Real World Event Discussions

Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?

POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 16:05
VIEWED: 185382
PAGE 359 of 479

Saturday, October 11, 2025 4:39 PM

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.

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.

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

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Saturday, October 11, 2025 5:29 PM

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

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Saturday, October 11, 2025 5:48 PM

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

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Saturday, October 11, 2025 7:09 PM

‘‘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

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Saturday, October 11, 2025 9:13 PM

Shut up, faggot.

--------------------------------------------------

For all that I've blessed, and all that I've wronged. In dreams until my death, I will wander on.

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Sunday, October 12, 2025 4:33 PM

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

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Sunday, October 12, 2025 6:07 PM

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

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Sunday, October 12, 2025 6:24 PM

Quote:

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.

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.
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

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Monday, October 13, 2025 12:54 AM

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 Finnish

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Monday, October 13, 2025 2:47 PM

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

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