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 36 of 48
NEWSOM: “IN ADDITION TO NEW MAPS, WE PLAN ON CHANGING OUR STATE’S OFFICIAL NAME TO DONALD TRUMP IS ON THE EPSTEIN LIST-FORNIA.”
https://ifunny.co/picture/newsom-in-addition-to-new-maps-we-plan-on-ch
anging-MuvFrj9fC
The implication here is that the convicted felon rapist draft dodger is a pedophile.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
NEWSOM: “IN ADDITION TO NEW MAPS, WE PLAN ON CHANGING OUR STATE’S OFFICIAL NAME TO DONALD TRUMP IS ON THE EPSTEIN LIST-FORNIA.”
The Left can't meme.
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Trump is not funny when raping children. The little girls weep:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
The Left can't meme.
Case 5:16-cv-00797-DMG-KS Document 1 Filed 04/26/16 Page 3 of 6 Page ID #:3
11. On the third occasion involving the Defendant, Donald J. Trump, the Plaintiff, Katie Johnson was forced to engage in an unnatural lesbian sex act with her fellow minor and sex slave, Maria Doe age 12, for the sexual enjoyment of Defendant Trump. After this sex act, both minors were forced to orally copulate Defendant Trump by placing their mouths simultaneously on his erect penis until he achieved sexual orgasm. After zipping up his pants, Defendant Trump physically pushed both minors away while angrily berating them for the "poor" quality of their sexual performance.
12. On the fourth and final sexual encounter with the Defendant, Donald J. Trump, the Plaintiff, Katie Johnson, was tied to a bed by Defendant Trump who then proceeded to forcibly rape Plaintiff Johnson. During the course of this savage sexual attack, Plaintiff Johnson loudly pleaded with Defendant Trump to "please wear a condom". Defendant Trump responded by violently striking Plaintiff Johnson in the face with his open hand and screaming that "he would do whatever he wanted" as he refused to wear protection. After achieving sexual orgasm, the Defendant, Donald J. Trump put his suit back on and when the Plaintiff, Katie Johnson, in tears asked Defendant Trump what would happen if he had impregnated her, Defendant Trump grabbed his wallet and threw some money at her and screamed that she should use the money "to get a fucking abortion".
It’s only 6 pages! See them all in their original form at https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/katie-johnson-civil-case-for-rape
-trump-epsteinpdf/257375882
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Trump is not funny when raping children.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
The Left can't meme.
Shut the fuck up, creep.
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Hey Google! What was the outcome of court case 5:16-cv-00797-DMG-KS?
Quote:
The civil lawsuit
Katie Johnson v. Donald J. Trump et al. (Case No. 5:16-cv-00797-DMG-KS), filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, was dismissed on May 2, 2016, just a week after it was filed. The court's dismissal followed the denial of the plaintiff's request to proceed without paying court fees.
Case details and timeline
Parties: Plaintiff "Katie Johnson," a pseudonym for a woman who alleged she was sexually assaulted by Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, and defendants Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey E. Epstein.
Filing: The lawsuit was filed in federal court in California on April 26, 2016, alleging sexual abuse and a conspiracy to deprive the plaintiff of her civil rights.
Dismissal: The case was quickly dismissed. On May 2, 2016, Judge Dolly M. Gee denied the plaintiff's request to proceed in forma pauperis (without paying court fees) and dismissed the case. The court cited that the plaintiff "fails to state a civil rights claim".
Tell me about the judge who dismissed the case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_Gee
Appointed by Barack Obama.
Judge Dolly M. Gee is the Chief United States District Judge for the Central District of California and the first Chinese American woman to serve as an Article III federal judge. A graduate of UCLA Law, she has a background as an advocate for immigrants, minorities, and the working class, often focusing on labor and employment law before joining the federal bench.
Also...
Quote:
While this doesn't invalidate the accuser's claims, reporting from Snopes in 2024 revealed that a publicist with a history of creating fictional salacious stories was heavily involved in promoting the claims during the 2016 campaign. This raises questions about the motives behind the claims' promotion, but it doesn't disprove the underlying allegations themselves.
The Snopes article:
https://www.snopes.com/news/2024/09/03/trump-epstein-katie-johnson/
Quote:
The Johnson claims, however, originated due to the aggressive efforts of a publicist using the false name Al Taylor. In 2016, investigative reporters tied the Taylor persona to a former "Jerry Springer Show" producer, Norm Lubow. For this story, Lubow confirmed to Snopes he had acted as Taylor and played a role in filing and promoting the Johnson claims.
Go fuck yourself, Second.
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:You are a supporter of a child rapist. Congratulate yourself on good taste and fine feelings of moral superiority.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Shut the fuck up, creep.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:That is not the same as Trump proving he did not rape a child. Also, it is not the same as insufficient evidence that defendant Donald J Trump raped the child.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
The court cited that the plaintiff "fails to state a civil rights claim".
The U.S. Supreme Court has protected Trump in the same way, on legal technicalities:
Trump Keeps Winning at the Supreme Court. There Are Two Convincing Theories Why.
By Dahlia Lithwick | Oct 06, 2025 5:45 AM
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/10/trump-winning-supreme-cour
t-theories-john-roberts.html
There is a long-standing theory among Supreme Court watchers that holds that the reason the six conservatives on the John Roberts court keep giving President Donald Trump big wins is because they are attempting not to provoke a fight with him, and thus not invite a so-called constitutional crisis wherein the executive branch and the high court are in an intractable standoff. On this week’s Amicus podcast, Dahlia Lithwick spoke to Ian Millhiser, senior correspondent at Vox, who writes about the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States, and attempted to understand whether this is a logical explanation of the conservatives’ thinking. A portion of their conversation, which has been edited and condensed for clarity, is below.
Dahlia Lithwick: I wanted to ask about what has come to be named the appeasement theory, the idea being that the Roberts court rolls on pretty much everything for Donald Trump, but it’s because they’re saving their powder—giving Donald Trump a string of uninterrupted wins, all in the hopes that they’re not going to draw down whatever capital they have with him. The idea being that when the real constitutional crisis is upon us, they will leap out and save democracy. I hear this a lot from people that are very, very smart. I am curious if, in your view, what the Kavanaugh–Barrett–chief justice trifecta is really saying, is OK, we’re going to wait until things get really bad and then we’re going to stop the juggernaut. I’m very curious how that’s going to work or if they genuinely don’t think there’s a juggernaut here to be stopped now.
Ian Millhiser: I try not to read the minds of the justices in part because I don’t know if it really matters that much whether the Neville Chamberlain theory of the Supreme Court is correct or whether the theory that they’re just 100 percent on board with MAGA is correct. Either way, they’re handing down the same decisions and what matters most is the results. I think what potentially supports the Neville Chamberlain theory is that they haven’t been handing down too many decisions saying: “Yes, the Constitution says that Trump can do this tyrannical thing that he wants to do.” What they’re doing instead is saying if you file in Court X, [we’ll] say, No, no, no—you had to file in Court Y. If you get an injunction, they’ll say, No, you didn’t meet the rules for what you need to do to get an injunction. If one plaintiff brings a suit, they’ll say, No, someone else had to be the plaintiff. They’re finding all these procedural ways to hand Trump victories and maybe that’s because they don’t want to damage the substantive law. And maybe they will turn around eventually when someone finally finds the perfect plaintiff and files in the perfect court [so] that Amy Coney Barrett has to admit, Yes, you are allowed to bring this magical person to this magical court and actually get a magical injunction from it.
Maybe they will then rule in August of Trump’s last year in office that he did something illegal, but who cares? The crisis is now. And if they are letting Trump win because they think they can appease him and find procedural reasons to kick the can down the road for as long as possible, or if they are instead doing it because they think that Stephen Miller is the most awesome person who has ever lived and they wake up every morning asking themselves, What would Stephen Miller do?, we’re still getting the ex
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
State Terror, American Style
Forget about “soft autocracy”
By Paul Krugman | Oct 6, 2025 at 5:34 AM
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/state-terror-american-style
Over the weekend I talked to a couple of people, people who generally try to keep abreast of the news, about the Chicago apartment raid last Tuesday — and discovered that they hadn’t heard about it. And that’s extremely worrying. It suggests that many people don’t realize how fast and aggressively the Trump administration is moving to end rule of law and convert America into a full-fledged autocracy.
So while I’d like to devote today’s post to economics — you have no idea how happy I felt while writing yesterday’s primer about agglomeration and productivity — I couldn’t in good conscience avoid writing about the terrible things happening in Chicago and elsewhere, and what they may portend.
About that raid: It was reported in mainstream media, but didn’t get the screaming banner headlines it deserved. Here’s what happened, according to Reuters:
U.S. Border Patrol agents deployed to Chicago led a late-night raid on an apartment building this week, rappelling from helicopters onto rooftops and breaking down doors in an operation authorities said targeted gang members but which swept up U.S. citizens and families.
…
As part of the raid, some U.S. citizens were temporarily detained and children pulled from their beds, according to interviews with residents and news reports. Building hallways were still littered with debris two days later.
…
Hundreds of agents swarmed the apartment building during the raid on Tuesday, including some rappelling down to the roof from Black Hawk helicopters, according to NewsNation.
…
One resident, who asked not to be named, reported being made to lie down on the ground by agents during the raid and having his hands zip-tied.
ICE claimed that the building was targeted because it was “known to be frequented by Tren de Aragua (a Venezuelan gang) members and their associates” — that is, although ICE carried out the raid, it was supposedly about crime. And they arrested two suspected gang members, while also rounding up some undocumented immigrants. But they detained everyone in the building, smashed their doors, zip-tied their children, and ransacked their homes.
This was a wildly disproportionate and illegal response, even if the raid had actually had anything to do with crime.
But none of what the Trump administration is doing in Chicago has anything to do with fighting crime. Chicago has more violent crime than, say, New York or Los Angeles, but the post-Covid bump in crime has completely receded. City officials report that this past summer had the fewest homicides in 60 years. If we’d seen this kind of decline in crime after the Trump administration began flooding Chicago with ICE agents, rather than before, they’d be touting these results as complete vindication.
But as I said, this isn’t about crime. It’s about paranoid conspiracy theories and an attempt to dismantle democracy.
Here’s Stephen Miller, Trump’s immigration czar:
Stephen Miller @StephenM
The issue before now is very simple and clear. There is a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country. It is well organized and funded. And it is shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general. The only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks.
1:59 PM • 10/4/25 • 360K Views
Does Miller actually believe this? The truth is that left-wing terrorist attacks and plots are very rare in this country. There have been more this year than in the previous two years, but the number is still tiny, and is normally dwarfed by right-wing terrorism:
https://www.csis.org/analysis/left-wing-terrorism-and-political-violen
c
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:House of South Carolina Judge Criticized by Trump Administration Set Ablaze
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Go fuck yourself, Second.
Judge Diane Goodstein had received death threats. At least three members of the judge’s family, including her husband and their son, have been hospitalized with serious injuries.
Oct 6, 2025 4:00 AM CT
https://time.com/7323442/south-carolina-judge-diane-goodstein-house-fi
re-trump-political-violence/
Funny how Trump threatens judges and then Trumptards try to kill the same people.
Could there be connections between Trump’s mouth and the crimes?
Trump’s Dept. of Justice is definitely NOT investigating such connections because the Supreme Court gave Trump immunity from prosecution.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/19/politics/trump-supreme-court-immunity
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Trump will have 25,000 paying guests at his birthday party on the White House lawn:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Go fuck yourself, Second.
The Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) fight will be hosted at the White House on June 14, 2026, marking the president’s 80th birthday. Trump announced the date on Sunday.
Around 20,000 to 25,000 will be in attendance on the White House South Lawn.
But the fight is not a universally popular event, with former UFC and WWE star Ronda Rousey last month ruling herself out from participating. During an appearance on The Lapsed Fan podcast, Rousey said she’s “got better s*** to do” when asked about the event.
Alluding to a potential comeback, she said “After Mike Tyson being in the biggest fight of the year, never say never,” but then added “I ain’t fighting at the f****** White House.”
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/mma_ufc/trump-announces-white-house-u
fc-fight-date/ar-AA1NV8pg
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:That is not the same as Trump proving he did not rape a child. Also, it is not the same as insufficient evidence that defendant Donald J Trump raped the child.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
The court cited that the plaintiff "fails to state a civil rights claim".
Innocent until proven guilty. We live in America, comrade. I know you'd love us to live in Russia (when it suits you), but we don't. Maybe you should move there and you'd be happier.
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Hey Google! What was the outcome of court case 5:16-cv-00797-DMG-KS?
Quote:
The civil lawsuit
Katie Johnson v. Donald J. Trump et al. (Case No. 5:16-cv-00797-DMG-KS), filed in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, was dismissed on May 2, 2016, just a week after it was filed. The court's dismissal followed the denial of the plaintiff's request to proceed without paying court fees.
Case details and timeline
Parties: Plaintiff "Katie Johnson," a pseudonym for a woman who alleged she was sexually assaulted by Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, and defendants Donald J. Trump and Jeffrey E. Epstein.
Filing: The lawsuit was filed in federal court in California on April 26, 2016, alleging sexual abuse and a conspiracy to deprive the plaintiff of her civil rights.
Dismissal: The case was quickly dismissed. On May 2, 2016, Judge Dolly M. Gee denied the plaintiff's request to proceed in forma pauperis (without paying court fees) and dismissed the case. The court cited that the plaintiff "fails to state a civil rights claim".
Tell me about the judge who dismissed the case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly_Gee
Appointed by Barack Obama.
Judge Dolly M. Gee is the Chief United States District Judge for the Central District of California and the first Chinese American woman to serve as an Article III federal judge. A graduate of UCLA Law, she has a background as an advocate for immigrants, minorities, and the working class, often focusing on labor and employment law before joining the federal bench.
Also...
Quote:
While this doesn't invalidate the accuser's claims, reporting from Snopes in 2024 revealed that a publicist with a history of creating fictional salacious stories was heavily involved in promoting the claims during the 2016 campaign. This raises questions about the motives behind the claims' promotion, but it doesn't disprove the underlying allegations themselves.
The Snopes article:
https://www.snopes.com/news/2024/09/03/trump-epstein-katie-johnson/
Quote:
The Johnson claims, however, originated due to the aggressive efforts of a publicist using the false name Al Taylor. In 2016, investigative reporters tied the Taylor persona to a former "Jerry Springer Show" producer, Norm Lubow. For this story, Lubow confirmed to Snopes he had acted as Taylor and played a role in filing and promoting the Johnson claims.
Go fuck yourself, Second.
With the unprecedented amount of lawfare against Trump, if there was any there, there, you guys would have nailed Trump to a fucking cross, what with a California court and an Obama appointed DEI hire judge.
The 2nd time the case was brought up was a few years later in New York under the exact same circumstances.
Neither case even got off the ground.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Some guys murder their entire family, and yet it takes decades to jail them.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
With the unprecedented amount of lawfare against Trump, if there was any there, there, you guys would have nailed Trump to a fucking cross, what with a California court and an Obama appointed DEI hire judge.
The 2nd time the case was brought up was a few years later in New York under the exact same circumstances.
Neither case even got off the ground.
Unless Trump made videos of the little girls as he raped them, then turned the videos over to prosecutors, he will never go to trial.
I was reminded of a murder case by google, but there are many more out there, unsolved because the murderer (or rapist) used his Fifth Amendment right to not confess:
Joseph Naso (multiple decades)
Crime: A serial killer, Joseph Naso is a family annihilator, although not in the traditional sense of a single event. While his killings were not a single-day event, he murdered multiple family members over several decades. For example, he is believed to have killed his ex-wife's sister and his former partner's daughter.
Motive: Naso was a serial rapist and killer who kept extensive diaries documenting his crimes, which spanned decades.
Evasion: Naso successfully evaded police for decades as the murders of his victims were initially treated as separate, unsolved crimes. He often targeted women with the same initials, a detail that was missed for many years.
Capture: Naso was finally arrested in 2011 after a parole search uncovered a trove of evidence, including his detailed diaries and photographs of his victims. He was convicted in 2013 for four murders spanning from 1977 to 1994, with many other cold cases potentially linked to him.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Trump has proved he is guilty. There is even video:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Innocent until proven guilty. We live in America, comrade. I know you'd love us to live in Russia (when it suits you), but we don't. Maybe you should move there and you'd be happier.
