's family members are raking in a fortune in deals across the world.
In the past 10 days, Donald Trump Jr. made stops in Hungary, Romania, Serbia, and Bulgaria. At the same time, Eric Trump was visiting Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and other Middle East spots promoting the family’s real estate company and crypto plans.
“There’s nothing like it,” Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley told the Times about the potential conflicts of interest posed by the trips.
Details about how the winds of change are filling Trump's bank accounts are at https://www.seattletimes.com/business/trump-sons-deals-on-3-continents
-directly-benefit-the-president/
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:
Trump sons’ deals on 3 continents directly benefit the president
May 5, 2025 at 1:27 pm
The president's family members are raking in a fortune in deals across the world.
In the past 10 days, Donald Trump Jr. made stops in Hungary, Romania, Serbia, and Bulgaria. At the same time, Eric Trump was visiting Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and other Middle East spots promoting the family’s real estate company and crypto plans.
“There’s nothing like it,” Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley told the Times about the potential conflicts of interest posed by the trips.
Details about how the winds of change are filling Trump's bank accounts are at https://www.seattletimes.com/business/trump-sons-deals-on-3-continents
-directly-benefit-the-president/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Until you tell me you have a problem with Joe Biden's crackhead son making $60,000 per month working at Burisma, I don't fucking want to hear it.
Nobody else does either.
How's that?
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:I have a problem with Hunter Biden's criminal behavior. Trumptards don't have a problem with criminal behavior by a Trump son or even The Trump.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Until you tell me you have a problem with Joe Biden's crackhead son making $60,000 per month working at Burisma, I don't fucking want to hear it.
Nobody else does either.
How's that?
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 a problem with Hunter Biden's criminal behavior.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Until you tell me you have a problem with Joe Biden's crackhead son making $60,000 per month working at Burisma, I don't fucking want to hear it.
Nobody else does either.
How's that?
First we have ever heard that out of you.
Now ask yourself why he was "working" for Burisma in Ukraine, in between the regime change during Obama's administration and his father's administration.
Do not play that off as something trivial, because you know very well that it is not.
Quote:
Trumptards don't have a problem with criminal behavior by a Trump son or even The Trump.
Once again, the problem here is your Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome. Nobody cares anymore period. We've been listening to 24/7 bullshit out of you for 12 years now and nearly all of it was proven bullshit over time. Meanwhile, the happiness level in this country is lower than nearly any living human being remembers it ever being, and your party has been in control of everything or at least maintained a majority of the control for the last 30 years.
Our streets aren't safe. Homlessness is higher than it's ever been. Our country is dumber and fatter than almost everyone else in the 1st world. People like you going out of your way to ruin everyone's day all the time.
You're fucking right we don't care.
Not anymore.
Maybe you should have been so fucking principled as to admit the Hunter Biden/Burisma thing was shady as fuck when it was relevant and people might take anything you have to say in May of 2025 seriously.
But you didn't, so we don't.
Go. Fuck. Yourself.
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Quote:You could have saved energy by typing "Fake News." Trump uses those two words all the time as a convenient time-conserving tactic.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
First we have ever heard that out of you.
Now ask yourself why he was "working" for Burisma in Ukraine, in between the regime change during Obama's administration and his father's administration.
Do not play that off as something trivial, because you know very well that it is not.
Once again, the problem here is your Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome. Nobody cares anymore period. We've been listening to 24/7 bullshit out of you for 12 years now and nearly all of it was proven bullshit over time. Meanwhile, the happiness level in this country is lower than nearly any living human being remembers it ever being, and your party has been in control of everything or at least maintained a majority of the control for the last 30 years.
Our streets aren't safe. Homlessness is higher than it's ever been. Our country is dumber and fatter than almost everyone else in the 1st world. People like you going out of your way to ruin everyone's day all the time.
You're fucking right we don't care.
Not anymore.
Maybe you should have been so fucking principled as to admit the Hunter Biden/Burisma thing was shady as fuck when it was relevant and people might take anything you have to say in May of 2025 seriously.
But you didn't, so we don't.
Go. Fuck. Yourself.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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In a post on his Truth Social site Sunday evening, Trump wrote that, “For too long, America has been plagued by vicious, violent, and repeat Criminal Offenders, the dregs of society, who will never contribute anything other than Misery and Suffering. When we were a more serious Nation, in times past, we did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals, and keep them far away from anyone they could harm. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”
“That is why, today,” he said, “I am directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders.”
The prison was closed in 1963 due to crumbling infrastructure and the high costs of repairing and supplying the island facility, because everything from fuel to food had to be brought by boat.
https://apnews.com/article/trump-alcatraz-prison-fabe3385415ae03829d44
e50efb3c1fb
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Trump declares 2 new national holidays — as he bemoans 'we already have too many'
President Donald Trump took to his social media platform Monday evening to double down on his plans to celebrate the end of World War I and World War II in the United States by designating specific "Victory Days" for each conflict.
He would rename May 8 as "Victory Day for World War II" and Nov. 11 as "Victory Day for World War I".
Trump had floated renaming Veterans Day to "Victory Day for World War I," but the White House walked that back facing backlash from veterans' groups and others.
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-holidays/
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 polity is cracked, and might collapse. Canada must prepare
The U.S. is becoming increasingly ungovernable, and some experts believe it could descend into civil war. What should Canada do then?
By Thomas Homer-Dixon
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published December 31, 2021
Updated January 2, 2022
This article was published more than 3 years ago. Some information may no longer be current.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-american-polity-is
-cracked-and-might-collapse-canada-must-prepare/
Washington, Jan. 6, 2021: A police flash-bang grenade illuminates Trump protesters outside the U.S. Capitol, which they stormed after a provocative speech by the outgoing president. The Capitol insurrection was a wake-up call about the vulnerabilities in American democracy.
Thomas Homer-Dixon is executive director of the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University. His latest book is Commanding Hope: The Power We Have to Renew a World in Peril. It is a free download at https://libgen.rs/search.php?req=Thomas+Homer-Dixon
By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence. By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship.
We mustn’t dismiss these possibilities just because they seem ludicrous or too horrible to imagine. In 2014, the suggestion that Donald Trump would become president would also have struck nearly everyone as absurd. But today we live in a world where the absurd regularly becomes real and the horrible commonplace.
Leading American academics are now actively addressing the prospect of a fatal weakening of U.S. democracy.
This past November, more than 150 professors of politics, government, political economy and international relations appealed to Congress to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, which would protect the integrity of US elections but is now stalled in the Senate. This is a moment of “great peril and risk,” they wrote. “Time is ticking away, and midnight is approaching.”
I’m a scholar of violent conflict. For more than 40 years, I’ve studied and published on the causes of war, social breakdown, revolution, ethnic violence and genocide, and for nearly two decades I led a centre on peace and conflict studies at the University of Toronto.
Today, as I watch the unfolding crisis in the United States, I see a political and social landscape flashing with warning signals.
I’m not surprised by what’s happening there – not at all. During my graduate work in the United States in the 1980s, I sometimes listened to Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio talk show host and later television personality. I remarked to friends at the time that, with each broadcast, it was if Mr. Limbaugh was wedging the sharp end of a chisel into a faint crack in the moral authority of U.S. political institutions, and then slamming the other end of that chisel with a hammer.
In the decades since, week after week, year after year, Mr. Limbaugh and his fellow travellers have hammered away – their blows’ power lately amplified through social media and outlets such as Fox News and Newsmax. The cracks have steadily widened, ramified, connected and propagated deeply into America’s once-esteemed institutions, profoundly compromising their structural integrity. The country is becoming increasingly ungovernable, and some experts believe it could descend into civil war.
How should Canada prepare?
Then-president Donald Trump arrives with far-right conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh at a rally in Cape Girardeau, Mo., in 2019. Mr. Limbaugh died on Feb. 17 this year. JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images
In 2020, president Donald Trump awarded Mr. Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The act signalled that Mr. Limbaugh’s brand of bullying, populist white ethnocentrism – a rancid blend of aggrieved attacks on liberal elites, racist dog-whistling, bragging about American exceptionalism and appeals to authoritarian leadership – had become an integral part of mainstream political ide
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Quote:Good? No, No, No: President Trump's threat to impose tariffs on film imports to the U.S. could risk retaliatory actions in international markets, where American film studios make the bulk of their box office revenue.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Trump Says He’s Instituting a “100% Tariff” on Films Produced Outside of the U.S. Because the “Movie Industry in America Is Dying”
The president posted that Hollywood and other areas are "being devastated" due to "a concerted effort by other Nations," which constitutes a "National Security threat."
By Kimberly Nordyke, Aaron Couch | May 4, 2025 8:39pm
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/trump-tariff-movie
s-produced-outside-america-1236206949/
“The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death,” he wrote. “Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated. This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda!”
“Therefore, I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands. WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”
“What they’ve done is other nations have been stealing the movies, the moviemaking capabilities from the united States,” he said, adding: “I’ve done some very strong research over the past week, and we’re making very few movies now. Hollywood is being destroyed. Now, you have a … grossly incompetent governor that allowed that to happen, so I’m not just blaming other nations, but other nations have stolen our movie industry. If they’re not willing to make a movie inside the United States, then we should have a tariff on movies that come in. And not only that, governments are actually giving big money. They’re supporting them financially. That’s sort of a threat to our country in a sense.”
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Good.
The U.S. is the top exporter of films globally by far, with export value running at three times imports, according to the Motion Picture Association (MPA).
U.S. movie studios typically drive the bulk of global box office sales. The majority of their revenue tends to come from distribution outside of the U.S., which is why any sort of retaliatory tariffs on U.S. film exports would be disastrous for Hollywood.
For example, the top-grossing movie globally last year, "Inside Out 2," was produced by U.S.-based entertainment giant Disney, but the bulk (61.6%) of its $1.7 billion in box office revenue was made abroad.
Similarly, 56% of global ticket sales to Warner Bros. Pictures' "Barbie," the top-grossing film the year prior, came from international distribution.
https://www.axios.com/2025/05/06/movie-tariffs-trump-studios
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:Good? No, No, No: President Trump's threat to impose tariffs on film imports to the U.S. could risk retaliatory actions in international markets, where American film studios make the bulk of their box office revenue.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Trump Says He’s Instituting a “100% Tariff” on Films Produced Outside of the U.S. Because the “Movie Industry in America Is Dying”
The president posted that Hollywood and other areas are "being devastated" due to "a concerted effort by other Nations," which constitutes a "National Security threat."
By Kimberly Nordyke, Aaron Couch | May 4, 2025 8:39pm
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/trump-tariff-movie
s-produced-outside-america-1236206949/
“The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death,” he wrote. “Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated. This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda!”
“Therefore, I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands. WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”
“What they’ve done is other nations have been stealing the movies, the moviemaking capabilities from the united States,” he said, adding: “I’ve done some very strong research over the past week, and we’re making very few movies now. Hollywood is being destroyed. Now, you have a … grossly incompetent governor that allowed that to happen, so I’m not just blaming other nations, but other nations have stolen our movie industry. If they’re not willing to make a movie inside the United States, then we should have a tariff on movies that come in. And not only that, governments are actually giving big money. They’re supporting them financially. That’s sort of a threat to our country in a sense.”
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Good.
The U.S. is the top exporter of films globally by far, with export value running at three times imports, according to the Motion Picture Association (MPA).
U.S. movie studios typically drive the bulk of global box office sales. The majority of their revenue tends to come from distribution outside of the U.S., which is why any sort of retaliatory tariffs on U.S. film exports would be disastrous for Hollywood.
For example, the top-grossing movie globally last year, "Inside Out 2," was produced by U.S.-based entertainment giant Disney, but the bulk (61.6%) of its $1.7 billion in box office revenue was made abroad.
Similarly, 56% of global ticket sales to Warner Bros. Pictures' "Barbie," the top-grossing film the year prior, came from international distribution.
https://www.axios.com/2025/05/06/movie-tariffs-trump-studios
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
It's not about charging people more money to see a movie.
It's about making sure Disney films in America and not the UK.
They can take that $50 Million in tax breaks per movie out of The Rock's payday for all I care.
Get fucked, dummy.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:You could have saved energy by typing "Fake News." Trump uses those two words all the time as a convenient time-conserving tactic.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
First we have ever heard that out of you.
Now ask yourself why he was "working" for Burisma in Ukraine, in between the regime change during Obama's administration and his father's administration.
Do not play that off as something trivial, because you know very well that it is not.
Once again, the problem here is your Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome. Nobody cares anymore period. We've been listening to 24/7 bullshit out of you for 12 years now and nearly all of it was proven bullshit over time. Meanwhile, the happiness level in this country is lower than nearly any living human being remembers it ever being, and your party has been in control of everything or at least maintained a majority of the control for the last 30 years.
Our streets aren't safe. Homlessness is higher than it's ever been. Our country is dumber and fatter than almost everyone else in the 1st world. People like you going out of your way to ruin everyone's day all the time.
You're fucking right we don't care.
Not anymore.
Maybe you should have been so fucking principled as to admit the Hunter Biden/Burisma thing was shady as fuck when it was relevant and people might take anything you have to say in May of 2025 seriously.
But you didn't, so we don't.
Go. Fuck. Yourself.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Once again, you miss the point because you are a very stupid person.
The point is, it doesn't matter anymore whether it's fake news or not.
