Legitimate gripes about Trump
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Tuesday, August 25, 2026 18:50
VIEWED: 5711
PAGE 13 of 19
Quote:Not an opinion. There are facts about how Trump will harm you, personally:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Shut up asshole.
Your opinion means nothing to no one.
You're finished.
Go call your mom and bitch to her, because nobody else cares.
Reverse Robin Hood - The Seven Ugliest Provisions in Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’
The Trumpy tax bill that's headed to the Senate has many nasty surprises
By Tim Dickinson | May 31, 2025
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-tax-bill
-big-beautiful-seven-ugly-provisions-2025-1235351717/
Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” is a reverse-Robin Hood nightmare. It steals from the poor to give to the rich. The 1,038-page version that passed the House will also balloon the deficit by nearly $4 trillion.
The Trump tax bill achieves this feat by extending (and in many cases expanding) tax breaks for the richest Americans, while at the same time depriving more than 10 million Americans of health insurance and regular access to their doctors, by axing $880 billion from Medicaid. It also increases red tape for Obamacare, while allowing other subsidies to lapse, boxing millions more out of their insurance.
The bill is regressive as a matter of tax policy. It will reduce the take-home incomes of bottom 10 percent of income earners by four percent by the end of the decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects. Penn Wharton, Trump’s alma mater, finds that most households earning less than $51,000 will immediately see their after-tax income decrease. Meanwhile, the bill boosts the incomes of the top one percent by nearly $70,000 in the first year alone, giving that elite cohort a collective $124 billion net tax cut.
The Trump bill sorta makes good on Trump’s campaign sales gimmicks — offering temporary, three-year tax breaks on tips (cost: $40 billion); the extra income earned from overtime ($124 billion); and auto loan interest ($58 billion); while also offering a tax credit to seniors, meant as an offset of taxes on Social Security income ($72 billion).
But as passed by the House, the tax bill also has many ugly provisions. Some are related to taxes, like the abolition of taxes on gun silencers, or ending tax incentives for clean energy and cars. Others are just completely extraneous, like language prohibiting state- and local regulation of artificial intelligence for 10 years.
Below is a survey of seven terrible tricks up the sleeves of the Big Beautiful Bill:
1) Undermining the Rule of Law
A provision slipped into the House bill, unrelated to taxes, would have a major impact on the courts and the rule of law. It blocks any funding to enforce contempt of court orders. This, in turn, could enable the Trump administration to flout the rulings of judges without consequence. Erwin Chemerinsky, a professor of law as the University of California, is sounding the alarm that this is an affront to the basic functioning of our democracy. He writes in a post at Just Security that “nothing could be done” to enforce injunctions against the executive branch were this provision to become law — “even when the government had been found to violate the Constitution.” In fact, he adds, “the greatest effect of adopting the provision would be to make countless existing judicial orders unenforceable.” These concerns are ripe because the Trump administration’s countless illegal executive orders and actions keep getting turned back in court, and the administration’s compliance — as with falling to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from the gulag in El Salvador, as directed by the Supreme Court — has been irregular at best.
2) Rewarding Rich Homeowners
Rich people in blue states have cause to laud the Big Beautiful Bill. It quadruples a tax break that one analysis finds “Overwhelmingly Benefits Wealthy, White Households.” We are talking here about the state and local tax, or SALT, deduction. The tax break has some logic. It is intended to keep folks from having to
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DOGE is on track to cost taxpayers more money than it saved
Elon Musk took a chainsaw to his brand and reputation with nothing to show for it.
By Zachary B. Wolf | 4:00 AM EDT, Fri May 30, 2025
https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/30/politics/doge-musk-government-savings
Despite everything DOGE claimed to do, government outlays are on track to rise by 9% in 2025 compared with 2024.
“Chainsaws and bluster can’t solve the yawning gap between revenue and spending that has led American debt to rise to unsustainable levels,” Stevenson said.
In total, estimates suggest that what has been spent to generate these cuts may be as great as the cuts. In the long run, it’s not clear that DOGE generated any savings. DOGE cuts could end up costing the US $135 billion simply because it will need to retrain and rehire elements of the work force that have been let go.
While Musk has promised maximum transparency, it has been impossible to verify much of what DOGE has said it has done.
We expect the government to show receipts. And the receipts that DOGE has shown that are posted publicly are nonetheless woefully inadequate to back their claims.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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An article about Trump, Trumptards and the Republican Party without mentioning those proper nouns.
5 ‘Argument Tactics’ That Narcissists Rely On — By A Psychologist
By Mark Travers | May 31, 2025, 04:15pm EDT
Mark Travers writes about the world of psychology.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/traversmark/2025/05/31/5-argument-tactics
-that-narcissists-rely-on---by-a-psychologist/
To strip the power from an emotional abuser, you must recognize their argument tactics for what they are: logical fallacies.
Narcissists tend to vastly overestimate the accuracy of their own beliefs. They become defensive, or even combative, when confronted with viewpoints that don’t align with their own. As a 2023 study published in Frontiers in Psychology explains, this is due to the fact that narcissists often exhibit very low levels of intellectual humility.
As a result, they rely heavily on manipulative argument tactics that serve to protect their inflated self-image. At face value, these tactics might seem clever, or maybe even intellectually sound. In reality, however, these tactics focus more on control than they do logic.
A 2024 study in published in Memory & Cognition also notes that individuals prone to such poor argument tactics are highly likely to accept and perpetuate information that confirms their existing beliefs.
Narcissists exploit this cognitive bias to others’ wits end: they frame their arguments to align with their victims’ fears or insecurities, or in ways that defend their warped self-image.
As such, they’re adept at spinning webs of flawed reasoning that feel convincing — but, under any actual scrutiny, they fall right apart. In other words, many of their go-to argument tactics are riddled with errors that are designed to deflect blame and derail conversations. In turn, they keep themselves in a position of control.
Here are five logical fallacies narcissists often rely on, and why they keep them in their repertoire.
1. Ad Hominem
The ad hominem fallacy occurs when someone chooses to attack the person making an argument instead of addressing the actual argument itself. They refuse to engage with the issue that was brought up, and instead discredit the speaker by focusing on their personal traits, emotions or past behavior. As a result, they shut down the discussion in its entirety.
For instance, say you confront a narcissist about their manipulative behavior. With an ad hominem attack, they might respond with, “You’re just insecure and bitter, that’s why you’re making such a big deal out of this.”
Rather than addressing your very real concerns, they attack you instead. As a result, your criticisms are rendered “irrational” in their eyes.
Narcissists heavily rely on ad hominem attacks, largely due to the fact that they will avoid engaging with facts that threaten their self-image at all costs. By turning the discussion into a critique of the accuser rather than their own actions, they change the course of the conversation. They make the victim feel self-conscious about raising concerns, which ensures the narcissist remains in control.
2. False Dichotomy
The false dichotomy fallacy arises once someone presents two extreme options as the only possible choices; they ignore the existence of middle-ground or nuance. This type of reasoning serves to force the victim (and the conversation as a whole) into a total gridlock. In turn, they prevent the possibility of any thoughtful discussions ensuing.
For instance, if you critique something that a narcissist says or does, they might respond in black-or-white statements like, “Either you agree with me, or you’re against me.” They equate any disagreement whatsoever with outright hostility.
But, in reality, relationships cannot function without compromise. Nor can discussions be productive without acknowledging the existence of both parties’ perspectives. Regardless, the narcissist limits the conversation to two opposing sides, which takes reasonable discourse out of the question entirely.
Narcissists favor false dichotom
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Trump Hits 'Undo' on Private Astronaut's Nomination for NASA Administrator
The move to pull Jared Isaacman's nomination comes a day after the White House publishes a budget proposal outlining a 24% cut in NASA’s budget.
By Rob Pegoraro | June 1, 2025
https://www.pcmag.com/news/trump-withdraws-private-astronaut-jared-isa
acman-nomination-nasa-administrator
Reaction to Isaacman losing out has been uniformly gloomy among NASA observers. Berger, an exceptionally sourced space reporter, quoted an unnamed "current leader" of the agency as saying "NASA is fucked."
But even before this plot twist, the release Friday of details of Trump's 2026 budget proposal for NASA had things looking bleak at the agency. That document calls for slashing its budget by 24%, from fiscal year 2025's $24.8 billion to $18.8 billion, then keeping it clamped down to that total through fiscal year 2030.
The budget would also chop NASA's planetary-science budget by 32%, and hack its Earth-science budget by almost 52%. And it would shove the agency's STEM-outreach efforts out a fiscal airlock, ending all funding for that office.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Grow up, faggot.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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The TACO Presidency
David A. Graham | May 30, 2025
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/05/taco-donald-tr
ump-wall-street-tariffs/682994/
One way to trace the past nine years of Donald Trump is the journey from taco bowls to TACO bulls. (Hey, don’t click away! This is going somewhere!)
Back in May 2016, the then–GOP presidential candidate posted a picture of himself eating a Trump Tower Tex-Mex entree. “I love Hispanics!” he wrote. Nearly everyone understood this as an awkward pander.
Now, in May 2025, Wall Street is all over the “TACO trade,” another instance of people realizing they shouldn’t take the president at face value. “TACO” is short for “Trump always chickens out.” Markets have tended to go down when Trump announces new tariffs, but investors have recognized that a lot of this is bluffing, so they’re buying the dip and then profiting off the inevitable rally.
A reporter asked Trump about the expression on Wednesday, and he was furious. “I chicken out? I’ve never heard that,” he said. “Don’t ever say what you said. That’s a nasty question. To me, that’s the nastiest question.” The reaction demonstrates that the traders are right, because—to mix zoological metaphors—a hit dog will holler. The White House keeps talking tough about levying new tariffs on friends and geopolitical rivals alike, but Trump has frequently gone on to lower the measures or delay them for weeks or months.
Foreign leaders had figured out that Trump was a pushover by May 2017, and a year later, I laid out in detail his pattern of nearly always folding. He’s a desirable negotiating foil, despite his unpredictable nature, because he doesn’t tend to know his material well, has a short attention span, and can be easily manipulated by flattery. The remarkable thing is that it’s taken this long for Wall Street to catch on.
Even though no president has been so purely a businessman as Trump, he and the markets have never really understood each other. That is partly because, as I wrote yesterday, Trump just isn’t that good at business. Despite much glitzier ventures over the years, his most effective revenue sources have been rent collection at his legacy properties and rent-seeking as president. His approach to protectionism is premised on a basic misunderstanding of trade.
Yet Wall Street has never seemed to have much better of a grasp on Trump than he has on them, despite having many years to crack the code. (This is worth recalling when market evangelists speak about the supposed omniscience of markets.) Financiers have tried to understand Trump in black-and-white terms, but the task requires the nuanced recognition, for example, that he can be deadly serious about tariffs in the abstract and also extremely prone to folding on specifics.
Although they disdained him during his first term, many titans of industry sought accommodation with Trump during his 2024 campaign, hoping he’d be friendlier to their interests than Joe Biden had been. Once Trump’s term began, though, they were taken aback to learn that he really did want tariffs, even though he’d been advocating for them since the 1980s, had levied some in his first term, and had put them at the center of his 2024 campaign.
Trump’s commitment to tariffs, however, didn’t mean that he had carefully prepared for them or thought through their details. The administration has announced, suspended, reduced, or threatened new tariffs on China, Mexico, Canada, and the European Union. All of this volatility is ostensibly a product of ongoing negotiations, but in many cases, it’s also a response to market turmoil or because of a lack of clarity about details. (This week, two federal courts also ruled that the president was overstepping his authority by implementing tariffs under emergency powers.)
This is where the TACO trade comes in. Rather than panicking over every twist and turn, investors have begun to grasp the pattern. But every Wall Street arbitrage eventually loses its power once people get hip to it. In this case, the fact that Trump has learn
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How Trump’s push to end California EV mandates may change rules of the road
By Francine Kiefer Staff writer | June 02, 2025, 5:00 a.m. ET | Pasadena, Calif.
https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2025/0602/trump-california-cars-
ev-mandates
The march toward electric cars in the United States took a U-turn in May when the Senate voted to revoke California’s electric vehicle mandate. And it’s not just about California. The move also applies to nearly a dozen states in step with the Golden State’s zero-emissions requirement, set to start phasing in next year.
President Trump has promised to sign the congressional action into law. And as soon as he does, California says, it will sue.
Regardless of the outcome, the revocation is a significant rebuke to states’ self-determination and, more specifically, any state hoping to push the nation to quickly abandon fossil fuels in favor of electrification for vehicles. The scientific consensus says greenhouse gas emissions must be cut dramatically within the next five years to mitigate the worst effects of climate change.
“It will slow down adoption,” says Stephanie Valdez Streaty, of Cox Automotive Inc., a technology provider to the industry.
Here, the Monitor explains why California plays such an outsize role in auto emissions standards, why this has met strenuous pushback, and where things might go from here.
Why is California so important when it comes to auto emissions? More at https://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2025/0602/trump-california-cars-
ev-mandates
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Shut up, faggot.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Trump Puts Lives at Risk by Revoking Emergency Abortion Guidelines for Hospitals
By Jessica Washington / Jun 3, 2025 at 9:33 PM
https://theintercept.com/2025/06/03/trump-emtala-abortion-emergency/
The Trump administration rescinded Biden-era guidance that explicitly required emergency rooms to provide abortions to pregnant patients if such care would save their lives. Medical experts expect the policy shift to sow chaos in hospitals and endanger pregnant people throughout the U.S.
In the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s move to overturn Roe v. Wade, the Biden administration issued guidance related to the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, or EMTALA, a federal law that requires health care providers that take Medicare to provide “stabilizing” medical treatment to all patients experiencing medical emergencies.
In a 2022 letter to health care providers, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Beccerra wrote that if a doctor believes a pregnant patient at an emergency room “is experiencing an emergency medical condition as defined by EMTALA, and that abortion is the stabilizing treatment necessary to resolve that condition, the physician must provide that treatment.” The memo also clarified that EMTALA preempts state law in cases where abortion is illegal with exceptions narrower than those in EMTALA.
In a press release Tuesday, the Trump administration rescinded the older guidance, stating that the previous rules “do not reflect the policy of this Administration.”
The release noted that Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services “will work to rectify any perceived legal confusion and instability created by the former administration’s actions.”
“In places where doctors and hospitals are being threatened with both criminal and civil penalties for providing abortion care, it will cause a delay.”
Abortion providers and experts in reproductive health argue that the vagueness of the new guidance will create uncertainty in emergency rooms, denying pregnant people equal access to care and putting lives at risk in states that have restricted or banned abortion.
“The Trump Administration would rather women die in emergency rooms than receive life-saving abortions,” said Nancy Northup, President and CEO at the Center for Reproductive Rights. “In pulling back guidance, this administration is feeding the fear and confusion that already exists at hospitals in every state where abortion is banned. Hospitals need more guidance right now, not less.”
The Trump administration told The Intercept that the idea that the new guidance puts lives at risk is “false.”
“CMS will continue to enforce EMTALA, which protects all individuals who present to a hospital emergency department seeking examination or treatment, including for identified emergency medical conditions that place the health of a pregnant woman or her unborn child in serious jeopardy,” Department of Health and Human Services spokesperson Andrew Nixon wrote in a statement to The Intercept.
Even before the Trump administration rescinded the Biden-era guidance, dozens of pregnant women reported being turned away for emergency medical care since the fall of Roe.
A ProPublica report found that at least five women have died as a result of abortion bans since Roe v. Wade was overturned. Most reproductive health care experts believe the number is far higher than what’s been reported.
“We already know that women have died because physicians didn’t act because of fear surrounding what they or couldn’t do under certain state bans,” said Dana Sussman, senior vice president at Pregnancy Justice, a non-profit reproductive justice organization. “We know that women have died because they have been scared to get care, because they self managed abortions. We know that more women will die, and we and there are probably women who have died, and we will never know their names.”
Sussman said that the new guidance will only make it harder for hospitals to feel comfortable providing lifesaving care to pregnant people.
“I think inev
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Shut up, faggot.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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