Trump just threatened all of us — and we should take it very seriously
By D. Earl Stephens | Oct 6, 2025 7:48 AM
https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/trump-threat-2674157585/
or
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-just-threatened-all-of-u
s-and-we-should-take-it-very-seriously-opinion/ar-AA1NWDgd
We are just a few days removed from the most toxic, anti-American speech ever given by a sitting President of the United States, and I am not letting it go.
And neither should you.
While addressing a gathering of military leadership from across the globe at Marine Corp Base Quantico in Northern Virginia Tuesday, the vile, America-attacking Donald Trump called on our generals and admirals to “… use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military,” so that he can attack us again.
There’s no sense being cute about it, or trying to sanitize it. The President of the United States is intent on using our military against us. And because I am one of the few in media — or the Democratic or Republican Party for that matter — who refuse to just merrily skip to the next Trump-made catastrophe, I want to repeat this again, until everybody hears it and understands it:
NOTHING Trump does with our military will be to protect the citizens of the United States of America. EVERYTHING Trump does with our military will be to protect himself from the citizens of the United States of America.
By words and by deed it is clear as day that Trump has absolutely no respect for the country he violently assaulted, nor our men and women who wear the uniform, because like any authoritarian leader he sees them as servants to him, and not our country.
And just so there was no misunderstanding about his objectives, Trump went on to say that the people who protest against him in America and disagree with his policies are, “The enemy within.”
Can you please read that again?
Look, while these words might pour out of his dirty mouth like contaminated water from an overflowing toilet because he is such a dreadful public speaker, they are nevertheless scripted and tested for affect before he ever harrumphs upon some poor, unsuspecting stage to use them.
The President of the United States was very intentionally telling us he will use our military against any American he doesn't like, which we all know is a very long list.
I suggest we take this very seriously.
Just a decade ago, if you heard the leader of any country say these things, you would have rightfully said, “Thank God I live in the United States where these kinds of terrible things never happen.”
Trump’s vile speech should have triggered a national discussion that would be reaching a fever pitch right now. Instead, we’ve just moved on to more drama: the predictable Trump/Republican shutdown of our United States Government that they so clearly hate.
We have dealt with shutdowns before, but never a president who is so intent on using our military to attack us.
All pressure should be brought to bear on these military leaders that this kind of thing is not remotely OK in America. As a veteran and journalist who worked closely with military leadership during my professional career, I would like to think that the vast majority of these men and women understand this.
Don’t get me wrong, I dealt with a few screwy, power-drunk flag officers during both my time at Stars & Stripes, and as a sailor way back when, but for the most part, I have confidence that most of these people understand nuclear-grade fascism when they see it and hear it.
I’d think they also know when they are being insulted by their punk of a secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, who can’t hold
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
The Supreme Court’s First Blockbuster Case This Term Looks Pretty Fake
By Mary Harris and Mark Joseph Stern | Oct 06, 2025 2:46 PM
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/10/supreme-courts-term-lgbtq-
conversion-fake-news.html
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in Chiles v. Salazar, a case that seeks to undo a major triumph of the LGBTQ+ movement: bans on “conversion therapy” for gay and transgender minors. These laws, now on the books in more than half the states, prohibit licensed counselors from attempting to change a client’s sexual orientation or gender identity if they are under 18. Lawmakers enacted them in response to overwhelming evidence that conversion therapy is both ineffective and dangerous, especially for children and teenagers. Now, however, conservative lawyers are on the verge of undoing these legislative achievements by persuading the Supreme Court that restrictions on this discredited “therapy” violate the free speech rights of counselors.
Curiously, they have done so by engineering a case riddled with distorted facts, fabricated injuries, and flimsy evidence. For instance, the plaintiff, Kaley Chiles, has disclaimed any desire to change her minor patients’ sexual orientation or gender identity, so it is unclear why she has standing to challenge the law in question. Her lawyers insist that banning conversion therapy hurts patients who voluntarily seek it out, but their proof for this assertion is anonymous Reddit posts. Chiles’ attorneys also claim that even LGBTQ+ advocates believe sexual orientation can be altered—but according to the very researchers cited in their brief, they “profoundly misrepresented” those findings through “deceptive” quotations.
On Monday’s episode of What Next, Mary Harris spoke with Slate senior writer and Amicus co-host Mark Joseph Stern about the fishy case and its alarming implications for LGBTQ+ equality throughout the country. An excerpt from their conversation, below, has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Mary Harris: Chiles v. Salazar is one of the first cases that’s going to be heard that’s considered a “blockbuster.” It’s about conversion therapy and whether states are allowed to ban it. This is something that’s happening in Colorado. So what’s the story behind this case?
Mark Joseph Stern: The story is that it’s a manufactured case.
Tell me how you really feel.
Well, it’s a case brought by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a very well-funded group that really engineers these test cases in order to get the Supreme Court to change the law to be more hostile to LGBTQ rights and reproductive rights and women.
They’ve done this before with the cake-baking case.
Right.
And the website designer who wants to be able to turn gay people away.
Exactly right. And I think, in theory, there’s nothing wrong with bringing a test case. If someone’s rights are really at stake and they haven’t faced punishment yet—but they fear that they will—it’s legitimate for that person to sue. But what ADF does is really finesse the facts, often to the point of fiction, to justify creating a test case that the Supreme Court can use to change the law. That was true, famously, of the “wedding website designer” who wasn’t actually asked to design websites for a gay couple, even though she claimed that she was. And it’s true in Chiles v. Salazar. The plaintiff here is challenging a Colorado law that prohibits licensed counselors, as a matter of professional conduct, from trying to change a minor’s sexual orientation or gender identity while on the job.
And you can see her point of view on YouTube. They’ve done a beautiful, well-produced video with this woman climbing mountains in Colorado or wherever.
And the mountains are a metaphor. Don’t miss that. She’s climbing that mountain all the way to the Supreme Court, baby.
She does not mention religion or gender for a really long time. She says: “As a counselor, I help people who come to see me have conversations to clarify what their goals and their values are and to identify the ways in
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
ICE is wasting money by paying prices twice as high as under Biden. And capturing only a third of its stated goal. Typical Trumptard inefficiency and graft.
As Money Rushed In, ICE’s Rapid Expansion Stalled Out
Immigration arrests have declined and jail overcrowding is worse despite billions in new funds.
By Nick Miroff | October 6, 2025, 10:37 AM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/10/ice-immigration-d
etention-centers/684465/
Few provisions in President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act were as thrilling to immigration hard-liners as the $45 billion it provided to supersize the ICE detention system. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials had long complained that a lack of jail space constrained their ability to deport more people. The bill gave ICE enough money to nearly triple its detention capacity to more than 100,000 beds—a “once-in-a-generation opportunity,” the White House called it.
But in the three months since the bill was signed, the agency has added little to that capacity. The lack of beds may be limiting ICE’s ability to expand its enforcement; the number of arrests it’s made peaked in June and has declined in the months since. The agency’s focus on partnerships with state governments has done little to add capacity, despite driving up costs. And overcrowding has worsened in short-term holding cells at ICE processing centers, where detainees, attorneys, and immigrant advocates report abysmal conditions.
Lawmakers who visited the Baltimore center in August said detainees were spending as long as eight days in bare-bones cells designed for 12-hour stays. In Georgia, Virginia, and California, attorneys say immigrants have been forced to sleep on concrete floors without showers or bedding for days. Last month, a district court judge in New York City ordered immediate improvements to the processing center at a federal building in Lower Manhattan, where secretly recorded videos showed packed holding cells and men sleeping beside toilets.
The lack of detention space has slowed Trump’s immigration crackdown at a moment when it was primed to accelerate. From January to June, the average number of detainees per day in ICE custody rose 43 percent, to more than 57,000. But since July, when the funding was approved, the detainee population has increased only about 5 percent, to roughly 60,000, the latest statistics show.
The stream of social-media clips showing masked federal agents kicking down doors, raiding Home Depot parking lots, and pulling people from their car have kept up the appearance of an ever-expanding campaign. ICE’s own data show that the agency’s buildup stalled over the summer.
Eight current and former officials at ICE and the Department of Homeland Security told me that they blame Corey Lewandowski, the longtime Trump-world figure who is a “special government employee” at DHS and functions as the unofficial chief of staff to Secretary Kristi Noem. Lewandowski has operated as a gatekeeper for Noem, especially since June, when the department implemented a new policy requiring her to sign off on any contract exceeding $100,000.
With 260,000 employees and an annual budget of $62 billion, DHS has thousands of contracts in that range—including things like Coast Guard vessels, Border Patrol equipment, and TSA software—and deals with private-prison companies that have facilities with tens of thousands of beds that they say could be operational within weeks. Ever since Trump was elected, companies like the Geo Group and CoreCivic have been quickly expanding and promising their investors fat profits.
DHS’s new contracting rules have produced “chaos,” according to the current and former officials I spoke with, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters or feared reprisals from the administration. Most of them support the president and his mass-deportation plan, but told me they were dismayed that ICE seemed to be losing altitude right after securing the funding they’d always dreamed of.
“There’s extreme fr
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Stephen Miller spent his weekend, as he is wont to do, describing American politics as if the nation were in the advanced stages of civil war and as if he were dictating a message while racing to a mountain hideout to escape bloodthirsty guerrillas. “There is a large and growing movement of leftwing terrorism in this country. It is well organized and funded,” he wrote on X. “And it is shielded by far-left Democrat judges, prosecutors and attorneys general. The only remedy is to use legitimate state power to dismantle terrorism and terror networks.”
The provocation for this latest sweaty missive was an unfavorable judicial ruling (by a judge contravening President Donald Trump’s federal takeover of 200 National Guardsmen in Oregon). But violent defiance has become the animating vision through which Miller—and, therefore, on account of his sweeping influence over domestic politics, the Trump administration—views his conflict with Democrats, the media, the judiciary, or any entity that stands in his path.
The most consistent theme in Trump’s career is that any word or deed that he deems contrary to his political interests is illegitimate. Any unfavorable news story is libel, any election he loses is rigged, any unflattering fact pattern is a hoax, and almost anybody who opposes him should be locked up.
Miller’s career was defined, in its early stages, by a fanatical hatred of immigration. Over time, as Miller has emerged as the chief architect of Trump’s second-term agenda, his worldview and Trump’s have blended together.
“The Democrat Party is not a political party,” he said in August. “It is a domestic extremist organization.” Several weeks later, Trump seized on Charlie Kirk’s assassination to depict his own political opponents as accessories to murder. “For years, those on the radical left have compared wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” he said, in remarks reportedly written by Miller. “This kind of rhetoric is directly responsible for the terrorism that we’re seeing in our country today, and it must stop right now.”
Kirk’s death became the immediate pretext for using state power to crush political opposition. As the shock of that murder has worn off, Miller is shifting to a more durable pretext: the political and legal backlash against Trump’s expansive deployment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The executive branch certainly has the right, and indeed the obligation, to enforce immigration law. Trump, though, has redefined the boundaries of this enforcement in numerous ways: by detaining people without due process, some of whom have inevitably turned out to be citizens; by seizing law-enforcement powers from states and localities; by employing masked agents who don’t always identify their agency, and who have frequently attacked journalists and bystanders.
These actions have generated public pushback, and even isolated and horrifying acts of violence—but hardly an insurrection. As the ruling turning down Trump’s demand to federalize law enforcement in Oregon notes, the administration’s assertion that Portland is in a state of revolution musters a total of four episodes of threatening behavior by protesters to justify this claim. One of the incidents is “protesters setting up a makeshift guillotine to intimidate federal officials.” Another was “someone posting a photograph of an unmarked ICE vehicle online.” The other two involved flashlights being shone in the faces of agents driving vehicles. These incidents may be regrettable, but they do not even constitute actual violence, let alone terrorism.
In the Miller-Trump formulation, however, Trump embodies both the public will and the only force standing between the public and rampant criminal anarchy. It follows that opposition to Trump in any form, including by judges issuing legal rulings, constitutes an illegal rebellion. “The President is the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, not an Orego
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Republican Hoaxes
https://andrewtobias.com/grindr-explodes-at-charlie-kirk-memorial-trum
p-rally/
Trickledown helping everyone
Dems trying to outlaw guns
Dems secretly communist
Dems controlling the media
Climate change not being real
Climate change not man made
Bin Laden/Saddam partnership
Iraq threatening with WMDs
Gays destroying marriage
Gays choosing to be gay
Gays turning other people gay
Obama secretly a Muslim
Obamacare death panels
Obama bom in Kenya
Obama dividing the nation
Obama seeking third term
Dems waging war on Christmas
Dems waging war on God
Benghazi show trials (30)
Hillary being a criminal
2016 election being rigged
Dems wanting open borders
Mexico sending its people
Walls solving all problems
Mexico paying for the wall
QAnon conspiracy cult
Obama spying on Trump
Denial of Russian collusion
Denial of Ukrainian extortion
Democrats secretly racists
Dems both “woke” and racist
Whites being oppressed
Christians being oppressed
Republicans being oppressed
Antifa gangs attacking
Covid being just like the flu
Masks being ineffective
Masks making people slaves
Masks traumatizing children
Scientists lying for money
Hospitals faking Covid #’s for $
Dr Fauci being a villain
Vaccines having microchips
Vaccines making people sick
Vaccines making people slaves
Vaccines not being effective
Unvaccinated mostly Democrats
Hydroxychloroquine curing Covid
Ivermectin curing Covid
“Real science” being suppressed
Legit questions being suppressed
Illegal immigrants voting
Dead people voting
People voting multiple times
Dems stealing 2020 election
Dems suppressing free speech
Dems controlling social media
Dems controlling private companies
Dems orchestrating race riots
Dems getting rid of police
Antifa behind Jan 6 insurrection
Jan 6 rioters just like tourists
Jan 6 not Trump’s fault
Jan 6 riot not a crime
Trump reinstatement dates
Teachers being pedophiles
Teachers turning kids gay
Disney run by pedophiles
Disney turning kids gay
Critical Race Theory in kid’s math books
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
This needs reposting.
T
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I see you two spent the day jerking each other's tiny cocks again.
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Trump’s Plan To Invoke the Insurrection Act
By Robert Reich | Oct 06, 2025
The direction we’re going is either martial law or civil war.
Americans from so-called “red” states, with the backing of their Republican governors and legislatures, are on the brink of using lethal force against Americans in so-called “blue” states, whose Democratic governors and legislatures strongly oppose the moves.
Today Trump said he was considering invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807. That act would allow him to deploy troops despite any court orders stopping him.
At the Pentagon on September 30, Trump pitched the plan to use American soldiers for the purpose of punishing his political enemies. He told hundreds of United States military leaders that they must prioritize “defending the homeland” against the “invasion from within” in American cities run by “radical-left Democrats.”
Trump has described Portland as a “war-ravaged” city “burning to the ground” with “insurrectionists all over the place.”
Trump posted on social media an image of the Chicago skyline in flames with the words “Chicago about to find out why it’s called the Department of WAR” and a depiction of himself in the image of the fictitious warmonger character Lt. Col. Kilgore from the 1979 film “Apocalypse Now,” titling the post “Chipocalypse Now.”
Yesterday, he described Chicago as a crime-ridden “war zone.”
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/trumps-plan
Next step? Trump declares war. Since Congress is shutdown, it won’t stop him. Will Trump order the killing of Americans? Will the Generals obey Trump’s orders? We will see what Trump’s plan is.
Again, Trump has described Portland as a “war-ravaged” city “burning to the ground” with “insurrectionists all over the place.” Trump described Chicago as a crime-ridden “war zone.” Nothing is stopping Trump, except the Generals realizing he is evil. And a fathead.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
You shouldn't have done everything you did to lead us up to this point, Reaverfan.
Now you get to pay the price.
And now I know why you hate Trump so much. You're a terrorist, and you got really pissed off when Trump classified you as such.
You are a part of the 8% of Americans who should be in CeCot along with the illegal alien invaders.
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Hitler didn’t start with Concentration Camps.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
You are a part of the 8% of Americans who should be in CeCot along with the illegal alien invaders.