We've heard 12 similar stories out of you every day for a decade. Nobody gives one single fuck what you or your lying media have to say about anything anymore.
This is exactly what I told you was going to happen, and you didn't listen to me.
I don't want to hear about it from you. Go cry to your dead party about it.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Once again, you miss the point because you are a very stupid person.
The point is, it doesn't matter anymore whether it's fake news or not.
We've heard 12 similar stories out of you every day for a decade. Nobody gives one single fuck what you or your lying media have to say about anything anymore.
This is exactly what I told you was going to happen, and you didn't listen to me.
I don't want to hear about it from you. Go cry to your dead party about it.
Quote:6ix, reading your stuff makes me feel that you are channeling the spirit of Rush Limbaugh. Arrogantly confident. Endlessly hostile. Diarrhea of the mouth. The Libtards tried to get one idea into that Trumptard's head but he knew this was a lie: smoking kills. The Libtards could save his life but Rush didn't believe anything from Libtards because he had strong principles and unwavering beliefs. Rush, and many others have taught me a lesson: let your enemies die for their ideas. Don't grant them good health and long life. Trumptards will find a way to ruin their health early because "freedom" for them means no chain-link fences keeping them away from their vices.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
It's not about charging people more money to see a movie.
It's about making sure Disney films in America and not the UK.
They can take that $50 Million in tax breaks per movie out of The Rock's payday for all I care.
Get fucked, dummy.
Health problems and death
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_Limbaugh#Health_problems_and_death
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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I don't understand why a Trumptard Senator would refuse to vote for a criminal nominated by Trump! Why? It is an unprecedented refusal!
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he wouldn't support Ed Martin, President Donald Trump's nominee for U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, likely blocking the path to confirmation for the “Stop the Steal” organizer who had closely aligned himself with Jan. 6 defendants.
“I’ve indicated to the White House I wouldn’t support his nomination,” Tillis said Tuesday after meeting with Martin on Monday night.
Tillis is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is overseeing Martin's nomination. The panel has 12 Republicans and 10 Democrats, meaning if all other members aside from Tillis voted along party lines, the vote on Martin would end in a tie and his nomination would not be reported favorably to the full Senate.
Trump's nomination of Martin, a longtime right-wing activist who had no prosecutorial experience until Trump named him as interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia on the day of his inauguration, has raised major concerns with alumni of the office, which prosecutors both federal and local crimes in Washington.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/thom-tillis-wont-s
upport-ed-martin-dc-us-attorney-rcna205104
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 could have saved energy by typing "Fake News." Trump uses those two words all the time as a convenient time-conserving tactic.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
First we have ever heard that out of you.
Now ask yourself why he was "working" for Burisma in Ukraine, in between the regime change during Obama's administration and his father's administration.
Do not play that off as something trivial, because you know very well that it is not.
Once again, the problem here is your Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome. Nobody cares anymore period. We've been listening to 24/7 bullshit out of you for 12 years now and nearly all of it was proven bullshit over time. Meanwhile, the happiness level in this country is lower than nearly any living human being remembers it ever being, and your party has been in control of everything or at least maintained a majority of the control for the last 30 years.
Our streets aren't safe. Homlessness is higher than it's ever been. Our country is dumber and fatter than almost everyone else in the 1st world. People like you going out of your way to ruin everyone's day all the time.
You're fucking right we don't care.
Not anymore.
Maybe you should have been so fucking principled as to admit the Hunter Biden/Burisma thing was shady as fuck when it was relevant and people might take anything you have to say in May of 2025 seriously.
But you didn't, so we don't.
Go. Fuck. Yourself.
SECOND, YOU could have saved yourself energy by not posting fake news. Instead, you waste yourself spewing endless amounts lies- like the 3 year old piece of crap (above) that literally nobody will bother to read.
Why will nobody bother to read your posts?
Because nobody is going to dig thru that mountain of crap you created, just to find a speck of insight. YOU are the overarticulate 'tard that you keep accusing others of being.
Oh, and BTW, about Hunter Biden ... weren't you the one calling his laptop "Russian disinfo" and anyone who disagreed with you a Russian troll (or words to that effect)?
-----------
"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:Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Once again, you miss the point because you are a very stupid person.
The point is, it doesn't matter anymore whether it's fake news or not.
We've heard 12 similar stories out of you every day for a decade. Nobody gives one single fuck what you or your lying media have to say about anything anymore.
This is exactly what I told you was going to happen, and you didn't listen to me.
I don't want to hear about it from you. Go cry to your dead party about it.Quote:6ix, reading your stuff makes me feel that you are channeling the spirit of Rush Limbaugh.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
It's not about charging people more money to see a movie.
It's about making sure Disney films in America and not the UK.
They can take that $50 Million in tax breaks per movie out of The Rock's payday for all I care.
Get fucked, dummy.
Oh fuck off, dude.
I already let everyone here know that if I were in the area I'd go out of my way to stop at Limbaugh's grave and piss on his ashes.
Fuck Rush Limbaugh, and fuck you.
Quote:
Arrogantly confident. Endlessly hostile. Diarrhea of the mouth. The Libtards tried to get one idea into that Trumptard's head but he knew this was a lie: smoking kills. The Libtards could save his life but Rush didn't believe anything from Libtards because he had strong principles and unwavering beliefs. Rush, and many others have taught me a lesson: let your enemies die for their ideas. Don't grant them good health and long life. Trumptards will find a way to ruin their health early because "freedom" for them means no chain-link fences keeping them away from their vices.
Say hi to Kevin Drum for me.
Oh... wait.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Opposing SB37
By Scott Aaronson | May 6th, 2025
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8853
Yesterday, the Texas State Legislature heard public comments about SB37, a bill that would give a state board direct oversight over course content and faculty hiring at public universities, perhaps inspired by Trump’s national crackdown on higher education. Text at https://legiscan.com/TX/text/SB37/2025
So, encouraged by a friend in the history department, I submitted the following public comment, whatever good it will do.
I’m a computer science professor at UT, although I’m writing in my personal capacity. For 20 years, on my blog and elsewhere, I’ve been outspoken in opposing woke radicalism on campus and (especially) obsessive hatred of Israel that often veers into antisemitism, even when that’s caused me to get attacked from my left. Nevertheless, I write to strongly oppose SB37 in its current form, because of my certainty that no world-class research university can survive ceding control over its curriculum and faculty hiring to the state. If this bill passes, for example, it will severely impact my ability to recruit the most talented computer scientists to UT Austin, if they have competing options that will safeguard their academic freedom as traditionally conceived. Even if our candidates are approved, the new layer of bureaucracy will make it difficult and slow for us to do anything. For those concerned about intellectual diversity in academia, a much better solution would include safeguarding tenure and other protections for faculty with heterodox views, and actually enforcing content-neutral time, place, and manner rules for protests and disruptions. UT has actually done a better job on these things than many other universities in the US, and could serve as a national model for how viewpoint diversity can work — but not under an intolerably stifling regime like the one proposed by this bill.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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'Millions are dying' because of 'foolish decision' to ban Russia from G8, Trump says
By Lucy Pakhnyuk | May 7, 2025 3:14 AM
https://kyivindependent.com/millions-are-dying-because-of-foolish-deci
sion-to-ban-russia-from-g8-trump-says/
United States President Donald Trump attributed Russia's invasion of Ukraine to its exclusion from the Group of Eight (G8), now the Group of Seven (G7).
Speaking to reporters at a World Cup planning meeting on May 6, Trump said it was a "foolish decision" to ban Russia from the group.
"If they didn't vote Russia out... I think you probably wouldn't have this ridiculous, deadly war... It was a very bad decision," Trump said.
"They threw them out and because of that... millions of people are dying," Trump added, referring to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
When pressed about whether he would invite Russia back to the group, Trump responded that "it's not good timing now," contradicting previous statements.
Earlier this year, Trump said that he would "love" to see Russia readmitted into the G7, calling Russia's expulsion from the group a "mistake."
The G8 became the G7 after Russia was expelled in 2014 for its invasion of Ukraine's Donbas, and subsequent annexation of Crimea.
Since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, G7 countries have collectively supported Ukraine, including through the Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration program, which aims to provide Kyiv with $50 billion in loans using frozen Russian assets.
Current G7 members include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The European Union is also represented in the group.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Is Trump Carrying Out His Mass Deportation Promises? The Numbers Might Surprise You.
By Shirin Ali | May 07, 2025 5:40 AM
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/05/trump-mass-deportation-pro
mises-numbers-statistics.html
The Trump administration is aiming to deport 1 million immigrants this year. (85,000 per month)
In February, Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed 11,000 migrants, and just over 12,300 in March.
Those figures are higher than the monthly pace of removals during Trump’s first term, when he deported 6,800 noncitizens per month, but still lower than former president Barack Obama’s, when ICE deported about 12,900 noncitizens per month.
Looking at all of Trump’s immigration actions since he took office on Jan. 20, the Brookings Institution concluded that there’s been “more arrests, less due process, but not yet more deportations.” https://www.brookings.edu/articles/100-days-of-immigration-under-the-s
econd-trump-administration/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Here’s Where Trump Got His Idiotic Idea to Tariff Foreign Movies
Someone close to Donald Trump planted the idea in his head that the United States should tariff foreign movies (whatever that means).
Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling | May 5, 2025, 10:35 a.m. ET
https://newrepublic.com/post/194830/where-trump-got-idea-tariff-foreig
n-movies
Donald Trump’s “eyes and ears” in Hollywood seem to have hand-delivered him his shocking idea to tax foreign films.
On Sunday, Trump revealed that he would be instituting a “100 percent tariff” on films produced outside of the United States.
“The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated. This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat.
“It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda! Therefore, I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands,” Trump continued. “WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”
Days before Trump took office in January, he announced online that he’d be tapping Mel Gibson, Sylvester Stallone, and Jon Voight to be his special envoys to Hollywood, mentioning that he would “get done what they suggest” in order to spark another “Golden Age of Hollywood.”
Months later, it appears that Voight—also known as the film industry’s most ardent conservative—spoke with Trump, and Trump listened.
Voight has reportedly spent weeks talking to the Directors Guild of America, Teamsters, and IATSE, Deadline reported Friday. The fruit of those conversations, according to sources with knowledge of them who spoke to the entertainment publication, was supposed to be a tax incentive that Hollywood has been clamoring for.
Instead, Trump went the way of the tariff, which squares into an administration that has aggressively curtailed spending in order to extend extremely expensive tax breaks for billionaires.
The details of the tariff were still being sorted out by Hollywood executives as of Sunday night, reported Reuters. It’s unclear, per Trump’s post, whether the tariffs would only impact movies in the theater or if they would also apply to streaming services. It’s also unclear if the tariffs would be calculated based on production costs or box office revenue, the newswire noted. By Monday, Netflix, Disney, Paramount Global, and Fox Corp stocks went tumbling.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Donald Trump’s Biggest, Dumbest Lie Is … Really Big and Really Dumb
By Michael Tomasky
https://newrepublic.com/article/194821/trump-tariffs-income-tax-innume
racy
Great news, my fellow Americans! Tariff revenue last month was way up. The government took in $17.4 billion from tariffs in April, nearly double the March haul of $9.6 billion. So far this year, the government has collected around $70 billion in tariff revenue. In 2024, with Sleepy Joe at the helm, it took in only about $77 billion for the whole year. Today, under the beautiful leadership of Pope Donald, we’re on pace for $210 billion in revenues. Maybe more!
Could Trump be right, then, that tariffs will pay for everything and one day replace the income tax?
No. Not even close. Not even kinda-sorta-maybe-in-dreamland close. This is a very under-discussed aspect of this whole tariff debate. Commentary typically focuses on whether the tariffs will really reduce the trade deficit and bring manufacturing back to the United States. Far too little attention is paid to one of Donald Trump’s chief claims, which he makes constantly: He fervently believes, or sure seems to, that the revenue from tariffs will be so great as to allow for the shutting down of the IRS and the end of income taxes.
Permit me to arm you with the answers to three fundamental questions. How much does the federal government spend every year? How much revenue does the federal government take in every year? And how much revenue might Trump’s tariffs generate once his plan is really up and running?
Answers to the first two questions: In 2024, the government spent about $6.75 trillion. In the same year, federal government revenues totaled $4.9 trillion. Yes, that made for a hefty budget deficit of $1.8 trillion, give or take, and that is certainly on the very high side, but that isn’t what we’re here to discuss today.
Now—let’s break down that revenue figure into its constituent categories. The largest chunk of that $4.9 trillion, about $2.4 trillion—or essentially half—came from income taxes. Another $1.7 trillion came from payroll taxes. About $530 billion came from corporate taxes (which Trump wants to lower again, so don’t expect that number to stay that high). Finally, $253 billion came from our old friend “Other.” The largest piece of the “Other” pie was excise taxes ($101 billion), which are taxes on things like airline tickets and so forth. “Other” also included the aforementioned $77 billion in tariff revenue, also known as customs duties.
In other words: To vaporize the IRS, Trump’s tariffs would need to produce $2.4 trillion in revenue. So, how’s that looking?
It’s looking insane is how it’s looking. As noted, the government is on pace to generate something north of $200 billion in tariff revenue this year. But let’s imagine that Trump’s wildest dreams are met or even exceeded. Will customs duties produce anywhere near $2.4 trillion?
