Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 16:05
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Going to war without a declaration of war from Congress
Trump confirms he's authorized CIA operations in Venezuela, looking into land strikes
"We are certainly looking at land now," Trump said.
By Michelle Stoddart and Lalee Ibssa | October 15, 2025, 11:35 PM
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-confirms-authorized-cia-operatio
ns-venezuela-land-strikes/story?id=126563281
When asked whether the CIA was given the authority to "take out" Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro, Trump called it a "ridiculous" question for him to respond to.
Is that a Yes? Or a No? Or Maybe? I have my doubts that the difference is clear even in Trump's mind. The President does love to improvise plausible justifications for his randomness.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Trump expresses appreciation toward the people who are bribing him:
Donald Trump Reveals His White House Ballroom Site With Epic Anticlimax
By Cameron Adams | Oct 16, 2025
https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-reveals-his-white-house-bal
lroom-reno-with-epic-anticlimax/
Donald Trump has delivered a supremely anticlimactic reveal of the site of the new $250 million White House ballroom at an exclusive dinner to thank the people who helped fund his pet project.
Trump, 79, filled the East Room on Wednesday with deep-pocketed guests, including oil billionaire Harold Hamm, Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman, and crypto billionaires Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, according to The Wall Street Journal.
There were also representatives from Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and defense and aerospace manufacturer Lockheed Martin. During the dinner, Trump talked up the architectural designs for the ballroom and noted that the construction work was already happening outside, right behind his podium.
The dinner will help “Establish the Magnificent White House Ballroom,” according to a copy of the invitation reviewed by the Journal.
“Should I show you? I guess maybe so they can see, right?” Trump mused, before instructing someone else to open the curtains behind him.
After the build-up, Trump’s big reveal turned out to be seriously low-impact. Through the small panels of the glass double doors, the influential guests got a glimpse of a construction site illuminated by industrial lighting—and not much else.
“We don’t really want you to walk on there, but you can take a look if you want,” Trump said.
He then pointed at tiny toy-sized models of his latest plans for the White House including a replica of the future ballroom. “We’ve already started excavation,” Trump said. “I’m very good at building things on time and on budget.”
While the White House announced the plans for the ballroom in July, Trump did not give any indication when it will be finished. The official statement said “it is expected to be completed long before the end of President Trump’s term.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
At one point, after a rambling speech where Trump again complained about not getting the Nobel Peace Prize, the curtain was discreetly closed.
The president also talked up his skills as he thanked the “legends” in the room.
“That’s why we’re here to celebrate you, because you’ve given tremendous amounts of money to see a ballroom built for the first time at the White House,” Trump said. “For 150 years plus they’ve wanted a ballroom and it never happened because they never had a real estate person.”
Trump made sure to call out his “really, really generous” friends in the room.
“A couple of you sitting here [were] saying, ‘Uh, sir, would $25 million be appropriate?’ I said, ‘I’ll take it.’ You know, it doesn’t take too many 25[million]s to get it done, but a lot of I mean, a lot of you were have been really fantastic.”
He revealed the ballroom will be big enough to hold “literally the inauguration if we want” and the exterior design will feature four sides of “beautiful glass,” which will all be bulletproof.
He also said it will have a capacity of 999 people, an increase from 650 people in July and 900 last month.
Trump also told the diners the ballroom is now “fully financed.”
“It’s fully taken care of now, and in fact, we’ll have money left over and we’ll use that for something.”
Trump also referenced his Presidential Hall of Fame during the diner, with the audience laughing at his “controversial” portrait of President Joe Biden being represented by a photo of an auto-pen.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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CDC scientist let go during shutdown says "it's truly like an episode of 'Squid Games'"
By Michael Kaplan, Caitlin Huey-Burns, Dr. Celine Gounder | October 15, 2025 10:14 PM EDT
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cdc-scientist-let-go-during-shutdown-says
-its-truly-like-an-episode-of-squid-games/
Washington — A scientist laid off by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said "the everyday American should be very concerned" by reductions in force amid the government shutdown.
The scientist, one of hundreds of CDC employees terminated by the Trump administration last week, asked that her identity be concealed for fear of retribution.
