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 449 of 479
Quote:The Trumptards at work were pretty much impressed with Trump's speech yesterday. I wonder what ultrasonic sounds and words they were hearing that people can't hear?
Originally posted by THG:
It's obvious SECOND. Trump is fucking up so bad on everything that Jack and comrade signym are staying home. They must be hiding in the garden thread. Shit, they aren't even posting in their own threads.
T
Maybe he’d have been better off not trying. Trump’s critics have castigated him for refusing to go on television and provide a comprehensive explanation of the war to the American people. But given his performance this evening, perhaps he had the right instinct. His address did not come across as a wartime speech but instead was a disjointed series of complaints, brags, and exaggerations (along with a few outright lies) delivered by a man who looked and sounded tired. After his 19 minutes on the air—brisk by Trump’s standards—Americans could be forgiven for being even more concerned now than they were only a few days ago. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/trump-iran-war-speech/686663
Reaction to Trump speech: stock prices decline, crude oil prices increase.
President Trump Delivers an Address to the Nation, Apr. 1, 2026
Read the complete transcript of Trump’s address to the nation
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-transcript-address-iran-war-b5
970011fe934dde84d95d650bda56a9
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:Hitler's Thousand Year Reich outlasted Trump's.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack Friday, January 24, 2025 9:50 AM:
Nobody cares what you think or believe.
You are an idiot, and everything you have ever said here has been proven wrong, whether it was merely an outright lie when you said it, or given enough time.
You worthless. You are nothing. And I own you.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Hitler’s Edifice Complex
He was obsessed with adding an expensive new wing to the Reich Chancellery, part of his grandiose architectural ambitions for the nation’s capital.
By Timothy W. Ryback | April 2, 2026, 9:27 AM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/04/hitlers-edifice-complex/6866
62/
He wanted it big. He wanted lots of gold, lots of marble. He wanted visitors awestruck by his architectural expansion of the country’s symbolic seat of power. “They should sense the strength and grandeur of the German Reich as they walk from the entrance to the reception hall,” Adolf Hitler told his chief architect, Albert Speer, outlining his plans for an extension to the old Reich chancellery, at Wilhelmstrasse 77 in Berlin.
The new annex, connected to the chancellery by a marble corridor hung with crystal chandeliers, was part of Hitler’s ambitious plans to align the Berlin cityscape with his vision for the future of the country. Hitler wanted a Triumphbogen, a triumphal arch, twice the size of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. He wanted an “Avenue of Splendor” for military parades. “The Champs-Élysées is a hundred meters wide,” Hitler told Speer. “We will make our avenue twenty meters wider.” A planned Volkshalle was to accommodate 180,000. The Eiffel Tower could fit beneath its cupola. This “Hall of the People” was to be topped by the largest swastika on Earth. Berlin itself was to be rechristened as Weltstadt Germania, “Capital of the World.”
Speer embellished these extravagantly outsized “Hitler branded designs”—Entwürfe Hitlerscher Prägung—with fascistic flourishes: bundled reeds, or fasces; spread-winged eagles; and enormous twisted crosses. In 1938, when André François Poncet, the French ambassador to Berlin, visited Hitler at the Berghof, the Nazi leader’s Alpine retreat outside Berchtesgaden, he was led through a “gallery of Roman pillars” to an “immense glassed-in rotunda” with a dramatic view that gave one the impression of being suspended in the air. “Was this edifice the work of a normal mind,” François-Poncet wondered in his memoirs, “or of one tormented by megalomania and haunted by visions of domination?”
Hitler’s interest in architecture originated in his teenage years when, as an aspiring artist, he applied to the Academia of Arts in Vienna, only to be rejected and informed that his real talent, such as it was, lay in architecture rather than painting. Of the several hundred surviving sketches and paintings from Hitler’s years as a struggling artist, 80 to 90 percent are of physical structures, the best-known being some watercolors from 1912, of the State Opera House in Vienna, and from 1914, of the Courtyard of the Royal Residence in Munich. There is also a 1915 pencil sketch of the farmhouse, near the northern French village of Fournes, where Hitler, then a 26-year-old corporal, was billeted as a message runner for the List Regiment during World War I.