No. They’ll come about as close as Publisher came to winning the Kentucky Derby Saturday (he finished fourteenth out of 19; my dream exacta of Journalism-Publisher went up in smoke around the first turn). Here’s a good report from USA Today that covers all the bases. The Yale Budget Lab estimates that the tariffs will bring in, wouldn’t you know it, exactly $2.4 trillion. But oops—that’s over the next 10 years, not one, so it’s not even going to cover the first year of this wild experiment. Other estimates are similar. Even Peter Navarro, Trump’s tariffs adviser who made his small contribution to the 2024 deficit by forcing you and me to pay his housing tab for four months (in a federal prison in Miami, that is), estimates they’ll only bring in $600 billion a year. And that’s from the most passionate tariff evangelist in the country, in some ways even more ardent than Trump himself.
So, doing the math, we find that $2.4 trillion (income tax revenue) minus $600 billion (the most optimistic projection of tariff re
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The world commemorates the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe
By David Frum | May 7, 2025, 10:30 AM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2025/05/the-david-frum-sh
ow-the-most-corrupt-presidency-in-american-history/682720/
This is a time of commemoration, and in this time, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, issued a very strange post about the event on the 8th of May. He wrote:
Quote:Now, that post was such a perfect crystallization of the Trump style: bombast, boast, all of it making Trump himself the center of a story that he had nothing whatsoever to do with. The statement is unwise and unattractive in all kinds of other ways too. It denigrates the sacrifices and heroism of others. And it turns the tragedy and horror of war into a triumphant narrative that was completely alien to almost all the people who experienced it as nothing but a tale of suffering and waste and cruelty and misery.
Many of our allies and friends are celebrating May 8th as Victory Day, but we did more than any other Country, by far, in producing a victorious result on World War II. I am hereby renaming May 8th as Victory Day for World War II and November 11th as Victory Day for World War I. We won both Wars, nobody was close to us in terms of strength, bravery, or military brilliance, but we never celebrate anything—That’s because we don’t have leaders anymore, that know how to do so! We are going to start celebrating our victories again!
I want to draw attention to something maybe less obvious about what is wrong—what is missing—from the president’s statement. The first is, as so often when Donald Trump talks about American military history, he emphasizes power and success and triumph and military genius, but always lacking is any mention of the values for which Americans fought. America didn’t go into World War II—or even World War I—to be top nation, to beat and dominate others. It went to defend things that Americans regarded as precious, and not only Americans but others too—and one of the measures of how precious those values were, not only to Americans and to others, but to the world that has grown up as a result of the war.
Because at this interval of eight decades, I think it’s maybe most useful and most necessary not to think about the war that ended in Europe on May 8, or the war overall that ended on September 2 in Tokyo Bay. I think it’s more useful to think about what began the process of reconstruction and reconciliation that occupied the next eight decades: the way in which former enemies became present partners, the way the Germans and the Japanese themselves discovered, in their own defeat, their own liberation because they came to accept the values for which Americans went into battle.
The story of how we turned the chaos and trauma of the Second World War into something better—and not Americans alone but Americans working with allies, working with defeated adversaries—that is not as dramatic as the battles of World War II. I don’t know that people are going to make successful documentary series out of trade negotiations in food aid and the negotiation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But those achievements were great, and they are the things that at the eighth-decade interval require us most to be mindful, because they’re the things that are most in danger of being lost. You know, there are marble and bronze statues that commemorate all the horror and bloodshed of the war. But those quiet victories of peacetime that built a better world, we’re in danger of forgetting them because right now, the United States is, step by step, unraveling its own great achievement.
You know, Winston Churchill described the Battle of Britain, in 1940, as Britain’s finest hour. If Americans are looking for a finest hour of their own, it’s not anything that happened during the war—when America was, by the way, a late entrant. It’s the five, seven years, 10 years after the war, when Americans and others learned from the mistakes aft
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Tariffs and Poverty Around the World
Why you should care about Bangladesh
By Paul Krugman | May 07, 2025
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/tariffs-and-poverty-around-the-worl
d
Many people, including many small investors, still believe and/or hope either that Donald Trump will soon negotiate many trade deals or that he will claim he has, declare victory, and back off his massive tariff hike. They’re deluding themselves.
Consider what we’ve learned about Trump as the negative fallout from his tariffs has started to become obvious.
First, he’s invincibly ignorant. The collapse of imports from China has businesses terrified and warning both of soaring consumer prices and of looming shortages. But Trump says it’s all good:
Quote:Hey, remember those empty shelves during Covid? Americans were doing great! Think of all the money they saved by not buying toilet paper, because there was none to be had. Very simple.
We were losing hundreds of billions of dollars with China. Now we’re essentially not doing business with China. Therefore, we’re saving hundreds of billions of dollars. Very simple.
Second, when he’s in a hole, he just keeps digging. His talk about making Canada the 51st state had a decisive effect in Canada’s recent election, hugely bolstering anti-Trump forces. But yesterday, meeting with Prime Minster Mark Carney, who kept his office thanks to this backlash, Trump kept pushing the idea.
Carney remained polite — he is, after all, Canadian — but his facial expressions during the meeting were something to behold.
The best bet, then, is that the trade war will proceed, even intensify. There will be some winners, at least in terms of global influence, including China, which gains from America’s loss of credibility, and the European Union, which unlike Trump’s America can be trusted to honor its agreements. The United States will be a big loser, both politically and economically.
But the biggest losers will be poor countries that have become less poor largely thanks to exports and are about to see their hopes of progress dashed.
Possibly the most hated article I’ve ever written was a 1997 piece for Slate titled “In Praise of Cheap Labor,” which was mainly aimed at left-wing critics of globalization. I argued that much as the sight of low-paid workers producing cheap goods for rich countries may — and should — disturb us, labor-intensive exports are often poor countries’ best hope of progress.
This argument has only become stronger over time. The New York Times recently had a very good article on Bangladesh, which 50 years ago was the poster child for warnings about mass famine driven by overpopulation. Instead, the South Asian nation became, not a banana republic, but a pajama republic, one of the world’s leading clothing exporters. It’s still a poor country, with wages and working conditions that are appalling by advanced-country standards. But as the chart at the top of this post shows, Bangladesh is about four times as rich as it was in the 1980s, when its exports began rising.
But now the country faces the possibility of economic catastrophe, made in America. Trump’s “Liberation Day” trade plan would have imposed a 37 percent tariff on imports from Bangladesh. That plan is temporarily on hold, but it seems all too possible that it or something as bad or worse will come back.
OK, I know that most Americans don’t care about Bangladeshi living standards. They should, even on selfish grounds: condemning 170 million people to deeper poverty would be a threat to global stability. But here’s the thing: Throwing up barriers to Bangladeshi exports doesn’t involve a tradeoff, helping American workers at others’ expense. It’s pure loss, hurting both nations.
Why? Because making imported clothing more expensive here won’t create U.S. jobs. Apparel production, s
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Seven TDS posts today in this single thread alone.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Is Trump Carrying Out His Mass Deportation Promises? The Numbers Might Surprise You.
By Shirin Ali | May 07, 2025 5:40 AM
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/05/trump-mass-deportation-pro
mises-numbers-statistics.html
The Trump administration is aiming to deport 1 million immigrants this year. (85,000 per month)
In February, Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed 11,000 migrants, and just over 12,300 in March.
Those figures are higher than the monthly pace of removals during Trump’s first term, when he deported 6,800 noncitizens per month, but still lower than former president Barack Obama’s, when ICE deported about 12,900 noncitizens per month.
Looking at all of Trump’s immigration actions since he took office on Jan. 20, the Brookings Institution concluded that there’s been “more arrests, less due process, but not yet more deportations.” https://www.brookings.edu/articles/100-days-of-immigration-under-the-s
econd-trump-administration/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Yeah. We need to do better and we will once we finally get the Supreme Court to put muzzles on your activist judges.
In the meantime, what are the level of current border crossings?
Just about zero per month.
That's 200,000 less per month that we have to remove than what Joe Biden* was letting in, and that's only when you believe the Legacy Media liars that were cutting the actual number in half.
Once your party finally dies off once and for all, we're removing every single last one of them. Including the kids.
But in the meantime, much more importantly, we've cut down illegal immigration into this country down to nothing per month. So at least the problem isn't continuing to get worse while the Anti-Americans in the Democratic party are fucking around.
Keep fucking around. You're about to find out.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Trump officials want Medicaid to pay drug makers “the lowest price charged by other developed countries” as, the Journal suggested, “a path of less political resistance to achieve some $880 billion in Medicaid savings.”
“President Trump and Republicans appear to be shrinking from reforming Medicaid, but that’s not the worst of it,” the Journal said of his drugs plans. “To replace the spending slowdown they won’t get in Medicaid, they may expand drug price controls. For that trade we could have elected Democrats.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wall-street-journal-donald-trump-worst-
idea_n_681c4a39e4b0b11c497973a4
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 taking bribes because Why Not? Who will stop him? Nobody is Who!
President Donald Trump’s meme coin is already a thing that shouldn’t exist, much less as a vehicle for foreign entities to funnel money to the sitting president, yet here we are.
According to a Wednesday report from Bloomberg, over half of the top holders of $TRUMP — a personal cryptocurrency token established days before his inauguration — are likely foreign buyers, who have dumped millions into the project.
And likely not without motive. Last month, the token announced that Trump would be hosting an exclusive May 22 dinner for about 200 of $TRUMP’s largest investors at his Washington, D.C., golf club, leading to a flurry of purchases. According to Bloomberg, “76 percent of the token value held among the top 220 wallets likely belongs to foreign owners because the wallets used exchanges that are not available to U.S. residents.” According to a separate analysis by The Washington Post, roughly $100 million worth of tokens were purchased after the dinner was announced.
$TRUMP’s existence as a piggy bank through which so-far anonymous entities from across the globe can dump untold amounts of cash into the president’s coffers in exchange for exclusive access to his time is a pretty clear cut case of corruption. According to an analysis published by the Associated Press earlier this week, the coin has already generated over $320 million in transaction fees for its creators.
The president’s crypto coin is by no means a safe investment. A Tuesday report from NBC News found that of the approximately two million crypto wallets that purchased $TRUMP, around 764,000 lost money on their investment. Just 58 wallets account for roughly $1.1 billion in value gains, each making more than $10 million on their investment.
“The sitting president appears to be selling personal cryptocurrency while in office, granting access to people who buy it, and thereby enriching his business and his family. It’s gobsmacking,” Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) told Politico on Wednesday. “I’d like to hear one Republican senator defend it. Any self-respecting Congress would demand an accounting of everyone trading this coin who has any business before the government.”
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-meme-coin-to
p-bu-1235333516/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The Impending Doom of Trump’s Trade War
The uncertainty is doing plenty of economic damage. He may make things much worse.
By James Surowiecki | May 8, 2025, 6 AM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/05/trump-trade-war-se
lf-defeat/682726/
Little more than a month has passed since Donald Trump announced his plans to upend the global economic order by imposing huge tariffs on almost every country in the world. The stock market sold off sharply following the announcement; within days, the S&P 500 had lost about 12 percent of its value. But if you look at the U.S. economy right now, it doesn’t look obviously different from the way it did just before Trump’s so-called Liberation Day. Job growth in April was respectable. Forecasts for April’s inflation number, which is due next week, suggest price increases have remained muted. Corporate-earnings reports have come in strong. And the stock market itself has regained the ground it lost in the weeks after April 2.
Unfortunately, none of this means the economy will emerge unscathed from Trump’s trade war. The conflict, after all, has barely begun: After markets’ steep sell-off, Trump put a 90-day pause on his higher tariff rates with every country except China, Canada, and Mexico; he also issued a host of exemptions from the minimum 10 percent global tariff he’s kept in place (though some of these tariff exemptions, such as the one on auto parts, were temporary and are now kicking in). Trump’s 145 percent tariff rate on Chinese imports did go into effect on April 9, but the administration then exempted semiconductor chips, smartphones, computers, solar cells, flat-panel TVs, and computer-storage devices. And U.S. retailers had already begun stocking up on inventory in anticipation of the tariffs, which is why we haven’t seen empty shelves or skyrocketing prices—so far.
We’re in a phony-war period of Trump’s trade conflict. Things appear fine on the surface, but look closely and plenty of signs of impending trouble are emerging. It’s still early enough that if Trump rolls back his tariffs on China and reaches deals with other U.S. trading partners, the damage will be limited. Stock-market investors seem convinced that Trump will come to his senses and make this happen, and it’s certainly in America’s best interest that he does so. But if the deals prove elusive and the tariff war escalates amid beggar-thy-neighbor tactics, economic reality will assert itself.
Worrisome data are already coming in. Trucking volumes—basically, a measure of how many goods are being moved around the country—have begun to fall. Starting this week, shipping volumes at West Coast ports appear to be plummeting as shipments from China simply dry up: Container-ship arrivals in L.A. this week will be down 35 percent year over year.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said this week that Trump’s exorbitant tariffs have created an effective “embargo” on Chinese goods. The steep decline in imports from China will translate into even less demand for trucking within the U.S. by the end of this month, which will almost certainly lead to layoffs in that industry. Depending on where a product is made, we’ll see empty shelves in some stores by the end of June, and that could lead to layoffs in retail as well.
American importers have, to a degree, diversified away from Chinese-made goods in recent years, but they still account for almost 13 percent of imports—and a higher percentage of imports of manufactured goods. So retailers and consumers have no way to entirely dodge the impact of a virtual trade embargo with China. And Trump has acknowledged this with his odd riffs on how American kids might have to make do with three expensive dolls rather than 30 cheap ones, or with five pencils rather than 250—which one Republican pollster has called a “Marie Antoinette” moment.