"It's going to mean more deaths, more preventable deaths," she told CBS News on Wednesday of the layoffs. "People will absolutely die from the impact of this administration."
The scientist worked at the CDC for the past decade, studying chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease.
She spoke out the same day a federal judge in Northern California issued a verbal order temporarily halting all the government layoffs that were issued since the shutdown began. This was in response to a lawsuit brought by federal employees' unions.
"They went in and fired entire programs, even statutorily mandated by law programs, they cut entirely," she said. "So there is no staff to do this work anymore."
She said everything she was working on has come to a complete stop.
"It's truly like an episode of 'Squid Games,' because we don't know what's going to happen next," she said.
The Trump administration has used the government shutdown, now in its third week, to lay off more than 4,000 federal workers, and plans to go further, according to Russell Vought, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.
"I think we'll probably end up being north of 10,000," Vought said Wednesday during an appearance on "The Charlie Kirk Show."
Since last week, the Trump administration has informed approximately 600 CDC employees they have been laid off.
On Tuesday, internal CDC officials not authorized to speak to the media told CBS News that on Oct. 10, about 1,000 CDC employees were initially given reduction-in-force notices, a government term for layoffs.
However, within about 24 hours, hundreds of those notices were rescinded, reducing the total number of layoffs in the agency since Oct. 10 to about 600, the officials said.
The judge's ruling Wednesday would put the layoffs of those 600 employees on hold, leaving them in limbo while the case plays out.
According to numbers provided by a congressional source familiar with the cuts, the 600 CDC layoffs impacted all staff in the CDC's offices in Washington, D.C., all staff for the office of the director for the National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, all staff for the National Center for State, Tribal, Local, and Territorial Public Health Infrastructure and Workforce, and all policy and communications staff for the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
The CDC agencies that saw their layoffs rescinded, according to the source, were the Immunization and Respiratory Diseases Center, the Global Health Center, the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report team, the Epidemic Intelligence Service, and scientists working on responses to outbreaks of measles in the U.S. and Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
So far this year, the CDC has lost about 3,000 employees to resignations and layoffs, or just under a quarter of its staff, according to AFGE Local 2883, the union that represents CDC employees. That number was confirmed by the CDC officials who spoke to CBS News.
The CDC has been beset by changes since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. took the reins of the Department of Health and Human Services earlier this year. A vaccine skeptic, Kennedy controversially replaced all 17 members of the Advisory Committee for Immuniz
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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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In case you were unaware that Trump is evil, he once again reminds you:
Trump ‘OK’ with DC statue honoring Civil War leader who fought for slavery: ‘Lot of people in this room’ agree
Trump’s administration has pushed for restoring multiple memorials to the pro-slavery leader
President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he’d have no problem with erecting a massive statue honoring Robert E. Lee, the Civil War general who led the South in rebellion against the United States to try and preserve the enslavement of Black people — within sight of the Lincoln Memorial.
His administration has consistently moved to restore tributes to Lee, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth ordering a portrait of Lee back to a place of honor at the U.S. Military Academy.
This restoration at West Point contradicts a Congressional commission's directive to remove items commemorating the Confederacy, with an Army spokesperson stating they honor history rather than erase it.
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-
ballroom-dinner-robert-e-lee-statue-b2846627.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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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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When I was chairman of the Republican National Committee, I sat in countless meetings where we carefully crafted the talking points for the week, fine-tuning the language so everyone from local lawmakers to friendly cable news pundits could stay on message.
But when we did that, it was to keep someone from upending the party message by saying something unhinged. This time, the unhinged comments are the message.
The GOP’s coordinated attack on the ‘No Kings’ rally is ridiculous. The Republican talking points are out of touch with the reality of Saturday's protests.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/no-kings-protests-trump-re
publican-warnings-rcna237845
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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America First? No, Billionaire Buddies First
Argentina: A very Trumpy debacle
By Paul Krugman | Oct 17, 2025
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/america-first-no-billionaire-buddie
s
The Trump administration is doing so many corrupt, destructive and simply stupid things that the failing attempt to rescue Javier Milei, Argentina’s MAGAesque president, with billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars isn’t even in the top 10. But the Argentina debacle is getting a lot of public attention, for good reason: It’s a teachable moment, a naked demonstration of the administration’s hypocrisy and incompetence.