He Started With:
• Make Germany Great Again
• Banning Books
• Targeting The Press
• Blaming Immigrants
• Creating Enemies From Neighbors
• Defunding The Arts
• Stoking Fear Of Outsiders
• Demonizing Educators
Sound Familiar? Or Should I Type Louder?
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Trump "will speak to the DOJ" concerning pardoning both child sex trafficker and rapist, Ghislaine Maxwell, as well as Diddy. Sympathy from one sex criminal to another.
This comes right after the United States Supreme Court rejected her appeal.
Source 1: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-gh
islaine-maxwell-diddy-pardons-b2840507.html
Source 2: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5541645-maxwell-pardon-tru
mp-review/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Hitler didn’t start with Concentration Camps.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
You are a part of the 8% of Americans who should be in CeCot along with the illegal alien invaders.
He Started With:
• Make Germany Great Again
• Banning Books
• Targeting The Press
• Blaming Immigrants
• Creating Enemies From Neighbors
• Defunding The Arts
• Stoking Fear Of Outsiders
• Demonizing Educators
Sound Familiar? Or Should I Type Louder?
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Type louder, loser.
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Trump’s interest in the Insurrection Act is hardly new. He toyed with invoking the law in his first term.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Type louder, loser.
He was itching to use it to send in the military to crush the 2020 George Floyd uprisings but faced opposition at the time from then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper. No such problem for the president with loyalist goon Pete Hegseth in the so-called secretary of war position.
And Trump allies called on the president to invoke the law to illegally hold onto power after the 2020 election. During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump vowed to use the Insurrection Act to suppress unrest and dissent.
Chilling Dissent
In his second term, Trump’s aides and advisers have been clearly setting up a justification for invoking the law — softening up MAGA adherents to accept yet another shockingly dictatorial move from the president.
It’s no accident, after all, that members of Trump’s Cabinet have repeatedly used the term “insurrection” and “insurrectionists” to describe the protesters standing up to U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s Gestapo-style operations. And Stephen Miller, the ghoulish architect of Trump’s deportation machine, described the Oregon judge’s ruling as “legal insurrection.”
Like an incantation, they call the notion of insurrection into being to justify the Insurrection Act’s invocation when no such justification exists in material reality.
“The Trump administration is following a playbook: cause chaos, create fear and confusion, make it seem like peaceful protesters are a mob by firing gas pellets and tear gas canisters at them,” JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, where Trump’s storm troopers already wreaking havoc in Chicago, said on Monday. “Why? To create the pretext for invoking the Insurrection Act so that he can send the military to our city.”
Ripe for Abuse
Then there is the law itself, which could not be better tailored for abuse by exactly the kind of brazen authoritarian like Trump. Legal experts have long warned that the two-century-old statute is dangerously broad and in desperate need of updating for the exact reasons it’s such an appealing tool for Trump.
First, the law gives extraordinary discretion to the president alone to declare a domestic “insurrection” is underway and deploy U.S. military forces against the American people. And it’s one of the few key exceptions to the Posse Comitatus Act barring federal military forces from engaging in civilian law enforcement operations.
Trump’s Trial Run for a Police State
If there is “a reason” we have an Insurrection Act, as Trump said on Monday, then it is a historic one, with little bearing on current conditions. With its roots in the 1792 Militia Act and first enacted in 1807, the Insurrection Act “has not been meaningfully updated in over 150 years, is dangerously overbroad and ripe for abuse,” wrote Joseph Nunn of the Brennan Center for Justice.
The language of the law is vague — a gift to a president with dictatorial aims. It grants the federal executive power to deploy troops to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy” in a state that “opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws.”
“Nothing in the text of the Insurrection Act defines ‘insurrection,’ ‘rebellion,’ ‘domestic violence,’ or any of the other key terms used in setting forth the prerequisites for deployment,” noted Nunn. “Absent statutory guidance, the Supreme Court decided early on that this question is for the president alone to decide.”
“Create the Pretext”
Concern that Trump will invoke the Insurrection Act to take control of Democratic-led cities is by no means far-fetched. Our cities are already occupied by a federal army of thugs — ICE — directed to kidnap and cage our neighbors atop regular police violence. And Trump has already federalized and deployed National Guard troops in Los Angeles and Washington, overreaches th
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Contributor: As Trump's reign implodes, tell MAGA 'I told you so'
I once held what seemed to be a perfectly rational belief: that even the staunchest supporters of Donald Trump would change their minds once his incompetence and hatred directly affected them. That logic tracked with the dominant narrative of the last decade, going back to when pundits first claimed that Trump supporters were motivated not by hatred but by something called “economic anxiety.”
Trump’s economy has now arrived, and it’s as catastrophic as the experts predicted. Despite his promises not only to curb inflation but also to bring prices down, there is no relief in sight, because Trump never had a plan for dealing with any of that. Housing remains out of reach for many, unemployment is rising, and, thanks to the Big Beautiful Bill Act, Medicaid is about to eject millions of recipients to help offset a budget-busting tax cut for rich people.
Across the country, Republicans are discovering that their loyalty was a one-way street. A red county in Maryland lost its badly needed FEMA aid. A Nebraska clinic closed due to imminent funding cuts. In North Dakota, Trump’s tariffs have cost soybean farmers the Chinese market. An Indiana cement factory lost a $500-million grant to reduce its carbon footprint because the administration doesn’t believe that climate change is real. And now, a government shutdown hinges on Trump’s refusal to provide subsidies to people on Obamacare — many of whom voted for him.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/contributor-as-trump-s-reign-im
plodes-tell-maga-i-told-you-so/ar-AA1O0QCN?ocid=BingHp01&cvid=33fd55f5dd884818e5cdc12ab7ac2fb8&ei=41
Me too me too, I told you so too. too funny...
T
Trump’s Tariffs Cause Prices To Skyrocket & Weaken America's Economy | Chuck Todd Politics Podcast
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
It’s Hard to Overstate How Disturbing This Trump Directive Is
This Trump Executive Action Is One of the Most Alarming We’ve Seen So Far
By Fred Kaplan | Oct 06, 2025 3:45 PM
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/10/trump-news-hegseth-militar
y-venezuela-enemy-within.html
Judging from recent statements, actions, and policy directives, President Donald Trump seems set on twisting the law into a weapon against his political critics—and using the military as its chief agent of enforcement.
In short, he is laying the groundwork for a police state, and he is doing so in broad daylight, assuming that our constitutional guardrails will bend and fold, as they often have under more-piecemeal pressures since his second presidency began just nine months ago.
None of his remarks or executive orders create new law on their own; they direct the executive branch, but they can be struck down in court if they lack solid legal footing. The question is whether, faced with such blatant challenges, our institutions will succumb or resist.
The clearest statement of Trump’s intentions is a “presidential action” issued on Sept. 25, “Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” also known as National Security Presidential Memorandum/NSPM-7.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/countering-dom
estic-terrorism-and-organized-political-violence/
The document begins with a false assertion—that in recent years “heinous assassinations and other acts of political violence” have “dramatically increased,” citing the assassination of Charlie Kirk (“cheered” by some “who adhered to the alleged shooter’s ideology”), the killing of a health care executive, and the assassination attempts against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Trump himself.
Notably, it does not mention any right-wing actions, such as the conspiracy to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor or the violent attempt on Jan. 6 to overturn the 2020 presidential election (or Trump’s blanket pardoning of everyone who took part).
But this indicates only the partisan nature of NSPM-7. More troubling are its definitions of domestic terrorism. It claims that the assassination of Kirk and a surge of riots against Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents mark a “culmination of sophisticated, organized campaigns … designed to silence opposing speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy, and prevent the functioning of a democratic society.” It calls for a “new law enforcement strategy that investigates all participants in these criminal and terroristic conspiracies,” including “funding sources and predicate actions behind them.”
Take a close look at the language buried within those sentences. It’s calling on law enforcement to go after those who are trying to “change or direct policy”—something any political organization does. Which policies? The document makes this clear as well. The “common threads” of these “domestic terrorist” groups “include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity,” as well as “extremism on migration, race, and gender, and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.”
The document calls for “a National Joint Terrorism Task Force” and “local offices” (“JTTFs”) to “investigate and disrupt networks, entities and organizations” that “foment” these ideas “before they result in violent political acts.”
Read literally (and why shouldn’t it be?), this is a national security memorandum—signed by the president of the United States—that essentially outlaws what George Orwell called, in a famous work of speculative fiction, “thought crimes.”
Trump elaborated on this on Tuesday, five days after he issued NSPM-7, in a speech to more than 500 generals and admirals at a Marine base in Virginia. Much of his 75-minute oration was campaign-rally boilerplate, railing against “Sleepy Joe” Biden, the “sleazeballs” in “fake media,” and the injustice of his not winning the Nobel Peace Prize. But in between all that was a very clear message
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Operation Circular Reasoning
“We're being deployed because of the protests about us being deployed.”
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:GOP busted using South American riot pics to justify Oregon troops
Originally posted by second:
Operation Circular Reasoning
“We're being deployed because of the protests about us being deployed.”
By Adam Nichols | October 7, 2025 6:42 AM ET
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-oregon-2674161152/
The Oregon Republican Party shared a social media post about a planned military deployment in Portland using a fabricated image composed of photographs from South America.
The accompanying image appeared designed to support Trump's claim that Portland's protests were out of control, showing a line of riot police and a crowd with flares creating red smoke. However, the image was a digital composite of two unrelated photographs from different South American countries.
When a journalist pointed out the image's inauthenticity, the Oregon Republican Party responded on social media with a cavalier admission: "We're not reporters, just bad memers."
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:The Borowitz Report
Originally posted by second:
GOP busted using South American riot pics to justify Oregon troops
Trump Explodes with Rage after Gavin Newsom Wins Nobel Peace Prize
Oct 7, 2025
https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/trump-explodes-with-rage-after-gavin
OSLO (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J. Trump reportedly "exploded with rage" on Tuesday after the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the 2025 Peace Prize to California Governor Gavin Newsom.
In its official statement, the Nobel committee praised Newsom for "demonstrating his dedication to the principle of peace by preventing an armed conflict between California and Oregon."
Though the committee did not bestow its prize on Trump, it did recognize him with a laser printed "certificate of participation."
"Deciding who will win the Peace Prize is an exhausting and stressful process," the committee stated. "Donald Trump's entry gave us many hours of welcome laughter."
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Trump and Stephen Miller See Insurrection Everywhere
Originally posted by second:
GOP busted using South American riot pics to justify Oregon troops
By Ed Kilgore | Oct 7, 2025 4:35 PM
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/trump-and-stephen-miller-see-i
nsurrection-everywhere.html
Nine months into the second Donald Trump administration, the legal and political issues underlying nearly all the conflicts between Trump and his critics boil down to his claims of extraordinary executive powers, which are allegedly required to deal with an extraordinary set of horrifying conditions in the country. This president, of course, arrogates to himself the exclusive right to determine whether and when such circumstances exist and then treats resistance to his edicts as another emergency requiring even more executive power. We are seeing this pattern repeated in the Trump administration’s battle with a federal judge who has banned the president’s deployment of National Guard units to Portland, Oregon on the grounds that the president’s claim that Portland is a “burning hellhole” besieged by violent anarchists is “untethered to facts.”
Judge Karin Immergut’s temerity in second-guessing Trump’s description of the city where she lives has driven the White House into a frenzy of rage. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said it was apparent to everyone that protests in a one-block area of Portland surrounding an ICE facility represented a “radical left reign of terror.” Trump’s top domestic-policy advisor Stephen Miller was beside himself. “Today’s judicial ruling is one of the most egregious and thunderous violations of constitutional order we have ever seen — and is yet the latest example of unceasing efforts to nullify the 2024 election by fiat,” he said.
This last Miller comment reflects the novel MAGA theory that because Trump told the country he would undertake mass deportations of illegal immigrants during the 2024 campaign, he is not restrained by laws or the Constitution in how he goes about it. But Miller doesn’t simply condemn Immergut’s ruling; he calls it a “legal insurrection” aimed at facilitating an “organized terrorist attack on the federal government and its officers.”
As absurd as the administration’s rhetoric has become, there’s a deadly serious issue beneath it. A saying often attributed to the late U.S. senator and social scientist Daniel Patrick Moynihan holds, “You are entitled to your own opinion. You are not entitled to your own facts.” It is precisely the contention of the Trump administration that the president is entitled to his own facts, which preempt anyone else’s facts. As Georgetown law professor Stephen Vladeck explains, this is a scary and unprecedented power grab:
Typically, our constitutional system resolves these kinds of factual disputes through litigation. Neutral judges and juries hear legal arguments and factual testimony and decide for themselves what has, and what has not been, established …
The Supreme Court will no doubt have the last word. And the question is going to be whether the president can use a contrived crisis as a justification for sending troops into our cities. In other words, the issue is going to come down to who decides the facts when it comes to domestic use of the military. That question meant one thing when we had presidents who, for whatever reason, were constrained to acknowledge reality. It means something else altogether in an administration for which, to borrow from George Orwell, 2 + 2 = 5.
Trump and Miller, to be clear, share a dangerous take on the facts about opposition to their policies and conduct. The 47th president spent much of the 2024 campaign accusing Democrats of consciously seeking to destroy America by “opening the borders” to “the worst of the worst,” who raped and killed their way across the country, pausing only to cast illegal votes. He now routinely refers to Democrats as “the radical left” and just last
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:The Borowitz Report
Originally posted by second:
GOP busted using South American riot pics to justify Oregon troops
Trump Explodes with Rage after Gavin Newsom Wins Nobel Peace Prize
Oct 7, 2025
https://www.borowitzreport.com/p/trump-explodes-with-rage-after-gavin
OSLO (The Borowitz Report)—Donald J. Trump reportedly "exploded with rage" on Tuesday after the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded the 2025 Peace Prize to California Governor Gavin Newsom.
In its official statement, the Nobel committee praised Newsom for "demonstrating his dedication to the principle of peace by preventing an armed conflict between California and Oregon."
Though the committee did not bestow its prize on Trump, it did recognize him with a laser printed "certificate of participation."
"Deciding who will win the Peace Prize is an exhausting and stressful process," the committee stated. "Donald Trump's entry gave us many hours of welcome laughter."
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
What did Gavin get the prize for? Gender neutral toy aisles in any Fortune 500 company?
What a joke.
Don't worry. We're going to smash Portland soon.
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Trump smashed the federal government with 4 shutdowns in 5 years.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Don't worry. We're going to smash Portland soon.
“If there is a shutdown, I think it would be a tremendously negative mark on the president of the United States. He’s the one who has to get people together.” Donald J. Trump
Donald Trump made this statement during an interview with NBC in April 2011. Trump criticized the potential budget impasse and placed blame for a shutdown on the sitting president.
How Many Government Shutdowns per President?
Bush 0 in 8 years
Obama 1 in 8 years
Biden 0 in 4 years
Trump 4 in 5 years. I think we have the winner! Give him a Nobel prize!
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:The price of gold is currently $4,037 per troy ounce, a record-setting price as it has skyrocketed in the past two months. It has risen over 54% since mid-November 2024:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
What a joke.
Don't worry. We're going to smash Portland soon.
So what’s happening? The most likely story, which seems consistent with what Griffin is saying, is that a growing number of investors — including, in particular, foreign central banks — are moving into gold because they no longer consider U.S. debt a safe asset.
Now it’s hard to pin down exactly what investors fear, perhaps because they aren’t sure themselves. But many previously inconceivable possibilities are now quite conceivable given the Trump administration’s radicalism. Runaway inflation hidden by rigged official statistics? Expropriation of the reserves of governments Trump doesn’t like? Forced conversion of foreign assets into 100-year bonds? Given the administration’s record so far, how confident are you that none of these things could possibly happen?
As I said at the top of this piece, I normally pay don’t pay much attention to gold, which doesn’t play an important role in the modern economy. But I believe that the recent runup in gold prices is telling us something — namely, that the world is losing faith in America.
And perhaps Ken Griffin’s warnings are also telling us that even ultra-rich hedge fund titans are starting to worry about the monster they helped create.
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/ingots-we-trust
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Trump’s War on Drugs
Journalist Radley Balko examines how Trump’s war on immigrants merges and expands the lethal policies of the wars on drugs and terror.