Annie Lowrey: How to prepare for the Trumpcession
Those who are going to take a hit are not limited to the retailers that sell imports and the consumers who
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Will Trump Pretend to Fix What He Broke?
Why you shouldn’t get excited about his “deals”
By Paul Krugman | May 08, 2025
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/will-trump-pretend-to-fix-what-he
The Trump administration is planning to announce its first trade deal today, with Britain. Except it won’t be a deal; more of a “deal.” Reportedly it will mainly be a “framework” for an actual deal that may or may not happen sometime in the future. This is the tariff equivalent of “concepts of a plan” for health care.
In other words, this will be smoke and mirrors, an attempt to persuade the gullible that Trump’s tariffs are actually working. Markets — driven by small investors who seem desperate to believe that the people in charge have some idea what they’re doing — may briefly bounce on the announcement.
Trump, however, has already declared that the tariff that really matters right now, the prohibitive 145 percent rate on imports from China, won’t be coming down. That tariff has already caused a 30-40 percent drop in the volume of US-China trade, which, given the time it takes to ship stuff, guarantees a sharp increase in consumer prices and possibly empty shelves a few weeks from now.
But back to that UK “deal.” Nobody knows what will eventually come out of it, but we can be sure of one thing: It won’t lead to any significant opening of the British market to U.S. goods. Why? Because that market was already wide open before Trump stomped in.
The most important thing to understand about Trump’s trade war is that it’s an attempt to solve a problem that only exists in his imagination. He keeps insisting that other countries are engaged in unfair trade, but the reality is that most of our important trading partners impose very low tariffs on U.S. products:
https://www.nimblefins.co.uk/uk-us-trade-and-tariffs-real-stats
You could argue that China is less open to trade than the tariff number suggests, because the government plays such a large role in the Chinese economy. But for Britain, Canada and the European Union Trump’s tariffs are a huge, destructive attempt to fix something that wasn’t broken. These nations can’t stop doing bad stuff on trade because they weren’t doing bad stuff before Trump came along.
What about America’s trade deficit? As economists have repeated ad nauseam, this deficit doesn’t reflect unfair foreign trade policies. It is, instead, the flip side of large flows of capital into the United States, which historically reflected the fact that the U.S. was perceived as an attractive place to invest. Even if Trump manages to score some actual deals, as opposed to concepts of deals, they won’t change that logic. If his strategy does manage to reduce the trade deficit, it will do so only by destroying America’s attractiveness to foreign investors, which may be an achievable goal.
But let me go back to the point that Trump’s tariffs are a response to a problem that didn’t exist. That’s actually an observation that goes beyond trade policy. The Trump team likes to claim that it inherited an economy in terrible shape. Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, keeps claiming that the economy needs a “detox.”
In fact, however, when Trump took over the U.S. economy was in very good shape. Unemployment was around 4 percent, while inflation was at most a fraction of a percentage point above the Federal Reserve’s target of 2 percent. Our productivity growth was the envy of the world. We had a trade deficit, but as I said, this mainly reflected America’s attractiveness as a place to invest.
It's true that Goldilocks now seems to be leaving the building, but that’s entirely — entirely — due to Trump himself. In discussing the Fed’s decision to leave interest rates unchanged, Jerome Powell repeatedly talked about “uncertainty,” but the only reason things seem much more uncertain now than they did a f
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The price of Trump’s war on universities
Trashing American science is not only the goal of the Trump White House, it has the support of the Republican Party.
Self-Destruction
By Josh Marshall | May 7, 2025 10:29 a.m.
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/self-destruction-2
A note from TPM Reader MA on biomedical research. I’m sharing it because it’s a good simple explanation not only of the nuts and bolts reality of “your cure isn’t going to be there when you need it” but the massive hit to global competitiveness and economic advantage …
I’m racking my brain trying to figure out why Trump would want to kill funding for curing cancer/Alzheimer’s etc. I guess, as is often the case, with Trump, the simple explanation is the most likely. He sees the university as the enemy and wants to use whatever federal leverage he can to attack them, even if it ends up destroying one of the areas in which the US has a huge comparative advantage. There are significant economic consequences to spiking medical research in the universities: this subsidizes the training of people who will work in the industry, and it drives the types of blue sky research that industry doesn’t want to do, but that it benefits greatly from. It creates a vacuum that other countries will rush to fill. If it persists, the comparative advantage that the US has gained by attracting top global talent will collapse.
At the same time, what Trump and his cronies are doing to the education system with their anti-science agenda will pretty much guarantee that home grown talent is likely to be non-competitive globally. As the split with Musk over visas indicates, the tech sector knows how much it has benefited from draining the brains from overseas. Trump’s actions will reverse the flow — that loud sucking sound will be top talent leaving the US. US higher ed is a significant export industry in which the US runs a big surplus (a lot more international students come to study here than the other way around). Losing the US edge in higher ed, means not just losing the research expertise and findings, but also the students.
Trump and co. don’t care as long as it means weakening the university system. As is becoming clear, their ideological project outstrips economic considerations. They are happy to weaken the US and relegate it to second tier status globally if they can remake the cultural and ideological landscape. I guess they don’t care about turning the US into a backwater as long as they get to be the tin-horn dictators.
What continues to confound me is how many people who do not benefit from this support it.
It was striking to me to hear Trump talking about kids getting fewer dolls at Christmas. If a democrat had done something similar, the right would have gone nuts. It’s like some weird Kennedy parody: “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country’s billionaires…” It’s fascinating how many Trump supporters are willing to make the sacrifices they would never countenance from a Democratic administration.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The Actual Math Behind DOGE’s Cuts
If you thought Elon Musk was really trying to cut costs, you weren’t in on the joke.
By Jessica Riedl | May 8, 2025
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/05/musk-doge-spendin
g-cuts/682736/
In November, when Donald Trump first announced his plan to place Elon Musk in charge of a new Department of Government Efficiency, the idea was widely written off as a joke. Then Trump took office, and DOGE began its very real stampede through the government. As an effort to meaningfully reduce federal spending, however, DOGE remains wholly unserious.
Musk initially promised that he would eliminate $2 trillion of the $7 trillion federal budget, before scaling back his ambitions to $1 trillion, and then $150 billion. Even that revised target is highly improbable.
Precisely measuring the budgetary effects of the Musk experiment remains difficult, but we can begin by looking at the claims made by DOGE itself. In late February, its website claimed to have achieved $55 billion in annual-spending reductions. However, its “wall of receipts” detailed only $16.5 billion of this total. Half of that figure came from a typo claiming $8 billion in savings from terminating an $8 million contract. As The New York Times has reported, that was far from the only accounting error. Once such mistakes as false contract cancellations, triple counts of the same reform, and the inclusion of contracts that expired decades ago were fixed, verified budget savings stood at just $2 billion.
The DOGE website now claims $165 billion in savings. However, it still details only a fraction of the supposed cuts, and earlier accounting errors have given way to new ones. A common sleight of hand is canceling a “blanket purchase agreement”—in which the recipient had been given the equivalent of a credit limit to incur necessary costs on a project—and then claiming savings of the full credit limit rather than the (in many cases substantially lower) amount that was actually spent. Even assuming that the website’s stated savings have become twice as accurate as they were in February, annual savings would reach perhaps $15 billion, or 0.2 percent of federal spending.
Fortunately, more reliable sources than DOGE’s self-reported figures exist. The best is the Treasury Department’s monthly accounting of spending by agency and program. Any true DOGE spending reductions should show up in these budget totals, as should the results of other White House initiatives, including cuts to public-health spending and the ongoing efforts to eliminate USAID and the Department of Education.
These spending data do not flatter the Musk project. Total federal outlays in February and March were $86 billion (or 7 percent) higher than the levels from the same months a year ago, when adjusted for timing shifts. This spending growth—approximately $500 billion at an annualized rate—continues to be driven by the three-quarters of federal spending allocated to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense, veterans’ benefits, and interest costs. These massive expenses have been untouched by DOGE’s focus on small but controversial targets such as DEI contracts and Politico subscriptions.
We can see this by looking at Treasury’s breakdowns of monthly spending by agency. Short-term program spending can fluctuate greatly, and sustained trends might not be fully apparent for several months, but the early data are nonetheless revealing. Perhaps the highest-profile cuts under the Trump administration so far have been to public-health spending and foreign aid. And yet, even here, the numbers are rounding errors in the context of the federal budget. Public-health spending, previously about $8.2 billion monthly, fell to $7.1 billion in March, led by cuts to the National Institutes of Health and the Health Resources and Services Administration, the latter of which funds state and local health grants to serve underprivileged families.
Monthly spending on targeted foreign-assistance programs has fallen from $2.4 billion to $1.4 billion. Thi
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Trump officials want Medicaid to pay drug makers “the lowest price charged by other developed countries” as, the Journal suggested, “a path of less political resistance to achieve some $880 billion in Medicaid savings.”
“President Trump and Republicans appear to be shrinking from reforming Medicaid, but that’s not the worst of it,” the Journal said of his drugs plans. “To replace the spending slowdown they won’t get in Medicaid, they may expand drug price controls. For that trade we could have elected Democrats.”
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/wall-street-journal-donald-trump-worst-
idea_n_681c4a39e4b0b11c497973a4
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
The only problem with that statement is no matter how many times Democrats promised to do it they never did.
Just like a Democrat to fight lowering drug prices when they're not in control
Take the win here, stupid.
Or at the very least, shut the fuck up about it because this makes you look terrible.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:Do you realize that every Republican in Congress, including a few of the dumbest Democrats, opposed all changes? If just a few Republicans would have voted for change, it could have happened despite the idiotic Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and the stupid bitch from Arizona, whatever her name was, who was forced to leave politics when Democrats in Arizona realized what a goddamn bribe-taking cunt she was. She has cited U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, as a role model.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
The only problem with that statement is no matter how many times Democrats promised to do it they never did.
Just like a Democrat to fight lowering drug prices when they're not in control
Take the win here, stupid.
Or at the very least, shut the fuck up about it because this makes you look terrible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyrsten_Sinema#Political_positions
Both Manchin and Sinema had been kicked out of the Senate because they were neither Democrat nor Republican. They were taking bribes from industry to vote against Democratic sponsored legislation, but they were not charged or convicted of bribery.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Trump radically remade the US food system in just 100 days
The people who grow and sell America's food no longer trust the USDA. We made a timeline to show you what happened.
https://grist.org/food-and-agriculture/trump-usda-food-system-agricult
ure-first-100-days/
Grist interviewed farmers, food businesses, and agricultural nonprofits across seven states about what the first 100 days of the administration has looked like for them. Nearly all of them told Grist that the agriculture department’s various funding cuts and decisions, as well as the moves to shrink its workforce capacity, have changed how much trust they have in the agency — and, by extension, the federal government.
Food policy analysts and experts throughout the nation also told Grist that this swift transformation of the USDA is unprecedented.
“Multiple parts of our food systems are now under attack,” said Teon Hayes, a policy analyst at the Center for Law and Social Policy. At the same time, food prices and overall costs of living are continuing to rise.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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New American Pope Trolls Trump in Very First Speech
By Kenneal Patterson | May 8 2025 3:45PM EDT
https://www.thedailybeast.com/read-pope-leos-full-speech-here-new-amer
ican-pope-trolls-trump-in-very-first-speech/
Newly-elected Pope Leo XIV appeared to take aim at President Donald Trump Thursday during his first speech as pontiff.
American-born Cardinal Robert Prevost echoed the words of the late Pope Francis, a regular critic of Trump’s, when he advocated for migrant rights.
“We must seek together how to be a missionary Church, a Church that builds bridges, dialogue, [and is] always open to receive—like this square, with open arms—everyone, all those who need our charity, our presence, dialogue, love," he said.
Francis, often called the “People’s Pope,” often countered Trump’s anti-undocumented immigrant campaign slogan “Build the Wall” by urging global leaders to instead “build bridges.”
“‘Build bridges, not walls,’ was an exhortation he repeated many times,” Cardinal Re said when he delivered the late pontiff’s homily.
The new Holy Father payed tribute to Francis in a speech honoring the world’s migrants. Francis, who was a migrant himself having been born in Argentina, was the world’s first Latin American pope.
“Help us too, then, each other, to build bridges... uniting all of us to be one people, always in peace,” Leo XIV added. “Thank you to Pope Francis.”
He even took a moment to speak Spanish and encourage the church to always seek peace, charity, and “to be close, especially to those who suffer.”
“I too would like this greeting of peace to enter your hearts, to reach your families, to all people, wherever they may be, to all nations, to the whole earth‚” the pontiff said to the thousands that gathered beneath St. Peter’s Basilica, adding that God “loves us all, unconditionally.”
“Peace be with you all,” Pope Leo XIV said from the balcony of St Peter’s Basilica, a common message within the Catholic Church but also one that could apply to Trump’s divided America.
Cardinal Robert Prevost has directly criticized the Trump administration in the past, including calling out Vice President JD Vance.
Francis was one of the most transgressive popes in the church’s history and was revered by progressives for his stances on social causes. He spent his final moments on Earth lamenting the world’s xenophobia. In his frail state, he directed Archbishop Diego Ravelli to read what would be some of his final words.
“What a great thirst for death, for killing, we witness each day in the many conflicts raging in different parts of our world!” Ravelli read. “How much violence we see, often even within families, directed at women and children! How much contempt is stirred up at times towards the vulnerable, the marginalized, and migrants!”
Francis implored the world to “revive our trust in others, including those who are different than ourselves, or who come from distant lands, bringing unfamiliar customs, ways of life and ideas. For all of us are children of God.”
Trump congratulated Leo XIV in a post on Truth Social, despite recently suggesting that he should be pope instead.
“Congratulations to Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who was just named Pope,” he wrote. “It is such an honor to realize that he is the first American Pope. What excitement, and what a Great Honor for our Country. I look forward to meeting Pope Leo XIV. It will be a very meaningful moment!”
The rest of MAGA, however, has already begun to melt down over the Vatican’s choice, with rightwing influencer Laura Loomer posting on X that Leo XIV “is anti-Trump, anti-MAGA, pro-open Borders, and a total Marxist like Pope Francis.”
Leo XIV is a native Chicagoan and the 267th pope of the Roman Catholic Church.
***
Read Leo XIV’s full speech below:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/read-pope-leos-full-speech-here-new-amer
ican-pope-trolls-trump-in-very-first-speech/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https:
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Do you realize that every Republican in Congress, including a few of the dumbest Democrats, opposed all changes? If just a few Republicans would have voted for change, it could have happened despite the idiotic Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and the stupid bitch from Arizona, whatever her name was, who was forced to leave politics when Democrats in Arizona realized what a goddamn bribe-taking cunt she was. She has cited U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, as a role model.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
The only problem with that statement is no matter how many times Democrats promised to do it they never did.
Just like a Democrat to fight lowering drug prices when they're not in control
Take the win here, stupid.
Or at the very least, shut the fuck up about it because this makes you look terrible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyrsten_Sinema#Political_positions
Both Manchin and Sinema had been kicked out of the Senate because they were neither Democrat nor Republican. They were taking bribes from industry to vote against Democratic sponsored legislation, but they were not charged or convicted of bribery.
No. See... You don't get to make this argument, because it's not a valid argument.
You're coming into it presenting this as if there was one singular bill that everyone was voting on, relating specifically to this one issue. And then you're pointing fingers at individual people who voted against a much, much, much larger piece of legislation that just so happened to include your current specific talking point.
Do you see the flaw in your logic here? Or should I go further into depth?
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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A Trumped Up Police State Is Coming
From militarized crackdowns to legal impunity, Trump’s policing agenda is designed to crush dissent and critics.
The Intercept Briefing | May 8, 2025, 4:30 p.m.
https://theintercept.com/2025/05/08/trump-police-crime-radley-balko/
Donald Trump’s all-caps executive order on policing — “STRENGTHENING AND UNLEASHING AMERICA’S LAW ENFORCEMENT TO PURSUE CRIMINALS AND PROTECT INNOCENT CITIZENS” – is less about policy and more about intent. And that intent is clear: To give Trump direct control over local law enforcement and further shield police from accountability.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/04/strengthening-
and-unleashing-americas-law-enforcement-to-pursue-criminals-and-protect-innocent-citizens/
As journalist and author of “Rise of the Warrior Cop” Radley Balko puts it, “It’s a statement of intent and whether or not Trump is able to do a lot of the more pernicious and unconstitutional things he wants to do.”
The executive order calls for “military and national security assets” to assist in local policing, directs federal resources and protections for state and local law enforcement, and enhances police protections, among other proclamations. But it reflects a deeper ambition.
“He wants more federal militarized law enforcement under his thumb instead of under the thumb of governors or mayors,” says Balko. “He wants to use them to help with immigration deportations. He wants help with cracking down on protest.” And the concern and fear, says Balko, is that Trump will also “use law enforcement to go after his critics and people he perceives to be his enemies.”
This week on The Intercept Briefing, Balko joins senior reporter Akela Lacy and host Jessica Washington to break down the Trump administration’s push to federalize local law enforcement and “unleash” police who already face minimal meaningful restraint.
“We’re really getting to the point where law enforcement officers have almost no accountability at all,” says Balko, who writes the newsletter The Watch. He adds, “All of this is based on a premise that isn’t true, which is that we’re in some sort of massive crime wave that’s been sweeping the country.”
The fearmongering, Lacy notes, is that cities run by Democrats — San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Baltimore — are dangerous.
But as Balko points out, “When [Trump] took office for the first time he had actually inherited the lowest crime rate of any president since like Eisenhower. And [he] was the first president in 40 years to leave office with a higher homicide rate than when he entered it.” While crime spiked during the pandemic under Trump, Balko continues, “Under Biden it started going down over the last two years of [his] administration and it continues to go down.”
“The narrative,” Lacy adds, “is extremely detached from reality.”
But that narrative serves to justify a sweeping law-and-order agenda.
“The vision is for police to respond to everything,” says Lacy. It’s a vision for a militarized police force with no accountability under the discretion of the president that “they can deploy to enforce any and every part of their agenda beyond criminal issues, and then further criminalize participation in the public’s sphere and exercise of constitutional rights.”
Chilling Dissent
Over the last few months, Balko adds, the federal government has increasingly used masked, unidentified agents to snatch people off the streets — not for violent crimes, but for political speech, protests, and civil offenses “in a deliberate effort to evade judicial review.”
“They’re snatching people off the street and taking them to an overseas prison that’s more like a gulag and imposing on them what’s effectively a life sentence with no due process,” Balko continues. “No habeas corpus, no judicial review whatsoever. These are very classic characteristics of a police state.”
Listen to the full conversation of The Intercept Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/po
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Quote:6ix, you're like a talentless lawyer or self-taught computer programmer whose code is full of errors. A competent lawyer or programmer would dump in the trash your wordy legal briefs and programs because debugging your crap, and listening to your whininess, is more trouble than rewriting the whole thing, ignoring you and your half-baked ideas. Everything is words with you, but meaning escapes you, so don't bother explaining.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
No. See... You don't get to make this argument, because it's not a valid argument.
You're coming into it presenting this as if there was one singular bill that everyone was voting on, relating specifically to this one issue. And then you're pointing fingers at individual people who voted against a much, much, much larger piece of legislation that just so happened to include your current specific talking point.
Do you see the flaw in your logic here? Or should I go further into depth?
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Do you remember that asshole Joe Lieberman? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Joe_Lieberman
Lieberman screwed the Democrats during his entire career, taking the Republican's side. If the FBI had monitored his bank transactions with lobbyists, he would have been imprisoned. The voters finally dumped him for a real Democrat, but he and the Republicans had screwed over the USA.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The IRS has lost almost one-third of its tax auditors after 2 months of DOGE cuts, report says
May 7, 2025
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/irs-doge-cuts-layoffs-31-percent-auditors
-tax-revenue-impact/
Losing a large share of auditors could impact the federal government's ability to collect tax revenue, given that these agents typically handle cases involving wealthy taxpayers or corporations, experts say.
"You lose the very staff trained to keep high-end taxpayers and corporate tax payers in compliance," noted Emily DiVito, senior adviser on economic policy at the left-leaning Groundwork Collaborative and a former policy adviser at the U.S. Treasury Department, which oversees the IRS.
She added, "You can see some behavioral effects when taxpayers, especially those that really don't want to pay their bills, come to accept there is very little risk to not paying at all, or even filing."
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:Do you realize that every Republican in Congress, including a few of the dumbest Democrats, opposed all changes? If just a few Republicans would have voted for change, it could have happened despite the idiotic Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and the stupid bitch from Arizona, whatever her name was, who was forced to leave politics when Democrats in Arizona realized what a goddamn bribe-taking cunt she was. She has cited U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, as a role model.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
The only problem with that statement is no matter how many times Democrats promised to do it they never did.
Just like a Democrat to fight lowering drug prices when they're not in control
Take the win here, stupid.
Or at the very least, shut the fuck up about it because this makes you look terrible.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyrsten_Sinema#Political_positions
Both Manchin and Sinema had been kicked out of the Senate because they were neither Democrat nor Republican. They were taking bribes from industry to vote against Democratic sponsored legislation, but they were not charged or convicted of bribery.
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
No. See... You don't get to make this argument, because it's not a valid argument.
You're coming into it presenting this as if there was one singular bill that everyone was voting on, relating specifically to this one issue. And then you're pointing fingers at individual people who voted against a much, much, much larger piece of legislation that just so happened to include your current specific talking point.
Do you see the flaw in your logic here? Or should I go further into depth?
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Quote:
6ix, you're like a talentless lawyer or self-taught computer programmer whose code is full of errors. A competent lawyer or programmer would dump in the trash your wordy legal briefs and programs because debugging your crap, and listening to your whininess, is more trouble than rewriting the whole thing, ignoring you and your half-baked ideas. Everything is words with you, but meaning escapes you, so don't bother explaining.
And yet, I continue to make progress and you're the one who's stuck constantly in the past. Making predictions that never come true. And you're always wrong about everything in the end.
Sucks to be you, huh?
I write things out and it's a great way to work things out in my head. A lot of times I end up coming up with other solutions I wouldn't have ever thought of had I not been writing out my thoughts. Not just with the programming and the project, but pretty much everything.
I'm perfectly happy with my life and the way things are going.
You're miserable every single day.
I wouldn't trade places with you for anything.
Good luck buddy.
In the meantime, nobody is forcing you to read anything I write. You do that on your own because you're a real fucking creepy guy. And your bullshit argument above was bullshit, and you know that it's bullshit. And that's why you didn't say a fucking thing about that in your reply and went right back to personal insults because you are an astoundingly stupid human being.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Can President Trump Turn Back the Economic Clock?
The president thinks he can return America to manufacturing glory — but the cycles of economic history are hard to break.
By Binyamin Appelbaum | May 7, 2025
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/07/magazine/trump-economy-finance-hist
ory.html
Historians make their names by persuading people to see patterns in the chaos. In the late 1970s, the French historian Fernand Braudel thought that one of those patterns was about to repeat. Braudel was a student of the slow-moving currents that shape events. He wanted people to pay less attention to great men like Napoleon and more to seemingly humble things like the potato, a New World import that made it easier for European farmers to grow more food than they needed; this surplus, in turn, gave a wider array of Europeans time to engage in new hobbies like complaining about their rulers. One might say that he regarded the potato as the cause of Napoleon.
In the third volume of his epic “Civilization and Capitalism,” published in 1979, Braudel explored the forces that made one city at a time the economic center of the Western world, from Venice to Amsterdam to London, and then inexorably lifted up another in its place. He wrote that cities rose as centers of commerce, and then, as they prospered, they began to invest their surpluses in building new centers, engineering their own declines. Commerce moved on, leaving a financial hub behind. Download the free books from https://libgen.rs/search.php?req=Fernand+Braudel+Civilization
Braudel’s account ended with the decline of Amsterdam, the entrepôt of Europe through the 17th and into the 18th century, a city of astonishing wealth and diversity. Wide-eyed visitors wrote of its wonders with the same astonishment as later generations would write of New York. The young czar of Russia went home so impressed that he built St. Petersburg in its image. But as Amsterdam grew fat and happy, its merchants became bankers and began to seek better returns in fast-growing London. Amsterdam, Braudel wrote, became “a society of rentier investors on the lookout for anything that would guarantee a quiet and privileged life,” a society that had moved on “from the healthy tasks of economic life to the more sophisticated games of the money market.”
Braudel noted that London, too, eventually ceded its role, underwriting the rise of New York in the early 20th century. And in the late 1970s, he judged that New York was entering the “autumn” of its era as the center of the global economy. Commerce and industry were fleeing the city, leaving behind a thriving financial center — a sure sign in Braudel’s view that New York, and the nation it anchored, were on the edge of decline.
Donald Trump became Donald Trump in that city, building towers and bankrupting casinos as Wall Street boomed and the working class faded away, and he emerged with a similarly bleak view of America’s prospects. His career as a political figure has been built on his conviction that America is losing its wealth and its power. If Ronald Reagan filled voters with hope, Trump offers to keep them company in their misery. He has an intuition for the things that people fear and is comfortable saying what other politicians won’t. Where other presidents intone that it’s still Morning in America, Trump has touched a nerve by insisting that it’s not long before midnight.
To the president, the solution is straightforward, if drastic: building a wall of tariffs around the United States in order to neatly accomplish two of his primary goals at once. It would force companies to make products for the American market in the United States — thereby rebuilding the nation’s manufacturing base — and it would enable big cuts in income taxation. He claims that we wouldn’t even need income taxes if we just forced the rest of the world to pay our bills. What he’s really saying is that our problems are always someone else’s fault. The heart of Trum
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Quote:The Trumptards around me display very maladaptive behavior. Much of it is inexplicable. They can't reveal their unhealthy motivations, but 6ix explains his!
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
And yet, I continue to make progress and you're the one who's stuck constantly in the past. Making predictions that never come true. And you're always wrong about everything in the end.
Sucks to be you, huh?
I write things out and it's a great way to work things out in my head. A lot of times I end up coming up with other solutions I wouldn't have ever thought of had I not been writing out my thoughts. Not just with the programming and the project, but pretty much everything.
I'm perfectly happy with my life and the way things are going.
You're miserable every single day.
I wouldn't trade places with you for anything.
Good luck buddy.
In the meantime, nobody is forcing you to read anything I write. You do that on your own because you're a real fucking creepy guy. And your bullshit argument above was bullshit, and you know that it's bullshit. And that's why you didn't say a fucking thing about that in your reply and went right back to personal insults because you are an astoundingly stupid human being.
What goes on inside a Trumptard's head? What are the feelings driving them over a cliff, to crash on the rocks and burn? (Why do they drink? Smoke? Cheat? Lie? Shirk? Fear? Neglect? Why are they indecent?) Since I'm not telepathic, I mostly don't know. If there were a Trumptard novelist who made himself the main character in his story, I'd learn more, but Trumptards don't write novels or confessionals. 6ix, you are the closest to a novelist, a diarist. You provide the mental monologue in writing that average Trumptards, and Trump, cannot. That does not make your behavior "good", but your writing does suggest your motives for bad behavior. A trained Freudian psychiatrist could help you because you are so articulate. You dump your guts in public. Most Trumptards crap in public but we can't see what was going on inside them, the emotional turmoil, before they take a dump on the floor like a dog not housebroken. See Trump in many interviews for a stinking dump in public. What makes him feel free to act that way? Like dogs, other Trumptards are similar to him, adding their own stinking behavior.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The Cost of Chaos: This is Getting Scary
And it’s all on Donald Trump
By Paul Krugman | Apr 09, 2025
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-cost-of-chaos-this-is-getting
Herbert Hoover, move over.
The 31st president has long been the patron saint of bad economic management. But while Hoover responded badly to the coming of the Great Depression, he didn’t cause the slump. By contrast, it seems more and more likely that Donald Trump will single-handedly push the solid economy he inherited into crisis. This is, as Trump might say, disastrous policy like nobody has seen before.
How is he managing that feat? While the vast majority of economists think high tariffs are bad policy, they don’t normally associate them with recession. Many, perhaps most economists who’ve looked hard at the evidence don’t accept the popular story that the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930 caused the Great Depression.
But this time looks and feels different. Why is a Trump Slump brought on by tariffs looking more probable by the day?
Like many others, I’ve been talking a lot about the huge uncertainty Trump is creating. Ignore the desperate efforts to retcon Trump’s trade policy, to pretend that it comes out of some coherent economic doctrine. We’re clearly looking at tariffs driven by id, not ideology — Trump’s biggest motivation seems to be the desire to see other countries grovel. Because there’s no clear policy objective, nobody knows what Trump will do tomorrow, let alone over the next few years. Did you have 104 percent tariffs on China and 34 percent tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber on your dance card? (Are 2x4s the industry of the future?)
As I wrote a few days ago, Permanent tariffs are bad for the economy, but businesses can, for the most part, find a way to live with them. What business can’t deal with is a regime under which trade policy reflects the whims of a mad king, where nobody knows what tariffs will be next week, let alone over the next five years. Are these tariffs going to be permanent? Are they a negotiating ploy? The administration can’t even get its talking points straight, with top officials saying that tariffs aren’t up for negotiation only to be undercut by Trump a few hours later.
Under these conditions, how is a business supposed to make investments, or any kind of long-term commitment? Everyone is going to sit on their hands, waiting for clarity that may never come.
But wait, there’s more. There are growing signs that we’re at risk of a tariff-induced financial crisis.
There are multiple indicators of that risk. Bear with me while I give a somewhat wonkish explanation of one indicator that really caught my eye.
Back in the good old days, that is, two weeks ago, the main concern about Trump’s tariffs was that they would cause sustained inflation. We knew that they would produce at least a temporary bump in consumer prices, but the big question — crucial for Federal Reserve policy — was whether this bump would lead to a sustained rise in expected inflation, and become entrenched in the economy.
That’s what happened in the 1970s and is the reason getting inflation down in the 1980s required years of high unemployment. It didn’t happen during the Biden years, which is why this time we were able to get inflation way down without a recession.
So everyone has been watching measures of expected inflation for clues. And the news from consumer surveys has been very worrying. Here’s long-term expected inflation from the widely cited Michigan Consumer Surveys:
Source: University of Michigan
Whoa. But consumers don’t set prices. Furthermore, the last few years have shown that what consumers say they believe about the economy isn’t a good predictor of their behavior. So you’d want some confirmation from other measures.
Late last month Austan Goolsbee, president of the Chic
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New Pope Leo XIV Bashed Trump and JD Vance on Twitter Just Weeks Ago
The very online new pope has made his feelings about MAGA’s top two figures clear.
By David Gardner | May 8, 2025 3:27PM EDT
https://www.thedailybeast.com/new-pope-leo-xiv-bashed-jd-vance-on-twit
ter-just-weeks-ago/
Pope Leo XIV called out Vice President J.D. Vance in a social media post just weeks ago bluntly calling him “wrong”—and bashed Donald Trump in a retweet less than a month ago.
Posting on his X profile as Cardinal Robert Prevost, he criticized Vance for an interview he gave about Christianity on Fox News.
“JD Vance is wrong,” he said.
The new pope, 69, posted the rebuke on X, together with a link to an article from the National Catholic Reporter reporting on the fallout from Vance’s remarks.
Vance had claimed that a teaching known as “ordo amoris” justified MAGA’s crackdowns on immigrants. “You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world,” Vance said in late January.
But Pope Francis spoke out strongly against him, giving the Catholic convert a lesson on theology in a public letter—and his successor, Pope Leo XIV tweeted his approval.
MAGA supporters were quick to show their disdain for the new Pope, with right-wing activist Laura Loomer commenting on several of his posts on X.
Loomer posted: “Meet the new American Pope. Of course he’s anti-MAGA and WOKE. Another Open Borders Pope. Gross.”
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Trump’s Killing of Energy Star Program Will Cost Families a Bundle
Created to encourage efficient appliances, the initiative has saved US households and businesses more than $500 billion.
The federal Energy Star program is among the most successful government initiatives in modern history. Its signature blue label is now nearly as recognizable as the Nike swoosh or a Coca-Cola can, and appliances bearing it save American consumers some $40 billion annually in energy costs, or about $350 for every taxpayer dollar that goes in.
This week, however, President Donald Trump’s administration moved to kill it, the Washington Post first reported. Grist also reviewed a US EPA document obtained by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that shows the program is slated to be “eliminated.”
“Energy Star remains one of our most effective bipartisan tools for ensuring energy reliability, affordability, and American competitiveness,” said Paula Glover, president of the nonprofit coalition Alliance to Save Energy. She noted the broader economic impact of the program as well, including creating hundreds of thousands of jobs in the manufacturing, retail, real estate, and energy services industries. “Shutting it down is a risk to those jobs.”
For years, though, Trump has complained about efficiency benchmarks for appliances. Lower-flow showerheads, he said, make showers “five times longer.” LED light bulbs make him look orange. People are flushing efficient toilets “10 times, 15 times” and, with dishwashers, “the electric bill is 10 times more than the water.” These claims are, by and large, inaccurate.
Veracity aside, Trump’s efforts play into a larger culture war against appliance standards — one that the White House has continued to aggressively wage since his second term began.
More at https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/05/trump-epa-energy-star-pro
gram-eliminate-reaction-cost-families-businesses-500-billion-efficient-appliances/
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:
Trump’s Killing of Energy Star Program Will Cost Families a Bundle
Created to encourage efficient appliances, the initiative has saved US households and businesses more than $500 billion.
The federal Energy Star program is among the most successful government initiatives in modern history. Its signature blue label is now nearly as recognizable as the Nike swoosh or a Coca-Cola can, and appliances bearing it save American consumers some $40 billion annually in energy costs, or about $350 for every taxpayer dollar that goes in.
This week, however, President Donald Trump’s administration moved to kill it, the Washington Post first reported. Grist also reviewed a US EPA document obtained by the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee that shows the program is slated to be “eliminated.”
Well then. I think this gives us a real barometer whether or not these big corporations really "care".
They really seemed to give a shit when fentanyl addict and street-abortionist murder George Floyd committed suicide by cop. And they love showing just how much gay pride they have on their Twitter accounts by making their logos rainbows for pride month (but only in America and a select group of European countries).
Maybe they'll show you just how much they really care about the environment and put the Energy Star stuff in there for free.
Maybe you shouldn't have tried forcing electric stoves and just take the win you've had for decades. But you didn't, and you went full retard like Democrats always do and this is just another of countless reasons why the Democratic Party is dead.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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6ix is venting his spleen:
Quote:MAGA Rage Erupts as New Pope’s Views of Trump Prove Unexpectedly Harsh
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Well then. I think this gives us a real barometer whether or not these big corporations really "care".
They really seemed to give a shit when fentanyl addict and street-abortionist murder George Floyd committed suicide by cop. And they love showing just how much gay pride they have on their Twitter accounts by making their logos rainbows for pride month (but only in America and a select group of European countries).
As MAGA personalities fume about the newly elected pope’s indictments of Trump and JD Vance, a political theorist steeped in the post-liberal right decodes why Trumpism is so inimical to Catholic teaching.
By Greg Sargent | May 9, 2025
https://newrepublic.com/article/195039/maga-rage-erupts-new-pope-views
-trump-prove-unexpectedly-harsh
Right after the news broke that Robert Francis Prevost was elected as the new pope of the Roman Catholic Church, the internet produced lots of evidence that he has promoted articles critical of JD Vance and Donald Trump, and even expressed sympathy for George Floyd. That prompted MAGA figures to erupt in anger. They attacked the new pope as anti-Trump, pro–open borders, a Marxist, and soft on thugs and drug dealers, as Media Matters documented.
We talked to the excellent political theorist Matt McManus, who was raised in the church and regularly wrestles with the intellectual roots of today’s right wing, including in his 2023 book, The Political Right and Equality. He explains what Vance gets wrong about Catholic teaching, why it’s so inimical to Trumpism, and how today’s pro-Trump influencers and “post-liberal” Catholic intellectuals alike are refusing to reckon with what MAGA has truly become.
https://newrepublic.com/article/195048/transcript-maga-fury-boils-new-
pope-anti-trump-views
MAGA and Trumpism thrives—it gets its energy, its spiritual energy, if that’s the right term for it—from meanness to the outsider, hostility to the outsider, demonization of the outsider.
A lot of people on the Christian Right, what they’re concerned with and what they worship is America first, or at least their own understanding of it, America tomorrow, and America forever. And you could say whatever it is that you want about this, but it is not an ethically demanding outlook.
Ethics, and Christian ethics particular, is an ideal. You don’t achieve an ideal by compromising it every chance you get to obtain power — let alone to try to do the cruel things that are on display to everyone day in and day out. So I just can’t think that there’s any way of making this intellectually palatable, even if it is something that is deeply desired by a lot of people on the Christian right, who, again, seem much more concerned with worshiping America than with worshiping anything that actually looks recognizably like the Christian God.
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:
6ix is venting his spleen:Quote:MAGA Rage Erupts as New Pope’s Views of Trump Prove Unexpectedly Harsh
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Well then. I think this gives us a real barometer whether or not these big corporations really "care".
They really seemed to give a shit when fentanyl addict and street-abortionist murder George Floyd committed suicide by cop. And they love showing just how much gay pride they have on their Twitter accounts by making their logos rainbows for pride month (but only in America and a select group of European countries).
Maybe they'll show you just how much they really care about the environment and put the Energy Star stuff in there for free.
Maybe you shouldn't have tried forcing electric stoves and just take the win you've had for decades. But you didn't, and you went full retard like Democrats always do and this is just another of countless reasons why the Democratic Party is dead.
Not a valid reply, so go fuck yourself for quoting me before posting it.
And like I said yesterday, fuck the dead pope and fuck the new pope.
There's no rage. Nobody gives a shit.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:6ix, don't you realize that you are acting crazy? Your insane way of dealing with life is why your life been hard, at least so far. Maybe you should try religion? Or meditation. Or drown your demonic urges with alcohol, assuming that alcohol calms you rather than excites.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Not a valid reply, so go fuck yourself for quoting me before posting it.
And like I said yesterday, fuck the dead pope and fuck the new pope.
Nobody gives a shit.
--------------------------------------------------
"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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Pakistan launches multiple attacks along India's western border, India says
https://japantoday.com/category/world/pakistan-launched-multiple-attac
ks-along-india's-western-border-india-says#comments
Turkey Has Been Totally Aligned With Pakistan
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:6ix, don't you realize that you are acting crazy?
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Not a valid reply, so go fuck yourself for quoting me before posting it.
And like I said yesterday, fuck the dead pope and fuck the new pope.
Nobody gives a shit.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
No. I'm not.
We're done with YOUR insanity.
Your party is dead, and your activists are going to prison when they're not being outright deported for not belonging here.
You've lost everything, including your voice. It's time for you to finally go away now.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:Are you absolutely sure that Trump and you aren't crazy? Because it is crazy for Trump to be doing this:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:6ix, don't you realize that you are acting crazy?
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Not a valid reply, so go fuck yourself for quoting me before posting it.
And like I said yesterday, fuck the dead pope and fuck the new pope.
Nobody gives a shit.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
No. I'm not.
We're done with YOUR insanity.
Your party is dead, and your activists are going to prison when they're not being outright deported for not belonging here.
You've lost everything, including your voice. It's time for you to finally go away now.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
The Real Trump Family Business Is Crypto
The president's side hustle is proving to be very, very lucrative.
