Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
My advice to any of the Left-Wingnuts and/or TDS sufferers who really want to do something for the Democratic Party is for every one of them to shut the fuck up and keep their feelings to themselves, for at least the next few months.

When you're going around breaking all of the Elite's Toys like a bull in a china shop, you're bound to accidentally break something that's going to create at least a minor crisis localized to a small area... but maybe he breaks something Really Big?

Or even worse yet, maybe nothing gets broken at all and things in this country really do start to improve for everyone for the first time in about 30 years. By that time, the Trump Administration could very well be sitting at or even above 60% approval.

Aaaaaaaaaaaand that's when some really powerful people push this as further evidence of a "clear mandate" that everything they think is what the people want and they start trying to do some things that we shouldn't be agreeing with like putting the church back in public schools or justifying insane ramp-ups of technological survalience on all US Citizens by telling us it's for our own good and they're only using it to look for illegals (*wink, wink... nudge, nudge...)

There are a lot of really fucking bad things that can come of all of this, Second.

I know this.

But not because of Trump. It has little to nothing to do with Trump.

There's a fucking boulder that's rolling right now and it appears to be picking up speed.

This DOES genuinely concern me, and it makes me question a lot of things right now.

I'm actually starting to have a little bit of actual fear surrounding the furvor of it all right now, and I do hope that it normalizes and doesn't continue to pick up speed for the next 4 years straight. I don't know how far down that mountain actually goes. I'm not an avid history buff, but I'm sure that there are much better comparisons to previous fallen empires than the unimaginative and trite muh Nazi ending.

I watch streamers all the time while I'm doing work on my projects and other things. Some of these guys doing it now are in their mid to late 20's and got their starts doing video game lets plays. Now they're talking politics to MILLIONs of subscribers who have been following them since they were all 12 years old.

Some of these opinions they have I like and agree with very much. Some I don't. But then sometimes I hear them say things that I think are a fucking terrible message to tell a couple of million impressionable young men who may have been in this para-social relationship with these streamers for over a decade, and who genuinely look to these Influencers as friends and role models.

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Can you give us some examples?

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Sure. The one that sticks out in my mind right now is a streamer named Asmongold who apparently recently made a transition from streaming games to streaming news from both sides and saying his opinions on everything, sometimes arguing and making fun of people in his chat for TDS. I find it kind of entertaining to have in the background, getting a glimps of the "news" from that lens. I just have YouTube on in the background while I'm working and often I don't bother intervening in the autoplay. He's never somebody I would have searched for or that I go out of my way to watch.

For the most part, I agree with a lot of his takes. But he is pretty young still and talks with the amount of cockiness that would come with being that age and having millions of people following you. There's a certain power you have over people watching you when the only ones that you're conversing with are the ones that are tipping you to get your attention. Imagine having that much power... where even people who hate you are going to give you money so they can shit talk you.

The other day though, healthcare came up

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Can you give us some examples?

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To add to what I put above when you asked this question, I should make it clear that I'm not putting the extremist talk on immigration from Asmongold. He was the person I named and I attribute the Super Mario Bros. "joke" to him. From what I've heard out of him on immigration, I'm fine with it for the most part. If anything, I think his opinion is far too lax on the issue.


But I did just remember something he said specifically the other day that really got under my skin, especially when it was clear from his reaction to what chat was saying to him that they all agreed with him.

He kept saying that it was time for Fat Camps, with the insinuation presumably being that Americans who are overweight should be put into a facility until they're no longer deemed too fat.


WTF, man?


This is the type of shit right here that I'm talking about.


Yeah. Dudes, especially young dudes, are pissed off that they put fat and tranny people into all of their movies and video games and even their mom's Victoria's Secret catalogue, which back pre-internet days was worth its weight in gold.



But that doesn't mean 5 years later after most of those fat influencers have died from heart attacks and strokes and Trump won and RFK got the spot we all wanted him to that I'm going to sit back and be silent while the government starts rounding up fat people.

Fuck. I'm not going to tolerate them forcing anything on somebody who's fat, other than taking a step way back and not getting in the way of somebody shaming them for it. (ie: "Hate" speech laws need to all go away forever).


And you know what I just thought of?

They're probably going to "incentivize" good eating behavior by making living unaffordable for you if you don't lose the weight. I can almost guaranty you that at some point during the next 4 years that being overweight is going to be something that insurance companies through employers are going to be able to charge a hefty additional fee if they don't join programs and/or lose the weight. Which also means that one day we're all going to be regularly weighing ourself in front of somebody at our jobs in order to maintain the lower premiums. We'll probably also have to have doctors send in information recording the weight of anybody in your family that is on your insurance plan.


That's old hat to us smokers. They did this to us ages ago.

And we told you all back then they would eventually come for you and whatever it was that you did to destroy yourself.


RFK could end up being a trojan horse for a lot of policy changes in the name of health that Americans aren't going to approve of when they happen.

We're all in support of taking the Healthcare and Pharmicutical Industries, the Lobbyists, the Beurucrats and the Politicians involved with them to task.

But I doubt very much that a majority of them are going to be so keen to continue supporting what RFK does when they realize that a good portion of being healthy is self-accountability, and how the Government knows full well that most of us aren't very good at that, or impulse control. And maybe we just need a little nudge or two in the right direction to do the right thing... every second of every day.

How many of them are going to still think it was a good idea when DOGE shits out an offshoot called Quitter's Ink, and they're there to SixSigma your personal life for you...

or else...

I know Winston had a problem with being forced to do his daily exercises in front of the TV every single day he did it. It didn't matter that doing these was how he was raised and he had never once heard a single adult speak out against it.

It was only when he was an adult that he finally understood why nobody ever complained about it even though he knew deep down that more than

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Trump open to US troops in Ukraine

The administration of US President Donald Trump is open to the possibility of deploying American troops to Ukraine. However, this would be conditional on the troops guarding rare-earth mineral deposits to which they would gain access, according to NBC News.

According to four American officials, Trump has proposed that Ukraine grant the US 50% rights to rare-earth minerals. The US administration made it clear that it is willing to deploy American troops to protect the minerals if a peace agreement with Russia is reached.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/trump-open-to-us-troops-in-ukrain
e-but-with-one-condition-nbc-news/ar-AA1z6wih

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

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

YOU ARE DOING DONALD TRUMP'S WORK FOR HIM FOR FREE.

Stop it.

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Are you having doubts about Trump? Are you doubting that tariffs can replace the income tax? Ending the income tax gets Trump out of bed in the morning.

Can Trump replace income taxes with tariffs?
https://www.piie.com/blogs/realtime-economics/2024/can-trump-replace-i
ncome-taxes-tariffs

The U.S. government is — this isn't original — best thought of as a giant insurance company with an army. Without income and FICA taxes, the government's insurance component will collapse. But think how much better Trump, Musk and I will be when we are not taxed.

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

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Originally posted by second:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

YOU ARE DOING DONALD TRUMP'S WORK FOR HIM FOR FREE.

Stop it.

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Are you having doubts about Trump?

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I'm having doubts about the world we're currently being presented.

I operate on a 3-digit IQ level. You wouldn't understand. Go back to your shrinking echo chamber and leave this conversation to the adults who've moved beyond a Hop-on-Pop reading level.

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

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Quote:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Quote:

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Originally posted by second:

Quote:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

YOU ARE DOING DONALD TRUMP'S WORK FOR HIM FOR FREE.

Stop it.

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Are you having doubts about Trump?

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I'm having doubts about the world we're currently being presented.

I operate on a 3-digit IQ level. You wouldn't understand. Go back to your shrinking echo chamber and leave this conversation to the adults who've moved beyond a Hop-on-Pop reading level.

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Trump is pressing Ukraine to give the United States half of Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, valued at hundreds of billions of dollars, as payment for past U.S. aid to Ukraine, which has included dozens of HIMARS launchers and thousands of rockets for them.

Trump has hinted that he may withhold future aid unless Ukraine agrees to the mineral extortion. “We have to get something,” Trump said, ignoring the benefits of U.S. support for a democracy battling an authoritarian aggressor.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/02/15/two-hapless-russian-d
rone-operators-rolled-out-in-an-unarmored-truck-the-ukrainians-blasted-them-with-himars-and-drones/

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

I operate on a 3-digit IQ level.

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Why are you being so modest? You are a very stable genius, as is Trump: I’m a ‘very stable genius’

https://www.cnn.com/2018/01/06/politics/donald-trump-white-house-fitne
ss-very-stable-genius/index.html

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

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The attack on USAID portends a war on Medicaid

Feb 16, 2025, 7:00 AM CST

https://www.vox.com/policy/399913/usaid-cuts-medicaid-medicare-welfare
-social-safety-net

The Trump administration’s assault on USAID does tell us something broader about Republicans’ view on government spending — specifically, what they might consider to be wasteful spending: programs that help the poor. And the way they have justified the dismantling of USAID — by categorizing it as rife with fraud and mismanagement — may give us a glimpse into how they will approach domestic welfare programs.

Shutting down USAID will have major consequences for millions of people abroad, and it is a warning about antipoverty programs at home. When programs like food stamps or Medicaid are on the chopping block, chances are Republicans are going to turn to the same argument: These programs are wasteful, so why should we fund them?

USAID today. Medicaid tomorrow.

Throughout the presidential campaign, Trump promised not to cut programs like Medicare and Medicaid, but the red flags were hard to miss. “There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements,” he told CNBC in March of last year.

And that’s exactly how Trump and his allies are framing their potential attacks on Medicaid now. (Unlike USAID's 0.3 percent of total federal spending, Medicaid is nearly 10 percent of the federal budget, making it a more appealing target for the Trump administration if they’re looking to drastically cut spending.) He recently told reporters that he’ll “love and cherish” Medicaid, but added one caveat: “We’re not going to do anything with that,” he said, “unless we can find some abuse or waste.”

When Trump nominated Dr. Mehmet Oz to serve as the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), he said that Oz would “cut waste and fraud within our country’s most expensive government agency.”

“At this point, I am 100% certain that the magnitude of the fraud in federal entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, Disability, etc) exceeds the combined sum of every private scam you’ve ever heard by FAR,” Musk tweeted last week. “It’s not even close.”

With Musk’s plan to cut some $2 trillion in government spending, it’s clear the road to getting even remotely close to that figure goes through entitlement cuts. Like the attack on USAID, Republicans will say they’re simply targeting fraud and abuse.

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

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In Graham Greene’s 1955 novel, The Quiet American, Alden Pyle, a CIA agent, reckons he has all the answers to conflict in colonial era Vietnam. Pyle’s ignorance, arrogance and dangerous scheming, intended to bring peace, result instead in the deaths of many innocents and ultimately his own. In today’s too-real, nonfiction world, Donald Trump is Pyle. Except he’s The Noisy American.

He thinks he’s a great deal-maker. He never stops trumpeting his brilliance. Yet his North Korea “deal of the century” was a fiasco. He handed Afghanistan to the Taliban on a plate. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu runs rings around him. Now Trump-Pyle proposes another rubbish deal – selling out Ukraine. America’s very own surrender monkey is Vladimir Putin’s useful idiot. No matter how officials spin it, Trump’s concessions, made before ceasefire talks with Russia even begin, are calamitous, primarily for Ukraine but also for Europe’s security, the transatlantic alliance, and other vulnerable targets, such as Taiwan. As stated, Trump’s giveaways – accepting the loss of sovereign Ukrainian territory to Russian aggression, denying Nato membership to Kyiv, withholding US security guarantees and troops – are appeasement.

By chatting chummily on the phone for 90 minutes, praising Russia’s “genius” tyrant for his “common sense”, and inviting him to a Saudi summit, Trump rehabilitated a pariah and pulled the rug from under Nato allies. Putin gave nothing back. He thinks he’s winning, on the battlefield, politically and diplomatically. He’s right. Worse, Moscow continues to demand that any lasting deal address “structural issues”. These include Ukraine’s disarmament, non-aligned status, the “denazification” of its leadership, and even its existence as an independent state, which Putin abhors. Russia wants to re-order Europe’s security architecture, shorthand for weakening, dividing and pushing back Nato.

https://attentiontotheunseen.com/2025/02/15/trumps-betrayal-of-ukraine
-has-emboldened-putin-and-pulled-the-rug-from-under-nato-allies/

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

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