October 8 2025, 6:00 a.m.
From Afghanistan to Iraq, the United States has long used drone strikes to take out people it alleges are terrorists or insurgents. It’s a legacy that started under President George W. Bush and greatly expanded under President Barack Obama. President Donald Trump has taken this tactic to new extremes, boasting about lethal strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean and declaring the U.S. is in a “non-international armed conflict” with narcotics traffickers.
Trump appears to be merging the war on terror with the war on drugs. This comes as he’s simultaneously ramping up the use of troops to police inside American cities. It’s a chilling escalation. But it’s not the first time we’ve seen a president stoke public fear and deploy overwhelming force in the name of law and order.
In the modern war on drugs — which dates back more than 50 years to President Richard Nixon’s administration — the United States has produced laws and policies ensuring that collateral damage isn’t just tolerated, it’s inevitable.
Much more at https://theintercept.com/2025/10/08/collateral-damage-podcast-trump-wa
r-drugs/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
The Civil-Military Crisis Is Here
The leaders of the U.S. military may soon face a terrible decision.
By Tom Nichols | October 7, 2025, 6:46 PM ET
Professor emeritus of national-security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/10/civil-military
-crisis-trump-hegseth/684486/
Despite the firing of several top officers—and Trump’s threat to fire more—the U.S. armed forces are still led by generals and admirals whose oath is to the Constitution, not the commander in chief. But for how long?
Trump and his valet at the Defense Department, Secretary of Physical Training Pete Hegseth, are now making a dedicated run at turning the men and women of the armed forces into Trump’s personal and partisan army. In his first term, Trump regularly violated the sacred American tradition of the military’s political neutrality, but people around him—including retired and active-duty generals such as James Mattis, John Kelly, and Mark Milley—restrained some of his worst impulses. Now no one is left to stop him: The president learned from his first-term struggles and this time has surrounded himself with a Cabinet of sycophants and ideologues rather than advisers, especially those at the Pentagon. He has declared war on Chicago; called Portland, Oregon, a “war zone”; and referred to his political opponents as “the enemy from within.” Trump clearly wants to use military power to exert more control over the American people, and soon, top U.S.-military commanders may have to decide whether they will refuse such orders from the commander in chief. The greatest crisis of American civil-military relations in modern history is now under way.
I write these words with great trepidation. When I was a professor at the Naval War College, I gave lectures to American military officers about the sturdiness of civil-military relations in the United States, a remarkable historical achievement that has allowed the most powerful military in the world to serve democracy without being a threat to it. I so revered this system that I went to Moscow just before the fall of the U.S.S.R. and told an audience of Soviet military officers that they should look to the American military as a model for how to disentangle themselves from the Communist Party and Kremlin politics. I regularly reminded both my military students and civilian audiences that they had good reason to have faith in American institutions and the constitutional loyalty of U.S. civilian and military leaders.
This new and dangerous moment has arrived for many reasons, including Trump’s antics in front of young soldiers and sailors, through which he has succeeded in pulling many of them into displays of partisan behavior that are both an insult to American civil-military traditions and a violation of military regulations. Senior military leaders should have stepped in to prevent Trump from turning addresses at Fort Bragg and Naval Station Norfolk into political rallies; the silence of the Army and Navy secretaries, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and some top generals and admirals is appalling. To their credit, those same officers listened impassively as Trump and Hegseth subjected them to political rants during a meeting at Quantico last week. But young enlisted people and their immediate superiors take their cues from the top, and one day of decorum from the high command cannot reverse Trump’s influence on the rank and file.
Trump’s rhetoric in his speeches to the military has been awful—he has ridiculed former commanders in chief, castigated sitting elected officials, and told the members of America’s armed forces that other Americans are their enemies. But his actions are worse. In deploying troops to American cities, he has set up a confrontation in which military commanders may soon have to choose between obeying the president and obeying the law. “This is a nation of Constitutional law, not martial law,” Judge Karin Immergut—a conservative Trump appointee—wrote last week when she blocked Trump’s attempt to send troops to Portlan
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
The most unprecedented presidency in 250 years
By Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen | Sept 23, 2025
https://www.axios.com/2025/09/23/trump-unprecedented-presidency-behind
-the-curtain
Not since America's founding 250 years ago has a U.S. president expanded power — and punished critics — in more unprecedented ways than Donald J. Trump.
1. Executive power: Trump has declared nine national emergencies in his first eight months in office, stretching the definition of "emergency" in creative and aggressive ways.
• Historical analogy: Since 1980, presidents have declared an average of seven in a four-year term. Trump's 200+ executive orders fall far short of the thousands issued by FDR (a wartime president elected to four terms), but Trump's pace—142 in his first 100 days—is the highest on record.
• New precedent: Future presidents can use loosely defined "emergencies" as a routine tool to bypass Congress and unlock extraordinary powers governing trade, immigration, mineral extraction and foreign disputes.
2. Free-press crackdown: Trump has waged the most aggressive government campaign against mainstream media in modern U.S. history —stripping funding from public outlets, pushing the FCC to revoke broadcast licenses over negative coverage, and personally suing CBS/ Paramount, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times while in office.
• Historical analogy: No modern president has deployed such a mix of lawsuits and regulatory muscle. Even Richard Nixon, who targeted the Washington Post and CBS through the IRS and FCC, never sued multiple networks directly.
• New precedent: Future presidents can use lawsuits, regulatory threats, and funding pressure to bring independent media to heel.
3. Seizing congressional purse strings: Trump has tried to freeze or redirect billions in congressionally appropriated funds, from public health to foreign aid to university research.
• Historical analogy: The closest precedent is Nixon, who tried to "impound" funds in the early 1970s. Congress responded by passing the Impoundment Control Act of 1974—which the Trump White House claims is unconstitutional—to stop presidents from unilaterally withholding money. No president since has attempted impoundments at this scale, or with such open defiance of Congress and the courts.
• New precedent: Future presidents can treat Congress's "power of the purse" as optional, withholding or redirecting funds to pressure states, institutions or foreign governments.
4. Tariffs: Trump has effectively seized the authority over tariffs that the Constitution gives to Congress, wielding tariffs to reshape global trade and punish countries for political or economic disputes.
• Historical analogy: The last sweeping tariff shock was Smoot–Hawley, which President Hoover signed in 1930 and wound up worsening the Great Depression. Since then, presidents have used delegated powers narrowly — including President Reagan's selective tariffs on Japanese motorcycles and semiconductors in the 1980s to try to protect American manufacturing. Trump is the first to use emergency authorities to impose broad tariffs without new congressional legislation.
• New precedent: Future presidents can bypass Congress to unilaterally set tariff policy, erasing one of the legislature's core constitutional powers.
5. Overriding the Constitution: Trump issued an executive order seeking to eliminate birthright citizenship — a right guaranteed in the 14th Amendment — for the children of unauthorized immigrants.
• Historical analogy: Past constitutional showdowns have come during war or insurrection: Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in the Civil War. FDR interned Japanese Americans during World War II. In each case, presidents acted under extraordinary wartime claims of necessity. No president has ever tried to nullify a core constitutional guarantee by executive order in peacetime — not even Nixon at his most imperial.
• New precedent: Future presidents can attempt to nullify co
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The most unprecedented presidency in 250 years
By Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen | Sept 23, 2025
https://www.axios.com/2025/09/23/trump-unprecedented-presidency-behind
-the-curtain
Not since America's founding 250 years ago has a U.S. president expanded power — and punished critics — in more unprecedented ways than Donald J. Trump.
I see. I guess the last 4 years didn't happen.
Shut the fuck up.
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:I guess you think Trump didn't rape those children who accused him of rape. But Epstein files say Trump did rape them. Also, Trump owes E. Jean Carroll $83 million for raping her and lying about it.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I see. I guess the last 4 years didn't happen.
Shut the fuck up.
Appeals Court Upholds Carroll’s $83 Million Judgment Against Trump
The judges rejected President Trump’s argument that the Supreme Court’s decision extending presidential immunity should shield him.
Sept. 8, 2025
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/08/nyregion/trump-e-jean-carroll-defam
ation.html
6ixStringJack, the story is only one month old, but you've already forgotten.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I didn't forget. It's bullshit. E. Jean Carroll is a lying slut and won't see a dime of that money.
Trump was fucking supermodels behind his wife on the regular back when Carroll was a 7/10 groupie slut working at a perfume counter.
In reality, Trump told her to go dig in the dumpster to find a man on her level, and she never forgot that.
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Too late. Trump has already paid the insurance company Chubb $91.63 million for a bond. Even if the Supreme Court takes Trump's case, he won't get that money returned. Chubb holds Trump's money until the Supreme Court tells Trump to fuck off, you rapist.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I didn't forget. It's bullshit. E. Jean Carroll is a lying slut and won't see a dime of that money.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._Jean_Carroll_v._Donald_J._Trump#Appea
l_effort_(March_2024%E2%80%93present)
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Too late. Trump has already paid the insurance company Chubb $91.63 million for a bond. Even if the Supreme Court takes Trump's case, he won't get that money returned. Chubb holds Trump's money until the Supreme Court tells Trump to fuck off, you rapist.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I didn't forget. It's bullshit. E. Jean Carroll is a lying slut and won't see a dime of that money.
Apparently you don't understand how bonds work.
No surprise there, retard.
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:(Appeal bonds are "fully collateralized," meaning the appellant, Trump, provided cash, property, or a letter of credit equal to the full amount of the bond to secure it. Then Chubb charged Trump 10% more because he is completely unreliable. )
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Apparently you don't understand how bonds work.
No surprise there, retard.
Pam Bondi did the same as what 6ixStringJack is doing.
Photographer Captures Pam Bondi’s Notes—and They’re a Doozy
Attorney General Pam Bondi came to the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing armed with nothing more than lame canned attacks.
By Edith Olmsted | October 8, 2025 10:37 a.m. ET
https://newrepublic.com/post/201475/photographer-pam-bondi-senate-hear
ing-notes
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi needed a cheat sheet of attacks to dodge Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s tough questions.
While sitting before the Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, Bondi repeatedly refused to answer questions from the Rhode Island Democrat about what happened to the $50,000 cash bribe border czar Tom Homan received from undercover FBI agents in 2024.
Reuters photographer Jonathan Ernst captured an image of the inside of a folder of notes Bondi referred to during questioning by Whitehouse. But her notes had nothing to do with her work as leader of the Department of Justice, or even the embattled border czar. Rather, Bondi had collected screenshots of social media posts, prewritten comebacks, and handwritten notes she hoped could give her a good “gotcha” moment.
The top of the folder showed a July X post from Whitehouse in which he’d called for an investigation into Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. “No government official should be above the law,” he wrote.
Also included in the folder was a bulleted list of comebacks. Apparently, Bondi needed to prepare the remark “You are a total hypocrite” in advance.
She employed another one of her prewritten attacks when asked about Homan’s tax returns. “Senator, I would be more concerned if I were you when you talk about corruption and money, when you pushed for legislation that subsidized your wife’s company!” Bondi sneered.
“The questions here are actually pretty specific,” Whitehouse replied, undeterred. “So, having you respond with completely irrelevant far-right internet talking points is really not very helpful here.”
Below her catalog of clapbacks, Bondi had written a handwritten note “On Epstein” positing whether Whitehouse had ever accepted money from Reid Hoffman, who once invited Epstein to dinner. She used the tidbit to deflect from a question about whether the FBI had seized photos of President Donald Trump with half-naked young women from the safe at Epstein’s estate, as reported by author Michael Wolff.
“Do you know if the FBI found those photographs in their search of Jeffrey Epstein’s safe or premises or otherwise? Have you seen any such thing?” Whitehouse asked.
“You know, Senator Whitehouse, you sit here and make salacious remarks, once again trying to slander President Trump left and right, when you’re the one who was taking money from one of Epstein’s closest confidants, Reid Hoffman,” Bondi replied.
Again, Whitehouse continued unbothered. “The question is, did the FBI find those photographs that have been discussed publicly by a witness who claimed Jeffrey Epstein showed them to him. You don’t know anything about that?” he asked, and Bondi fell silent, having exhausted her scant notes.
It’s disturbing, but not surprising, that Bondi didn’t make actual preparations to answer tough questions from senators. It appears that the attorney general felt no obligation to be accountable to the American people about alleged efforts to cover up for Trump or his underlings, believing them all to be above the law.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:(Appeal bonds are "fully collateralized," meaning the appellant, Trump, provided cash, property, or a letter of credit equal to the full amount of the bond to secure it. Then Chubb charged Trump 10% more because he is completely unreliable. )
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Apparently you don't understand how bonds work.
No surprise there, retard.
So fucking what?
Her case is going to get tossed, and she isn't going to get shit.
Trump had to put up collateral for the half a BILLION kangaroo court case that was thrown out too.
You get your bond back, jackhole.
Chubb doesn't just keep that. The government doesn't confiscate it. It doesn't just disappear into the ether.
You are fucking retarded.
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Why do Trumptards act the way you do? Once you figure it out, you will know why life has been hard for you Trumptards. Even better, you will know why life has been one conflict after another for Trump, too!
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
So fucking what?
Her case is going to get tossed, and she isn't going to get shit.
Trump had to put up collateral for the half a BILLION kangaroo court case that was thrown out too.
You get your bond back, jackhole.
Chubb doesn't just keep that. The government doesn't confiscate it. It doesn't just disappear into the ether.
You are fucking retarded.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Something Interesting Is Happening With GOP Public Opinion
Phillips’s Newsletter by Phillips P. OBrien / Oct 9, 2025 at 4:19 AM
Hhttps://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/something-interesting-is-happening
There has been a noticeable change in the public opinion of Republicans about the war in Ukraine—one that seems to have been catalyzed when Trump rolled out the red carpet for Vladimir Putin during the Alaska Summit in August. In a nutshell, Trump seems to be losing control over Republican opinion on the Russo-Ukraine war, in a way that is very different from his hold over the party when it comes to practically every other issue.
Now, one of the reasons I get frustrated when people talk about Trump being a buffoon, or stupid, etc., is that this leads to the type of drastic underestimation of his political abilities that helps him immensely. Trump is one of the most intuitive operators in US political history—a seminal figure who has the ability to motivate and understand his base in a way that has been shared by very few others (and I hate saying that). Not understanding his political skills, respecting them, and responding to them appropriately, is one of the reasons Democrats have failed repeatedly against him.
Between 2022 and 2025 one of the greatest examples of Trump’s ability to manipulate and understand his base was how he turned a Republican Party that was instinctively sympathetic to Ukraine and hostile to Putin in February 2022, and flipped it almost entirely by the second half of 2024 and early 2025.
In a nutshell, when Putin launched his full scale invasion in February 2022, Republicans and Democrats shared very similar visions of the war and the need to support Ukraine, but within a year the Republicans had become much more sympathetic to Russia and skeptical of aiding Ukraine. This change can be seen in many polls, maybe the best is the Pew Research Centre, which took regular polls using the same methodology and asking the same questions) between 2022 and 2024.
What they found was striking—starting with the basic idea of whether Russia was a threat to the USA. In February 2022 there was no partisan difference whatsoever amongst Americans. However by 2024 Republicans were far less likely to see the Russians as a threat. Basically the Republican worry about Russia being a threat had fallen by 50% (and this was while Russia was regularly attacking Ukrainian civilians, etc).
When it came to US aid for Ukraine, the Partisan change by the Republicans was arguably more stark. In March 2022, once again there was strong bipartisan support for aiding Ukraine. However by April 2024, half of all Republicans believed that the US was providing too much aid to Ukraine. Note that date April 2024—it was after four months during which the Republicans in Congress had already cut off Ukraine from US aid—which caused a real crisis. At the same time, Democratic support for aiding Ukraine had remained very solid.
This deep partisan split with Republicans becoming more Ukraine-skeptical and more Russia-comfortable than Democrats, was seen in many other polls.
When Trump retook the White House, therefore, he had done something really remarkable (and I mean that in a terrible way). He had taken a party that was instinctively pro-Ukraine and anti-Russian and basically scrambled its brains. And believe, me, Republicans in Congress understood this, and tempered their support for Ukraine and criticism of Russia as well.