Read more from Timothy Ryback: How Hitler dismantled a democracy in 53 days
Glimmerings of Hitler’s grandiose architectural imaginings can be discerned from that time. In the rare-book reading room at the Library of Congress, you can request an early-20th-century architectural guide to Berlin, entitled simply Berlin, that is smeared with trench dirt and drips of red paraffin wax, most likely traces of nighttime reading by candlelight, and features this inscription on the inside cover: Adolf Hitler, Fournes, November 5, 1915. The book, by a Jewish art critic named
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Gotta go back a long time to reply to me now, huh?
*yawn*
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Be Nice. Don't be a dick. 
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Trump lawyer REFUSES to acknowledge Native Americans are birthright citizens
T
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Quote:6ix, can you see what is wrong with Trump's words? I suspect you will reinterpret his words to mean something innocuous.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Gotta go back a long time to reply to me now, huh?
*yawn*
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Be Evil. Be a dick.
President Donald Trump on Wednesday said it’s “not possible” for the federal government to fund Medicare, Medicaid and child care costs, arguing that it should be up to the states to “take care” of those programs while the federal government focuses on military spending.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-says-not-possible-
us-pay-medicaid-medicare-daycare-re-fighting-w-rcna266381
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 First Speech About the War With Iran Explained Absolutely Nothing
Let’s take stock of just how much Trump is distorting the truth about this war.
By Fred Kaplan | April 02, 2026 5:06 PM
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/04/trump-iran-war-news-speech
-lies.html
The White House heralded it in advance as a “major address,” but President Donald Trump’s actual prime-time speech on Wednesday—what he called “an update on the tremendous progress our warriors have made in Iran”—was a big nothing.
News stories, citing inside sources, had reported that Trump was thinking about escalating the war—even sending in ground troops—or exiting it very quickly. Yet judging from the speech, he’s doing neither. Instead, he’s intent on keeping up the bombing, hitting Iran “extremely hard over the next two to three weeks … to bring them back to the Stone Ages, where they belong”—a malapropism of Gen. Curtis LeMay’s call in the 1960s to “bomb them”— meaning North Vietnam—“back to the Stone Age.”
It was the first speech Trump has delivered on his and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war on Iran, now in its second month—yet he still offered no serious explanation of why he started it, when it will end, or how anyone should define victory. Instead, he crammed the 20-minute address with many of the lies he’s told many times before and invented a few new ones.
Sometimes it’s worth cataloging the lies and distortions in one of his speeches to show just how incapable he is of telling—or perhaps recognizing—the truth. Because this speech was billed as so important, yet carried so little real news, it offers another opportunity.
So let us begin.
Claim: “In these past four weeks, our armed forces have delivered swift, decisive, overwhelming victories on the battlefield, victories like few people have ever seen before.”
Fact: U.S. and Israeli bombs and missiles have destroyed many targets but racked up no “victories” (if that word has any meaning). Iranian leaders have been killed, but the regime—a theocratic state empowered by a repressive well-armed military—remains intact. A lot of their missiles have been hit, but Iran is still launching a fair number each day.
Claim: “I did many things during my two terms in office to stop the quest for nuclear weapons by Iran. … I killed Gen. Qassem Soleimani. … I terminated Barack Hussein Obama’s Iran nuclear deal … [which] gave them $1.7 billion in cash … [and] would have led to a colossal arsenal of massive nuclear weapons for Iran.”
Fact: Killing Soleimani was a big deal, but the terrorist commander had nothing to do with Iran’s nuclear program. The Iran nuclear deal, signed by Obama and six other leaders, then sanctified into law by the U.N. Security Council, in fact halted Iran’s nuclear program, forced Iran to dismantle most of it, and allowed strict international inspection. The $1.7 billion in cash referred to Obama’s return of Iranian money, which the U.S. had confiscated when Iran covertly started a nuclear program. Trump’s scuttling of the deal and his reimposition of sanctions prompted Iran to restart the program, bringing the country closer than ever to an A-bomb.
Claim: “My first preference was always the path of diplomacy, yet the regime continued their relentless quest for nuclear weapons and rejected every attempt at an agreement.”
