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 433 of 479
Quote:Attack of the Zombie Tariffs
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Shut up, loser.
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Be Evil. Be a dick.
A brain is a terrible thing to have eaten
Paul Krugman | Feb 24, 2026
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/attack-of-the-zombie-tariffs
50 years of zombies: Designing the undead to explain the living | CNN
Trump administration officials are trying to put a brave face on the stinging rebuke just delivered by the Supreme Court in its ruling that most of the tariffs imposed since April 2025 (the IEEPA tariffs) are illegal. Never one to accept limitations on his power, Trump rushed to impose new tariffs using an obscure clause, Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act. Section 122 tariffs have a 150-day limit, at which point they expire. So Trump officials are now claiming that they’ll find ways to reconstruct the tariffs using other legal loopholes before the expiration date is reached.
I don’t know how well this strategy will actually work. To the extent that it does work, we will be in the grip of zombie tariffs — tariffs that should be dead, because they were clearly imposed illegally, but that somehow keep shambling along.
Why this desperate attempt to keep tariffs high? A MAGA loyalist would say it’s to preserve what those illegal tariffs have accomplished. But even before they were struck down, the tariffs had achieved none of their stated goals. In fact, they had put those goals further out of reach.
On Liberation Day, Trump justified the tariffs now ruled illegal by telling the American public that our trade deficits were proof that the United States was giving money away to other countries. In his ranting press conference after the Supreme Court decision, he justified his actions by saying,
“You take a look at the deficits that we had with some of these countries. It was disgraceful what they got away with for many, many decades.”
He has the economics of trade deficits fundamentally wrong. But even aside from that, tariffs aren’t reducing those deficits. In fact, the U.S. trade deficit for all of 2025 was about the same as it was in 2024.
Trump apparently believes otherwise. In a recent Truth Social post he declared,
“THE UNITED STATES TRADE DEFICIT HAS BEEN REDUCED BY 78% BECAUSE OF THE TARIFFS BEING CHARGED TO OTHER COMPANIES AND COUNTRIES”
What was he talking about? Probably this:
The U.S. trade deficit surged in early 2025, as companies raced to bring in imports before the Trump tariffs went into effect. It then plunged briefly as companies drew down their swollen inventories before importing more. In the end, the 2025 trade deficit was about the same as the 2024 trade deficit. So what Trump cited was a cherry-picked, misleading number that bears no relation to reality.
Trump also claimed that his tariffs would revive American manufacturing. In fact, manufacturing employment has declined since Liberation Day. But in that press conference Trump asserted that great things are coming:
“You’re going to start to see the results in a year from now when all those factories start that are under construction right now. You see all the construction numbers are so good.”
Which numbers does he have in mind? The most recent available data on manufacturing construction show it falling thanks to Trump’s cancellation of Biden’s green energy subsidies:
Finally, Trump likes to boast about the immense revenue generated by the tariffs. And they did indeed bring in some money — tariffs are taxes, and taxes yield revenue. But they aren’t the gusher of revenue tha
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Attack of the Zombie Tariffs
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Shut up, loser.
--------------------------------------------------
Be Evil. Be a dick.
A brain is a terrible thing to have eaten
Paul Krugman | Feb 24, 2026
Paul's brain was cooked many years ago.
Nobody gives a single fuck what Paul Krugman has to say on any topic. You can't even show me one article from the last 10 years where he made a prediction that came true.
Fuck you cultist. You're done.
Nobody is listening to any of you losers anymore.
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Be Nice. Don't be a dick.
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Quote:Trumptards are loony-tunes. This one story jumped to my attention today because it has suicide, sex, and national politics, but all Trumptards I personally know are mind-benumbed crazy, only NOT this extreme:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Paul's brain was cooked many years ago.
Nobody gives a single fuck what Paul Krugman has to say on any topic. You can't even show me one article from the last 10 years where he made a prediction that came true.
Fuck you cultist. You're done.
Nobody is listening to any of you losers anymore.
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Be Evil. Be a dick.
Lawmaker Faces Calls to Resign
Feb 23, 2026
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/tony-gonzales-text-messages-pressu
re-9dea8775
Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas faced calls from Republican colleagues to drop his re-election bid over an alleged affair with a staff member, after new text messages of a sexual nature surfaced between Gonzales and the aide, who died after setting herself on fire last year. Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado became the first House Republican to call on Gonzales to quit ahead of his primary next week. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) acknowledged to reporters Monday that Gonzales is facing serious accusations. “You have to allow the investigations to play out and all the facts to come out,” Johnson said. “I’ve told him he’s got to address that with his constituents,” he said. Gonzales didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The lawmaker, a Navy veteran who is serving his third term in the House, has previously dismissed allegations of an improper relationship and called discussions of the allegations “personal smears.” Voting in the Texas GOP primary wraps up Tuesday of next week. Last week, Brandon Herrera, a YouTuber known as the AK Guy who is challenging Gonzales in the primary, said the incumbent should resign over the affair allegations. —Olivia Beavers
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Attack of the Zombie Tariffs
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Shut up, loser.
--------------------------------------------------
Be Evil. Be a dick.
A brain is a terrible thing to have eaten
Paul Krugman | Feb 24, 2026
Paul's brain was cooked many years ago.
Nobody gives a single fuck what Paul Krugman has to say on any topic. You can't even show me one article from the last 10 years where he made a prediction that came true.
Fuck you cultist. You're done.
Nobody is listening to any of you losers anymore.
--------------------------------------------------
Be Nice. Don't be a dick.
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President Trump’s State of the Union Variety Show
Were you not entertained?
By Tom Nichols | February 25, 2026, 12:54 AM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/02/trump-state-of-the-union/686
125/
The longest State of the Union in modern history is now over. Donald Trump held court in the House of Representatives and said little of substance, but substance wasn’t the point. This year, he intended to put on a show, with an array of guest stars and special appearances. He was happy because he was playing the roles he clearly loves: game-show host, ringmaster, emcee, beneficent granter of wishes—and, where the Democrats were concerned, a self-righteous inquisitor.
Trump did his usual rote lying about the economy—pity the fact-checkers who tried to keep up even in the first 10 minutes or so of the speech—along with some of his other greatest hits, including the many wars he stopped and the magic of tariffs. (He referred to the “unfortunate involvement” of the Supreme Court on the tariff issue, as if the justices had barged into his office like interlopers.)
President Ronald Reagan, the “Great Communicator,” once managed to do the entire State of the Union address in 31 minutes; that’s because he could say important things efficiently and well. Tonight, however, was not about communication—it was about showmanship. Almost every line was a cue for applause from obedient Republicans; they even gave Jared Kushner a standing ovation. Every few minutes, Trump told a story and reached out into the audience like the host of The Price Is Right, telling people to come on down.
He started, of course, with the U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team. Just basking along with Team USA wasn’t enough. Trump soon announced that the goalie Connor Hellebuyck would receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Normally, this honor is bestowed for a lifetime of achievement, but this time it was given as if the young athlete had chosen the right door and found a new car.
And so it went, all night. Sometimes, the guests were meant to tug at the heartstrings, such as when Trump recognized Erika Kirk, the wife of the murdered activist Charlie Kirk. Others were presented as ornaments meant to illustrate Trump’s successes: Enrique Márquez, a Venezuelan political prisoner freed after U.S. forces deposed the strongman Nicolás Maduro, was given a round of well-deserved applause. Trump also gave a shout-out to a woman whose IVF medications were now, he claimed, cheaper.
But no group received more attention than the U.S. military. Trump handed out two Purple Hearts (one posthumously), a Legion of Merit, and not one but two Congressional Medals of Honor. Military awards that should have been treated with dignity and respect were placed on men like prizes, including a moment when Trump’s co-host, the first lady, put one of the Medals of Honor around the neck of a 100-year-old fighter pilot.
Trump even had designated heels in the audience: the Democrats. He called them crazy and accused them of impoverishing the nation. He dared them to stand up if they agreed with him that “the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.” This stunt was obviously meant to force Democrats either to stand or boo or otherwise do something that Trump could exploit; instead, it merely resulted in several awkward seconds of a staring contest between the president and the Democrats in the chamber. Trump managed to bait Representative Ilhan Omar into shouting at him, but for the most part, he seemed genuinely irritated that the Democrats sat through his show in stony silence.
As the whole business dragged on, the atmosphere started to seem less like a game show and more like the late-night Jerry Lewis telethons of the 1970s, in which a tired but pumped Lewis alternately griped at the audience, broke into maudlin emotion, or jumped up to welcome a new guest. The only thing Trump did not do was explain his policies—especially about war and peace—to Congress or the American people.
The largest American
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We know you weren't entertained.
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Be Nice. Don't be a dick.
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Quote:Donald Trump has a long-standing, well-documented relationship with professional wrestling. Wrestling is fake, as was Trump's SOTU.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
We know you weren't entertained.
--------------------------------------------------
Be Evil. Be a dick.
https://www.wwe.com/superstars/donald-trump
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Trump's State of the Union Address--He Is Reading the Polls And Seems Scared
What he avoided was more important than what he said
Phillips P. OBrien | Feb 25, 2026
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/trumps-state-of-the-union-addre
ss
To understand how he now accepts that many of his policies are unpopular and how scared he is, it's best to look at what he avoided talking about or more accurately what he talked about as little and as carefully/generically as possible. The first was the Supreme Court after the Tariff ruling last week.
If you remember, when the ruling first came out, Trump was incandescent and lashed out in a historically negative fashion about the Court. He called the ruling an “embarassment” a “terrible” decision and even claimed that members of the Supreme Court were traitors, saying they were "swayed by foreign interests".
It should be noted that in the history of the USA, this was an unprecedented attack. Never before has a President accused the Supreme Court of being traitors.
Last night in the State of the Union address, however, he hardly mentioned the court or the ruling. When he did, he even tried very hard to be presidential, describing the ruling which he had earlier blasted as traitorous only as “unfortunate”. Here was the key text:
“And then just four days ago an unfortunate ruling from the United States Supreme Court, it just came down, came down. Very unfortunate ruling. But the good news is that almost all countries and corporations want to keep the deal that they already made, right, Scott? Knowing that the legal power that I as president have to make a new deal could be far worse for them. And therefore they will continue to work along the same successful path that we had negotiated before the Supreme Court’s unfortunate involvement.”
Trump even avoided the whole tariff question as much as possible. In the entire 2-hour speech, he used the word "tariff" only 5 times, and he rushed through those moments, trying more to convince himself of his arguments than anything else.
So we went from Tariffs being absolutely central to his political positioning and the Supreme Court being an embarrassing disaster, to very little in just a few days.
One thing that he avoided entirely was ICE (US Immigrations and Customs Enforcement). He not only never mentioned ICE or immigrants and only used the word “immigration” three times. And it is worth noting that these three mentions were general and not specific.
So the Court was treated with kid gloves, ICE was completely avoided, and tariffs and immigration were small issues.
Much more at https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/trumps-state-of-the-union-addre
ss
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The most important line from Trump’s State of the Union
To understand Donald Trump’s State of the Union address core purpose — arguably, the core purpose of his presidency — you need only to hear one line.
https://www.vox.com/politics/480388/trump-state-of-the-union-2026-tran
script-democracy
The line came during a discussion of the SAVE Act, a Republican bill designed to combat the fictitious scourge of noncitizen voting. Democrats, Trump claimed, only opposed the bill because “they want to cheat.” And then he took it much further.
“Their policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat. We’re going to stop it. We have to stop it.”
Think about that for a second. This is the president of the United States, speaking to the country in a ritualized national address, claiming that the opposition party is not only wrong on policy but fundamentally illegitimate, so much so that if they win an election it must be because they cheated.
Taken literally, that is the president announcing that the stated policy of his administration is preventing the opposition from winning any future election.
We’re all so used to wading through Trump’s sea of hyperbole that it’s easy to push past a bald-faced declaration of authoritarian intent. And to be clear, I don’t think the SAVE Act — or anything else Trump has proposed so far — could actually lock Democrats out of power. There is a real gap between what he is saying and what he is capable of doing.
Still, we have very good reason to think that Trump really does believe that Democrats cannot win without “cheating.”
When he last lost an election, in 2020, he claimed — and has continued to falsely insist — that the contest was stolen. His supporters took this so seriously that, after a fiery Trump speech at the White House on January 6, they marched on the Capitol building and ransacked the very chamber in which he spoke tonight.
He even referenced these grievances in the State of the Union, saying “this should be my third term, but strange things happen.”
Not rivals, but enemies
Trump’s vitriol is different from the “normal” partisanship of pre-Trump State of the Unions. Prior presidents might attack, or even mock, the other party’s policy ideas. But they would treat their opponents as political rivals: as people they disagreed with who were nevertheless partners in the shared project of democracy.
In many ways, that’s the conceit of the entire State of the Union tradition: that the president, in speaking before Congress, is giving an accounting of his actions to the nation as a whole, divided in opinion but united in purpose.
But Trump doesn’t see Democrats as opponents. He sees them as enemies.
I mean “enemies” here in the specific sense used by interwar German legal theorist Carl Schmitt. In his view, the liberal idea of politics — a community of political equals engaged in a shared project of collective governance — was a fantasy. For Schmitt, politics always comes down to a division between friends (those in your group) and enemies (those outside it, who may be legitimately excluded from political life or even killed).
Schmitt’s thinking has enjoyed a revival among MAGA intellectuals, a reflection in part of the movement’s increasingly Manichean view of American politics. Democrats, in this telling, are not just wrong; they are evil, an internal scourge bent on the destruction of America as we know it.
And indeed, this was how Trump talked about Democrats in the State of the Union.
“These people are crazy. I’m telling you, they’re crazy. Boy, we’re lucky we have a country with people like this,” he said. “Democrats are destroying our country, but we’ve stopped it, just in the nick of time.”
At many times during the rambling speech, Trump sounded optimistic, even sunny. But make no mistake: It is this dark Schmittian vision that dwells at the heart of his politics.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, wher
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You're so full of shit dude.
Your party died last night. Forever.
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Be Nice. Don't be a dick.
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