So let me ask two questions about this deployment of $20 billion, or maybe $40 billion in U.S. funds. (Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, has talked about a second facility financed by the private sector, but I don’t see why anyone would put money into this facility without some kind of official U.S. backing that puts taxpayers further on the hook.) First, what if anything does this have to do with U.S. national interest? Second, will this bailout succeed and, if so, for whom?
Bessent has said that Argentina is a “systemically important ally.” As an editorial in the Financial Times — not exactly a left-wing rag — drily notes, this is “news to many.”
One way to highlight the weakness of the case for this bailout is to compare current U.S. economic links with Argentina with U.S. interest in Mexico back in 1995, when the Clinton administration provided a financial aid package to our neighbor that may, on the surface, look similar to what Bessent is giving the Milei government. Here are U.S. exports to Mexico (dashed green line) and Argentina (blue line) as a percent of total U.S. exports:
In 1994, just before the financial crisis that prompted Clinton to intervene, Mexico accounted for 10 percent of U.S. exports, a number that would rise over time as the North American Free Trade Agreement led to close integration of our national economies. Furthermore, Mexico is right next door, giving the U.S. an obvious interest in Mexico’s political stability.
Argentina is, to say the least, not next door, and accounts for less than 0.5 percent of U.S. exports. Why, exactly, should U.S. taxpayers bail out Javier Milei?
We know why Trump and Bessent want to help Milei. First, he’s a MAGA favorite, fond of posing with U.S. right wingers with a chainsaw as a prop. So the Trumpists want a right-wing, anti-government politician to succeed, no matter how much taxpayer money is required.
Second, some U.S. hedge-fund billionaires, personally close to Bessent, bet big on Milei and bought Argentine bonds. The bailout package almost surely won’t succeed in turning Argentina’s economy around and probably won’t rescue Milei politically. But it may buy enough time for Bessent’s buddies to get much of their money out before the bottom falls out of the Argentine economy.
Yet events may very well overtake Bessent’s bailout plans. As I’ll explain shortly, Milei’s situation appears to be deteriorating fast, and Trump’s intervention may be making it worse.
Milei has succeeded in reducing Argentina’s inflation rate, but only by keeping the peso overvalued against the dollar. This is a time-tested futile strategy — by which I mean that it’s a strategy that has been attempted many times and has consistently failed. Typically, there’s initial euphoria. Then, as the overvalued currency leads to rising unemployment and political backlash, money starts to flee the country in anticipation of a future devaluation.
The final acts of a failed “exchange rate-based stabilization” usually play out as follows: For a short period the government tries to keep capital from fleeing and prop up the currency by raising interest rates, sometimes to incredibly high levels. But soaring interest rates compound the economic pain. Event
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Most of what Trump says or posts is cringeworthy and some of it is downright grotesque.
It seems to me that Trump can't wrap his brain around the idea that being President of the USA does NOT make him Master of the Universe. It looks like he keeps trying for leverage on China and Russia, and can't figure out that while he can bully and/or bribe Qatar or Israel or France or Venezuela, it's not going to work on the other big powers.
It seems to me you can’t either. First, he could end Russian aggression in a week. He doesn’t because Putin has something on him, and or, he doesn’t think it benefits him personally. You have yet to figure out Trumps motivations and that’s sad. Or you're being dishonest.
And he didn’t bribe Qatar, they bribed him. Why did he crack down on Israel? They bombed his business partners, Qatar. I see no references in your posts expressing how he is acting like a dictator and destroying American institutions. Which shows your ignorance and biases regarding all matters, here and abroad. Isn’t that right comrade?
You are on board with the Alex Krainer's of the world. He likes dictators like Putin and believes Putin being a strong man benefits the masses. You think the same. Which is why you always come off as a Russian troll who never gets, how and why America is what it is and the promise only it offers. And, it's why you are all in for tearing it down.
T
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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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