Fact: The week before Trump started Operation Epic Fury, Iranian negotiators presented a proposal that was actually pretty favorable to us; it would have required them to scale back enriched uranium even more than Obama’s deal had done. U.S. officials said talks would resume on Monday. The Saturday before, Trump launched his surprise attack.
Claim: “In Operation Midnight Hammer,” Trump’s attack on Iran’s enrichment sites last June, “we totally obliterated those nuclear sites. The regime then sought to rebuild their nuclear program at a totally different location, making clear they had no intention of abandoning their pursuit of nuclear weapons.”
Fact: Trump’s own director of national intelligence, Tu
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Hegseth’s War on America’s Military
Someone needs to explain the Pentagon purges to the American people.
By Tom Nichols | April 2, 2026, 10:05 PM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2026/04/hegseths-war-on-americas-
military/686676/
The United States is in the middle of a major war, but that didn’t stop Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on Thursday from firing General Randy George, America’s most senior Army officer. George was the Army’s Chief of Staff, and he was cashiered along with another four-star general, David Hodne, and Major General William Green, Jr., the top Army chaplain, in what has been a rolling purge by Hegseth of senior officers—particularly those close to the Secretary of Army, Dan Driscoll.
Why were these men fired while U.S. forces are fighting overseas? The Defense Department has given no official reason for their dismissals, but likely they are the latest victims of Hegseth’s vindictive struggles with the Army, which he feels treated him poorly—the service “spit me out” he said in his 2024 book—as he struggles in a job for which he remains singularly unqualified.
Hegseth began his tenure by acting against what he sees as a Pentagon infested with DEI hires. He pushed for the removal of the then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, C.Q. Brown, who is Black, and he fired a raft of female military leaders, replacing them all with men. But dumping the Army Chief of Staff in the middle of a war, without explanation, is a reckless move even by Hegseth’s standards. George is a decorated combat veteran who was slated to stay in his job until 2027, and he has never publicly feuded with Hegseth—despite having good reason to do so.
Trump and Hegseth have been on a clear mission to politicize the U.S. military, and to turn it into an armed extension of the MAGA movement. Hegseth regularly proselytizes, both for Trump and for his right-wing evangelical beliefs, from the Pentagon podium. He has intervened in Army promotions, recently culling four colonels—two Black men and two women—from the list for advancement to brigadier general. (This may be the tip of the iceberg: NBC is now reporting that Hegseth has also cancelled the promotions, across multiple services, of at least a dozen minority and female officers.) When two Army helicopters buzzed a political rally and then flew to MAGA favorite Kid Rock’s house, Hegseth short-circuited the Army’s suspension of the pilots and squashed an investigation into their actions. In keeping with the best American civil-military traditions, George and other senior military leaders have been remarkably disciplined in keeping their thoughts out of the public eye.
Of course, the tone at the Pentagon was set by the commander in chief. Last June, Trump spoke at Ft. Bragg, where he tried to turn his appearance into a political rally. Again, George (and Driscoll) said nothing, at least in public, about this shocking violation of civil-military norms. Trump, after all, is the commander in chief and his behavior can only be curtailed by the Senate or the American people.
Even in less dangerous times, the public would still have a right to answers about such an unprecedented purge of the senior U.S. military ranks. These officers are all people with long and distinguished records of service; none of them has been charged with any wrongdoing, and none of them have been accused of any kind of incompetence or disloyalty. They all seem to have committed only the offense of being part of a military institution that Hegseth—who still harbors obvious bitterness about his undistinguished and ultimately shortened military career—wants to restock with MAGA loyalists.
These dismissals are not even defensible as the product of some high-minded strategic reform. Rather, as Pentagon officials told the New York Times, they are the “product of Mr. Hegseth’s long-running grievances with the Army, battles over personnel and his troubled relationship” with Driscoll. Hegseth’s beef with Driscoll may be a product of insecurity: When Hegseth was stepping on rakes in the wake of S
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A Republic, Not a Mood
The presidency has become too dependent on the ego and temperament of the man in office.