Now the interesting news. Having scrambled Republican brains, Trump has started to lose control of GOP opinion and Ukraine and Russia, particularly in the last two months. Signs started in March that the Republicans were become a little uncomfortable with Trump’s open love of Putin and hostility towards Ukraine, but in the last two months this transformation has picked up pace rapidly—and amazingly the partisan difference between the parties has gone down a great deal. Here is the Yougov/Economist Poll, which shows the change starkly—notice in particular the steep decline in Republi
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Bailing out Bessent’s Buddies’ Bets on Argentina
Trump bails out hedge funds’ failed bets on Milei while his foreign aid cuts will kill millions of children
By Paul Krugman | Oct 09, 2025
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/bailing-out-bessents-buddies-bets
RFK Jr. Poses for Weird Photos With Argentina's President as They Plot Alternative to World Health Organization
The Trump administration really hates giving foreign aid that serves any kind of humanitarian purpose. They are clearly unmoved by the fact that that they may be responsible for the preventable deaths of millions of children in impoverished countries.
Children die as USAID aid cuts snap lifeline for the world’s most malnourished
https://apnews.com/article/usaid-funding-cuts-humanitarian-children-tr
ump-4447e210c4b5543b8ebb9a6b9e01aa53
And to be crass, it isn’t even in the strategic interests of the United States to withdraw critically needed aid to impoverished countries. For example, we are abandoning the entire continent of Africa, with billions of people and enormous deposits of critical resources, to China.
But a $20 billion lifeline to the right-wing government of Argentina, which has no strategic value to the US and has a decades-long history of corruption, unstable politics, fiscal mismanagement and financial crises? A country that has defaulted nine times on its sovereign debt, three times since 2001? No problem!
Two weeks ago I wrote about Scott Bessent’s plan to aid Argentina, saying “This is about ideology and Trumpian fealty, not America’s interests.” I have since learned that what I said was true but incomplete, because I was insufficiently cynical. Mea culpa.
First things first: there’s no plausible scenario in which even $20 billion in U.S. loans will save Javier Milei’s failing economic strategy. The core of that strategy, as I noted previously, is what is called “exchange-rate based stabilization” — propping up the peso in an attempt to bring down inflation. But as Maurice Obstfeld, the former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund, points out in a new analysis, “Latin America is a museum of failed exchange-rate based stabilization efforts.”
I witnessed one of Argentina’s many failed attempts up close. During Argentina’s 2001 financial crisis I attended a meeting at the Casa Rosada, the Argentine equivalent of the White House, with then-president de la Rua. I was there because de la Rua was desperately trying to salvage the Convertibility Plan, the 1990s version of exchange-rate based stabilization. The plan bore a strong family resemblance to Milei’s plan both in concept and in results: Initial euphoria that eventually gave way to disaster. Neither I nor anyone else had a solution: the Convertibility Plan was unsalvageable and Argentina soon defaulted on $132 billion in sovereign debt.
Yet in 2024, despite Argentina having arguably the worst global record for sovereign debt defaults, hedge funds decided that this time was different. Milei played the room well, espousing libertarian econo-derp policies, waving a chain saw to show what he would do to government spending. While ignoring his own domestic politics, Milei deftly courted Donald Trump and Elon Musk. So by December 2024, after Trump won the presidential election, Argentine stocks and bonds had surged in value, as hedge funds and money managers put big bets on Milei.
Well, as every economist who knew the relevant history expected, it all went pear-shaped again. By early September 2025, investors began dumping Argentine assets as it became clear that Milei would suffer significant losses in upcoming congressional elections, thereby putting his entire program in danger. Despite lacking any economic, strategic or even a political rationale, Scott Bessent then announced a $20 billion lifeline to save Milei.
What I failed to point out in my previous post was that the Bessent’s money-drop was not only an attempt to bail out Argentina’s version of Elon Musk, it also bailed out
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Trump says he has taken away freedom of speech and expression because he disagrees with the Supreme Court's ruling on it.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
So fucking what?
You are fucking retarded.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2025/10/08/trump-flag-burni
ng-first-amendment-portland-free-speech/86589856007/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Did #Trump write the infamous Epstein birthday letter? You decide.
www.youtube dot com/shorts/P902FDQGK0s [Cut-and-paste the URL]
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Why do Trumptards act the way you do? Once you figure it out, you will know why life has been hard for you Trumptards. Even better, you will know why life has been one conflict after another for Trump, too!
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
So fucking what?
Her case is going to get tossed, and she isn't going to get shit.
Trump had to put up collateral for the half a BILLION kangaroo court case that was thrown out too.
You get your bond back, jackhole.
Chubb doesn't just keep that. The government doesn't confiscate it. It doesn't just disappear into the ether.
You are fucking retarded.
That's not a reply, screen bitch.
Don't quote me if you have nothing intelligent to say.
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:What is wrong with you Trumptards? Feeling oppressed? Not appreciated for your sterling quality? Want revenge?
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
That's not a reply, screen bitch.
Don't quote me if you have nothing intelligent to say.
Trump’s Vengeance Campaign Is Escalating
The president’s threats of revenge are no longer bluster.
By Jonathan Lemire | October 8, 2025, 8:56 PM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/10/trump-retribution
-comey-chicago/684497/
If the secret to understanding a strongman is to identify his greatest weakness, one place to start with Donald Trump is his obsession with his own eventual obituaries. Trump knows that they will mention his history-making presidencies, his ostentatious wealth, and his unusual charisma—but he also is aware that when he dies, people will remember his conviction on 34 felony counts, and that there is nothing he can do about it. Even now, White House officials have told me, Trump rages about how his guilty verdict is sure to be mentioned way up high in his obituaries.
Trump’s fixation on all of this leapt to mind today when I heard that he’d called for the arrests of the governor of Illinois and the mayor of Chicago—not just because it explains Trump’s psychology, but also because this obsession is one of the driving motivations of his revenge crusade, which is now escalating dramatically.
It bears pausing on the starkness of these facts: The president of the United States today demanded the jailing of two elected officials who belong to the opposing political party. Trump did not offer evidence that Governor J. B. Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson had committed a crime, nor did he even suggest what charge either man would face, though the outburst presumably stemmed from their opposition to Trump sending the National Guard to Chicago to protect ICE officers.
This, of course, is hardly the first time Trump has urged the incarceration of his political foes. (This is the man who led “Lock her up” chants at his rallies, after all.) But what makes this moment so significant is what happened a short time later, in a courtroom just outside Washington, D.C. There, former FBI Director James Comey was arraigned on charges of making false statements to Congress. Trump’s threats are no longer bluster. The guardrails of his first term are gone. He is instead surrounded by enablers, including a pliant attorney general. The federal government is taking legal action against those whom Trump wants punished. Retribution is here.
White House aides scoffed to reporters in the first months of this administration that the talk of vengeance was an overblown media creation and that Trump was instead focusing on matters such as tariffs and resolving global conflicts. They acknowledged that during a signature campaign speech, Trump had flat-out declared, “I am your retribution,” promising his supporters that he’d strike back at those in power who they believed had oppressed them or curtailed their freedoms. He would simply right some wrongs, his aides claimed, by, say, pardoning the January 6 rioters—and yes, yes, all of them, including those who’d violently attacked police officers. Even as those around him, led by his aide Stephen Miller and others using Project 2025 as a playbook, began to challenge powerful institutions—such as law firms and universities—that they believed had long worked against conservatives, the president’s aides insisted that talk of revenge was just hyperbole.
Yet after the passage of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act and the revival of the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, things changed, one current and two former White House officials, as well as one outside adviser, told me on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. Trump couldn’t get some die-hard MAGA supporters to stop dwelling on his ties to the disgraced sex offender. The signature Republican legislation proved unpopular. The economy, whipsawed by tariffs, was displaying warning signs. Trump’s poll numbers bega
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Norway braces for Trump’s reaction if he does not win Nobel Peace Prize
US president may impose tariffs, demand higher Nato contributions or even declare Norway an enemy, analyst says
Norwegian politicians were steeling themselves for potential repercussions to US-Norway relations if it is not awarded to Donald Trump.
Kirsti Bergstø, Norway’s foreign policy spokesperson, said Oslo must be “prepared for anything.”
“Donald Trump is taking the US in an extreme direction, attacking freedom of speech, having masked secret police kidnapping people in broad daylight and cracking down on institutions and the courts. When the president is this volatile and authoritarian, of course we have to be prepared for anything,” Bergstø told the Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/09/norway-braces-for-trumps
-reaction-if-he-does-not-win-nobel-peace-prize
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:What is wrong with you Trumptards? Feeling oppressed? Not appreciated for your sterling quality? Want revenge?
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
That's not a reply, screen bitch.
Don't quote me if you have nothing intelligent to say.
I have no idea what you're talking about, loser.
Your world is gone.
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:You admitted today that you are on the autism spectrum. Unsurprisingly, you don't understand.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I have no idea what you're talking about, loser.
Your world is gone.
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=62462&mid=12307
35#1230735
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
This book explains everything about how Trump befouled America
By Greg Palast | Oct 9, 2025
Pay attention to this professional liar: “I’m the only president in modern history who left office with a smaller national debt than when I came into office.”
Fact check: “During Trump’s presidency, the national debt actually increased by $7.8 trillion, nearly 40 percent and more than any president in history.”
The fact check is courtesy of Thom Hartmann. Indeed, Hartmann’s new book, The Last American President: A Broken Man, a Corrupt Party and a World on the Brink, is one giant fact check on the Whopper-in-Chief, and much more — a disturbing dive into the roiling miasma of self-aggrandizing, self-deluding, psychologically shattered, wailing man-child who is Commander-in-Chief.
Don’t read Hartmann’s book twice, as I have. It’s not just the nightmares it induces; it’s the fact that you’ll wake up to the nightmare that is our new reality.
Hartmann is known as America’s number one progressive radio host. But he is also a certified psychotherapist, ordained theologian and noted historian who has brought his extraordinary bandolero of skills to an excavation of the dark regions of the president’s brain.
And dark it is. Trump grew up in an atmosphere of cruelty under the familial dictatorship of his daddy Fred Trump, whom the future president saw bully his older brother into an early alcoholic death. His mother emotionally checked out, leaving us with a president who needs a mother’s hug — and is taking it out on government employees.
Trump learned cruelty from his dad but learned how to weaponize it from his second daddy: Roy Cohn, Joe McCarthy’s henchman, who taught Trump how to use media manipulation and fear to break your enemies — a group now encompassing most Americans.
Does Trump even believe his own bullshit? That’s not even a question for Trump, notes Hartmann. He quotes the master of prevarication himself:
“The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest. I call it ‘truthful hyperbole.”
The ghost-writer of Trump’s The Art of The Deal says he made up the term “truthful hyperbole” to cover up the word, “lie.”
But it’s a lie we love. Or, at least a lot of Americans love it. Here is a photo of one of Trump’s acolytes at a Trump rally my team attended in rural Georgia. There’s her T-shirt of Trump and JD Vance as vigilantes, gunning down the bad guys. She had a Trump hat, Trump socks, and sported a red, white and blue Trump ballet tutu.
A Trump supporter in Georgia. Photograph: Zach D. Roberts for the Palast Investigative Fund (2024)
The biggest sellers were shirts announcing, with an armed Trump image, “Daddy’s home.” Our national father figure is coming back for a second term to spank us bad kiddies as Trump Sr. did to his son. The parental abuse goes on, but now as a policy of fear, repression, mass firings, race-baiting, Constitution-defying lawsuits ginned up “by cynical attorneys and billionaires’ checkbooks, riding the algorithms of outrage and our insatiable hunger for spectacle,” as Hartmann says.
As Hartmann warns, democracy in America won’t roll in on tanks, it will come “packaged as entertainment.” He notes, chillingly, that, “It wasn’t just Trump, it was the system that fed him.” Trump’s beguiling fibs, his mayhem-making, his troops-in-the-street diktats are all spectacle to satisfy the desire for retribution of America’s working class wounded.
Trump is a symptom, notes Hartmann, not a cause, of what I’d call the New Hate. We don’t want to win arguments anymore. We want to hurt those who don’t share our politics. Trump revels in it.
And Hartmann is not afraid to call out the racism that lubricates Trump’s resentment machine, a GOP line of ugly innuendoes that originated with
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:What is wrong with you Trumptards? Feeling oppressed? Not appreciated for your sterling quality? Want revenge?
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
That's not a reply, screen bitch.
Don't quote me if you have nothing intelligent to say.
I have no idea what you're talking about, loser.
Your world is gone.
You admitted today that you are on the autism spectrum. Unsurprisingly, you don't understand.
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=62462&mid=12307
35#1230735
I've never been diagnosed, but I suspect that I probably am.
Autism is a disorder of high intelligence. It's very apparent to anybody else here except for 20 digit IQ Ted that I'm brilliant when compared to you, retard.
I have a hard time dumbing myself down to even have a chance of conversing with those as stupid as you two dipshits are. Your mere existence is frustrating to exceedingly intelligent people like us.
This doesn't change the fact that you posted nonsense, I called you on it, you are a loser and the world you thought you were living in 9 months ago is dead.
Have a nice day.
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
New York Times: With Mideast Deal, Trump Is on the Brink of a Major Diplomatic Accomplishment
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/08/us/politics/trump-mideast-visit-isr
ael-gaza.html
Archive to avoid paywall: https://archive.is/Sf2vN#selection-4309.0-4309.77
I guess you two idiots will have to stop reading the New York Times headlines now too, huh stupids?
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:6ix, you are as fucked up in the head as Rainman:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:What is wrong with you Trumptards? Feeling oppressed? Not appreciated for your sterling quality? Want revenge?
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
That's not a reply, screen bitch.
Don't quote me if you have nothing intelligent to say.
I have no idea what you're talking about, loser.
Your world is gone.
You admitted today that you are on the autism spectrum. Unsurprisingly, you don't understand.
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=62462&mid=12307
35#1230735
I've never been diagnosed, but I suspect that I probably am.
Autism is a disorder of high intelligence. It's very apparent to anybody else here except for 20 digit IQ Ted that I'm brilliant when compared to you, retard.
I have a hard time dumbing myself down to even have a chance of conversing with those as stupid as you two dipshits are. Your mere existence is frustrating to exceedingly intelligent people like us.
This doesn't change the fact that you posted nonsense, I called you on it, you are a loser and the world you thought you were living in 9 months ago is dead.
Have a nice day.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Wow. Great burn. *yawn*
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Conservative Rick Wilson Warns MAGA Loyalists: Trump ‘Will Be Dead Sooner Than You Imagine’
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Wow. Great burn. *yawn*
By Frank Yemi | Oct 9, 2025
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/conservative-rick-wilson-warns
-maga-loyalists-trump-will-be-dead-sooner-than-you-imagine/ar-AA1Oa9gB
Rick Wilson has never been one to hold back, but his latest Substack column went even further than usual. The longtime Republican strategist and outspoken Trump critic warned the former president’s most loyal followers that their leader will not be around forever, and that those who have helped him undermine democratic norms should prepare for consequences.
https://therickwilson.substack.com/p/the-trump-insurrection
The column dropped the day before Donald Trump’s scheduled “routine yearly check-up” at Walter Reed Hospital, just five months after his last visit, fueling speculation about his health. Wilson did not mince words, tying the timing to his grim prediction. “You will not reign forever,” he wrote. “Your Dear Leader will be dead sooner than you imagine, given his failing health and corroded mind.”
Wilson’s warning was not just about Trump’s mortality, but about what he called the “reckoning” awaiting his inner circle. He accused Trump’s allies, from top officials to rank and file enforcers, of enabling what he described as an assault on American liberty. “The lawful power of the people will be used to deliver decisive, agonizing consequences,” he wrote. “Legal, political, economic, and social punishments are the only warning that will work.”
In the piece, Wilson also referenced Trump adviser Stephen Miller, calling him part of an effort to inflame public tensions to justify authoritarian crackdowns. He accused the administration of trying to provoke chaos so that Trump could invoke the Insurrection Act. “Donald Trump and his claque of pissant authoritarians have switched from wanna be to gonna be,” Wilson warned, adding that they were “itching to turn the United States military into their personal palace guard.”
The post also veered into disturbing imagery, with Wilson writing that Trump loyalists “can live their remaining days in an 8×8 cell or take a blindfold, a cigarette, and a wall.” He later framed his language as about accountability, not violence, but the line sparked outrage among Trump supporters and conservative media figures, who accused him of calling for political persecution.
Still, Wilson’s followers saw the essay as a blunt reality check for a movement that has grown used to acting with impunity. He argued that Trump’s cult of personality has shielded enablers from responsibility, but that eventually, when Trump’s influence fades, justice will catch up. “Those who betrayed this nation in the service of Trump,” he wrote, “will be tried and handed punishments so severe that generations to come will remember that America is, by its very DNA, engineered to destroy tyranny.”
Wilson’s rhetoric has long been divisive, but his prediction comes as Trump’s physical and political stamina face intense scrutiny. Between reports of repeated medical visits and observations about cognitive lapses, speculation about the former president’s health continues to swirl. For Wilson, that is part of his point, the “Dear Leader,” as he calls Trump, is not immortal, and when he is gone, his allies will not have his shadow to hide behind.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Be The Insurrection. They want one. They're going to get one.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Wow. Great burn. *yawn*
Team Trump has known for a while now that if they want an insurrection, they’re going to create one.
It’s why all the elements of the MAGA message machine are in overdrive, from Fox down to windowlicking scamfluencers like Benny Johnson and Nick Sorter, each breathlessly lying about the “carnage” on the streets of Portland.
They’ve been telegraphing this play for years, the fantasy of crossing that final bridge, of four-wheeling across the Rubicon, of flipping the last switch on the control-rod panel at Chernobyl, because what could possibly go wrong?
Like a third-rate magician with a tell so obvious a blind man could spot it, Donald Trump and his claque of pissant authoritarians have switched from wanna-be to gonna-be, itching to turn the United States military into their personal palace guard, their political police force, their Praetorian Guard for the Thousand Year Trumpreich.
https://therickwilson.substack.com/p/the-trump-insurrection
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Be The Insurrection.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Wow. Great burn. *yawn*
What was that?
CNN's Enten: "Trump Is Who The Voters Thought He Would Be," Has The Steadiest Favorability Rating On Record
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=67148
Trump/Biden* Approval Rating Comparison
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=67108
All the legacy media boys and girls are bouncing on Trump's D today, huh?
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=67153
Just can't seem to hear your noise anymore.
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Traitors shot in the back of the head don't hear the gun firing.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Just can't seem to hear your noise anymore.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
"Trust me when I tell you the last thing those Admirals + Generals wanted was to be flown across multiple time zones to be lectured on what it means to be a warrior by a former PT TV Host who had to promise to stop drinking to get the job. Then have a 5-time Draft Dodger bereft of any honor as a man tell them the American people are the enemy within."
---Retired U.S. Army Maj. General Paul Eaton
https://www.instagram.com/p/DPRkxX4jfue/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Traitors shot in the back of the head don't hear the gun firing.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Just can't seem to hear your noise anymore.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Why so angry?
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Bigger question is why doesn't a general shoot Trump?
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Why so angry?
"Trust me when I tell you the last thing those Admirals + Generals wanted was to be flown across multiple time zones to be lectured on what it means to be a warrior by a former PT TV Host who had to promise to stop drinking to get the job. Then have a 5-time Draft Dodger bereft of any honor as a man tell them the American people are the enemy within."
---Retired U.S. Army Maj. General Paul Eaton
https://www.instagram.com/p/DPRkxX4jfue/
If a Confederate officer had shot General Robert E Lee, there would be statues erected all over America to that Confederate rather than to the traitor Lee.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
The Nobel Committee gave Trump the Prize for Biggest Asshole:
White House accuses Nobel Committee of being political after Trump misses out on peace prize
The White House on Friday criticized the Nobel Prize committee’s decision to award the peace prize to a Venezuelan opposition leader instead of US President Donald Trump.
Most of this is false, but it was said despite that: “President Trump will continue making peace deals, ending wars and saving lives. He has the heart of a humanitarian, and there will never be anyone like him who can move mountains with the sheer force of his will,” White House spokesman Steven Cheung said in a post on X.
“The Nobel Committee proved they place politics over peace.”
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/white-house-accuses-nobel
-committee-of-being-political-after-trump-misses-out-on-peace-prize/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Bigger question is why doesn't a general shoot Trump?
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Why so angry?
Bigger question for a psychopath.
You're really going to let Trump drive you off a cliff, aren't you?
You poor thing.
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:I have seen a sufficient number of Trumptards' lives, from their early years to their absurd finale, to know the pattern. This historian has seen a much bigger pattern:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Bigger question for a psychopath.
You're really going to let Trump drive you off a cliff, aren't you?
You poor thing.
Stalin and Stephen Miller (video)
Cause for concern
By Timothy Snyder | Oct 08, 2025
https://snyder.substack.com/p/stalinism-and-stephen-miller-video
I name these five similarities not because I'm claiming that the situation of the Soviet Union in 1925 is the same as the situation of the United States in 2025. What I am saying is that knowledge of history and awareness of history can allow us to see patterns, make connections, and identify incipient problems. It can give us a language and a set of references that allows us to step back, broaden our view, and see things and sometimes warn ourselves and others when necessary. I'm not saying that substantially the views of the two men are the same, but I don't think it's the substance that is most important. I actually think it's the form.
I think a form in which you rise to power unelected by controlling access to the leader, a form in which you are taking advantage of the illness of that leader, a form in which you rely upon non-existent, vast conspiracies, a form in which you plead for and try to implement a state of exception, and a form of politics in which you dream about and eventually carry out vast... vast numbers of interrogations to, so to speak, make real that conspiracy. That form of politics is something that we should be alert to.
So I'm making this comparison not because I think the political aims are the same. Obviously, they're not. But I'm making this comparison because to me, what's fundamental is the political form, the political method. And I see forms and methods here that are concerning. And the comparison to the Soviet Union in the 1920s is one way to see why we have cause for concern.
Thank you for listening. This is Tim Snyder. This is for the 8th of October, 2025. It's on my substack, Thinking About. Thanks for being with me.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:I have seen a sufficient number of Trumptards' lives
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Bigger question for a psychopath.
You're really going to let Trump drive you off a cliff, aren't you?
You poor thing.
That's a yes.
Your choice dude. You want to be miserable everyday for the rest of what's left of your life, that's on you.
Even Hillary Fucking Clinton is praising Trump today. I guess she's a Trumptard now too. Your club is getting smaller every day, and you are an endangered species.
Hillary Clinton: I Really Commend President Trump For Israel-Hamas Peace Deal
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2025/10/10/hillary_clinton_i_re
ally_commend_president_trump_for_israel-hamas_peace_deal.html
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
If there's a war on MAGA lost the first general; Charlie Kirk. I wonder if he heard the shot SECOND?
T
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
If there's a war on MAGA lost the first general; Charlie Kirk. I wonder if he heard the shot SECOND?
T
Are you celebrating Kirk's death again, retard?
Go ahead and bring a war on. You want Civil War we will destroy you. Bring it on, buddy.
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
If there's a war on MAGA lost the first general; Charlie Kirk. I wonder if he heard the shot SECOND?
T
Are you celebrating Kirk's death again, retard?
Go ahead and bring a war on. You want Civil War we will destroy you. Bring it on, buddy.
Never made fun of him the first time. Just spoke the truth about him.
To win a war you need an army. You don't have one. Did you watch the videos as see how the Generals responded to Trump and his joke of a 'head of the war office'? Like I said, you don't have an army. Who by the way, swore an oath to the constitution, not Trump.
T
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
If there's a war on MAGA lost the first general; Charlie Kirk. I wonder if he heard the shot SECOND?
T
Are you celebrating Kirk's death again, retard?
Go ahead and bring a war on. You want Civil War we will destroy you. Bring it on, buddy.
Never made fun of him the first time.
No. You didn't make fun of Charlie Kirk. You were extremely pleased he was dead and because you are a disgusting human being with zero impulse control, you couldn't help yourself from expressing your extreme pleasure in his death here for everyone to see.
Quote:
Just spoke the truth about him.
No. You did not. You regurgitated 30 seconds of out-of-context sound bytes from a guy who has thousands upon thousands of hours of himself speaking. Most of it in video format and available for anybody to watch for free on YouTube. And every one of the half-dozen quotes that the Legacy Media was repeating over and over and over again are part of much longer videos that have been put out there for everyone to see that they were being lied to. But you won't ever look at them because you would be nothing if you allowed that illusion to finally shatter.
Quote:
To win a war you need an army. You don't have one. Did you watch the videos as see how the Generals responded to Trump and his joke of a 'head of the war office'? Like I said, you don't have an army. Who by the way, swore an oath to the constitution, not Trump.
I have no fucking idea what you're even talking about here dude, and I'm not even going to bother looking into it. It's just another stupid lie that you're bullhorning for your George Soros funded clickbait that is never going to come true and a month from now you won't even remember that you posted it. You're just stroking your hate boner and desperately looking for anybody to give you another hit of hate the second you wake up until the moment you drift off to sleep.
It's been 9 months straight of this bullshit out of you...
... on top of 8 fucking years of you talking about Trump every single goddamned motherfucking day...
...except for the days where you get humiliated and you disappear for weeks at a time and everyone wonders if you're still alive.
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:6ix, you guys regularly kill your own brain cells. Your habits destroy yourselves.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Are you celebrating Kirk's death again, retard?
Go ahead and bring a war on. You want Civil War we will destroy you. Bring it on, buddy.
Trump is killing civilians because he ‘suspects’ that they’re smuggling drugs. Former government lawyers, experts on the laws of war, say it’s outright murder.
The United States has executed 21 people over the last month in targeted drone strikes off the coast of Venezuela. The Trump administration has so far authorized at least four strikes against people it claims are suspected “narco-terrorists.” They are not.
https://theintercept.com/2025/10/10/briefing-podcast-trump-venezuela-b
oat-strikes/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:6ix, you guys regularly kill your own brain cells. Your habits destroy yourselves.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Are you celebrating Kirk's death again, retard?
Go ahead and bring a war on. You want Civil War we will destroy you. Bring it on, buddy.
Shut up, retard.
We're done with your stupid personal insults. Go to BlueSky with the rest of your nearly extinct species and tell them all about your TrumpTard fanfic porn.
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
while bombing parts of the world
Ego-man Boomer Trump still cares about 'Peace Prize'
the terror attack was terrible but what the Jewish State has been doing across the Middle East seems overkill.
Linked to the Kushner crime family
if only he did not spend so much time kiss those ass of the Militant Israeli Jews
Maria Corina Machado, Venezuela's opposition leader, has won the Nobel Peace Prize.
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Shut up, retard.
We're done with your stupid personal insults. Go to BlueSky with the rest of your nearly extinct species and tell them all about your TrumpTard fanfic porn.
Climate change is not a ‘con job’
By Rebecca Vega Thurber | Oct 9, 2025 2:00 PM ET
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/5545868-trump-climate-c
hange-denial/
President Trump has said numerous times that climate change is a “hoax” and a “con job,” telling the United Nations last month that it was made up by “stupid people” despite a majority of credible scientists agreeing that it is real and causing massive issues in our world today.
Many climate change deniers claim that scientists only study climate change for grant dollars, yet many of us never intended to study it in the first place. When scientists like myself work in the real world, out in the elements, we cannot avoid climate change’s broad and deep reach.
I never wanted to study climate change. For 15 years I studied the effects of different kinds of pollution, from pesticides to personal care products to industrial fertilizers. I documented quantitative evidence that man-made pollutants could do bad things to sea life, and by proxy ourselves. My early work was also in a lab, far away from the realities and complexities of our natural environment. Nowhere in these studies was there a consideration for climate change.
It wasn’t until I started working on coral reefs in 2005 that I began to see, at an objectively scientific level, that climate change was always the primary driving force behind patterns in our data, even if we didn’t mean to study it. Without intention, then, my research, and the research of hundreds of other scientists, has found that the real issue is globally increasing temperatures driven by a less tangible pollutant. In truth, “climate change” is just a poorly marketed term for pollution of another variety — the carbon kind.
For two decades now, my devoted team and I have conducted short-term (hours to days) and long-term (months to years) experiments on the effects of pollution on the reefs of Hawaii, Florida, Australia and the South Pacific. Some of these experiments have run more than seven years.
We found that in many cases, pollution like fertilizer runoff can cause disease and death of corals, the animals that build the foundation of tropical reefs. And yet every result we have collected, in every one of these well intentioned and carefully designed experiments, was waylaid by the increasingly frequent and severe heat waves that have arisen in the last decades. Either the effects of our pollution treatments were overwhelmed by high water temperatures driven by climate change or worse, climate change killed our whole experiment.
There have been 11 recorded major coral bleaching events associated with marine heatwaves, or periods of time where sea surface temperatures are dramatically elevated compared to their typical seasonal means. Bleaching, when corals lose their primary symbionts and their critically provided food, can be followed by mass mortality events, or these heatwaves can cause direct immediate death where corals are literally cooked onsite due to dramatically high water temperatures outside coral’s normal tolerance.
I used to work on Florida Keys reefs, but our research there has been stalled indefinitely because there simply aren’t enough animals to work with since three back-to-back heatwaves that caused mass die off events, killing thousands of the already depleted wild corals and about 80 percent of the corals being raised for restoration.
Out of necessity, most of my research moved from Florida to the French South Pacific. But even there — almost 4,000 miles from the nearest continental coast — we can’t escape the heat. We have recorded four heat waves in the last 10 years that together have transformed these normally bountiful reefs from habitats where there was once 60 percent of the seafloo
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:2017 TRUMP: "Qatar has been a funder of terrorism at a very high level."
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Shut up, retard.
We're done with your stupid personal insults. Go to BlueSky with the rest of your nearly extinct species and tell them all about your TrumpTard fanfic porn.
2025 TRUMP: "Thank you, Qatar, for my free $400,000,000 personal jet!"
TRUMP, today: "I'm letting Qatar be the first foreign nation to build a military base on US soil."
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:According to a September 2025 Forbes report, the Trump family’s combined net worth is estimated at $10 billion. This is a significant increase from recent years, driven largely by new ventures in cryptocurrency and international licensing deals.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Shut up, retard.
We're done with your stupid personal insults. Go to BlueSky with the rest of your nearly extinct species and tell them all about your TrumpTard fanfic porn.
Estimated family net worth by member
• Donald Trump: $7.3 billion. Forbes reports his fortune increased by more than $3 billion in the past year alone, with much of that gain attributed to cryptocurrency and a successful international licensing business.
• Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump: $1 billion and $100 million, respectively. Jared Kushner's wealth, in particular, saw significant growth after he founded the private equity firm Affinity Partners in 2021, raising billions from investors in the Middle East.
• Eric Trump: $750 million. His net worth has seen a rapid increase, primarily due to his stake in the crypto mining company American Bitcoin.
• Donald Trump Jr.: $500 million. He is also involved in cryptocurrency ventures and other businesses, such as partnering with an "anti-woke" venture firm.
• Barron Trump: $150 million. The youngest Trump co-founded the crypto firm World Liberty Financial, which has contributed significantly to his net worth.
• Melania Trump: $20 million+. Her wealth comes from sources including a book deal, speeches, and her own meme coin.
https://www.google.com/search?q=How+much+is+Trump+family+worth
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Trump’s Insurrection Claims Could Lead American Democracy Off a Cliff
Is the administration priming the American people to accept military intervention in the midterms?
If the courts uphold this idea that he has the exclusive authority to decide when an insurrection occurs, facts be damned, anything that happens anywhere could be labeled an insurrection and could be the trigger for deploying troops.
Stephen Miller seems to be teasing a claim that the President has plenary power to do with the military as he sees fit, and the army, stuck in the middle, is in the unenviable position of having to make impossible choices. How those in the military make those impossible choices was muddled mightily by the Supreme Court’s ruling in Trump v. United States in July of 2024. On this week’s show, we wanted to think about the competing pressures on the US Military and to try to understand what will happen in the event that the President forces a showdown between the armed forces and the American people. How should officers respond to legally dubious orders from a commander in chief who has been placed above and in many ways beyond the law by the Roberts majority?
https://slate.com/podcasts/amicus/2025/10/trump-miller-hegseth-and-sco
tus-v-the-us-military
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
President Trump’s message on Truth Social late August: “We will not approve wind or Solar.”
Trump administration cancels largest solar project in United States
The Bureau of Land Management has officially canceled the Esmeralda 7 solar project, a Nevada-based project that would stand among the world’s largest solar power plants, large enough to power nearly 2 million homes.
By Ryan Kennedy | October 10, 2025
https://pv-magazine-usa.com/2025/10/10/trump-administration-cancels-la
rgest-solar-project-in-united-states/
The project’s NEPA environmental review had been stalled since Donald Trump took office. It is now officially listed on BLM’s website as canceled.
Despite campaigning on an “all the above” energy policy, the Trump administration has cracked down harshly on renewable energy development.
This July, the Department of Interior announced it will require “elevated review” for solar and wind projects on public land by Trump-appointee Secretary Doug Burgum. Projects seeking leases, rights-of-way, construction and operation plans, grants, consultations and biological opinions are now subject to approval by Burgum.
Kabir Green, director of federal affairs for nature at the Natural Resources Defense Council said the move imposes unprecedented scrutiny and bureaucratic roadblocks that could indefinitely delay clean energy projects on public lands.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
‘‘Vertical Morality’ Might Describe Why MAGA Christians Seem So Unchristian
This framework reveals why some MAGA-aligned Christians act in ways that contradict Jesus’ teachings.
By Caroline Bologna | Oct 9, 2025
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/vertical-morality-maga-christians_l_68d
c8386e4b0b11989f00fb8
For many Americans, the gap between Christian teachings and MAGA politics is baffling. How can people profess faith in Jesus -- who preached love, mercy and care for the oppressed -- while supporting policies that punish immigrants, demonize LGBTQ people and glorify cruelty?
The key to understanding this apparent contradiction might lie in something called “vertical morality.”
This ethical framework measures righteousness not by goodness to others, but by something more simplistic. Below, Christian advocates and former fundamentalists break down what vertical morality means and how it explains our political landscape today.
What Is Vertical Morality?
“Vertical morality teaches that authority, power and a moral code of right and wrong, or acceptable and unacceptable, come from ‘above’ -- an external superior who designates rules, systems and tenets that must be obeyed by those beneath,” said Tia Levings, a former Christian fundamentalist and author of “A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy.”
In the context of religion, the superior is God. In politics, it might be an authoritarian dictator. In a cult, it would be the controlling leader. Whatever the circumstances, the idea is that behaviors are only right or wrong based on what the figure in power says.
“Vertical morality in Christianity is the idea that our ethics and behaviors have a duty to please God alone. We get our morals from God and we must obey him, furthering the will of God no matter the cost,” said April Ajoy, author of “Star-Spangled Jesus: Leaving Christian Nationalism and Finding A True Faith.”
The term has become popular in the social media sphere in recent years, thanks to viral videos from content creator and activist Rachel Klinger Cain. She told HuffPost she started using this terminology in her content a few years ago.
“Vertical morality is just how I describe what’s called ‘divine command theory’ in metaethics,” she said. “I’m a teacher, so I’m always looking for ways to make complicated concepts a little simpler. It’s basically the idea that morality comes from authority above, which is what I was taught when I was raised within conservative Christianity.”
Vertical morality stands in contrast to the concept of horizontal morality, another term Klinger Cain has broken down in her videos.
“Horizontal morality prioritizes the well-being of our neighbors, communities and personal relationships,” Ajoy explained. “We act in ways that cause the least amount of harm to those around us, regardless of beliefs. Someone with vertical morality may help someone in need because they believe that’s what God wants them to do, versus someone with horizontal morality may help that same person for the benefit of the person who needs help.”
Rather than unquestioning obedience and superficial optics, this approach focuses on genuine empathy, compassion and love toward others, recognizing the actual effects our actions have on people.
“I think both are important in the Christian faith, but a lot of people today get hung up on the vertical as a priority and forget about the horizontal altogether,” said Malynda Hale, an advocate and executive director of The New Evangelicals, a nonprofit focused on promoting inclusivity, justice and compassion in Christianity.
Similarly, Ajoy believes that the most Christ-like approach is to hold a position of horizontal authority, because doing so also subscribes to vertical morality.
“In Matthew 25, Jesus describes people who fed and clothed those in need, who welcomed the stranger, who took care of the sick and visited those in prison,” she noted. “He then says, ‘What you did for the least of these, you did for me.’ He equates loving our neighbors (horizontal m
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Shut up, faggot.
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
This Nazi philosopher's playbook explains everything Donald Trump does
By Thom Hartmann | October 11, 2025 10:00AM ET
https://www.rawstory.com/2674172950/
The endgame for Donald Trump, JD Vance, Kristi Noem, and Pam Bondi is coming into clearer focus, and it’s nearly a one-for-one, step-by-step implementation of Nazi jurist/philosopher Carl Schmitt’s ideas that created and sustained the early Third Reich. Vance has even gone so far as to directly quote Schmitt.
The concepts aren’t particularly complicated, and it’s easy to see how Trump and his enablers are implementing them:
• First, Schmitt taught, “there is no law, there is just power.”
Democracy is a messy anachronism in which whoever controls the political majority inevitably imposes their will on everybody else, stifling individuality and freedom, both in thought and behavior. The cure for this messiness of democracy, he argued, is a strong leader who transcends politics, understands the people and reflects their true desires, defends their racial and religious identity, ignores inconvenient laws, and thus leads the superior/majority race of people to their true destiny. A fascist dictator, in other words.
• Second, the way the noble dictator rises to “plenary” (ultimate, unchallengeable) power is by discarding participation in the political process; contemptuously ignoring norms; breaking previous promises; flaunting national laws while blowing up negotiations; and refusing to compromise with “inferior political parties or political ideas. Instead, Schmitt says, a “true leader” puts every institution and person in the nation into one of two binary buckets: “friends” or “enemies.” Friends are lavishly and publicly rewarded with wealth and power; enemies are relentlessly pursued and conspicuously punished until they’re either neutralized, bankrupted, or dead.
• Third, the way to get past the guardrails built into constitutional republics (like the German 1930s Weimar Republic or today’s American republic) is by invoking “emergency” powers, even if it’s necessary to create an emergency to justify the invocation.
When Vance sat down with New York Times columnist Russ Douthat in May of last year he complained that Democrats opposing Brett Kavanaugh’s appointment to the Supreme Court weren’t interested in Kavanaugh’s legal positions but, rather, whether he would serve or oppose Democratic Party political efforts. He said:
“The thing that I kept thinking about liberalism in 2019 and 2020 is that these guys have all read Carl Schmitt — ‘There’s no law, there’s just power.’”
Not only has Vance apparently read Schmitt, his mentor and benefactor, Peter Thiel, has — according to extensive reporting in Wired magazine — long been fascinated by the Nazi theorist’s ideas.
https://www.wired.com/story/the-real-stakes-real-story-peter-thiels-an
tichrist-obsession/
While it’s unlikely that Trump could tell Schmitt from Fred Flintstone, he instinctively understands the man’s theories — he’s systematically following them, starting with his flouting norms and laws like the Hatch Act (two years in prison for selling Teslas in front of the White House) and both US and international laws against selling pardons or killing civilians (in boats in the Caribbean) without trial and conviction.
And that’s just the beginning. Taking a jet plane in an alleged bribe; giving the UAE high-tech chips in violation of America’s national security in exchange for a $2 billion investment in a Trump family crypto business; and exempting companies that gave him gifts or money from antitrust regulation, tariffs, and Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcements continue the trend.
From there, Trump moved to Schmitt’s friend-enemy doctrine, maliciously punishing his perceived enemies even when — like James Comey, Miles Taylor, and James Clapper — they’re Republicans.
He’s characterized Democrats in terms never before used by an American president to describe members of his opposition party, using words typically reserved for traitors and criminals. This is incre
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
The real winners of Trump’s attack on clean energy aren’t American
Oct 12, 2025
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/the-real-winners-of-trump-s-at
tack-on-clean-energy-aren-t-american/ar-AA1Ojmwa
As President Donald Trump pressures world leaders to abandon the energy transition in favor of a U.S.-led fossil fuel resurgence, the status of India’s gas-fired power plants helps explain why his pitch isn’t getting much traction.
Half of that fleet in India is sitting idle. Although electricity demand is exploding, and the plants are designed to run for decades into the future, Indian officials have turned away from them. Their calculation: that renewable energy provides a cheaper and more reliable alternative.
“And you don’t have to depend on overseas nations for fuel,” said Sumant Sinha, CEO of ReNew, one of India’s largest renewable energy companies.
Last week, the International Energy Agency (IEA) nearly halved its forecast of renewable energy growth in the United States, citing the end of tax incentives and other recent policy shifts. Tens of billions of dollars of manufacturing projects to build solar panels, batteries, charging stations and other clean technologies have already been canceled, with hundreds of billions of dollars of additional announced investments imperiled.
But even as U.S. political forces are working against the energy transition, economics are propelling it forward globally. While Trump brands renewables as a “green energy scam,” other countries are pivoting to solar and wind because dramatic price reductions have made them the cheapest options.
As a result, by next year, renewables are expected to overtake coal as the largest global source of electricity, part of what the United Nations calls an irreversible “tipping point” for clean energy adoption. The scale of uptake stands as one of the few climate-related bright spots since countries struck the Paris agreement a decade ago with the goal of limiting global temperature rise.
“No one can stop the energy transition — no one. No country, no person,” said Francesco La Camera, the director general of the International Renewable Energy Agency.
What’s propelling global growth
China and India are key drivers of this trajectory. While both nations continue to build coal plants, renewables are growing much faster and coal use is expected to peak in the next few years, followed by steady declines.
China recently announced a target to cut greenhouse gas emissions and said it would add roughly enough solar and wind energy to power 200 million homes every year until 2035. Already, the amount of wind and solar power under construction in China last year was twice as much as in the rest of the world combined, according to Global Energy Monitor.
But other countries, too, are finding that economic development no longer requires heavy reliance on fossil fuels. Brazil is now generating more power from solar than Germany. Pakistan, over six years, has imported solar panels at such volume that their capacity equals that of the national electricity grid. Countries across Africa, where hundreds of millions lack a grid connection, are lighting homes and businesses and medical clinics with Chinese-made solar panels at a record scale. Oil-rich Nigeria is even installing a solar mini-grid at its presidential villa — a way to work around persistent power outages.
“I don’t see it as a scam. In fact, it has saved lives. It has improved industry,” said Melvin Sackie, CEO and founder of a solar company in Liberia, where solar imports tripled over the past 12 months. “For Africa, or for my country, it is a huge boost. The demand will keep growing.”
At the same time, adoption of electric vehicles outside the U.S. is soaring. EVs accounted for more than 20 percent of car sales globally in 2024, according to the U.N. More than half the cars sold in China are electric, after government support helped automakers there develop reliable vehicles selling for as little as $9,000.
To be sure, since the Paris agreement a decade ago, the pl
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:A comparison has been drawn by critics between the actions and political rhetoric of Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, Kristi Noem, and Pam Bondi, and the ideas of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt. Critics argue the use of Schmitt's ideas provides a playbook for an authoritarian form of governance.
Originally posted by second:
This Nazi philosopher's playbook explains everything Donald Trump does
By Thom Hartmann | October 11, 2025 10:00AM ET
https://www.rawstory.com/2674172950/
The endgame for Donald Trump, JD Vance, Kristi Noem, and Pam Bondi is coming into clearer focus, and it’s nearly a one-for-one, step-by-step implementation of Nazi jurist/philosopher Carl Schmitt’s ideas that created and sustained the early Third Reich. Vance has even gone so far as to directly quote Schmitt.
https://tinyurl.com/2s7h8w3y
Who is Carl Schmitt?
Carl Schmitt was a German jurist and political theorist who joined the Nazi party and provided legal justification for its authoritarian rule. His ideas continue to be influential but are extremely controversial due to his role in the Third Reich.
Key concepts from Schmitt's work that are relevant to this comparison include:
• The State of Exception: Schmitt wrote that a sovereign is defined by their power to decide when a "state of exception" or emergency exists, during which they can suspend the law. This was later used to justify the Third Reich's subversion of the Weimar Constitution.
• The Friend-Enemy Distinction: He argued that the essence of politics lies in the distinction between "friend" and "enemy," a concept that critics say eliminates dissent by framing political opponents as existential threats.
• Critique of Liberalism: Schmitt was a vocal critic of liberal democracy, which he viewed as weak and indecisive. He advocated for a strong, centralized state with a powerful leader who could act decisively.
J.D. Vance and Carl Schmitt
Vance, a former advisor to the second Trump administration, has brought Schmitt into the spotlight, leading to increased scrutiny of the jurist's ideas.
• In 2024, Vance blamed liberals for adopting Schmittian tactics, but commentators quickly countered that Vance and his allies were more aligned with the Nazi jurist's ideas.
• Vance has also been described by critics as borrowing from "fascist-adjacent" ideologies, including Austrofascism, which has been cited as an influence by his Catholic integralist allies.
• His 2025 speech at the Munich Security Conference was interpreted by some as promoting a "transnational Bewegungsstaat (movement state)," an idea that builds upon Schmitt's concept of a state that acts as a spearhead for a political movement.
Donald Trump and Carl Schmitt
Commentators have drawn parallels between Donald Trump's political actions and rhetoric and Schmitts theories.
• State of Exception: In early 2025, Trump pinned a social media post that read, "He who saves his Country does not violate any Law". Critics compared this directly to Schmitt's theory of sovereignty, in which a leader can claim unlimited power by declaring a state of emergency to defeat enemies.
• Illiberal Democracy and Authoritarianism: Trump's political style is often described as illiberal, and his supporters' attempts to overturn the 2020 election have been linked to Schmitt's ideas. The comparison to Schmitt is based on his actions, such as considering blanket pardons for January 6 rioters, as well as his rhetoric.
• Friend-Enemy Distinction: Like Schmitt, Trump employs a strong friend-enemy distinction, defining political opponents as "enemies of the people". Some sources, including the Harvard Kennedy School, argue that Trump's "America-first" agenda and expansionist rhetoric align with Schmitt's vision of a world divided into powerful, expansionist "Great Spaces".
Pam Bondi and Kristi Noem
Less is known publicly about direct ties or references
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
I posted this almost 10 years ago.
IT ENCAPSULATES EVERYTHING GOING ON THEN WHICH PREDICTS EVERYTHING GOING ON TODAY.
And nothing has veered from course.
So while today might feel breezy, NOTHING ESSENTIAL HAS CHANGED. YET.
Normally, I highlight the most salient points, but in this post, EVERYTHING is salient.
Quote:
SECOND:
Before you answer, read
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/04/america-tyranny-donald-tr
ump.html And it is when a democracy has ripened as fully as this, Plato argues, that a would-be tyrant will often seize his moment.
He is usually of the elite but has a nature in tune with the time — given over to random pleasures and whims, feasting on plenty of food and sex, and reveling in the nonjudgment that is democracy’s civil religion. He makes his move by “taking over a particularly obedient mob” and attacking his wealthy peers as corrupt. If not stopped quickly, his appetite for attacking the rich on behalf of the people swells further. He is a traitor to his class — and soon, his elite enemies, shorn of popular legitimacy, find a way to appease him or are forced to flee. Eventually, he stands alone, promising to cut through the paralysis of democratic incoherence. It’s as if he were offering the addled, distracted, and self-indulgent citizens a kind of relief from democracy’s endless choices and insecurities. He rides a backlash to excess—“too much freedom seems to change into nothing but too much slavery” — and offers himself as the personified answer to the internal conflicts of the democratic mess. He pledges, above all, to take on the increasingly despised elites. And as the people thrill to him as a kind of solution, a democracy willingly, even impetuously, repeals itself.
SIGNY:
There's a "but" to that comparison. In Plato's day, Athens had plenty of [actual] slaves. In fact most men, and all women, couldn't vote. The "addled, distracted, and self-indulgent CITIZENS" were already of the upper class, so it's not a one-to-one comparison.
That description could have equally described Hitler's rise to power, which was precipitated by the terrible economic conditions of the Weimar Republic, which itself was fueled by the reparations that Germany was forced to pay after WWI.
Another rise to power (although not framed as a democracy) was the French Revolution. There too, conditions were terrible: taxes were unpayable, small businesses were suffering, and peasants were starving. However, the French nobility were indeed pleasure-seeking and corrupt.
There was a partial turnover of power during FDR's terms of office, precipitated by the Great Depression.
The cause of most turnovers of power seems to be related to economics, not an excess of freedom. And since economies seem to implode whenever there is a huge imbalance of wealth, it's not due to "too much freedom" or even "unwise populism", although it's understandable that a huge imbalance of wealth would cause both corruption (at the top) and populism (at the bottom).
However, that does bring me back to my original point.
The 2008 financial collapse rang the world economies like a bell, and it's STILL ringing. China suddenly realized that their whole economic plan depended utterly on western- specifically American- markets. Xi Jingping came to power then, and that whole "it is glorious to be wealthy" crowd - exemplified by Den Xiaoping and his appointees and successors - that had dominated Chinese politics for 30 years started to be squeezed out. China is seeking to wean itself from the dollar, and (in concert with Russia) is working to "de-dollarize" Asia.
Western banksters were suddenly staring down into a yawning chasm that had opened up under their feet. They had made money plundering the entire world with unpayable loans. The ECB decided it needed to plunder its own population instead, hence the squeeze by German, Dutch and FinnishNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Just to expand my last point about Trump:
There is what Trump says/ posts... which, most of the time, is cringeworthy.
There is what Trump does and, just as importantly, what he doesn't do.
And there's what happens as a result, which isn't necessarily the intended effect.
Bc what Trump says can have an effect, it overlaps with what he does [or doesn't] do. And what he does sometimes has a the opposite effect of intended.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Trump becomes the latest Republican to blame Biden for events that took place while Trump was president
By John Bowden | Sunday 12 October 2025 10:41 EDT
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
THE BIDEN FBI PLACED 274 AGENTS INTO THE CROWD ON JANUARY 6. If this is so, which it is, a lot of very good people will be owed big apologies. What a SCAM - DO SOMETHING!!! President DJT
Donald Trump was president on January 6, and the FBI reported to him that day — as did the D.C. National Guard.
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-
biden-fbi-jan-6-post-b2843973.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Pope Leo calls for news agencies to stand as a bulwark against "post-truths," lies, and manipulation
He quoted Hannah Arendt's "The Origins of Totalitarianism" in asserting that the world needs free and objective information. He cited her warning that "the ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist."
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/pope-leo-news-agencies-bulwark-ag
ainst-lies-manipulation-post-truths/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Pope Leo takes aim at MAGA’s false gospel
“The fact that I am American means, among other things, people can’t say, like they did about Francis, ‘he doesn’t understand the United States, he just doesn’t see what’s going on,’” Leo said.
Leo wrote, “The fact that some dismiss or ridicule charitable works, as if they were an obsession on the part of a few and not the burning heart of the church’s mission, convinces me of the need to go back and reread the Gospel, lest we risk replacing it with the wisdom of this world.”
Before being named pope, Leo reposted an article headlined, “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.” In January, the vice president invoked St. Augustine to justify the Trump administration’s decision to cut international aid and impose a brutal immigration crackdown. A Catholic convert, Vance told Fox News that “there is a Christian concept that you love your family and then you love your neighbour, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritise the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that.”
“Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others,” the future Pope Leo said in response, calling the vice president “wrong.”
Needless to say, MAGA are unhappy. Calling his selection “shocking,” former White House strategist Steve Bannon said Leo was the “worst pick for MAGA Catholics.” Right-wing agitator Laura Loomer immediately labeled Leo “Anti-Trump, anti-Maga, pro-open Borders, and a total Marxist like Pope Francis.” The late Charlie Kirk suggested Leo was an “open borders globalist installed to counter Trump.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/pope-leo-takes-aim-maga-130030759.
html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Trump’s family could reap major rewards from his ‘TrumpRx’ plan
A report highlights ties between Donald Trump Jr. and a company that stands to gain from the Trump-branded, government-backed pharmaceutical market.
The president’s family is poised to take advantage of the drug market that he’s attempting to open up.
No, this isn’t the plot of some kingpin drama on Starz. Rather, it’s the conclusion of new reporting from The Wall Street Journal on how a business tied to Donald Trump Jr. stands to benefit from his father’s newly announced plan to launch a Trump-branded pharmaceutical market funded by the government.
Here’s why:
Trump’s eldest son sits on the board of a prescription drug delivery company. That company is hosting a summit for pharmaceutical companies at Trump Jr.’s private club, the Journal reported. Those companies are likely to participate in the direct-to-consumer marketplace the president is planning to establish under the name “TrumpRx.”
According to the Journal:
The host: BlinkRx, an online prescription drug delivery company that this year installed Trump Jr. as a board member. The summit will conclude with a dinner at the Executive Branch, the exclusive new club founded by Trump Jr. and his close friends, according to people with knowledge of the event and a copy of the invitation viewed by The Wall Street Journal. BlinkRx stands to benefit from a shake-up of how patients buy drugs after President Trump urged pharmaceutical companies to sell their medicines directly to consumers. BlinkRx helps drugmakers do exactly that with a service that promises to set up direct-to-patient sales programs in as little as three weeks. TrumpRx, a new government website set to launch in early 2026, would funnel patients to direct-sale sites.
— The Wall Street Journal
The report also notes that 1789 Capital, a MAGA-aligned firm where Trump Jr. is a partner, is a major investor in BlinkRx. As I wrote last year, 1789 Capital invests in what’s known as the parallel economy, a sector of MAGA-branded products and services that conservatives sell to their followers as an alternative to brands they consider too friendly to liberals.
“At 1789, Trump Jr. will work alongside some of Trump’s biggest allies, mixing politics with business even as he has said he plans to stay out of the administration,” the Journal reported last year.
https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/trump-family-trumprx-blinkrx-
junior-rcna236748
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Purge, Merge, and Surge at the FBI
By Don Moynihan | Oct 12, 2025
https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/purge-merge-and-surge
At the same time that the FBI is purging decorated agents, it is also lowering recruitment standards to select non-college graduates. This fits with Kash Patel’s vision of the FBI not as an elite investigation unit, but as street cops, allowing him to draw law enforcement from other agencies with lower recruitment standards. It also means that recruits will be less likely to question the debasement of the FBI, and go along with Trump’s orders.
Nearly half of FBI agents in major field offices, and about one-quarter of all FBI agents, are now working on immigration enforcement.
And to put all of this in context, the FBI is smaller than it was due to resignations and firings. It is already less able to take on it’s core tasks. Nevertheless it has to reallocate a huge proportion of its staff to support the only part of government that is growing rapidly (immigration enforcement), and to serve what is now the largest federal law enforcement agency (ICE).
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Purge, Merge, and Surge at the FBI
By Don Moynihan | Oct 12, 2025
https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/purge-merge-and-surge
At the same time that the FBI is purging decorated agents, it is also lowering recruitment standards to select non-college graduates. This fits with Kash Patel’s vision of the FBI not as an elite investigation unit, but as street cops, allowing him to draw law enforcement from other agencies with lower recruitment standards. It also means that recruits will be less likely to question the debasement of the FBI, and go along with Trump’s orders.
Nearly half of FBI agents in major field offices, and about one-quarter of all FBI agents, are now working on immigration enforcement.
And to put all of this in context, the FBI is smaller than it was due to resignations and firings. It is already less able to take on it’s core tasks. Nevertheless it has to reallocate a huge proportion of its staff to support the only part of government that is growing rapidly (immigration enforcement), and to serve what is now the largest federal law enforcement agency (ICE).
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
That's because most college graduates are fucking idiots.
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:I'm guessing that you didn't know the FBI are the criminal scientists that other law enforcement people, both state and local, call on for help. Not any more. Trump is turning the FBI into his secret police, his Gestapo, his KGB.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Purge, Merge, and Surge at the FBI
By Don Moynihan | Oct 12, 2025
https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/purge-merge-and-surge
At the same time that the FBI is purging decorated agents, it is also lowering recruitment standards to select non-college graduates. This fits with Kash Patel’s vision of the FBI not as an elite investigation unit, but as street cops, allowing him to draw law enforcement from other agencies with lower recruitment standards. It also means that recruits will be less likely to question the debasement of the FBI, and go along with Trump’s orders.
Nearly half of FBI agents in major field offices, and about one-quarter of all FBI agents, are now working on immigration enforcement.
And to put all of this in context, the FBI is smaller than it was due to resignations and firings. It is already less able to take on it’s core tasks. Nevertheless it has to reallocate a huge proportion of its staff to support the only part of government that is growing rapidly (immigration enforcement), and to serve what is now the largest federal law enforcement agency (ICE).
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
That's because most college graduates are fucking idiots.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:I'm guessing that you didn't know the FBI are the criminal scientists that other law enforcement people, both state and local, call on for help. Not any more. Trump is turning the FBI into his secret police, his Gestapo, his KGB.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Purge, Merge, and Surge at the FBI
By Don Moynihan | Oct 12, 2025
https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/purge-merge-and-surge
At the same time that the FBI is purging decorated agents, it is also lowering recruitment standards to select non-college graduates. This fits with Kash Patel’s vision of the FBI not as an elite investigation unit, but as street cops, allowing him to draw law enforcement from other agencies with lower recruitment standards. It also means that recruits will be less likely to question the debasement of the FBI, and go along with Trump’s orders.
Nearly half of FBI agents in major field offices, and about one-quarter of all FBI agents, are now working on immigration enforcement.
And to put all of this in context, the FBI is smaller than it was due to resignations and firings. It is already less able to take on it’s core tasks. Nevertheless it has to reallocate a huge proportion of its staff to support the only part of government that is growing rapidly (immigration enforcement), and to serve what is now the largest federal law enforcement agency (ICE).
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
That's because most college graduates are fucking idiots.
Your FBI under Joe Biden* was his secret police, his Gestapo, his KGB. And under Trump 1.0, they were doing the bidding of Obama and Clinton. You just admitted so yourself in your post about J6.
We don't need an FBI full of people who were taught to hate America and Americans in college, and didn't learn anything else.
--------------------------------------------------
For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Is America on the brink of Civil War? Thank Trump!
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Your FBI under Joe Biden* was his secret police, his Gestapo, his KGB. And under Trump 1.0, they were doing the bidding of Obama and Clinton. You just admitted so yourself in your post about J6.
We don't need an FBI full of people who were taught to hate America and Americans in college, and didn't learn anything else.
By Sean Illing | Oct 13, 2025
https://www.vox.com/politics/464354/barbara-walter-charlie-kirk-gray-a
rea-violence
Political violence isn’t new in America. But the reaction to it today feels different.
After the killing of Charlie Kirk, the country didn’t rally around a message of restraint. Instead, key leaders treated it as ammunition. That shift, combined with a rise in tit-for-tat attacks and a politicized security apparatus, points to a more dangerous phase in our politics.
Barbara Walter is a political scientist at University of California San Diego and the author of How Civil Wars Start. She studies how democracies slide into instability — and how they pull back. I invited Walter onto The Gray Area to talk about what makes this moment distinct, why lone-actor violence is rising, how leaders’ rhetoric can normalize force, and what it would actually take to lower the temperature.
Download How Civil Wars Start for free from https://annas-archive.org/search?q=How+Civil+Wars+Start
As always, there’s much more in the full podcast, so listen and follow The Gray Area on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pandora, or wherever you find podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
We’ve seen a lot of political violence over the history of this country, and certainly there have been more violent periods than this one. But you’ve said this moment still feels different — and more dangerous — than earlier waves of violence. Why?
There are three big differences. The first is how our leaders are responding. Historically, when tragedy struck — whether it was an assassination, a terrorist attack, or a domestic bombing — the instinct among political leaders was to unify the country. That’s especially important in a place as diverse and heterogeneous as the United States. After events like 9/11, after the Oklahoma City bombing, after political assassinations in the 1960s, you saw Democrats and Republicans stand together, condemn the violence, and reassure people that we were one nation.
This time, that didn’t happen. Within hours of Charlie Kirk’s killing, key figures on the right used it as a political weapon. Instead of calls for peace or restraint, it became a rallying cry. We saw people like Laura Loomer and Steve Bannon go straight to “civil war” language. Even the president spoke about “going after them,” even though, as we later learned, this was a lone actor — a young man radicalized online. The immediate response wasn’t unity. It was vengeance. That’s new, and it’s dangerous.
You have a useful phrase — “violence entrepreneurs” — to describe people who take chaotic or random events and weaponize them for political gain.
That’s what we’re seeing. A single act of violence becomes propaganda. Instead of treating these as isolated crimes, political actors fold them into a broader narrative of existential threat: “They’re out to get us.” That language radicalizes faster than any ideology.
You’ve also written that violence is no longer one-sided and that this shift makes the situation even more volatile. Tell me about the dynamic that emerges once we get caught in a spiral like that?
It does make the situation more volatile. For a long time, political violence in the US came overwhelmingly from the far right. Now we’re starting to see incidents from the other end of the spectrum. It’s still fewer, but the rise is real and significant.
A recent study by Dan Byman at Georgetown found that attacks linked to far-left causes are at their highest levels in 30 years. That doesn’t mean equivalence. The far right
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
‘Bow to the Emperor’: We Asked 50 Legal Experts About the Trump Presidency
Before the election, we surveyed the legal establishment about what a second Trump term could mean for the rule of law. A year later, they’re very, very worried.
By Emily Bazelon | Oct. 6, 2025
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/06/magazine/legal-experts-trump-justic
e-department.html?unlocked_article_code=1.tE8.VEnn.L9GtznXiTG5h&smid=url-share
Last year, in the months before the 2024 presidential election, the magazine surveyed 50 members of what might be called the Washington legal establishment about their expectations for the Justice Department and the rule of law if Donald Trump were re-elected. The group was evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. They had worked as high-level officials for every president since Ronald Reagan.
A majority of our respondents told us they were alarmed about a potential second Trump term given the strain he put on the legal system the first time around. But several dissenters countered that those fears were overblown. One former Trump official predicted that the Justice Department would be led by lawyers like those in the first term — elite, conservative and independent. “It’s hard to be a bad-faith actor at the Justice Department,” he said at the time. “And the president likes the Ivy League and Supreme Court clerkships on résumés.”
Eight months into his second term, Trump has taken a wrecking ball to those beliefs. “What’s happening is anathema to everything we’ve ever stood for in the Department of Justice,” said another former official who served in both Democratic and Republican administrations, including Trump’s first term.
We recently returned to our group with a new survey and follow-up interviews about Trump’s impact on the rule of law since retaking office. The responses captured almost universal fear and anguish over the transformation of the Justice Department into a tool of the White House. Just as chillingly, the new survey reflects near consensus that most of the guardrails inside and outside the Justice Department, which in the past counterbalanced executive power, have all but fallen away. The indictment of James Comey, the former F.B.I. director whom Trump ordered the Justice Department to charge, represents a misuse of power for many of our respondents that they hoped never to see in the United States.
These respondents include former attorneys general, solicitors general and their deputies in the Justice Department and White House counsels, as well as former U.S. attorneys and retired federal judges from across the country. (Forty-two people who took the survey last year did so again, and we added eight more to replace those who did not. The group is again evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans.) Some of the former officials we surveyed, in both parties, are speaking out against the wrongs they see unfolding despite the professional and personal risks.
But many of them — more so than last year — don’t want to speak on the record. These are people with stature in their world, custodians of the American Bar who have represented clients of all stripes, taught law students, served on professional committees. But now they’re worried about retribution, for their law firms or their family members, if they draw Trump’s ire.
Our new survey channeled their collectively grim state of mind. All but one of the respondents rated Trump’s second term as a greater or much greater threat to the rule of law than his first term. They consistently characterized the president’s abuses of power — wielding the law to justify his wishes — as being far worse than they imagined before his re-election.
And every single one of the 50 respondents believe that Trump and his attorney general, Pam Bondi, have used the Justice Department to go after the president’s political and personal enemies and provide favors to his allies.
To measure the degree to which the Justice Department has changed in Trump’s second term, several people pointed to what happened at the
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME