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 461 of 479
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Hegseth had just given the military an "open invitation to commit war crimes."
"No matter what, President [Donald] Trump and I will have your back when tough decisions are made," Hegseth said during his speech. "Especially decisions made in a split second in the heat of battle. No matter what. No matter if it's the right decision or the wrong decision. If it's made by the right person or the wrong person. For the right reasons or the wrong reasons. Your hands are untied. No matter what, we will have your back."
Former Army Lt. Gen. Mark Hertling voiced alarm over Pete Hegseth’s assurance that he and President Trump would support troops’ split-second battlefield decisions ‘no matter what.’ Speaking on the 'Bulwark Takes' podcast, Hertling said such remarks could be interpreted as disregarding legal implications and highlighted past cases where individuals accused of killing civilians were released. He warned that this approach would undermine discipline within the ranks and increase national security risks.
"And we've seen that in a couple of situations so far in this administration, where ... war criminals, people who murdered civilians, were allowed to go free and were paroled."
https://www.rawstory.com/pete-hegseth-2676964223/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Why aren't you in prison for murdering all those Vietnamese women and children?
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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand
By John Ambrosio | Friday, May 29, 2026 4:00AM
https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2026/05/a-house-divided-against-
itself-cannot-stand.html
On June 16, 1858 in his House Divided speech, Abraham Lincoln declared that the government “could not endure permanently as half slave and half free” and would eventually become “all one thing or all the other.” Addressing the Illinois Republican State Convention, he argued that the deep and intensifying division over slavery threatened to destroy the Union.
While the historical circumstances and issues are different today, the house is once again divided against itself. The nation is at a critical crossroads and faces a similar dilemma: can the social, cultural, and political chasm that emerged between Red and Blue America be repaired? Can the Union be saved or will the country continue to separate politically and ideologically, if not geographically, into two sharply opposed societies whose core values, beliefs, and identities are incommensurate and irreconcilable? Is the U.S. entering a prolonged period of social upheaval and political conflict, a kind of cold civil war, between and within Red and Blue states that leaves the country increasingly fragmented and politically dysfunctional?
While many sources contributed to this division, including the rise of neoliberalism and extreme income and wealth inequality, social media algorithms that produce incendiary content designed to addict users, and a far-right media ecosystem that disseminates socially corrosive and divisive propaganda, the primary issue driving national politics in the U.S. today is demographic: the racial restructuring of U.S. society, the browning of America.
This process began with the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which ended the national origins quota system established by the Immigration Act of 1924 that significantly reduced immigration and heavily favored immigrants from Northern and Western Europe to ensure the continued dominance of the white majority.
In the last few decades, Republican Party politics has largely been aimed at cutting taxes for the wealthy and large corporations and reversing this demographic trend, at re-establishing racial and gender hierarchies, in rolling back the civil rights gains of Black Americans and other minorities over the past half century. In addition to an agenda of deregulation and privatization, the party has sought to eliminate the social progress achieved by New Deal and Great Society programs and restore the racial, gender, and class relations of an idealized and fictionalized past.
To achieve this, Trump and his MAGA allies have exploited ambiguous legislation and anti-majoritarian features of the U.S. Constitution. The demographic and geographic distribution of the electorate gives the Republican Party a structural advantage because seats in the U.S. Senate are apportioned equally among the states, regardless of population. In this way, smaller and less populated states, which are typically more rural and conservative, are disproportionately represented. This advantage is then transferred to presidential elections through the Electoral College, so that California’s nearly 40 million residents have the same representation in the Senate as Wyoming’s nearly 600 thousand.
Other anti-majoritarian and undemocratic features of the U.S. political system include the practice of extreme racial and partisan gerrymandering, which divides voters into state legislative and congressional districts that favor one political party, the filibuster rule in the U.S. Senate that enables a minority of senators to exercise veto power over most legislation, and the Supreme Court, which currently has three justices who were nominated by a president (Trump) who lost the popular vote and were confirmed by narrow margins by Republican senators who represent a minority of the U.S. population.