By Peggy Noonan
April 2, 2026 5:58 pm ET
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/a-republic-not-a-mood-75a4c01a
In his Iran speech Wednesday, President Trump asserted much and argued for little. There were some boasts, some threats—“We are going to hit them extremely hard.... We’re going to bring them back to the stone ages, where they belong.” And some of what appeared to be magical thinking: “When this conflict is over, the strait will open up naturally.”
The central message seemed to be that the war isn’t over but may be over in a while, the U.S. will continue bombing for two or three weeks, and, unstated but made clear through subject matter, setting, symbolism and the length, extent and success of the military campaign: Of course this is a war.
It was strange that Mr. Trump didn’t prepare the country for any possible repercussions. A somber admission that U.S. actions in Iran might be followed by serious counteraggression was needed, and is part of the president’s responsibility.
I was thinking this week that Mr. Trump’s vision of himself as primarily a dealmaker is unsuited to a necessity of presidential leadership, which involves laying out the logic of a difficult case. Deal makers gain advantage through strategies that don’t necessarily involve transparency and forthrightness. I went back to Mr. Trump’s 1987 "The Art of the Deal.” A strong undercurrent of that lively book is that it’s good to be unreadable and sneaky: "I play it very loose.” "Sometimes it pays to be a little wild.” "The truth is I’m keeping my options open.” "I also protect myself by being flexible. I never get too attached to one deal or one approach.” "I keep a lot of balls in the air.” "Once I’ve made a deal, I always come up with at least a half dozen approaches to making it work because anything can happen.” Money is a way of keeping score. "The real excitement is playing the game.”
I want to swerve here to talk about the word that keeps coming to mind when I look at the president’s leadership, and it is “mood.” A lot seems to depend on matters of personal choice, will and mood. In Iran for instance, maybe he’ll bomb the rubble until it jumps, maybe he’ll declare victory and withdraw by May, maybe he’ll send in troops. But it will be his choice, no consultation needed with that pesky branch, the legislative.
There is something not at all right when the weightiest decisions of a democratic republic depend so much on the mood of one man. With the great majority of past presidents personal mood didn’t have such precedence. There were forms and traditions and processes, there were strictures, rules, the law, expectations, all of which would hem in the head of the executive branch, at least eventually. The president’s mood didn’t reign and determine everything. But now mood mows down all. People have become habituated to this, tolerate it, factor it in. But of course when you factor it in you are enabling and continuing it.
Fear of the president’s mood has reduced otherwise impressive appointees to anxious ferrets sparring with Sunday news show anchors in a way that is performatively smug but also fearful—always aware of the famous “audience of one.”
Things are out of whack, and even though we all know this, it still should be said now and then.
Ronald Reagan late in his presidency, in a valedictory appearance at a Republican National Convention, spoke of how he personally experienced the office: “You don’t become president of the United States. You are given temporary custody of an institution called the presidency, which belongs to our people.” He approached his two administrations as "a sacred trust.” This was pushback against the idea of an imperial presidency, in which man and office are fused and personal power the point. But man’s life is limited and the institution is continuous, an inheritance accumulated across time. It was also a rebuke to the idea of grandi
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America as we knew it may end on Tuesday.
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/living-in-hell
Hi, I’m Paul Krugman. Sunday morning update. Yesterday, I talked about how awful Trump’s message about glory to God and all of that was, but it’s looking much, much worse today. I’ll quote Trump in a second.
But let me talk about history for a second. Think about what Abraham Lincoln, a president who was actually winning his war, said in his second inaugural. You’ve all probably heard the magnificent conclusion, which begins,
". . . with malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in."
Determination, humility, decency. Now, let me read you Donald Trump’s Truth Social post from this morning:
"Tuesday will be power plant day and bridge day, all wrapped up in one in Iran. There will be nothing like it. Open the fuckin strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in hell. Just watch. Praise be to Allah."
What happened to us? This is not the country we were supposed to be.
If Trump is actually going to give the order for massive war crimes, for destruction of civilian infrastructure, power plants, and bridges, which will, among other things, lead to a lot of deaths in Iran, will the military obey it? A year ago, I would have said no.