By Will Gottsegen | May 9, 2025, 1:47 PM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/05/trump-crypto-bi
llionaire/682763/
Early Monday morning, the leader of the free world had a message to convey. Not about the economic turmoil from tariffs, any one of the skirmishes playing out abroad, or a surprise shake-up in his White House staff. Instead, President Donald Trump turned to Truth Social to post about something called the “$TRUMP GALA DINNER,” with a link to https://gettrumpmemes.com
A visit to the website paints a slightly fuller picture: Buy as many tokens as you can of Trump’s personal cryptocurrency, $TRUMP, and you could be invited to a private event later this month at the Trump National Golf Club outside Washington, D.C. There, you will get the unique opportunity to meet with the president and “learn about the future of Crypto.” The gala looks very much like a thinly veiled gambit to pump up the price of $TRUMP, a so-called memecoin that is mostly owned by Trump-backed entities. Funnel the greatest amount of money to the president of the United States, and you could win some face time with the big man himself.
In 2021, Trump called bitcoin a “scam.” Now he seems to understand exactly what crypto can do for him personally: namely, make Trump and his family very, very rich. The $TRUMP gala is one part of a constellation of Trump-affiliated crypto efforts that includes Trump Digital Trading Card NFTs, a crypto company called World Liberty Financial, and a bitcoin-mining firm. According to an analysis by Bloomberg, the Trump family has already banked nearly $1 billion from these projects. Long before he descended the golden escalator at Trump Tower a decade ago, Trump’s public image was rooted in his business prowess. But compared with his real-estate projects or The Apprentice, crypto is already turning into his most successful venture yet.
Trump perhaps wouldn’t be president at all if it wasn’t for crypto. During the 2024 campaign, the industry was among his campaign’s biggest donors. That money flowed in from both crypto corporations and individual donors, such as the bitcoin billionaires Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. (The identical twins gave $1 million each in bitcoin to the Trump campaign, but had to be refunded because they exceeded the legal donation limit.) In exchange, Trump promised the imperiled industry a fresh start after four years of a Biden-sanctioned crypto crackdown. Last summer, as the keynote speaker at the annual bitcoin conference, Trump promised that if elected, he would make America the “crypto capital of the planet.” The crypto industry is now getting its money’s worth. Consider the crypto firm Ripple, which spent four years squaring off against Biden’s regulators in federal courtrooms and donated $4.9 million to Trump’s inauguration fund. Yesterday, the new administratio
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Trump Surrenders to the Houthis
May 8, 2025, 8:03 PM CDT
By Courtney Kube and Gordon Lubold
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-operation-hou
this-cost-1-billion-rcna205333
Donald Trump is one of the worst negotiators in the history of international relations. He lacks focus, does not seem to have any real strategic priorities, seems to fold remarkably easily, and can be purchased for relatively little. We have seen many of these qualities in display during his extraordinary campaign against the Houthis in Yemen—which ended this week when he basically threw in the towel after having thrown away billions of dollars and achieved nothing.
On the first day he took office for his second term, Trump redesignated the Houthis as a terrorist group in a grand pronouncement which was released by the White House. Trump laid out three clear policy goals; to cripple the Houthis as a military force so that they would no longer be able to threaten shipping in the Red Sea, to stop attacks on US military forces, and to stop attacks on US “partners”. Here is the heart of the proclamation laying out all three:
Quote:In mid March Trump would start a massive air campaign, supposedly to achieve these specific policy aims.
Under President Trump, it is now the policy of the United States to cooperate with its regional partners to eliminate the Houthis’ capabilities and operations, deprive them of resources, and thereby end their attacks on U.S. personnel and civilians, U.S. partners, and maritime shipping in the Red Sea.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/01/fact-sheet-president-do
nald-j-trump-re-designates-the-houthis-as-a-foreign-terrorist-organization/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Senator Thom Tillis
Rare spine sighting.
Trump placed an especially ludicrous test on the Senate by pressing it to confirm “Eagle Ed” Martin, the interim U.S. attorney for D.C., to the position indefinitely. Martin’s nomination was a joke. He had no prosecutorial experience, had lost repeated bids for political office, was supportive of the #StopTheSteal movement, and forgot to disclose to the Senate his hundreds of appearances on Russian state-sponsored media programs. Trump, of course, liked him because of all the Jan. 6 stuff. But his involvement in #StopTheSteal, support for Jan. 6 defendants, and investigation of Jan. 6 prosecutors also closed off his path to confirmation in the Senate. North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis, a key vote on the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced this week that he wouldn’t support Martin’s nomination because of his posture toward Jan. 6.
It’s a rare thing to see a Republican senator commit to killing a favored nominee of Trump’s in committee; we believe, in fact, that this is the first time we’ve seen it. And while the MAGA mediaverse quickly moved into formation to threaten Tillis, Trump seemed to take the news relatively well, saying on Thursday that it’s just the way the cookie crumbles. Martin is “a terrific person, and he wasn’t getting the support from people that I thought,” he told reporters. “I can only lift that little phone so many times in a day, but we have somebody else that will be great.”
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/05/thom-tillis-ed-martin-dona
ld-trump-medicaid-john-fetterman.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Trump’s push for control of Greenland
Fri 9 May 2025 14.48 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/09/us-greenland-trump
US officials are discussing a plan to pull Greenland into America’s sphere of influence using a type of agreement that the United States has used to keep close ties with several Pacific Island nations, according to two US officials and another person familiar with the discussions.
Under the plan being considered, the Trump administration would propose to Greenland’s leaders that the island enter into a so-called compact of free association, or Cofa, with the United States.
While the precise details of Cofa agreements – which have only ever been extended to the small island nations of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and Palau – vary depending on the signatory, the US government typically provides many essential services, from mail delivery to emergency management to military protection. In exchange, the US military operates freely in Cofa countries and trade with the US is largely duty-free.
Donald Trump, who during his first administration floated the idea of acquiring Greenland, has pressed even harder since taking office in January, refusing to rule out taking the island by force. Denmark, which governs the island, has sharply rebuffed the idea.
A Cofa agreement would stop short of Trump’s ambition to make the island of 57,000 people a part of the US. It is not the only Greenland plan on the table, the sources said, and it would face many practical hurdles.
Much more at https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/09/us-greenland-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:
Trump Surrenders to the Houthis
May 8, 2025, 8:03 PM CDT
By Courtney Kube and Gordon Lubold
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-operation-hou
this-cost-1-billion-rcna205333
Donald Trump is one of the worst negotiators in the history of international relations. He lacks focus, does not seem to have any real strategic priorities, seems to fold remarkably easily, and can be purchased for relatively little. We have seen many of these qualities in display during his extraordinary campaign against the Houthis in Yemen—which ended this week when he basically threw in the towel after having thrown away billions of dollars and achieved nothing.
On the first day he took office for his second term, Trump redesignated the Houthis as a terrorist group in a grand pronouncement which was released by the White House. Trump laid out three clear policy goals; to cripple the Houthis as a military force so that they would no longer be able to threaten shipping in the Red Sea, to stop attacks on US military forces, and to stop attacks on US “partners”. Here is the heart of the proclamation laying out all three:Quote:In mid March Trump would start a massive air campaign, supposedly to achieve these specific policy aims.
Under President Trump, it is now the policy of the United States to cooperate with its regional partners to eliminate the Houthis’ capabilities and operations, deprive them of resources, and thereby end their attacks on U.S. personnel and civilians, U.S. partners, and maritime shipping in the Red Sea.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/01/fact-sheet-president-do
nald-j-trump-re-designates-the-houthis-as-a-foreign-terrorist-organization/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Oh. You mean the operation that crippled the Houthis and left them begging to end it?
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:Are you absolutely sure that Trump and you aren't crazy?
Originally posted by second:Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:6ix, don't you realize that you are acting crazy?
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Not a valid reply, so go fuck yourself for quoting me before posting it.
And like I said yesterday, fuck the dead pope and fuck the new pope.
Nobody gives a shit.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
No. I'm not.
We're done with YOUR insanity.
Your party is dead, and your activists are going to prison when they're not being outright deported for not belonging here.
You've lost everything, including your voice. It's time for you to finally go away now.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
I don't speak for other people. I'm not crazy.
Say hi to Kevin Drum and the rest of the Democrat-voting club that never gets sick and never dies.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:No. The operation where the US Navy lost two F-18 fighters into the ocean because the Houthis were attacking an aircraft carrier. Also, Trump dropped billions worth of bombs, but on civilians, not Houthis. He can't tell the difference between one rag-head and another. So, Trump surrendered, but called it Victory!
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Oh. You mean the operation that crippled the Houthis and left them begging to end it?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/07/world/middleeast/us-navy-fighter-je
t-truman-carrier-red-sea.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:There were perfectly obvious reasons why Kevin Drum deserved to die. He stopped working decades ago, just like you, but let his wife support him. He wrote about his fatal illness that he couldn't walk across the room without being out of breath, but if it continued a few more days he was calling the doctor. He was like a Trumptard, waiting and then waiting some more for problems to solve themselves or for the President to solve them so that Kevin wouldn't have to get off his fat ass and do something more than write words on the Internet, much like you, 6ix, who has never known a problem that required strenuous effort to solve. You and Kevin certainly have never confronted an evil fucking bastard (Trump is an example, but there are millions of others) and killed his goddamn worthless ass, making America great again. Instead, you just watched the show.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I don't speak for other people. I'm not crazy.
Say hi to Kevin Drum and the rest of the Democrat-voting club that never gets sick and never dies.
--------------------------------------------------
"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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JD Vance, a practicing Catholic, now has the dubious honor of being scolded by two Popes, a rare feat that puts him in the company of the serpent from the Garden of Eden and Satan himself.
It’s a testament to Vance’s loyalty to Trump that he has not wavered from his path even after being chastised by the last two of God’s representatives on Earth.
Within hours of the white smoke emerging from the chapel, Trump loyalists had scoured Cardinal Prevost’s tweets and labeled the new Pope an “open borders globalist,” “a liberal piece of s***,” a “WOKE Never Trumper liberal” and a “MARXIST.”
There is a familiar path for how these things usually play out. If a prominent figure criticizes Trump, he comes back at them tenfold with a barrage of crude nicknames, late-night tweets and press conference diatribes.
It’s one thing to insult the leader of New York’s 9th Congressional district, it’s quite another to insult the leader of 1.4 billion Catholics.
More at https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/pope-l
eo-trump-vance-woke-b2748269.html
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:There were perfectly obvious reasons why Kevin Drum deserved to die. He stopped working decades ago, just like you, but let his wife support him. He wrote about his fatal illness that he couldn't walk across the room without being out of breath, but if it continued a few more days he was calling the doctor. He was like a Trumptard, waiting and then waiting some more for problems to solve themselves or for the President to solve them so that Kevin wouldn't have to get off his fat ass and do something more than write words on the Internet, much like you, 6ix, who has never known a problem that required strenuous effort to solve. You and Kevin certainly have never confronted an evil fucking bastard (Trump is an example, but there are millions of others) and killed his goddamn worthless ass, making America great again. Instead, you just watched the show.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I don't speak for other people. I'm not crazy.
Say hi to Kevin Drum and the rest of the Democrat-voting club that never gets sick and never dies.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Getting Second to throw Kevin Drum under the bus.
Man... I'm getting good at this.
You suck at everything Second, and you are a pure garbage human being.
You deserve every bad thing you have coming to you. Don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise.
Meanwhile... in reality. I'm a survivor of a brutal 4-on-1 attack and a deep stab wound to the lower back. I don't feel any need to go online every day and tell people my fantasies who I'd like to murder if I had a pair of balls. That's what little crybaby faggot bitches like you do.
You're always invited to come find me and see who's dick is bigger. Door's always open.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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You also have the option of not being a lunatic everyday and coming back down to earth and behaving like a serious person too.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:You ARE getting good at winding SECOND up. I can always tell when you get under his skin bc he posts about killing, again.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:There were perfectly obvious reasons why Kevin Drum deserved to die. He stopped working decades ago, just like you, but let his wife support him. He wrote about his fatal illness that he couldn't walk across the room without being out of breath, but if it continued a few more days he was calling the doctor. He was like a Trumptard, waiting and then waiting some more for problems to solve themselves or for the President to solve them so that Kevin wouldn't have to get off his fat ass and do something more than write words on the Internet, much like you, 6ix, who has never known a problem that required strenuous effort to solve. You and Kevin certainly have never confronted an evil fucking bastard (Trump is an example, but there are millions of others) and killed his goddamn worthless ass, making America great again. Instead, you just watched the show.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I don't speak for other people. I'm not crazy.
Say hi to Kevin Drum and the rest of the Democrat-voting club that never gets sick and never dies.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Getting Second to throw Kevin Drum under the bus.
Man... I'm getting good at this.
You suck at everything Second, and you are a pure garbage human being.
You deserve every bad thing you have coming to you. Don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise.
Meanwhile... in reality. I'm a survivor of a brutal 4-on-1 attack and a deep stab wound to the lower back. I don't feel any need to go online every day and tell people my fantasies who I'd like to murder if I had a pair of balls. That's what little crybaby faggot bitches like you do.
You're always invited to come find me and see who's dick is bigger. Door's always open.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
-----------
"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:Have you heard of Mark Twain? His public image was admirable. But in private, not so much:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Getting Second to throw Kevin Drum under the bus.
Man... I'm getting good at this.
You suck at everything Second, and you are a pure garbage human being.
You deserve every bad thing you have coming to you. Don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise.
Meanwhile... in reality. I'm a survivor of a brutal 4-on-1 attack and a deep stab wound to the lower back. I don't feel any need to go online every day and tell people my fantasies who I'd like to murder if I had a pair of balls. That's what little crybaby faggot bitches like you do.
You're always invited to come find me and see who's dick is bigger. Door's always open.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Quote:That is from the article by Graeme Wood "The Not-at-All-Funny Life of Mark Twain" Ron Chernow’s biography dwells more on the wreck of a man than on his sublimely comic work.
Ron Chernow’s Mark Twain forces a similar conclusion about its subject: clearly an idiot, and a born sucker. This conclusion will shock anyone who knows Twain only through his writing, in which the author is wise and witty and, above all, devastating in his portrayal of frauds, cretins, and sententious bores. In life, Twain (1835–1910) was quite different. He was gullible, emotionally immature, and prone to shoveling money into obvious scams. Twain therefore presents a tantalizing challenge for literary biography: to explain how someone able to spot and depict frailties of conscience, character, and judgment in others could be so powerless to correct them in himself. Forced to choose, as Yeats wrote, “perfection of the life, or of the work,” Twain left the former a total shambles—and then for good measure was struck by a series of family tragedies that would have been unbearable even for a much less self-destructive man.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/06/ron-chernow-mark-
twain-review/682584/
Unlike Mark Twain, neither the public nor private life of Trump is admirable. The nastiness of the two halves of Trump is what attracts Trumptards to him. They handle Trump's obviously evil personality and behavior with phrases such "Fake News", but Trump is truly what his detractors have discovered about him.
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:Have you heard of Mark Twain? His public image was admirable. But in private, not so much:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Getting Second to throw Kevin Drum under the bus.
Man... I'm getting good at this.
You suck at everything Second, and you are a pure garbage human being.
You deserve every bad thing you have coming to you. Don't let anyone ever tell you otherwise.
Meanwhile... in reality. I'm a survivor of a brutal 4-on-1 attack and a deep stab wound to the lower back. I don't feel any need to go online every day and tell people my fantasies who I'd like to murder if I had a pair of balls. That's what little crybaby faggot bitches like you do.
You're always invited to come find me and see who's dick is bigger. Door's always open.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul SimonQuote:That is from the article by Graeme Wood "The Not-at-All-Funny Life of Mark Twain" Ron Chernow’s biography dwells more on the wreck of a man than on his sublimely comic work.
Ron Chernow’s Mark Twain forces a similar conclusion about its subject: clearly an idiot, and a born sucker. This conclusion will shock anyone who knows Twain only through his writing, in which the author is wise and witty and, above all, devastating in his portrayal of frauds, cretins, and sententious bores. In life, Twain (1835–1910) was quite different. He was gullible, emotionally immature, and prone to shoveling money into obvious scams. Twain therefore presents a tantalizing challenge for literary biography: to explain how someone able to spot and depict frailties of conscience, character, and judgment in others could be so powerless to correct them in himself. Forced to choose, as Yeats wrote, “perfection of the life, or of the work,” Twain left the former a total shambles—and then for good measure was struck by a series of family tragedies that would have been unbearable even for a much less self-destructive man.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/06/ron-chernow-mark-
twain-review/682584/
Unlike Mark Twain, neither the public nor private life of Trump is admirable. The nastiness of the two halves of Trump is what attracts Trumptards to him. They handle Trump's obviously evil personality and behavior with phrases such "Fake News", but Trump is truly what his detractors have discovered about him.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Yeah, Mark Twain (Second). We've heard all about Mark Twain's (Second's) fake life.
We can only imagine how terrible your real life is and what a terrible person you actually are in real life when this is the best you can fake.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:Here is some real news that Trumptards will either call Fake News or see nothing wrong with:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Yeah, Mark Twain (Second). We've heard all about Mark Twain's (Second's) fake life.
We can only imagine how terrible your real life is and what a terrible person you actually are in real life when this is the best you can fake.
Trump is accepting a luxury jumbo jet as a gift from Qatar that will be transferred for his personal use.
It is the most blatant example of bribery in presidential history.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-administration-poised-accept-pal
ace-sky-gift-trump/story?id=121680511
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-reportedly-getting-luxury-qatari-jet-gi
ft-sparks-fury-2070672
I suppose that if there is enough screaming from Congressional Republicans about this being as immoral as hell, either Trump or Qatar might say, "Well, never mind." But then maybe not. It's just one preposterous thing after another with Trump. Next week, there will probably be something absurdly stupid, evil, and bigger than a jumbo jet that Trump is contemplating doing.
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:Here is some real news that Trumptards will either call Fake News or see nothing wrong with:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Yeah, Mark Twain (Second). We've heard all about Mark Twain's (Second's) fake life.
We can only imagine how terrible your real life is and what a terrible person you actually are in real life when this is the best you can fake.
Trump is accepting a luxury jumbo jet as a gift from Qatar that will be transferred for his personal use.
It is the most blatant example of bribery in presidential history.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-administration-poised-accept-pal
ace-sky-gift-trump/story?id=121680511
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-reportedly-getting-luxury-qatari-jet-gi
ft-sparks-fury-2070672
I suppose that if there is enough screaming from Congressional Republicans about this being as immoral as hell, either Trump or Qatar might say, "Well, never mind." But then maybe not. It's just one preposterous thing after another with Trump. Next week, there will probably be something absurdly stupid, evil, and bigger than a jumbo jet that Trump is contemplating doing.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Trump should get smacked for that. That may be common in the billion-dollar business world, but not when you're making decisions for the USA. Whatever made him think he should get away with that?
Ridiculous and obscene.
Don't be so blatant, Mr Trump.
Save that for AFTER your Presidency, like everybody else.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Here is some real news that Trumptards will either call Fake News or see nothing wrong with:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Yeah, Mark Twain (Second). We've heard all about Mark Twain's (Second's) fake life.
We can only imagine how terrible your real life is and what a terrible person you actually are in real life when this is the best you can fake.
Trump is accepting a luxury jumbo jet as a gift from Qatar that will be transferred for his personal use.
It is the most blatant example of bribery in presidential history.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-administration-poised-accept-pal
ace-sky-gift-trump/story?id=121680511
https://www.newsweek.com/trump-reportedly-getting-luxury-qatari-jet-gi
ft-sparks-fury-2070672
I suppose that if there is enough screaming from Congressional Republicans about this being as immoral as hell, either Trump or Qatar might say, "Well, never mind." But then maybe not. It's just one preposterous thing after another with Trump. Next week, there will probably be something absurdly stupid, evil, and bigger than a jumbo jet that Trump is contemplating doing.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Trump should get smacked for that. That may be common in the billion-dollar business world, but not when you're making decisions for the USA. Whatever made him think he should get away with that?
Ridiculous and obscene.
Don't be so blatant, Mr Trump.
Save that for AFTER your Presidency, like everybody else.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
Yup. It wasn't no good when Bill Clinton was getting $1 Million birthday presents from the Prince of Qatar when Hillary was in office, and it ain't any good now.
I'm reserving my judgement on this one until I see what he does.
He has no need for this jet, whatsoever. There is absolutely zero upside for Trump to take this jet under any circumstances. Trump lived and breathed ROI his entire life and understands concepts like weighing out positives and negatives in a way that would break most of you mouth-breathers' little brains.
And I don't imagine that he and every single person in his inner circle of family, friends, employees and political allies weren't aware of this and that every single one of them who were aware of it must have brought up what a bad idea it was at some point, knowing full well that nothing but deserved bad publicity would come of it, and that there was zero chance they'd ever be able to pull this off in 2025 without every single person on the planet knowing about it within 24 hours.
So what's the angle?
Who is about to look like a giant asshole?
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Yup. It wasn't no good when Bill Clinton was getting $1 Million birthday presents from the Prince of Qatar when Hillary was in office, and it ain't any good now.
I'm reserving my judgement on this one until I see what he does.
He has no need for this jet, whatsoever. There is absolutely zero upside for Trump to take this jet under any circumstances. Trump lived and breathed ROI his entire life and understands concepts like weighing out positives and negatives in a way that would break most of you mouth-breathers' little brains.
And I don't imagine that he and every single person in his inner circle of family, friends, employees and political allies weren't aware of this and that every single one of them who were aware of it must have brought up what a bad idea it was at some point, knowing full well that nothing but deserved bad publicity would come of it, and that there was zero chance they'd ever be able to pull this off in 2025 without every single person on the planet knowing about it within 24 hours.
So what's the angle?
Who is about to look like a giant asshole?
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
I'm going to get a huge fucking laugh out of this if he immediately gets the plane repainted with "THE DEPORTATION WAGON" with the "R" backwards like in Toys R Us and he unveils our new free illegal alien-deporter that was gifted to us by the Prince of Qatar on his cute little Truth Social platform.
Even better if he got some sort of celebrity tagger artist to do it and make it look Ghetto Fabulous!
There are so many ways this could go.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Another reason for believing that Trump was accepting a free jet from Qatar isn't what surface value would suggest...
Even under the impossible scenario where Trump thought he'd dotted all of his T's and crossed all of his I's and there was an Absolute Zero chance that any other human being would know that he got a new jet and where it came from, what then?
Donald J. Trump, the 45th and 47th President of the United States of America, who has shown everyone in the world who's running the show right now, just put himself in the eternal blackmail pocket of some foreign leader for a free airplane he didn't need?
C'mon people, now...
This is the type of shit I'm talking about when I say that none of y'all have any critical thinking skills and you just believe whatever you're told.
Wake up and use your fuckin' noggins for once and stop letting headlines rule your emotions everyday.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Another reason for believing that Trump was accepting a free jet from Qatar isn't what surface value would suggest...
Even under the impossible scenario where Trump thought he'd dotted all of his T's and crossed all of his I's and there was an Absolute Zero chance that any other human being would know that he got a new jet and where it came from, what then?
Donald J. Trump, the 45th and 47th President of the United States of America, who has shown everyone in the world who's running the show right now, just put himself in the eternal blackmail pocket of some foreign leader for a free airplane he didn't need?
C'mon people, now...
This is the type of shit I'm talking about when I say that none of y'all have any critical thinking skills and you just believe whatever you're told.
Wake up and use your fuckin' noggins for once and stop letting headlines rule your emotions everyday.
Jack likes to tell us he has critical thinking skills. Well Jack, these people proved they have those skills. When you had the chance, you flunked out. And look at what they think of you/MAGA. What do ya think; are they going to vote republican in the mid-terms?
T
WOW: College graduates WALK OUT as MAGA Republican governor speaks
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Here's some more MAGA critical thinking skills. Warning, you won't be able to stop laughing. Hey Gilligan, do you feel the winds shifting?
T
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Hey Gilligan, how did those critical thinking skills of yours miss this? Fucking dummy...
T
WHOA: Joe Rogan TURNS on Trump
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Quote:
Originally posted by THG:Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Another reason for believing that Trump was accepting a free jet from Qatar isn't what surface value would suggest...
Even under the impossible scenario where Trump thought he'd dotted all of his T's and crossed all of his I's and there was an Absolute Zero chance that any other human being would know that he got a new jet and where it came from, what then?
Donald J. Trump, the 45th and 47th President of the United States of America, who has shown everyone in the world who's running the show right now, just put himself in the eternal blackmail pocket of some foreign leader for a free airplane he didn't need?
C'mon people, now...
This is the type of shit I'm talking about when I say that none of y'all have any critical thinking skills and you just believe whatever you're told.
Wake up and use your fuckin' noggins for once and stop letting headlines rule your emotions everyday.
Jack likes to tell us he has critical thinking skills. Well Jack, these people proved they have those skills. When you had the chance, you flunked out. And look at what they think of you/MAGA. What do ya think; are they going to vote republican in the mid-terms?
T
WOW: College graduates WALK OUT as MAGA Republican governor speaks
Quite frankly, I don't care what a bunch of college "educated" dipshits who are going to take that student debt to their graves think about anything, Theodore.
Let's see how many of them are still living with their parents 10 years from now, shall we?
And why is this a capital "WOW" moment for the clickbait farmers at MTN, Ted?
You couldn't trip at a college campus without landing dick deep in Liberal Idiot.
The only reason reasonable folk are surprised about any of this is that they didn't set shit on fire or smash windows on their way out.
"QUICK!!!! DID ANYBODY CHECK FOR SWASTIKAS!!!!!"
We all know how much you crazy Lefties love your doodles.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:Even if he later turns down the gift, or bribe from the persnickety viewpoint, because someone convinced him not to take it, Trump sees no problem:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Who is about to look like a giant asshole?
Trump defended the move and attempted to see off potential criticism online, by posting on his Truth Social platform: "So the fact that the Defense Department is getting a GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE, of a 747 aircraft to replace the 40 year old Air Force One, temporarily, in a very public and transparent transaction, so bothers the Crooked Democrats that they insist we pay, TOP DOLLAR, for the plane. Anybody can do that! The Dems are World Class Losers!!! MAGA [Make America Great Again]."
Donald Trump Will Get to Keep Qatar Jet Even After He Leaves Office
May 12, 2025 at 3:06 AM EDT
The jet will then be donated to Trump's presidential library when he leaves office, meaning he can continue to use it (or sell it)
The nature of the gift is unprecedented given its value, estimated at around $400 million.
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-qatar-plane-air-force-one-207076
1
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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