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 33 of 479

6IXSTRINGJACK

Sunday, February 9, 2025 8:27 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Trump and his set act carefree in the face of catastrophe—and they give their supporters permission to do the same.

By Ben Tarnoff | February 7, 2025

More at "More Babies!" https://www.nybooks.com/online/2025/02/07/more-babies-trump/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Here is More:

It is stressful to be young. The world is confusing, the process of fitting oneself into it long and painful. But these difficulties are offset by certain pleasures, chief among them the relative absence of responsibility. If children misbehave they can be punished, but in moral and legal terms they are not accountable for their actions to the same degree as adults are. When people feel nostalgic for their childhoods, even when they had bad childhoods, this is what they miss: to be carefree.

Ben doesn't know about bad childhoods. Ben is talking about the childhoods of kids in gated communities.

You don't know shit about nothing with that silver spoon up your ass you were born with, Ben.

I'm smart enough to know that you can't go back to a time that never existed.

And since the world you thought you were living in 6 months ago never actually existed, you should probably finally become an adult and give up on that yourself.

As somebody who has suffered from chronic insomnia since he was 5 years old, I know how much the first time you face adversity can be rough. Especially when you've sailed through life up until this point without ever being around anyone who's faced it, let alone yourself.

Don't worry. It's about to get worse when you are replaced by A.I. and you get to deliver Amazon packages for $15/hr.

Good luck to ya, Ben.

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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

SECOND

Monday, February 10, 2025 1:22 AM

Donald Trump campaigned, in part, on returning political power to American Christians. “If I get in, you’re going to be using that power at a level that you’ve never used before,” Trump promised a room full of religious news broadcasters in February 2024. “With your help and God’s grace, the great revival of America begins on November 5.” At different campaign events, he vowed both that Christian leaders would have a line “directly into the Oval Office — and me” and that he would create a federal task force to “stop the weaponization of our government against Christians.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/02/catholic-charities-t
rump/681610/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

SECOND

Monday, February 10, 2025 1:31 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Trump and his set act carefree in the face of catastrophe—and they give their supporters permission to do the same.

It is stressful to be young. The world is confusing, the process of fitting oneself into it long and painful. But these difficulties are offset by certain pleasures, chief among them the relative absence of responsibility. If children misbehave they can be punished, but in moral and legal terms they are not accountable for their actions to the same degree as adults are. When people feel nostalgic for their childhoods, even when they had bad childhoods, this is what they miss: to be carefree.

As somebody who has suffered from chronic insomnia since he was 5 years old, I know how much the first time you face adversity can be rough. Especially when you've sailed through life up until this point without ever being around anyone who's faced it, let alone yourself.

6ix, you didn't get to the second paragraph:

The desire to be carefree is integral to the psychic allure of Trumpism. It is pleasurable to disinter one’s deepest resentments, to worship power, to go berserk with rage, to be floridly conspiratorial, to know nothing, to hallucinate Marxists under the bed, to picture the people you hate in tears and in chains. But the unifying principle, the rind that envelops and coheres these delights, is the abdication of adulthood’s defining obligation: to take responsibility for oneself and others. It is precisely this responsibility that Trump and his set refuse. They are carefree in the face of catastrophe. And they give their supporters permission to take the same flight from responsibility—indeed, their political appeal depends on it.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

SIGNYM

Monday, February 10, 2025 1:34 AM

Quote:
DOGE's Targets...
Sunday, Feb 09, 2025 - 06:20 AM

Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

As the second Trump administration nears the end of its first three weeks leading the federal government, Elon Musk’s advisory commission, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has deployed teams within multiple agencies to use technology to cut costs and streamline processes.

Moving at breakneck speed as President Donald Trump shakes up the executive branch, Musk’s engineers and advisers have accessed information technology (IT) systems in several federal departments.

Anonymously sourced reports, not yet independently verified by The Epoch Times, allege DOGE is probing several other agencies, and groups are filing lawsuits to bar Musk’s advisers from accessing those departments’ computer systems.

DOGE’s actions, which Musk says are aimed at reducing government spending and waste, have spurred a backlash from some Democratic lawmakers who describe it as a breach of congressional oversight

If Congresspeople were actually doing their jobs DOGE wouldn't be necessary. Instead, they treated the Federal budget ... our taxpayer dollars ... as their personal and party piggybanks.

Quote:
by an unelected “special government employee.”

Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) cited cybersecurity concerns if DOGE is connecting to federal databases with “their own unvetted commercial servers.”

This week, during a House Oversight Committee on “Reducing Waste in Government,” Rep. James Comer (R-K.Y.) defended Musk’s unprecedented role in the executive branch, saying “real innovation isn’t clean and tidy.”

President Donald Trump defended DOGE’s access to federal data systems on Friday, adding that the Pentagon and the Department of Education are next.

The Pentagon. They haven't passed an audit since audits began.

Quote:
“We’re going to be looking at tremendous amounts of money … being spent on things that bear no relationship to anything and have no value,” Trump said.

“I’m very proud of the job that this group of young people … [are] doing. They’re doing it at my insistence. It would be a lot easier not to do it, but we have to take some of these things apart to find the corruption.”

So far, the DOGE team has accessed IT systems at agencies, including the Treasury Department, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the Department of Energy, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), while a coalition of labor unions has sued to block access at the U.S. Department of Labor.

Additionally, students in California are suing the Department of Education, alleging that DOGE staffers are accessing confidential student data.