But what we do know now is that, first of all, there turns out to be at least a significant MAGA component inside the officer corps. And we know that Pete Hexeth has been systematically corrupting and dismantling the military over the past 14 months. Generals who raise ethical concerns have been fired. Officers who even just want to be intelligent about warfare and not believe that it’s all about warrior ethos and lethality have been fired, so it’s quite possible that there’s a quorum of officers who will follow instructions to commit war crimes.
You can get even more pessimistic. Tim Snyder has been arguing that we’re basically in preparation for a coup, that somehow or other the war will be a pretense and arguing that this insane expansion of military spending in the latest Trump budget is a bribe to the military. https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-next-coup-attempt
I hope he’s wrong.
It’s entirely possible that by this time Tuesday, America will have established itself as one of the world’s great villains. I don’t want to be here, but, you know, be warned. This is happening. This is real.
It’s the most astonishing, awful thing that I’ve ever seen, and we’ve all seen a lot of awful things. Take care, I guess.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Jocelyn Sze wrote in 2025:
You know it’s bad when a conflict-avoidant introvert like me is speaking up in public. Please check out this piece about the parallels I see between the Trump administration and my work as a trauma psychologist with survivors of narcissistic abuse. I enjoyed writing about my zany idea that the Constitution serves as a psychological boundary against narcissistic control, and the role we all have in upholding it.
(I didn't write the title and I'm definitely not sure how to stop Trump--but speaking up and joining hands with you is perhaps a step along the way.)
I’m A Psychologist Who Specializes In Narcissists. Here’s What We Need To Do To Stop Trump.
"The same patterns that destabilize families destabilize democracies."
By Jocelyn Sze | May 23, 2025, 07:52 AM EDT | Updated Jul 1, 2025
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/psychologist-how-to-stop-trump-narcissi
st_n_682df1cae4b09b7e5013a586?3u
The Trump administration is planning a June 14 military parade to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army — and the president’s 79th birthday. When your sense of self-exaltation requires tanks, flyovers and up to $45 million for a birthday party, we’re no longer in the realm of cake and candles — we’re squarely in Criterion 1 of narcissistic personality disorder: “a grandiose sense of self-importance.”
To be clear, I can’t diagnose the president or any public figure without personal examination. But research shows that those in positions of power, especially in politics, are more likely to exhibit traits of grandiose narcissism. When narcissistic control seeps into leadership, it distorts truth, erodes trust and destabilizes institutions. The more we understand these dynamics, the better we can protect both the public and the health of our democracy.
As a clinical psychologist who works with trauma and narcissistic abuse, I see echoes of this dynamic every day in my therapy office. The same patterns that destabilize families destabilize democracies: along with the magnetic vision of the grandiose narcissist come denial, attack, reversal of blame and emotional chaos.
I think of one of my patients when she discovered her brother was terrorizing their elderly mother with violent threats and financial abuse. When she named the harm, he flipped the script — denying everything and accusing her of being unstable, all while fiercely protecting his “golden boy” image. Under family pressure to stay quiet, she spiraled into rumination. But armed with awareness and support, she stood firm. Like a broken record, she calmly named the harm until her boundary held. It came at a cost, but her brother was eventually removed from their mother’s home.
This same pattern shows up, magnified, on the political stage. Narcissistic control in government thrives on flipping the script and silencing watchdogs.
Authoritarian leaders, like narcissistic family members, rely on well-worn tactics to manufacture a psychological state of volatile uncertainty — where outcomes aren’t just unknown, but constantly shifting and unpredictable. This overwhelms the brain’s ability to anticipate and prepare, keeping people mentally off-balance and easier to control. The good news: Awareness works like a vaccine, gradually building psychological immunity against further harm.
For another patient, “moving the goalposts” was the favored tactic of her ex-boyfriend to generate such volatility. He would make a demand (under the guise of “improving her”) and then change the expectation once it was met. In government, this looks like constantly reversing policies or public positions so that citizens, the media and allies remain unmoored.
“The White House has no idea what it’s doing on tariffs and keeps flip-flopping... Why even do an exemption if you’re going to reverse it soon?” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) posted on X on April 13, referring to more than 50 flip-flops on tariff policies since Trump’s inauguration.
Many dismiss these reversals as mere incompetence or poor strategy — and it’s true th
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