Majoritarian democracy was further eroded by the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder in
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Trump clears way for companies to dodge taxes in havens like Malta, Bermuda, and Cyprus
By Jesse Drucker and Dylan Freedman
May 29, 2026
The New York Times reports:
A year ago, the Trump administration withdrew from a global effort to curb offshore tax-dodging by multinational companies. That decision has been a huge gift to corporate America, enabling companies to avoid at least $40 billion in income taxes since the beginning of 2025.
A New York Times review of securities filings from nearly 500 companies showed that they avoided taxes by attributing hundreds of billions of dollars in earnings to low- or no-tax foreign locales like Cyprus, Bermuda, Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. Often, corporations funneled the profits through subsidiaries in places where they had no employees, offices or customers.
Tax havens became more appealing after President Trump signed an order on his first day back in office withdrawing the United States from a 13-year international effort to end such schemes. The effort led dozens of countries to impose a minimum corporate tax and rules for pursuing companies using tax havens. After House Republicans passed legislation last year targeting some of those countries with a new tax, international officials agreed to exempt U.S. companies from much of the crackdown.
American Express avoided paying $423 million in taxes last year using the island of Jersey. PayPal trimmed its taxes by nearly half during 2025 thanks to its units in Singapore. Stanley Black & Decker cut its bill by $27 million — nearly one-third — using the island of Cyprus.
A favorite destination was the tiny Mediterranean island of Malta, where Abbott Laboratories, the pharmaceutical giant, has claimed all its global profits were earned by a subsidiary with no employees. Malta helped the company cut its tax bill by $336 million last year, the filings show.
Companies making similar moves spanned nearly every sector of the economy: Walmart and Uber; Mastercard and Pepsi; Crocs and Merck; Honeywell and Cigna. To put the $40 billion in taxes they avoided in perspective, it would be enough to triple the annual budget of the Federal Aviation Administration or U.S. Customs and Border Protection. [Continue reading…]
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/29/business/economy/offshore-tax-haven
s-trump.html?unlocked_article_code=1.mFA.Euhg.uOz6XnAdIugP
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Or. If we're going to be honest about it...
This has been happening to Americans no matter who was in office since before I was fucking born.
You're only reporting on it now because you hate the guy running the show.
Take all your hypocrisy and bounce on it, faggot.
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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
A House Divided Against Itself Cannot Stand
By John Ambrosio | Friday, May 29, 2026 4:00AM
https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2026/05/a-house-divided-against-
itself-cannot-stand.html
On June 16, 1858 in his House Divided speech, Abraham Lincoln declared that the government “could not endure permanently as half slave and half free” and would eventually become “all one thing or all the other.” Addressing the Illinois Republican State Convention, he argued that the deep and intensifying division over slavery threatened to destroy the Union.
John is writing about the Death of the Democratic Party.
He's not wrong. He's just a year and a half late with that prediction is all.
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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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How Do We Know the China Summit Was a Failure? Because Trump Did It.
Everything he does on the world stage is disastrous, and the U.S. is reviled globally. How much longer will some idiots believe this “Art of the Deal” garbage?
Michael Tomasky / May 15, 2026 / 12:21 p.m. ET
https://newrepublic.com/post/210522/china-summit-failure-iran-jinping
Donald Trump says China agreed to buy 200 jets from Boeing. He crowed about it on Fox News Thursday night. But funny thing: A spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was asked specifically about the jet deal after Trump spoke, and he said nothing about any such agreement. Wanna take bets on whether it actually happened?
Three points here. First of all, we should stop quickly to note that it’s sad that it’s come to pass that we just automatically believe a foreign government—and China’s no less—over the president of the United States (sad about him, that is, not us). Second, let’s remember that Boeing is an American company in a deep and sustained crisis that was brought on by basic greed: As David Goldstein explained in Democracy journal in 2024, after its acquisition of McDonnell-Douglas in 1997, the historically proud engineering culture at Boeing was destroyed as the company became more anti-union and outsourced more of its production.
And third, assuming that Trump is lying or at least exaggerating, well, we’ve just learned again for the jillionth time that Mr. Art of the Deal is a total fraud. Let’s review.
• Remember how, in his first term, Trump was going to bring North Korea to its knees? Remember how he consistently heaped praise on Kim Jong Un and his “beautiful vision for his country”? Well, it’s not a “beautiful country” to the people who live there, and meanwhile, its nuclear progress has been steady over the last decade—during most of which, of course, Mr. Art of the Deal has been the president of the United States. Experts think the nation has assembled about 50 warheads.
• Remember also that he was going to solve the Russia-Ukraine war on his first day back in office? In late March, a UN expert testified that the violence was “worse than ever.” We—that is, most decent people—are heartened by Ukraine’s resilience and wowed by its innovative drone technology. But that “we” doesn’t include the president of the United States, who obviously is cheering for his pal Putin—over whom he has zero leverage.
• The 2025 tariff war on China totally backfired. China responded to Trump’s tariffs by limiting exports of rare-earth metals, and Trump backed down. Today, U.S. soybean exports to China are down (they peaked during Sleepy Joe’s “disastrous” presidency), as are auto exports. The first Chinese EVs are landing in Canada even as we speak. These are ultra-luxury cars that sell for $10,000 or even $20,000 less than their American equivalents.
• Speaking of Canada, why isn’t it the 51st state yet? And speaking of Northern annexation, why isn’t Greenland part of the United States yet?
• How’s that world-class Gaza resort coming along?
• U.S. relations with Europe are at an all-time low. And it isn’t because of anything Europe did. Last December, the Trump administration released a security strategy paper calling Europe a bigger threat to the United States than Russia or China because of its progressive social and immigration policies, which threatened the continent with “civilizational erasure.”
• And finally, of course, there is Iran. The economic impact of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz will be felt for months ahead. The latest wrinkle? In India, where they apparently lap up Diet Coke, there’s a shortage of the beloved elixir because there’s an aluminum shortage (Diet Coke is sold only in cans there). The Middle East accounts for 98 percent of the global aluminum supply. Stock up on that Reynolds Wrap. Joking aside: There are and will be dozens of such shortages, some far more serious than Diet Coke. A UN official told AFP in Paris this week that up to 45 million people in the developing world coul
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The Real—and Deeply Corrupt—Reason Trump Is After E. Jean Carroll
Actually, it’s not reason, singular. It’s reasons, plural. And there are 88.3 million of them.
Michael Tomasky / May 29, 2026 / 11:04 a.m. ET
https://newrepublic.com/post/211110/trump-e-jean-carroll-justice-depar
tment-corrupt
CNN originally reported late in the day Wednesday that the Justice Department was opening a probe into whether E. Jean Carroll, the New York woman who successfully sued Donald Trump and won $88.3 million in damages for sexual abuse and defamation, lied during the legal proceedings against Trump, and that Andrew Boutros, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, would be leading the investigation. Then, on Thursday, Boutros said, Hey, not me!, categorically denying that he was investigating Carroll.
This is extraordinary on so many levels. First and foremost, it’s shocking and disgusting that the Trump administration would even contemplate doing this.
It’s important to dip briefly into the facts here. Yes, in a 2022 deposition, Carroll misrepresented the fact that Democratic billionaire Reid Hoffman donated to her defense fund. Her lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, has said that Carroll recalled later, sometime in 2023—it seems worth bearing in mind that she was in her late seventies at the time—that she had received some outside donations and that she told Kaplan, and Kaplan immediately told Trump’s lawyers. Those lawyers tried to pounce on this new information to cast doubt on Carroll’s credibility, but the judge barred Trump’s lawyers from using it at trial. Two juries subsequently found Trump liable for both sexual assault and defamation.
That’s the background. Here’s the important part, as detailed by Lisa Rubin in a recent MS NOW column: Trump appealed, twice, trying to get appellate courts to agree that Carroll was lying, and he lost both times. First, a three-judge appellate panel upheld Trump’s conviction and believed that Carroll just forgot: “Ms. Carroll plausibly represented that she had forgotten about the limited outside funding,” the panel wrote. Second, eight of 10 active judges on an appellate panel in June 2025 denied a request for rehearing by Trump’s lawyers. (And even just last month, a third appellate panel denied a rehearing of the defamation case.)
If you look at that June 2025 ruling I linked to above, you’ll see an interesting name listed as counsel for “defendant-appellant”: Todd Blanche.
This, of course, is the same Todd Blanche who is running the Department of Justice today. When Trump fired Pam Bondi as attorney general and stories came out that Trump had been displeased with her lack of zeal about going after his enemies, you, like me, probably wondered how anybody could possibly be more of an unethical, corrupt, cowardly lickspittle than Bondi was. She brought—or tried to bring—prosecutions against Trump antagonists Letitia James, James Comey, John Brennan, Fani Willis, and more. When career prosecutors declined to bring those cases, she fired them and brought in incompetent hacks to do Trump’s bidding. In some cases, federal judges found these hacks to have been installed illegally.
Bondi was venally corrupt, on an absolutely Wagnerian level. Just this week, in fact, a retired chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court, backed by 120 judges, attorneys, and law professors, brought a blistering ethics complaint against Bondi demanding that she be investigated and disbarred. That complaint is mostly about her handling of the Epstein files because, remember, she behaved indefensibly there too.
So how could anyone be more corrupt than that? I’ll tell you exactly how, through Trump’s eyes: They could succeed where Bondi failed. That was her crime. Not obviously and serially violating departmental ethical canons. Her crime was not doing it well.
Hence, Blanche. The fact that his name was on that appellate denial—that he was one of Trump’s lawyers in the Carroll proceedings—means he has personal skin in this game, which in turn means that there’s no way on earth this sho
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Meet the Press | May 31, 2026
Mike Pence says 2nd Trump term ‘departed’ from ‘conservative agenda’: Full interview
Former Vice President Mike Pence tells Meet the Press he believes the “populist right” is pushing President Trump away from the conservative agenda.
https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/mike-pence-says-2nd-trump
-term-departed-from-conservative-agenda-full-interview-264240709752
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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We have no desire for Mike Pence's Conservative Agenda, so that's good news.
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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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Quote:You have no desire to pay income taxes. Nor does Trump:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
We have no desire for Mike Pence's Conservative Agenda, so that's good news.
Was Trump illegally an author of the tax agreement giving him and his family immunity from audits?
May 31, 2026
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/30/us/politics/trump-irs-lawsuit-deal.
html
The New York Times reports:
The tax immunity agreement was more like a rescue operation than a formal legal settlement. It called for the I.R.S. to absolve Mr. Trump and his businesses of all audits they were currently facing — including a yearslong battle with the tax agency that could have cost the president more than $100 million.
That fight stemmed partly from a refund that Mr. Trump had claimed — and collected — starting in about 2010. He justified the refund by declaring huge business losses, including on his tower in Chicago.
Early in Mr. Trump’s first term in the White House, the matter was put on hold, but it came back to life before he left office.
More recently, the company had entered settlement talks with the agency, laying the groundwork for a potential resolution, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.
Now, it seemed, the audit would vanish.
Acting as a cheerleader for the overall plan, including the tax deal, was Mr. Epshteyn, Mr. Trump’s top outside legal adviser who has been close to the president for about a decade, both when he was in and out of office.
Mr. Epshteyn played a significant role in moving the proposals forward, according to multiple people familiar with the matter, discussing the issue with Mr. Trump and circulating drafts of the tax agreement to Trump advisers.
While the origins of the tax maneuver remain somewhat obscure, the Justice Department began to assess the proposal about a week before Judge William’s May 20 deadline, according to people familiar with the matter. One of the questions raised was whether giving the Trumps protection against I.R.S. scrutiny would run afoul of a law barring the tax agency from dropping audits at the direction of the president or his aides.
The tax proposal did not end up appearing in the initial document that declared the lawsuit resolved and described the details of the compensation fund. That document was signed by the Justice Department’s No. 3 official, Stanley Woodward Jr., who had worked with Mr. Blanche on Mr. Trump’s defense team and represented several of the president’s close aides in various investigations.
In a curious twist, the tax addendum was posted, without fanfare, on the Justice Department’s website one day after the terms of the main agreement were released. It was a murky piece of writing, full of long sentences stuffed with subordinate clauses and the Trumpian use of words in capital letters. Only Mr. Blanche, and no one from the I.R.S., signed it.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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