The Epoch Times could not independently confirm other agencies—including the U.S. Office of Personnel Management and the U.S. Agency for International Development—where DOGE may have received access to internal systems or databases.
Treasury Department

The Treasury Department confirmed in a Feb. 4 letter to Congress that DOGE staff had been given “read-only” access to the agency’s nearly $6 trillion federal payments system.

According to the letter, Cloud Software Group CEO Tom Krause will work with the agency as a “special government employee” to review the Bureau of the Fiscal Service for operational efficiency and prevent abuse, fraud, and waste. The work will be done in conjunction with career Treasury officials.

On Feb. 5, the Justice Department wrote in a court filing that it would, for now, restrict DOGE’s access to Treasury Department payment systems.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services

DOGE was also granted access to systems and technology at CMS, the agency said on Feb. 5. CMS will be in direct collaboration with DOGE while two senior agency staffers will direct the effort.

CMS, which is within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, oversees the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Medicare is a health insurance plan for older an

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SECOND

Monday, February 10, 2025 1:55 AM

(Almost) everyone is getting torched by the Trump meme coin

....more than 810,000 wallets had lost money on [$Trump].... The total losses are almost certainly much larger: The data does not include transactions that took place on a series of popular crypto marketplaces that started offering the coin only after its price had already surged.

....Whether people made or lost money, it was stellar business for the Trumps. Nearly $100 million in trading fees have flowed to the family and its partners.

Trump and his buddies don't need to care about the price of the coin. They'll make $100 million in fees every month as long as there's plenty of churn among the chumps. Or maybe less. But who cares? It's a lot and it's risk-free. Just sit back and let the Oval Office make you rich.

https://jabberwocking.com/almost-everyone-is-getting-torched-by-the-tr
ump-meme-coin/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

SECOND

Monday, February 10, 2025 3:17 AM

Pushback Begins Against Trump’s Oil Agenda

By Irina Slav | Feb 08, 2025, 6:00 PM CST

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Oil-Prices/Pushback-Begins-Against-Trumps-
Oil-Agenda.html

President Trump declared a national energy emergency as soon as he took office. The declaration had the goal of facilitating growth in energy supply or, as Trump likes to call it “Drill, baby, drill.” Yet this time, Baby doesn’t feel much like drilling. And it’s saying this loud and clear.

West Texas Intermediate has been trading around $70. Trump has insisted that lower oil prices will force Russia to negotiate peace with Zelensky. His special envoy to Russia and Ukraine has an exact price in mind: $45 per barrel. Unfortunately, that price — while certain to cause Russia economic pain — will also cause pain to U.S. shale drillers.

U.S. oil and gas producers will not do the President’s bidding. There is untapped crude in the shale patch, but drillers are going to tap it in a measured way rather than a burst of activity that saw so many go under when debt burdens became unsustainable. This led to that strict financial discipline everyone’s been praising for years now, and that has become the new normal in shale.

With that discipline, cheap oil may turn out to be one promise Trump can’t keep — because it’s not entirely up to him.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

6IXSTRINGJACK

Monday, February 10, 2025 3:41 AM

Keep hoping for a Trump failure and cheerleading for that for the next 4 years and see where that gets you.

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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

SIGNYM

Monday, February 10, 2025 3:51 AM

Since the original article was written so badly .... Where was the editor?
... I'll try to recap ..

Quote:
DOGE's Targets...
Sunday, Feb 09, 2025 - 06:20 AM

Authored by Jacob Burg via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

As the second Trump administration nears the end of its first three weeks leading the federal government, Elon Musk’s advisory commission, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has deployed teams within multiple agencies to use technology to cut costs and streamline processes.

Moving at breakneck speed as President Donald Trump shakes up the executive branch, Musk’s engineers and advisers have accessed information technology (IT) systems in several federal departments.

the Pentagon and
Department of Education are next

So far, the DOGE team has accessed IT systems at agencies, including the
Treasury Department, the
Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the
Department of Energy, and the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

Trump says
the Pentagon and
Department of Education are next

Since a coalition of labor unions has sued to block access at the
U.S. Department of Labor,
that implies that they're on the list, too.

Epoch Times could not independently confirm other agencies like
U.S. Office of Personnel Management and the
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)*

were also on the list.

* Seems like DOGE has already been there.

Seems like most of these invetigations are being done with the cooperation of agency heads.

Don't forget HUD! It's been pointed to as the slush fund for dollar stabilization activities.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

SECOND

Monday, February 10, 2025 4:07 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Keep hoping for a Trump failure and cheerleading for that for the next 4 years and see where that gets you.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

Remember George Bush, the governor of TEXAS? As governor, Bush was a complete asshole and nothing could stop the inevitable fiasco of Iraq, Afghanistan and the Crash of 2008 because Bush is a negligent asshole. Why inevitable? Republicans won't do what needs doing. Trump is no different. Trump will run up the nation debt (my consolation prize is lower taxes from Trump) and Trump will cause something important to fail out of neglect by the White House. Will it be another Crash? I don't know, but Trump is negligent. There will be an avoidable accident that Trump won't avoid.

Stock Market Crash of 2008
Explore the Causes and Events at the Heart of the Financial Crisis
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/economics/09/subprime-market-200
8.asp

The Trump Prayer
Trump supporters be like...
He didn't say that
and if he did, he didn’t mean that
and if he did, you didn't understand it
and if you did, it’s not a big deal
and if it is, others have said and done worse.

https://www.thelifedoctor.org/the-narcissist-s-prayer

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

6IXSTRINGJACK

Monday, February 10, 2025 7:01 AM

Well, your shitshow of a last administration destroyed the country and itself, so what the fuck do you know?

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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon