REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

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Wednesday, March 8, 2023 7:34 AM

SECOND

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


Tracing the evangelical roots of white nationalism

The seeds of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol were germinating for decades, posits religion scholar Bradley Onishi in “Preparing for War.”

Review by David Conrads, Contributor to the Christian Science Monitor

March 7, 2023

It has been over two years since a violent mob attacked and occupied the United States Capitol in an effort to overturn the 2020 election. While blame has been laid at the feet of then-president Donald Trump and his most ardent supporters, religion scholar Bradley Onishi takes a close look at the historical events and forces that led up to the attack.

In “Preparing for War: The Extremist History of White Christian Nationalism – and What Comes Next,” Onishi examines the history of evangelical Christianity in the U.S. and the movement’s increasing involvement with political extremism since the late 1950s. Examining cultural and political movements that reshaped society, he shows how conservative evangelical Christianity has melded with political extremism to exert an outsize influence on contemporary society. His thorough research, close observation, and clear writing are invaluable in helping to understand the insurrection as well as some of the many puzzling aspects of the Trump presidency.

“January 6 was not an aberration or even some historically bewildering event,” he writes. “It was the logical outcome of the Trump presidency and election defeat but also of the long history of White Christian nationalist rhetoric, organizing, and influence across the United States.”

Why We Wrote This

To fully gauge the dangers posed by white Christian nationalism, a religion scholar and former evangelical shares his insights into the connection between some strands of evangelicalism and political extremism, such as the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Onishi brings an insider’s perspective to his subject. He became a zealous convert to evangelicalism as a teenager in Orange County, California. He later served as a full-time youth minister, before leaving evangelicalism and becoming a scholar of religion (he is currently a professor of religion at the University of San Francisco). In 2018, he melded his scholarly projects with his personal history. His desire was to help people understand one of the most perplexing and contradictory aspects of the Trump presidency.

“How could those who touted the Bible at every turn support a man who had clearly never read it?” he asks. “How could the pastors who called on Bill Clinton to resign for his sexual misconduct support a thrice-married president who paid hush money to a sex worker and gleefully described sexually assaulting women?”

Onishi makes the distinction between white evangelicalism and white Christian nationalism. While the terms are not the same, they are closely linked. Evangelicalism teaches that “the Bible is the errorless Word of God,” which “should be read and followed as literally as possible.” White Christian nationalism goes further, embracing the idea that America was founded as a Christian nation and, as such, is superior to all other nations, and one chosen by God to play a central role in world history. Other foundational components of Christian nationalism are nostalgia for past glory – when white men were most highly privileged – and an apocalyptic view of the nation’s future.

Onishi explains that white Christian nationalism is not so much an established ideology or a cogent theological belief system as it is a marker of cultural identity. And it doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with personal religious practice or identification with a specific denomination. This goes a long way to explaining the proliferation of Christian imagery and symbols at the Jan. 6 insurrection. Among the various religious banners on display, one of the most popular read “Jesus is My Savior – Trump is My President.”

How did things get to this point? Onishi points to the 1960s and the immense transformation of American society that decade ushered in. While many welcomed the achievements of the burgeoning civil rights movement, new freedom for women, and other sweeping changes, others did not.

For many, he writes, “the sixties were the time when numerous serpents tempted Americans away from the bedrock values of faith, family, and freedom and toward a new social order, a sexual revolution, and an abandonment of the nuclear family.”

The John Birch Society, an anticommunist organization steeped in libertarianism and informed by the idea that Christianity and American democracy are inextricably linked, was one of many organizations that flourished as a corrective to the sweeping changes of the 1960s, a counterrevolution held together by Christian identity.

In 1964, Barry Goldwater was able to tap into this reserve of white Christian nationalism and, much like Donald Trump 51 years later, became the unlikely Republican nominee for president. While his campaign against Lyndon Johnson went down in flames, his candidacy gave rise to the New Right, a grassroots coalition of American conservatives. In the late 1970s, the New Right joined forces with televangelist Jerry Falwell’s Religious Right and changed American politics by inspiring tens of millions of people of faith in the South, the Midwest, and the Sunbelt to vote for Ronald Reagan, the Republican presidential nominee, rather than Democrat Jimmy Carter. (Though Carter’s faith was without question, his politics did not fit the Religious Right’s agenda.)

By 1980, the extremism of Goldwater had become the mainstream of the GOP. Thirty-six years later, Onishi explains, when it came to voting for Donald Trump, Christian nationalists had a precedent in prioritizing politics over morals.

“Trump was not an imperfect candidate who somehow managed to garner the votes of White Christians. He was the prototype of the candidate White Christians had been searching for since the early 1960s,” Onishi writes.

As to what the future holds, the author acknowledges that the movement Trump has energized will continue even after Trump himself is out of the public eye. He also looks with apprehension at the continuing migration to the American Redoubt, an area composed of Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and parts of Washington and Oregon, where white Christian nationalists and political extremists find a safe haven and a sense of separatism in an isolated region of the country. He sees the Redoubt Migration as the next step in the evolution of American politics that started with the Sunbelt Migration in the mid-20th century. Only this time, he speculates, the goal is not to take control of a political party, but to prepare for the collapse of the United States and a chance to rebuild a theocratic state.

While this assessment may seem dubious and is certainly debatable, a look back at events of just the past eight years should make anyone hesitate to write off any conclusion as far-fetched. Though not an alarmist, Onishi is unequivocal in his outlook. Asserting that white Christian nationalists have been preparing for war ever since Goldwater lost the 1964 election, he ends his thought-provoking narrative with this warning: “What lies ahead is not a contest for electoral majorities or policy initiatives. It’s a test of democracy’s resilience in the face of an apocalyptic threat.”

https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2023/0307/Tracing-the-eva
ngelical-roots-of-white-nationalism

Download the free book by Bradley Onishi, “Preparing for War” from the mirrors at https://libgen.unblockit.boo/search.php?req=Bradley+Onishi

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, March 10, 2023 5:52 AM

SECOND

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


Helping the poor has been one of the great triumphs of the progressive movement

Author Kevin Drum
Published on March 9, 2023

Matthew Desmond has a very odd op-ed in the New York Times today. His topic is the lack of improvement in poverty despite 50 years of effort:

What accounts for this lack of progress? It cannot be chalked up to how the poor are counted: Different measures spit out the same embarrassing result. When the government began reporting the Supplemental Poverty Measure in 2011, designed to overcome many of the flaws of the Official Poverty Measure, including not accounting for regional differences in costs of living and government benefits, the United States officially gained three million more poor people.

....A fair amount of government aid earmarked for the poor never reaches them. But this does not fully solve the puzzle of why poverty has been so stubbornly persistent, because many of the country’s largest social-welfare programs distribute funds directly to people. Roughly 85 percent of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program budget is dedicated to funding food stamps themselves, and almost 93 percent of Medicaid dollars flow directly to beneficiaries.

Desmond is perplexed that social welfare programs distribute money to the poor but somehow poverty doesn't go down. And that is indeed perplexing.

Or it would be, anyway, if Desmond were using a measure of poverty that accounts for social welfare programs. But he's not. Here's what happens when you do that:



This comes from Columbia University's Center on Poverty and Social Policy, which calculates historical poverty using several different measures. This one is the Supplemental Poverty Measure Desmond mentions, but counting social welfare benefits and then adjusting for inflation. When you do that, you find that poverty has dropped from 19% at the start of the Reagan era to 8% today. Child poverty has dropped even more dramatically.

One of the things that's baffled me for a long time is why liberals are so resistant to the idea that social welfare benefits have helped people. We're the ones who fight for them! Shouldn't we be thrilled to see evidence that they've lifted millions of families out of poverty?

Instead I mostly see complaints about how our "tattered" safety net and our "fragile" benefit structure are being constantly slashed by Republicans. But this isn't true. Our safety net has been steadily improving for many decades, and Republicans—to their chagrin—are routinely unable to shred it the way they'd like to. Partly this is because Democrats fight them and partly it's because aid to the poor is surprisingly popular.



I have issues with the way we handle poverty, though they revolve as much around the complexity and randomness of our programs as they do around the amount we spend. Regardless, there's not much question that programs to help the poor have been one of the great triumphs of the progressive movement over the past half century. Why are we so reluctant to brag about it?

https://jabberwocking.com/helping-the-poor-has-been-one-of-the-great-t
riumphs-of-the-progressive-movement/#comments

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, March 10, 2023 7:37 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
...there's not much question that programs to help the poor have been one of the great triumphs of the progressive movement over the past half century. Why are we so reluctant to brag about it?














But by all means.... Let's give child rapist Zelensky some more billions on top of the $125+ Billion we gave him last year.

Get fucked, Kevin.

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Saturday, March 11, 2023 7:14 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

But by all means.... Let's give child rapist Zelensky some more billions on top of the $125+ Billion we gave him last year.

Get fucked, Kevin.
6ix, the Pentagon squandered $trillions in the 21st Century and has no victories to show for all that money, but you whine about the far smaller amount spent in Ukraine, where an actual enemy of the US, the Russians, are being slaughtered methodically, efficiently, competently. The world is better the more Russian soldiers fall dead in Ukraine. Here is a little story about how incompetent the Pentagon is at winning wars. Too bad the US military can't learn something from Zelensky about how to kill only your enemies, not women and children and toothless old men in Afghanistan and Iraq:

Trump’s Last Defense Secretary Has Regrets — But Not About Jan. 6

by Peter Maass / March 11, 2023 at 05:10AM

When bureaucrats get big promotions, they tend to receive congratulations from their friends, but after Christopher Miller landed the biggest job of his life, his wife and some of his colleagues were horrified.

It was November 9, 2020, the day President Donald Trump fired his secretary of defense, Mark Esper. But just as Miller’s journey to the top is atypical, so too is his obscenity-flecked memoir, because the retired soldier emerges as a scorched-earth critic of the institution he served for more than three decades and presided over for 73 days.

After more than two decades of the forever wars, Miller is pissed off in the way a lot of former soldiers are pissed off — and, I have to say, in the way a lot of former war reporters are pissed off too. It’s hard to have been a participant in those calamities and not feel betrayed in some fashion, as pundits attempt to whitewash the disaster and promotions are announced for officials who masterminded it. Miller’s evolution from Special Forces operator to Trump Cabinet member is a forever wars parable that helps us understand the moral injury festering in our political corpus.

Miller’s 9/11 journey got into literal high gear when he roared into Kandahar in a Toyota pickup with blown-out windows. It was December 2001, he was a 36-year-old major in the 3rd Battalion of the 5th Special Forces Group, and this was his first combat deployment.

Miller didn’t know it at the time, but he was at the cusp of a profound disenchantment with the country’s military and political leaders, a disillusionment he shared with a lot of soldiers, thanks to the deceptions and errors embedded in the wars they fought. Miller is exceptional only in his Cabinet-level end point.

Miller noticed omens of dysfunction in the American war machine. It began, he wrote in his book, with a visit to the airport that U.S. Marines seized outside Kandahar a few days after the Special Forces sped into town in their four-wheel-drive vehicles. Miller and one of his sergeants had to pick up supplies at the airport, and they saw Marines putting up a big tent. The sergeant told Miller, “Sir, it’s time for us to get the fuck out of here.” Miller asked why, and the sergeant replied, “They’re building the PX. It’s time for the Green Berets to leave.”

He meant the military was settling in for the long haul. Sprawling bases would be constructed with Burger King and Pizza Hut outlets, staffed by workers flown in from Nepal, Kenya, and other countries. There would be more than 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan at the peak of President Barack Obama’s surge, and hundreds of billions of dollars spent in the country, yielding decades of full employment for generals and executives in the weapons industry. Miller had a front-row seat at this carnival. “We should have kept it to about 500 people, just let that be the special operations theater,” he told me. In other words, quickly arrange a power-sharing deal between Karzai and the Taliban rather than try to eliminate the Taliban and leave a small number of special operators to find and kill Osama bin Laden and the remnants of Al Qaeda.

I don’t think Miller sensed all this when he saw that tent going up; nobody knew what was going to happen that early in the game. And remember, you can’t trust Beltway memoirs; they’re a racket of myth construction. But locating the exact moment of Miller’s awareness is less important than the fact he eventually recognized, as most of us did, a historic error that he blamed on his leadership. “As soon as we went conventional, that war was lost,” Miller said. “That’s what I’ll take to my grave. As soon as we brought in the Army generals and all their big ideas — war was over at that point.”

The Betrayal

Like many veterans, Miller participated in not just the Afghanistan disaster, but also the one in Iraq. There he had an even stronger sense of betrayal.

As the invasion neared, Miller was responsible for operational planning for his Special Forces battalion, and he put together a blueprint for seizing an airfield southwest of Baghdad as an advance position for the capture of Iraq’s capital. He thought the buildup was a bluff to coerce Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein into giving up the weapons of mass destruction that the Bush administration insisted he possessed (though he did not). In Miller’s telling, it wasn’t until he was geared up in an MH-53 helicopter at night, heading deep into Iraq, that he knew it was on. The future acting defense secretary turned to a soldier next to him and said, “We’re really doing this. I can’t believe we’re fucking doing this.” According to Miller, the soldier replied, “Me neither.”

“Invading a sovereign country is a big deal, you know. We typically don’t do that except in extenuating circumstances. I thought it was all coercive diplomacy. Then when it goes down, you’re like, ‘Damn.’” As he writes in his book, “I had been an active participant in an unjust war. We invaded a sovereign nation, killed and maimed a lot of Iraqis and lost some of the greatest American patriots to ever live — all for a god-damned lie.”

“You can mess up a piece of paperwork and get run out of the Army. But you can lose a damn war and nobody is held accountable.”

If that line came from a pundit, it would be a platitude. But Miller described to me the case of a soldier he knew well who was forced out of the military for not having the paperwork for a machine gun he left in Afghanistan for troops replacing his unit. The soldier was trying to help other soldiers who didn’t have all the weapons they needed. It didn’t matter; he was gone, and Miller couldn’t stop it.

More at https://web.archive.org/web/20230311115111/https://theintercept.com/20
23/03/11/trump-defense-secretary-christopher-miller/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, March 11, 2023 7:43 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Another stupid reply.

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Saturday, March 11, 2023 8:28 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Another stupid reply.
6ix, you won't understand, but one of those videos you included is a carjacking that did NOT occur in the US. I have had a problem with Trumptards all my life. They never learn if the lesson is given nicely. There has to be real and concentrated and prolonged pain to get a Trumptard to change their ways. (I've known people when they were kids that grew up to be Trumptards.) I'd introduce them to a simple concept when they were kids, they would misunderstand or, even worse, be unable to understand what non-Trumptards learn almost instantaneously. What concepts? Things like not smoking, not getting drunk, not stealing, not lying, not being lazy, not being piggish. Then in time the simple concept that the Trumptard should understand, but doesn't, would wreck their lives. The way to teach a Trumptard a new idea is NOT to use praise or reward, but to punish them. Since this is the internet, there is really no way to get a new concept into the brain of a Trumptard.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, March 11, 2023 10:33 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Another stupid reply.
6ix, you won't understand, but one of those videos you included is a carjacking that did NOT occur in the US.


Oh. Nitpick now. Go fuck yourself, Second. If I wanted to, I could have posted 10,000 video compilations of GTA and other smash and grabs all over the country in Democratic ran shitholes, and you know it.

The rest of your post isn't even worth replying to, so I won't bother. We've already been through that bullshit a billion times here.

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Monday, March 13, 2023 8:34 AM

JAYNEZTOWN


Hopefully this gets mirrored on rumble and bitchute

Cramer once again telling persons to go out and buy garbage stocks

maybe I will find a mirror of these clips seen as u tube is known to censor




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Monday, March 13, 2023 9:38 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Yeah. That's awesome. He was telling people to buy Silicon Valley Bank right before the collapse too. And there's videos of him telling people to hold on to Lehman Bros back in the day.

The guy is either an idiot or has no soul.

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Tuesday, March 14, 2023 3:50 PM

SECOND

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


Alone and Exploited, Migrant Children Work Brutal Jobs Across the U.S.

Arriving in record numbers, they’re ending up in dangerous jobs that violate child labor laws — including in factories that make products for well-known brands like Cheetos and Fruit of the Loom.

Nery Cutzal was 13 when he met his sponsor over Facebook Messenger. Once Nery arrived in Florida, he discovered that he owed more than $4,000 and had to find his own place to live. His sponsor sent him threatening text messages and kept a running list of new debts: $140 for filling out H.H.S. paperwork; $240 for clothes from Walmart; $45 for a taco dinner.

“Don’t mess with me,” the sponsor wrote. “You don’t mean anything to me.”

Nery began working until 3 a.m. most nights at a trendy Mexican restaurant near Palm Beach to make the payments. “He said I would be able to go to school and he would take care of me, but it was all lies,” Nery said.

Nery eventually contacted law enforcement, and his sponsor was found guilty last year of smuggling a child into the United States for financial gain. That outcome is rare: In the past decade, federal prosecutors have brought only about 30 cases involving forced labor of unaccompanied minors, according to a Times review of court databases.

Children are ending up in some of the most punishing jobs in the country, a New York Times investigation found. This shadow work force extends across industries in every state, flouting child labor laws that have been in place for nearly a century. Twelve-year-old roofers in Florida and Tennessee. Underage slaughterhouse workers in Delaware, Mississippi and North Carolina. Children sawing planks of wood on overnight shifts in South Dakota.

More at https://nyti.ms/426ntE5

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, March 16, 2023 8:18 AM

SECOND

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


The Architects of the Iraq War: Where Are They Now?

They’re all doing great, thanks for asking.

The U.S. and its allies invaded Iraq 20 years ago in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

We have no idea how many Iraqi deaths there have been. Various estimates range from 151,000 to over a million. While the U.S. ultimately spent at least $3 trillion on the war and the CIA put down $1 billion just to figure out that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, we’ve allocated exactly zero dollars to learn how many Iraqis have died thanks to the US.

How are the Architects of the Iraq War doing? Voltaire said that humanity invented hell to dissuade people from doing wrong when they noticed there didn’t seem to be any consequences for it here on Earth. On this bleak anniversary, you can certainly understand where he was coming from:

1) George W. Bush

Bush is gobbling down huge quantities of money on the speaking circuit, where he charges at least $100,000 for an hour of his thoughts and reflections. He recently condemned “the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq.” Then he said, “I mean, of Ukraine!” and he and his audience all chortled, because you have to admit that’s pretty funny.

“I mean, of Ukraine!” Ha ha ha ha ha, what a scamp.

George Bush bungles speech condemning Putin invasion with Iraq reference



2) Dick Cheney

Vice President Cheney told one of the most blatant lies about Iraq during the buildup to the war. In an August 2002 speech, he claimed that when Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law Hussein Kamel defected in 1995, he revealed that Iraq was trying to make nuclear weapons again. In reality, Kamel had insisted that Iraq had no unconventional weapons of any kind. This was not a big secret: Kamel said it on CNN in an interview that was available to anyone with an internet connection. America’s crack press corps ripped the lid off Cheney’s obvious deceit by completely missing it.

Since leaving office, Cheney has spent his time fishing, endorsing Donald Trump for president in 2016, and not being prosecuted for torture. Also, for a period of time, he had a kind of external mechanical heart that pushed blood through his veins continuously, meaning that he had no heartbeat yet was still alive (?).

More at https://web.archive.org/web/20230315212143/https://theintercept.com/20
23/03/15/iraq-war-where-are-they-now/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, March 18, 2023 5:59 AM

SECOND

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


On the anti-abortion right, which has a stranglehold on the GOP, there are no moderate positions on abortion. Once you’ve staked your political future on the claim that abortion is literally murder, there is no arguing for lenience.

There is nothing currently stopping Republican officials in states where the GOP is in power from enacting the most radical version of their stated agenda: not the courts, not their future political prospects, not voters, not humility in the face of the human body’s complexity, not empathy for the people bound by their laws. Even the direct democracy option is drifting out of reach. Voters have favored abortion rights in every direct ballot initiative that has come up for a vote since Roe was overturned, but Republicans in several states—including Florida—are working to make it harder for residents to get propositions on the ballot.

Republicans have little to gain and a lot to lose (like a GOP primary) from moderating their positions on abortion. That’s why almost every state that has restricted legal abortion since the end of Roe has gone with a full ban, despite the fact that the majority of people in those states disapprove of such bans.

Stargel, the senator who sponsored the “not being mean” 15-week ban in 2022, said at the time that she wanted to propose a stricter ban, but she “knew we could never get that bill passed” because the Florida public was “not there yet.” Less than one year later, with a six-week ban around the corner, it is clear that what was restraining the Florida GOP in 2022 had nothing to do with what the Florida public did or did not want, because nothing in that realm has changed significantly since then. The only two things that distinguish this moment from that one are the absence of a constitutional protection for legal abortion—and the political will to disregard the majority of voters who support it.

More at https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/03/florida-abortion-ban-six-w
eeks.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Saturday, March 18, 2023 7:57 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Alone and Exploited, Migrant Children Work Brutal Jobs Across the U.S.


There's an easy fix for that.

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Saturday, March 18, 2023 7:59 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The Architects of the Iraq War: Where Are They Now?


They're all cheerleading your fuckin' war in Ukraine. Idiot.

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Sunday, March 19, 2023 6:04 AM

SECOND

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


Jimmy Carter lost his 1980 reelection bid against Ronald Reagan thanks in part to the long-running Iranian hostage drama. It's long been suspected that Reagan's team actively tried to persuade Iran not to release the hostages so that Carter wouldn't get a victory bump, but there's never been any firm proof until now: https://jabberwocking.com/reagan-team-tried-to-sabotage-hostage-talks-
before-the-1980-election/

Tom Nichols was unimpressed with the story about Texas governor John Connally's 1980 mission to let the Iranians know they should wait a while before releasing the embassy hostages. But did Reagan know about any of this? We know the hostages were released within minutes after Reagan was sworn in. And we know that arms began flowing from Israel to Iran a few days later, something that could happen only with a US blessing. And we also know that Reagan was perfectly happy to trade arms for hostages later in his presidency during the Iran-Contra scandal.

Given all this, you'd have to be willfully obtuse to continue thinking it unlikely that Reagan—or at least his senior staff—knew what was going on: https://jabberwocking.com/ronald-reagan-and-the-hostages/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, March 19, 2023 9:07 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


lol @ jabberwokeing and Jimmy Carter.

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Sunday, March 19, 2023 10:37 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
lol @ jabberwokeing and Jimmy Carter.
Ronald Reagan promised to give weapons to Iran if Iran would help him win the election against Carter. That was because Reagan was a crook. Nixon did the same thing in Vietnam: If the Vietnamese helped Nixon win, then Nixon would pay them back.

Did Nixon Commit Treason in 1968? What The New LBJ Tapes Reveal.
https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/60446
Quote:
Nixon’s promise of diplomatic backing for Johnson’s post-election peace efforts, coupled with the Republican’s backing away from his advisors’ criticisms of LBJ, seemed to be enough for Johnson. The President didn’t publicly reveal what he knew about the Nixon operatives and South Vietnam.

Nixon, of course, got the better of this arrangement: avoiding a pre-election bombshell that could very well have swung enough votes in a tight election, he narrowly bested Humphrey. The post-election peace talks, meanwhile, unsurprisingly went nowhere: the Thieu regime, fully confident that it would receive a better settlement from the presumably hard-line anti-communist Nixon, proved no more willing to negotiate after November 5 than before the election. And so, in the end, no one was held accountable for actions that Johnson had labeled “treason.”

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, March 19, 2023 11:07 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
lol @ jabberwokeing and Jimmy Carter.
Ronald Reagan promised to give weapons to Iran if Iran would help him win the election against Carter. That was because Reagan was a crook. Nixon did the same thing in Vietnam: If the Vietnamese helped Nixon win, then Nixon would pay them back.


Oh yeah?

What's Biden* doing right now.

lol


You morons made a big fucking deal about a phone conversation Trump had with child rapist Zelensky back in the day, but Trump didn't give track-suit Z $125 BILLION and counting or have a son on his energy board making $60k per month while his only contribution to Ukraine was doing all the cocaine in the country so the citizens couldn't buy any.

You are not even worth having a conversation with.

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

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Sunday, March 19, 2023 11:09 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK



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Sunday, March 19, 2023 11:53 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

Oh yeah?

What's Biden* doing right now.

lol


You morons made a big fucking deal about a phone conversation Trump had with child rapist Zelensky back in the day, but Trump didn't give track-suit Z $125 BILLION and counting or have a son on his energy board making $60k per month while his only contribution to Ukraine was doing all the cocaine in the country so the citizens couldn't buy any.

You are not even worth having a conversation with.
1) Reagan promises to secretly (remember, it's a big secret) give weapons to America's enemy, Iran. Iran promises to elect Reagan. By the way, Iran is still America's enemy.

2) Trump promises to withhold weapons from friendly Ukraine unless Ukraine helps elect Trump. Trump immediately got in trouble over this because the people doing the translation between Ukrainian and English were loyal to the USA. They were not allowed by law to work for electing Trump. For some reason, Trump thinks government employees are supposed to break the law to reelect Trump.

3) Biden promises weapons to Ukraine so that Russia can't conquer Ukraine. Russia threatens to nuke the USA if Biden sends weapons to Ukraine. By the way, Russia has been threatening to nuke the USA since Russia got nukes, resulting in an arms race costing $ trillions.

6ix, can you tell the difference between 1, 2, and 3?

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, March 19, 2023 2:56 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


There's no difference between 1, 2 and 3. They're all bullshit stories.



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

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Sunday, March 19, 2023 4:01 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
There's no difference between 1, 2 and 3. They're all bullshit stories.
6ix, your years of drinking have misaligned your brain. Other goofy things you wrote today:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

It all started when the Government FORCED diversity hiring by giving them money to hire women and minorities in positions of power and "Human Resources" departments grew unchecked. Didn't matter if they earned it or not. Most women are incapable of handling a position of power. Not all, but most. It's not in the genes.

If minority men are educated and/or have experience, they're capable of it... but those aren't the people that are getting the jobs. Everything falls to shit when you're just mindlessly filling quotas.
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=65547&mid=1
171051#1171051
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:

My family is just too good at making due with bad situations... So I know where I got it from and how easy it was for me to allow my house to fall around me back in my drinking days.
http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=65350&mid=1
171035#1171035

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, March 19, 2023 7:03 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK




Have fun at work tomorrow, honey.



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

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Sunday, March 19, 2023 7:34 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Oh yeah?
What's Biden* doing right now.
lol
You morons made a big fucking deal about a phone conversation Trump had with child rapist Zelensky back in the day, but Trump didn't give track-suit Z $125 BILLION and counting or have a son on his energy board making $60k per month while his only contribution to Ukraine was doing all the cocaine in the country so the citizens couldn't buy any.
You are not even worth having a conversation with.

SECOND 1) Reagan promises to secretly (remember, it's a big secret) give weapons to America's enemy, Iran. Iran promises to elect Reagan.
Hahahaha!!! Iran promised to hang on to the hostages and make Carter look stupid. Iran couldn't POSSIBLY "elect" Reagan.

Quote:
2) Trump promises to withhold weapons from friendly Ukraine unless Ukraine helps elect Trump.
same problem. HOW??

Quote:
3) Biden promises weapons to Ukraine so that Russia can't conquer Ukraine. BIDEN threatens to withhold $$ from Kiev unless they shut down the investigation into Burisma (from which BTW his son made millions). It's on tape.



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


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Wednesday, March 29, 2023 7:05 AM

SECOND

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


Donald Trump: Saboteur in Chief
When you want to discredit government itself, obliviousness and ineptitude are their own rewards.

December 6, 2018 issue
by Fintan O’Toole

Writing about her friend the famously unpleasant Evelyn Waugh, Frances Donaldson reflected that

the weakness in attributing any particular quality to Evelyn is that he could not allow anyone to dictate his attitude or virtues to him. Consequently, if he was accused of some quality usually regarded as contemptible, where other men would be aroused to shame or hypocrisy, he studied it, polished up his performance, and, treating it as both normal and admirable, made it his own…. Consequently, it was never any good looking straight at him to learn the truth about him.

Donald Trump is not often compared to a great English novelist, and the word “studied” does not apply—he is all instinct. But his instincts lead him in precisely the same direction. He disorients us by wearing his most contemptible qualities as if they were crown jewels, by brandishing as trophies what others would conceal as shameful secrets. He uses his dirty linen as a cloth with which to polish up his performance.

Thus, on the evening of October 24, the day it was discovered that explosive devices had been mailed to several leading Democrats, Trump, at a rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin, mouthed the expected platitudes about coming together in “peace and harmony.” Any politician of the kind we are used to would have left it at that, keeping a straight face and willing his audience to forget his own hate-mongering. But Trump did not leave it at that. He tickled his fans with a teasing acknowledgment that this emollient rhetoric was unreal and that stirring up hatred was, and would remain, his essential effect: “By the way, do you see how nice I’m behaving tonight? Have you ever seen this?” The message was not subtle: I’m adjusting my act a little tonight but don’t worry, normal service will resume shortly.

Or, while any other politician accused of breaching electoral law to cover up a sexual liaison with a porn star would try to avoid the subject, Trump feeds the story by calling Stormy Daniels “Horseface” on Twitter. Or, while any conventional party leader would want to erase from the public memory an incident in which one of his candidates (Greg Gianforte) violently assaulted a reporter (Ben Jacobs) for asking him a question, Trump returned to it a year and a half later to propel it back into the headlines just as the murder of another journalist (Jamal Khashoggi) was on everyone’s mind. Or, while any other rash Tweeter might at least privately regret tweeting that the women demonstrating against the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court were “paid professionals,” Trump circled back to simultaneously retreat and up the ante: “The paid D.C. protesters are now ready to REALLY protest because they haven’t gotten their checks—in other words, they weren’t paid!”

And so on. When Guy Debord wrote in 1967 that “by means of the spectacle the ruling order discourses endlessly upon itself in an uninterrupted monologue of self-praise,” he can hardly have imagined that his insight would be so literally embodied or that an American president’s self-praise would take a form that, in conventional politics, would be self-sabotage.

Most of us are conditioned to regard these incidents as mere proof of Trump’s inability to control his impulses. But his urges are powerfully honed by decades of collusion with the scandal-mongers and gossip columnists who made him famous and helped him to create his brand. The outbursts and asides establish and maintain his alpha-male reputation in the eyes of his fans (though they might not quite put it like this) by not allowing anyone to “dictate his attitude or virtues to him.” Trump’s flaunting of his own most shameful qualities deflects the damage that any revelation can do to him. When he displays his vices so openly, the drama of revelation leads only to a shrug of the shoulders: tell us something we didn’t know. His outbursts normalize the outrageous—habit, as Samuel Beckett has it, is a great deadener. Most subtly but most effectively, they play havoc with one of the things we think we know about politics: the game of distraction.

We all know that people in power deploy distraction as a professional skill, much as magicians do. We are used to it. In every act of political communication, “Look at this” is always the explicit obverse of an implicit “Don’t look at that.” But Trump confounds us by using as distractions the very things that other politicians want to distract us from. In democracy as we think we have known it, the art of governance is, in part, the skill with which our attention is diverted from the sordid, the shameful, the thuggish. Yet these same qualities are the gaudiest floats in Trump’s daily parade of grotesqueries. This is his strange, and in its own way brilliant, reversal: instead of distracting us from the lurid and the sensational, Trump is using them to distract us from the slow, boring, apparently mundane but deeply insidious sabotaging of government. He is the blaring noise that drowns out the low signal of subversion.

There is, surely, a reason why books that give us Trump in all his outlandish tawdriness—like Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury and Bob Woodward’s Fear: Trump in the White House—cannot, however appalling their accounts may be, do him any harm. They are exercises in “looking straight at him to learn the truth about him,” an act that seems entirely right by any traditional political and journalistic standard but that misses the specificity of Trump’s performance. If you look straight at such a glaring object, you are blinded.

Michael Lewis’s The Fifth Risk is a much shorter, simpler book, with no great drama and no real claims to be comprehensive or definitive. But it does something both brave and highly intelligent: it looks at Trump not straight but crooked. He is hardly in the book at all and yet it tells us more than Wolff or Woodward about the long-term damage he is doing. For while they give us an aberrant buffoon whose incompetence must surely doom him, allowing the normal business of government to resume, Lewis points toward a much deeper assault on government itself.

Lewis is (justly) a nonfiction star, a weaver of propulsive, character-driven narratives in which people, money, and technology are thrown into a dizzying spin. Moneyball and The Big Short have been made into gripping movies. Michelle and Barack Obama have acquired the rights to The Fifth Risk for a possible Netflix series, but it is hard to imagine that they faced much competition from more typical movie producers. The pitch would be the toughest since The Producers. “So Trump’s in this, right?” “Well, he makes a cameo appearance at the start. But we’ve got John MacWilliams who used to work for the Department of Energy and Catherine Woteki who used to be chief scientist at the Department of Agriculture and Kathy Sullivan who was head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) at the Department of Commerce and D.J. Patil who was Obama’s chief data scientist.” “Never heard of them. And what is this fifth risk anyway?” “We find out in the big reveal at the end of the first act: it’s ‘project management.’”

The Fifth Risk is a passionate, even earnest, book about people who have worked as public servants for the federal government and the things they worry about. But it is also a challenge to think about not who Trump is but what he is doing, to see how, in some important respects, the phrase “the Trump administration” is an oxymoron. His project is not to administer the government of the United States. It is to bring it into disrepute.

In October 1987 Ronald Reagan sprayed his folksy charm over an old antigovernment joke: “You know, it’s said that the ten most frightening words in the English language are: ‘Hello, I’m from the government, and I’m here to help.’” Reagan was speaking to small-business owners likely to be receptive to the idea that even the most well-intentioned government agencies do nothing but get in the way. There was always an element of hypocrisy in this—Republican politicians have gone on deploying the power of federal patronage, and their supporters have never been allergic to taxpayer dollars. Republican presidents thus continued, even as they starved some parts of the federal government, to have an interest in actually running it.

The joke, though, was always likely to become a serious proposition sooner or later. If you keep saying that government is not the solution but the problem, that “Washington” as a generic term for all the institutions that manage the public realm is just a swamp to be drained, you will end up wanting to destroy it. And if this is what you want to do, then the aspects of Trump that seem most like political weaknesses—his ignorance and his incompetence—are not weaknesses at all. They are powerful weapons of administrative destruction. The best way to undermine government is to make it as stupid and as inept as your rhetoric has always claimed it to be.

The American system is uniquely vulnerable to this maneuver. Americans tend to think they have the best system of government in the world. Yet from the outside, one aspect of it seems insane. Most functioning democracies have a permanent civil service that is legally obliged to be politically neutral. It takes orders from elected politicians but is protected from subversion by protocols of parliamentary accountability and the difficulty of firing its members. In the US, there is of course a vast permanent public service of two million employees. But the top layers of each department and institution are made up of four thousand presidential appointees. Not only is there no continuity of management, but chaos is easy to create. All an incoming president needs to do is appoint people to these agencies who should not be allowed anywhere near them—or indeed appoint no one at all. There is in the US system an opportunity to abuse power by simply declining to use it.

According to Lewis, in August 2016 Trump was enraged to discover that the head of his transition team, then New Jersey governor Chris Christie, had raised several million dollars to meet the campaign’s legal obligations to start planning to take over the government after the presidential election. He yelled at Christie: “You’re stealing my money! You’re stealing my fucking money! What is this?… Fuck the law. I don’t give a fuck about the law. I want my fucking money.” He was dissuaded from shutting down the transition team only by Steve Bannon’s argument that the media would take this as evidence that he had abandoned hopes of winning in November. But Trump had his revenge. At the instigation of Jared Kushner, whose animosity toward Christie was seated in the latter’s successful prosecution of his father, Charles Kushner, for illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering, Trump fired Christie and his entire team almost immediately after the election and effectively shredded all the work they had done to find suitable appointees.

As of October 22, 2018, according to a tracker maintained by The Washington Post and the Partnership for Public Service, almost two years after his election, Trump has failed even to put forward a nominee for 139 of the top 704 positions requiring confirmation by the Senate. The Department of Agriculture (USDA), for example, has no undersecretary for food, nutrition, and consumer services. This is a part of the department that managed a budget of $112.2 billion in 2015.

This undersecretary administers a system bigger than many countries. He or she runs the food stamp program that provides a vital lifeline to millions of Americans. The undersecretary is supposed to supervise fifteen federal nutrition assistance programs, including school meals and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, and to develop policies to end hunger and stop kids from being raised on junk food. While failing to fill the post, Trump did manage to fill the lower echelons of the USDA with patronage appointees, described by Lewis as “a long-haul truck driver, a clerk at AT&T, a gas- company meter-reader, a country-club cabana attendant, a Republican National Committee intern, and the owner of a scented-candle company.”

But who knows or cares about a nonexistent undersecretary for food, nutrition, and consumer services? It’s a boring question about a quiet void. When Trump makes sure that we have an outrage a day to feed on, who has time to think about the nonmanagement of food stamps or school meals? As it happens, Lewis does, and he talks extensively to the last holder of the office, Kevin Concannon. He held the position from 2009 until January 2017, and had “spent the better part of a trillion dollars feeding people with taxpayer money while somehow remaining virtually anonymous.” Before that, he ran successively the human services departments of the states of Iowa, Maine, and Oregon.

The norm under both Republican and Democratic administrations is that the incoming president’s appointee to this job, usually a very experienced administrator who, like Concannon, had done a similar job at the state level, would begin detailed briefings with the incumbent almost immediately after the election. Concannon prepared extensively for the transition. He had, for example, reduced the rate of fraud in the food stamp program to an all-time low—something Republicans, who like to go on about fraud, might at least want to learn about. By the time he left office, no one from Team Trump had spoken to him or to any of his subordinates, ever. He waited and waited but nobody came. Two years on, no one has yet arrived to take his place.

What’s going on here is easily enfolded within the terms that the big narratives of the Trump presidency offer us: chaos, ignorance, incompetence. The terms are not inapt, but they are radically insufficient. They demand modifiers. In the entire nexus of right-wing politics and business interests around Trump, deliberate chaos, willful ignorance, and strategic incompetence can be embraced as virtues. If you despise the food stamp program as a disincentive to the shiftless poor to buck up and take responsibility for themselves, if you make your profits from supplying junk food for school meals fed to 30 million American children, if you think that ensuring that pregnant women and new mothers get proper nutrition is socialist tyranny, then the easiest thing to do is nothing. Avoid briefings so you don’t have to know what these programs do and why they do it. Let the knowledge and experience embodied in people like Concannon just vanish into thin air. Leave vacuums of leadership, authority, and accountability that will, with any luck, lead to drift and demoralization. Let public agencies rot on the vine and then point to the rottenness as proof that Big Government doesn’t work.

It helps that the US federal government is astonishingly bad at letting people know about the good things it does. Lewis talks to Lillian Salerno, who ran the Rural Development division of the USDA, including a $220 billion bank that makes loans to needy communities and individuals in small-town and agricultural America—the places that voted most heavily for Trump. Before taking public office, she developed, in response to the AIDS crisis, the first retractable needles in a manufacturing company she started near Dallas. She did so with a business loan from a local bank. She had no idea that the bank was merely the conduit for the real source of the money—the very federal agency she ended up running in the Obama years. She recalls making similar loans while in that job: “In the red southern states the mayor sometimes would say, ‘Can you not mention that the government gave this?’”

Even the titles of departments are bushels specially made for hiding lights under. The Department of Agriculture is mostly not concerned with agriculture—70 percent of its budget goes to the programs Concannon used to run, which are essentially social welfare services. The Department of Energy is not primarily in the energy business—half its budget goes toward maintaining the US nuclear arsenal and protecting the public from nuclear threats and another quarter toward, in Lewis’s colorful description, “cleaning up all the unholy world-historic mess left behind by the manufacture of nuclear weapons.” The Department of Commerce has almost nothing to do with promoting businesses. It gathers data (including the census), sets material and technological standards—and predicts the weather. More than half of its budget goes to NOAA, which in turn runs the National Weather Service.

Here we come to another way of wrecking government. Alongside malign neglect, Trump has a second option: appoint the worst possible person. Trump’s pattern of appointing to the top layers of government people who were openly antagonistic to the very departments they would run—Wilbur Ross, Betsy DeVos, Scott Pruitt, Ben Carson, and Rick Perry among them—was obvious enough. But arguably of even greater import was his approach to the appointment of the people who actually run things, the low-profile technocrats and bureaucrats crucial to a competent administration.

According to the criteria drawn up by Mitt Romney’s team for the transition he hoped would take place in 2012, the head of NOAA should have a “strong scientific background in either oceans or climate,” as well as extensive management experience, preferably in NOAA or another government agency. This ought to be a given, since the agency’s 11,000 employees are primarily engaged in scientific work. Hence George W. Bush appointed Conrad Lautenbacher, who had been the CEO of the Consortium for Oceanographic Research and Education and deputy chief of naval operations in the US Navy. Barack Obama appointed first Jane Lubchenco, professor of marine biology at Oregon State University and president of both the International Council for Science and the Ecological Society of America; and then Kathryn Sullivan, previously NOAA’s chief scientist, an assistant secretary of the Department of Commerce, and, incidentally, an astronaut and the first American woman to walk in space.

Who could replace Sullivan? According to Lewis, a former Bush administration adviser whom he does not name but who had worked at the Commerce Department for eight years, was asked by the White House to provide an answer. This man was well aware that Trump would not want a leading climate scientist—constructed ignorance of climate change being a core presidential principle. But he still reckoned that the appointee would be an experienced scientist: “If you don’t believe in climate change, you at least want to understand the climate.” He drew up a list of six “qualified Republicans, inoffensive to Trump.” Emphatically not on it was Barry Myers, who has no scientific or public service credentials. He is the CEO of AccuWeather, a private company that makes its money by taking the weather data created at great public expense by NOAA’s National Weather Service, marketing it through apps, a website, and a TV network, and tailoring it for private clients like newspapers, ski resorts, and home improvement stores.

Myers managed to define AccuWeather, in reality parasitic on the government, as a private sector competitor of the government, and therefore insisted that the National Weather Service not be allowed to provide citizens with the information they pay for through their taxes: “The government should get out of the forecasting business.” He argued that the NWS was like the Post Office, while AccuWeather was FedEx: “It was,” he told a congressional hearing in 2013, “like the Post Office and Federal Express, except it would be like the Post Office offering to carry every letter without postage, and every package for free.” Myers donated to Rick Santorum, who in turn introduced a bill in the Senate in 2005 that would have forced the NWS to issue forecasts only through “data portals designed for volume access by commercial providers” (like, of course, AccuWeather) and would have effectively banned it from issuing any public information except immediate severe storm warnings.

Making Myers head of NOAA would therefore be, to use his own analogy, like putting the CEO of FedEx in charge of the Post Office, with the power to decide that it should cease to provide any services that compete with private courier companies. (Though to make the analogy complete, FedEx would already have free use of the Post Office’s trucks and distribution systems.) In October 2017, Trump nominated Myers as head of NOAA, a nomination quickly confirmed along party lines in committee but still awaiting Senate approval.

Lewis is at his vivid best in teasing out the implications of this, for it is a story in which a little movie-style melodrama is entirely justified. He points out that Myers has spent much of his career trying to make the NWS look bad. Why else would people pay for his service when the government provides the same information for free? But now he will acquire the power to actually make it bad, to limit its investment in refining and communicating its forecasts:

The dystopic endgame is not difficult to predict: the day you get only the weather forecast you pay for. A private company will become better than the Weather Service at knowing where a hurricane will make landfall: What will it do with that information? Tell the public or trade it inside a hedge fund? You know what Hurricane Harvey is going to do to Houston before Houston knows: Do you help Houston? Or do you find clever ways to make money off Houston’s destruction?

We know what Donald Trump the mogul would have done, and in the light of that knowledge it is not surprising that he would want to steal the weather. But even to say this is, of course, to be distracted, to move from the mundane business of who controls food stamps and weather forecasts back into the appallingly entertaining psychodrama with which he keeps us transfixed. Old habits die hard, and it is very hard to shake off the habitual assumption that every administration, beneath the surface, has a basic interest in being able to show with some credibility that it is governing well. We imagine that those in power at least want to convey the impression that they know what they are doing and that they do it capably. Neither of these assumptions applies to Trump. When you want to discredit government itself, obliviousness and ineptitude are their own rewards. In drawing attention to what public service is and how it is being abused, Michael Lewis has himself done the public a considerable service.

https://web.archive.org/web/20220814214454/https://www.nybooks.com/art
icles/2018/12/06/trump-saboteur-in-chief/

Download a free copy of Michael Lewis’s The Fifth Risk from the mirrors at https://libgen.unblockit.boo/search.php?req=Michael+Lewis+The+Fifth+Ri
sk

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, March 29, 2023 10:31 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The joke, though, was always likely to become a serious proposition sooner or later. If you keep saying that government is not the solution but the problem, that “Washington” as a generic term for all the institutions that manage the public realm is just a swamp to be drained, you will end up wanting to destroy it. And if this is what you want to do, then the aspects of Trump that seem most like political weaknesses—his ignorance and his incompetence—are not weaknesses at all. They are powerful weapons of administrative destruction. The best way to undermine government is to make it as stupid and as inept as your rhetoric has always claimed it to be.

The American system is uniquely vulnerable to this maneuver. Americans tend to think they have the best system of government in the world. Yet from the outside, one aspect of it seems insane. Most functioning democracies have a permanent civil service that is legally obliged to be politically neutral. It takes orders from elected politicians but is protected from subversion by protocols of parliamentary accountability and the difficulty of firing its members. In the US, there is of course a vast permanent public service of two million employees. But the top layers of each department and institution are made up of four thousand presidential appointees. Not only is there no continuity of management, but chaos is easy to create. All an incoming president needs to do is appoint people to these agencies who should not be allowed anywhere near them—or indeed appoint no one at all. There is in the US system an opportunity to abuse power by simply declining to use it.




President Biden’s “A-Team” turnover is 45% as of March 2, 2023.
https://www.brookings.edu/research/tracking-turnover-in-the-biden-admi
nistration/

Don't get me started on his current idiot press secretary.

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

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Tuesday, April 4, 2023 6:24 AM

SECOND

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


Understanding the Red State Death Trip

Last Friday the Medicare trustees released their latest report on the system’s finances, and it contained some unexpected good news: Expenditures are running below projections, and the Hospital Insurance Trust Fund won’t be exhausted as soon as previously predicted. https://www.cms.gov/oact/tr/2023

But one important reason for this financial improvement was grisly: Covid killed a substantial number of Medicare beneficiaries. And the victims were disproportionately seniors already suffering from severe — and expensive — health problems. “As a result, the surviving population had spending that was lower than average.” https://www.cms.gov/oact/tr/2023#page=7

Now, Covid killed a lot of people around the world, so wasn’t this just an act of God? Not exactly. You see, America experienced a bigger decline in life expectancy when Covid struck than any other wealthy country. Furthermore, while life expectancy recovered in many countries in 2021, here it continued to fall. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01450-3

And America’s dismal Covid performance was part of a larger story. I don’t know how many Americans are aware that over the past four decades, our life expectancy has been lagging ever further that of other advanced nations — even nations whose economic performance has been poor by conventional measures. Italy, for example, has experienced a generation of economic stagnation, with basically no growth in real G.D.P. per capita since 2000, compared with a 29 percent rise here. Yet Italians can expect to live about five years longer than Americans, a gap that has widened even as the Italian economy flounders.


https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=127rX

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=127s0

What explains the American way of death? A large part of the answer seems to be political.

One important clue is that the problem of premature death isn’t evenly distributed across the country. Life expectancy is hugely unequal across U.S. regions, with major coastal cities not looking much worse than Europe but the South and the eastern heartland doing far worse.
https://americaninequality.substack.com/p/life-expectancy-and-inequali
ty

But wasn’t it always thus? No. Geographic health disparities have surged in recent decades. According to the U.S. mortality database, as recently as 1990, Ohio had slightly higher life expectancy than New York. Since then, New York’s life expectancy has risen rapidly, nearly converging with that of other rich countries, while Ohio’s has hardly risen at all and is now four years less than New York’s.

There has been considerable research into the causes of these growing disparities. A 2021 paper published in The Journal of Economic Perspectives examined various possible causes, like the increasing concentration of highly educated Americans (who tend to be healthier than those with less education) in states that are already highly educated and the widening per capita income gaps among states. The authors found that these factors can’t explain more than a small fraction of the growing mortality gap.

Instead, they argued, the best explanation lay in policy: “The most promising explanation for our findings involve efforts by high-income states to adopt specific health-improving policies and behaviors since at least the early 1990s. Over time, these efforts reduced mortality in high-income states more rapidly than in low-income states, leading to widening spatial disparities in health.”
https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/jep.35.4.123#page=4

That sounds right. But did high-income states adopt health-improving policies because they were rich and could afford to? Or was it because in 21st-century America, high-income states tend to be politically progressive and politics, rather than money per se, account for the difference?

There is, in fact, a strong correlation between how much a state’s life expectancy rose from 1990 to 2019 and its political lean, as measured by Joe Biden’s margin over Donald Trump in the 2020 election — a correlation slightly stronger, by my estimates, than the correlation with income.
https://twitter.com/paulkrugman/status/1642568409115156481

There are several reasons to believe that America’s death trip is largely political rather than economic. One is the comparison with European nations, which have had much better health trends even when, as in Italy, their economies have performed badly.

Another is the fact that some of the poorest states in America, with the lowest life expectancy, are still refusing to expand Medicaid, even though the federal government would cover the bulk of the cost (and the failure to expand Medicaid is killing many hospitals). This suggests that they’re failing to improve health because they don’t want to, not because they can’t afford to.

Finally, since Covid struck, residents of Republican-leaning counties have been far less likely to get vaccinated and far more likely to die of it than residents of Democratic-leaning counties — even though vaccines are free.

All of this seems relevant to our current era of culture war, with many Republican politicians praising rural and red-state values while denigrating those of coastal elites. Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, for example, claims that although he grew up around Tampa Bay, he’s culturally a product of western Pennsylvania and northeastern Ohio. It’s worth noting, then, that the culture these politicians want all of America to emulate seems to have a problem with one of society’s most important functions: keeping people from dying early.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/03/opinion/red-state-life-expectancy-d
eath.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, April 4, 2023 7:27 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Lots of fake news right there.

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

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Tuesday, April 4, 2023 7:52 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Lots of fake news right there.
The life expectancy for Haiti in 2022 was 64.70 years. Can you survive that long, 6ix? The Trumptards I know don't live as long as a Haitian. It is more than a little odd that the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere has increased life expectancy while at the very same time in the richest country, the Republicans have decreased their life expectancy.

https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/HTI/haiti/life-expectancy

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, April 7, 2023 9:01 AM

SECOND

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


Los Angeles Times reported about Justice Thomas’ gifts 20 years ago. After that he stopped disclosing them

Thomas refused to comment on the article, but it had an impact: Thomas appears to have continued accepting free trips from his wealthy friend. But he stopped disclosing them.

https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2023-04-06/the-times-reported-a
bout-justice-thomas-gifts-20-years-ago-after-he-just-stopped-disclosing-them

That's our Clarence! When you get caught with your hand in the cookie jar, don't pull out your hand and apologize. Instead, do a better job of making sure the plebs can't catch you.

Supreme Court justices sure do live in a weird, lawless netherworld where they can do anything they want. That's sort of ironic since they're folks who make up the law for the rest of us.

Clarence Thomas and the Billionaire
https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-scotus-undisclosed-
luxury-travel-gifts-crow

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, April 7, 2023 10:32 AM

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


The IRS on Thursday released a plan for the nearly $80 billion in agency funding enacted through the Inflation Reduction Act in August — including expected boosts for customer service, technology and enforcement.

"We will increase capacity and expertise
for enforcement to better address high-dollar
noncompliance among complex filers."

"Effective enforcement: Reduce the gap
between taxes owed and paid"

"Earlier contacts as appropriate will also
improve the effectiveness of overall IRS
compliance actions by focusing enforcement
efforts on high-priority issues and cases with
significant evidence of noncompliance."

"Indicators of success
Decreased repeat noncompliance rates
Decreased enforcement contact with the IRS for compliant taxpayers"

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p3744.pdf

Beware, Donald Trump! The IRS will be chasing you to the grave and beyond to get paid the $billions you owed for decades.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, April 7, 2023 10:38 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Trump has paid his taxes.

These agents aren't going after the rich and powerful. They're going after you.

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

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Friday, April 7, 2023 6:24 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Trump has paid his taxes.

These agents aren't going after the rich and powerful. They're going after you.
I have never been audited. Not because I'm honest but because the IRS can't do it. My taxes are one-tenth as complicated as Trump's, but there are a million ways to cheat when you own the company. I don't go that way, but Trump does. Every Trumptard I know that got audited also got into trouble with the IRS because they all cheat. The Trumptards actually believe all taxation is theft so they conclude that cheating is admirable.

Trump posted a massive $4.8 million adjusted loss in 2020, which alone wiped out his federal income tax obligation. Trump paid $0 in federal income taxes in 2020.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/30/politics/donald-trump-tax-returns-relea
sed/index.html

Trump is a crook. So are his voters.

If you look at his 2020 returns, Trump wants a refund of $5,468,593. Just that request ought to be enough to bar Trump from being President. But it gets better. He claims he overpaid by $13,468,593. What a bullshit artist and con man Trump is.
https://s3.amazonaws.com/pdfs.taxnotes.com/2022/Trump_2020_1040.pdf

See all tax returns at https://www.taxnotes.com/presidential-tax-returns

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Friday, April 7, 2023 6:33 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Everybody gets audited.

You don't have a business.

I don't debate with liars.

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

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Tuesday, April 11, 2023 7:35 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Everybody gets audited.

You don't have a business.

I don't debate with liars.
You (or your cheating Trumptard relatives in their crappy little businesses where the main source of profit is price-gouging customers) must have done something obviously crooked, which is why you got audited. People who are honest or at least competent at appearing honest while cheating don't get audited. I understand why Trumptards are paranoid about the IRS. Trumptards don't pay what they owe and don't do as they are supposed to, then lie to cover up, which is why their lives are full of unnecessary drama.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, April 11, 2023 7:36 AM

SECOND

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


"Kennan: A Life Between Worlds," by Frank Costigliola (2023)
Reviewed by Terry W. Hartle
April 10, 2023

In the history of American foreign policy, few individuals have had the powerful and sustained impact of George F. Kennan. From the 1930s, when he helped open the first U.S. Embassy in the Soviet Union, until after the Soviet government collapsed some 60 years later, Kennan was the United States’ most influential analyst of Russia and its intentions. A new biography by Frank Costigliola, “Kennan: A Life Between Worlds,” offers a penetrating assessment of the accomplishments and character of this seminal figure.

As the extent of Soviet expansionism became clear after World War II, America faced a stark choice: either acquiesce and let more countries disappear behind the Iron Curtain or confront the Soviet Union militarily and run the risk of nuclear war.

As these debates raged, Kennan – already an experienced hand in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow – was asked to respond to a speech by Joseph Stalin. On Feb. 22, 1946, he dictated what quickly became known as the “Long Telegram,” which explained Soviet motivations and outlined a new strategy to gently but firmly respond to Soviet provocations.

Kennan was soon installed as the State Department’s first director of policy planning in an office next door to Secretary of State George Marshall where, among other things, he helped design the Marshall Plan. But most importantly, his 5,500-word telegram became the agency’s operating manual for engaging the Soviet Union across the globe.

In 1947, in an article in Foreign Affairs, he called on America to remain “cool and collected” and to refrain from “outward histrionics” while enforcing “a long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment” of our ally-turned-adversary. Kennan believed that such a regimen would lead to the “moderation” or “mellowing” of Soviet power.

But Kennan’s plan had a second dimension that was quickly forgotten. After signaling the commitment to containment, Kennan wanted the U.S. to also engage in serious and sustained diplomacy to find a permanent solution to the post-war map in Europe.

Government policies – especially those dealing with existential threats – once set in motion are hard to redirect. Blocking the Soviets at every opportunity became the central goal of America’s foreign policy for the next four decades.

To the end of his long life (he died in 2005), he steadfastly and vociferously argued that the failure to move to diplomacy extended the Cold War and even increased the possibility of nuclear war. But as time passed, the consensus of the foreign policy establishment was that containment worked and produced the “long peace” that lasted until the Soviet Union collapsed. In short, Kennan lost control of the policy and the narrative.

Kennan was the ambassador to the Soviet Union during the Truman administration until, frustrated by lack of direction from Washington and an inability to engage with Russian officials, he lashed out and compared the Soviet Union to Nazi Germany. Stalin declared this man who deeply loved Russians and their culture “persona non grata.”

Kennan would later serve as ambassador to Yugoslavia in the Kennedy administration. He was often called upon for advice by government officials, but, for the most part, he spent the remainder of his career as a scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University.

In later years, he was often in the news for his clear, sometimes contrarian, and prescient foreign policy advice. Beginning in the 1950s, he predicted that Soviet hegemony in Central and Eastern Europe would collapse. He was a very early critic of the war in Vietnam. When the Soviet Union did fall, he warned against the expansion of NATO, fearing that it would lead the Russians to feel surrounded by hostile, nuclear-armed forces. He thought the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq could turn into quagmires. But while he received accolades and honors, “Kennan was not heeded,” Costigliola writes.

The author says he undertook the biography because he was “hooked by the distinction of Kennan’s writing and thinking, the quirkiness of his personality, and the turmoil of his inner life.” The Kennan that emerges is brilliant, creative, hardworking, and funny. But he also had a dark side. He was “cantankerous, cranky, and outrageously prejudiced” and “sensitive to criticism.”

Like other Kennan biographies, Costigliola focuses on his professional life and legacy. But the author is also adept at showing how Kennan’s personality shaped his professional life. Costigliola has given us a rich, insightful, and powerful portrait of this legendary American.

https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2023/0410/Brilliant-presc
ient-troubled-The-man-behind-Cold-War-containment

Download the books from the mirrors at https://libgen.unblockit.click/search.php?req=Kennan+Frank+Costigliola

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Wednesday, April 12, 2023 12:03 PM

SECOND

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


Sneaky politicians cheat to make democracy fail: Political parties use gerrymandering to counteract shifting voter preferences

New research that focused on “swing states,” where political parties are evenly matched, suggests that whichever party controls the redistricting process in the state legislature engineers an 11 percentage point increase in its probability of winning a U.S. House race in the next election. And these advantages often run counter to the will of voters.

Ultimately, gerrymandering is a way for political parties to minimize the electoral impact of opposition voters without actually winning a greater share of votes.

The study’s unique methods applied “bunching tests” to real-world data to look for non-random patterns in election results that can only arise through strategic party behavior. And the finding that gerrymandering conferred an average 11 percentage point advantage in swing states was just the tip of the iceberg. The team also took a close look at the conditions under which these advantages arose and found that, in the election before a redistricting cycle, political parties systematically won narrow majorities in the legislatures of states where they had recently lost U.S. House races. Then, in the election after redistricting, the trend of that party’s losses at the federal level reversed, despite no change in their share of votes.

“The deeper question of this work was not just a matter of whether parties that control redistricting use that to their advantage, but also where and why they wind up in control,” Shenoy explained. “And our findings suggest that parties seek control of redistricting in places where the electorate is turning against them, which is, in some ways, more concerning because it indicates that redistricting is being used to actively thwart the popular will.”

More at https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/political-parties-use-gerr
ymandering-counteract-shifting-voter-preferences-key-battleground

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
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Wednesday, April 12, 2023 3:32 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Sneaky politicians cheat to make democracy fail


Yup. That sums up what Democrats did to the system during Covid.

Republicans will make you regret that in 2024.

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

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Wednesday, April 12, 2023 4:57 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Sneaky politicians cheat to make democracy fail


Yup. That sums up what Democrats did to the system during Covid.

Republicans will make you regret that in 2024.
I hate to say this, but America no longer has two parties devoted to a democratic system of self-government. We have a Democratic Party, which — notwithstanding a few glaring counter-examples such as what the Democratic National Committee did to Bernie in 2016 — is still largely committed to democracy. And we have a Republican Party, which is careening at high-velocity in the opposite direction.

What occurred in Nashville last week is a frightening reminder of the fragility of American democracy when Republicans obtain supermajorities and no longer need to work with Democratic lawmakers.

The two Tennessee Democrats expelled from the Tennessee House were not accused of criminal wrongdoing or even immoral conduct. Their putative offense was to protest Tennessee’s failure to enact stronger gun controls after a shooting at a Christian school in Nashville left three 9-year-old students and three adults dead.

They were technically in violation of House rules, but the state legislature has never before imposed so severe a penalty for rules violations. In fact, over the past few years, a number of Tennessee legislators have kept their posts even after being charged with serious sexual misconduct. And the two who were expelled last week are Black people, while a third legislator who demonstrated in the same manner but was not expelled is white.

We are witnessing the logical culmination of win-at-any-cost Trump Republican politics — scorched-earth tactics used by Republicans to entrench their power, with no justification other than that they can.

Democracy is about means. Under it, citizens don’t have to agree on ends (abortion or whatever else we disagree about) as long as we agree on democratic means for handling our disagreements.

But for Trump Republicans, the ends justify whatever means they choose —including expelling lawmakers, rigging elections through gerrymandering, refusing to raise the debt ceiling, and denying the outcome of a legitimate presidential election.

My friends, the Republican Party is no longer committed to democracy.

More examples of Republicans being uncommitted to democracy at https://robertreich.substack.com/p/what-happens-when-supermajorities

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, April 13, 2023 1:34 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Second is talking about this clown, who used to be a normal person.



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

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Thursday, April 13, 2023 8:14 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Second is talking about this clown, who used to be a normal person.

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

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
6ix, you really are cuckoo. Who made that video? This silly man: Mark Dice @markdice "I'm Mark Dice and I enjoy laughing at liberal lunatics, mocking celebrity scum, and exposing the Liberal Media Industrial Complex. You have found the BEST CONSERVATIVE CHANNEL ON YOUTUBE, so subscribe now. On my channel we will systematically debunk fake news, push back against Big Tech's censorship of free speech online, and defend the Constitution of the United States to Make America Great Again!" Mark Dice isn't self-aware enough to realize he is crazy.

6ix, your food consumption was insane http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=65350&mid=11724
21#1172421 , but then you stopped, temporarily, after making yourself ill, and now your media consumption is becoming similarly crazy. 6ix, you go from one insane habit to the next. 6ix, maybe you should break all old and new bad habits, stop everything wrong you do with your days, go on a vacation from Trump, MAGA, politics, Mark Dice, all these things that a neurotic like you should avoid.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Thursday, April 13, 2023 9:47 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Second is talking about this clown, who used to be a normal person.

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

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.
6ix, you really are cuckoo. Who made that video?


It doesn't matter who made the video. That dude used to wear normal suits and talk like a human being. Now he looks like something out of a Blacksploitation film and talks like a caricature.

As for the rest of your post? Get fucked.

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

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Sunday, April 16, 2023 9:03 AM

SECOND

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


10 Years After My Cancer Diagnosis, the Right Is Still Trying to Kill Me

In 2013, I had great health insurance, and it probably saved my life.

If ever there were a cancer where early detection makes all the difference, it’s melanoma. If I hadn’t gone to have my weird-looking mole examined, eventually one day, a clump of malignant cells would have migrated from my skin to elsewhere in my body and quietly begun multiplying. Would that have taken six months, three years, five years? There’s no way to know. But then I would have been looking at prognosis charts with survival numbers like 67 percent, or 49 percent, or 34 percent. The difference between that and being cancer-free was a five-minute procedure in a suburban office building on a Monday.

That’s why it’s so important to understand how unworried I was. I wasn’t $400 worth of worried, or $100 worth of worried, or even $20 worth. I wouldn’t have gone to the dermatologist if I didn’t have health insurance. I probably wouldn’t have gone if I had insurance but it had a big deductible or even any real copay. The only reason I went to have my life saved is because it cost me zero dollars.

And the reason it cost me nothing is because I was then working for Dog Eat Dog Films, Michael Moore’s production company, and had America’s best health insurance. Moore didn’t just make an entire documentary, “SiCKO,” about our disastrous health insurance system, he did his best to make sure his employees didn’t experience it. My coverage had no deductible, and most doctor’s visits had no copay. (The dental coverage was great too — I had three wisdom teeth removed for a total cost to me of $242.) I’d never had insurance like this before in my life and probably never will again unless I move to Ontario.

So you can understand why ever since, I’ve closely followed the GOP’s attempts to destroy the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. With my melanoma diagnosis, I suddenly became much more interested in everything about health care policy, in the same way you’re suddenly much more interested in the safety instructions in the seat back in front of you when the pilot announces you’re ditching in Lake Superior. And every time Republicans have gone on TV to talk about this subject, what I’ve heard them say is, “We very much want to kill you, Jon Schwarz.”

That’s because Obamacare required insurance companies for the first time to cover everyone, regardless of any preexisting conditions. There’s no more disqualifying condition than cancer; without Obamacare, I would now likely be essentially uninsurable if someday in the future I need to get insurance on the individual market. And we know what happens to people without health insurance in the United States: they die.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t understand Obamacare’s many grievous flaws. But they’re not flaws of going too far; they’re flaws of not going nearly far enough.

More at https://web.archive.org/web/20230415103338/https://theintercept.com/20
23/04/15/health-insurance-affordable-care-act/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, April 16, 2023 9:23 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Millions to lose Medicaid coverage under Congress’ plan

https://apnews.com/article/health-covid-304d921beee43d29f1862cd4d6ab52
97

Quote:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of people who enrolled in Medicaid during the COVID-19 pandemic could start to lose their coverage on April 1 if Congress passes the $1.7 trillion spending package leaders unveiled Tuesday.


It passed a Democrat Senate and was signed into law by Joe Biden*.

Bernie Sanders is not happy.

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

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Sunday, April 16, 2023 9:50 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Millions to lose Medicaid coverage under Congress’ plan

https://apnews.com/article/health-covid-304d921beee43d29f1862cd4d6ab52
97

Quote:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of people who enrolled in Medicaid during the COVID-19 pandemic could start to lose their coverage on April 1 if Congress passes the $1.7 trillion spending package leaders unveiled Tuesday.


It passed a Democrat Senate and was signed into law by Joe Biden*.

Bernie Sanders is not happy.
Bernie is not happy with what Republican governors want. Quoting the same news story: "The legislation will sunset a requirement of the COVID-19 public health emergency that prohibited states from booting people off Medicaid. The Biden administration has been under mounting pressure to declare the public health emergency over, with 25 Republican governors asking the president to end it in a letter on Monday, which cited growing concerns about bloated Medicaid enrollment." Republicans don't love "bloated".

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Sunday, April 16, 2023 11:28 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Democrats didn't have to do it. They had the power and yet they chose to do it anyhow.

Don't cry about healthcare when Democrat politicians don't give a shit about it either.

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

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Tuesday, April 18, 2023 7:23 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Democrats didn't have to do it. They had the power and yet they chose to do it anyhow.

Don't cry about healthcare when Democrat politicians don't give a shit about it either.
You worthless Trumptards have never understood anything going on in Congress and no amount of explanation makes even the tiniest dent in your ignorance. It is zero surprise that the life of a Trumptard is hard because you guys are living and breathing versions of Homer Simpson, the alcoholic who hates his job and does not get along well with his children or his spouse in the cartoons.

Plutocratic Power and Its Perils



The rich are different from you and me: They have immensely more power. But when they try to exercise that power they can trap themselves — supporting politicians who will, if they can, create a society the rich themselves wouldn’t want to live in.

This, I’d argue, is the common theme running through four major stories that have been playing out over the past few months. They are: the relationship between Justice Clarence Thomas and the billionaire Harlan Crow; the rise and seeming decline of Ron DeSantis’s presidential campaign; the trials (literally) of Fox News; and the Muskopalypse at Twitter.

First, some notes on the role of vast wealth in a democracy.

People on the right often insist that expressing any concern about highly concentrated wealth is “un-American.” The truth, however, is that worrying about the dangers great wealth poses for democracy is very much part of the American tradition. And our nation basically invented progressive taxation, which was traditionally seen not just as a source of revenue but also as a way to limit excessive wealth.

In fact, if you read what prominent figures said during the Progressive Era, many expressed views that would be hysterically denounced as class warfare today. Theodore Roosevelt warned against “a small class of enormously wealthy and economically powerful men, whose chief object is to hold and increase their power.” Woodrow Wilson declared, “If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it.”

How does great wealth translate into great power? Campaign finance is dominated by a tiny number of extremely rich donors. But there are several other channels of influence.

Until recently I would have said that outright corruption — direct purchase of favors from policymakers — was rare. ProPublica’s revelation that Justice Thomas enjoyed many lavish, undisclosed vacations at Crow’s expense suggests that I may have been insufficiently cynical.

Beyond that, there’s the revolving door: Former politicians and officials who supported the interests of the wealthy find comfortable sinecures at billionaire-supported lobbying firms, think tanks and media organizations. These organizations also help shape what military analysts call the “information space,” defining public discourse in ways that favor the interests of the superrich.

Despite all that, however, there’s only so much you can achieve in America, imperfect and gerrymandered as our democracy may be, unless you can win over large numbers of voters who don’t support a pro-billionaire economic agenda.

It’s a simplification, but I think fundamentally true, to say that the U.S. right has won many elections, despite an inherently unpopular economic agenda, by appealing to intolerance — racism, homophobia and these days anti-“wokeness.” Yet there’s a risk in that strategy: Plutocrats who imagine that the forces of intolerance are working for them can wake up and discover that it’s the other way around.

Which brings us to the other stories I mentioned.

For a while DeSantis seemed to be surging in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Much of his apparent rise reflected support from big G.O.P. donors, who saw him as a saner alternative to Donald Trump — someone who would serve their financial interests while attracting working-class support with his social conservatism and willingness to play footsie with conspiracy theories.

But some of those donors are now bailing, because it looks increasingly as if DeSantis’s intolerance and conspiracy theorizing weren’t a political show — they’re who he really is. And the big money was looking for a charlatan, not a genuine fanatic.

Among the forces pushing a DeSantis candidacy has been Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News. Fox was essentially founded to carry out the right-wing strategy of pushing plutocratic policy while winning over working-class whites with intolerance and conspiracy theories. But emails and texts uncovered by the defamation suit by Dominion Voting Systems show that Fox has become a prisoner of the audience it created. It found itself endorsing claims about a stolen election, even though its own people knew they were false, because it feared losing market share among viewers who wanted to believe the Big Lie.

And does anyone doubt that if the Republican primary goes the way it seems to be heading, Fox will soon be back in Trump’s corner?

Rupert Murdoch’s organization, then, has effectively been taken hostage by the very forces he helped conjure up.

But Elon Musk’s story is, if anything, even sadder. As Kara Swisher recently noted for Time magazine, he’s become “the world’s richest online troll.” The crazy he helped foment hasn’t taken over his organization — it has taken over his mind.

I still believe that the concentration of wealth at the top is undermining democracy. But it isn’t a simple story of plutocratic rule. It is, instead, a story in which the attempts of the superrich to get what they want have unleashed forces that may destroy America as we know it. And it’s terrifying.

https://web.archive.org/web/20230417230824/https://www.nytimes.com/202
3/04/17/opinion/plutocrats-power-trump.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, April 18, 2023 9:39 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Millions to lose Medicaid coverage under Congress’ plan

https://apnews.com/article/health-covid-304d921beee43d29f1862cd4d6ab52
97

Quote:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of people who enrolled in Medicaid during the COVID-19 pandemic could start to lose their coverage on April 1 if Congress passes the $1.7 trillion spending package leaders unveiled Tuesday.


It passed a Democrat Senate and was signed into law by Joe Biden*.

Bernie Sanders is not happy.


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

Growing up in a Republic was nice... Shame we couldn't keep it.

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Tuesday, April 18, 2023 10:23 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Millions to lose Medicaid coverage under Congress’ plan

https://apnews.com/article/health-covid-304d921beee43d29f1862cd4d6ab52
97

Quote:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Millions of people who enrolled in Medicaid during the COVID-19 pandemic could start to lose their coverage on April 1 if Congress passes the $1.7 trillion spending package leaders unveiled Tuesday.


It passed a Democrat Senate and was signed into law by Joe Biden*.

Bernie Sanders is not happy.
The spending bill would not have passed (H.R.2617 - Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023) unless the Republicans got what they wanted: permission to kick people out of Medicaid in their states. You can check the votes because the Senate has to record who voted to pass a spending bill and who didn't. All the Democrats voted for the bill and most of the Republicans voted against spending any money on anything, including Medicaid. The few Republicans that voted for the bill got what they wanted: kick people out of Medicaid.

https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_votes/vote1172/vote_1
17_2_00421.htm

You can see which states are kicking people out of Medicaid:
Status of State Medicaid Expansion Decisions: Interactive Map
https://www.kff.org/medicaid/issue-brief/status-of-state-medicaid-expa
nsion-decisions-interactive-map/

Most, but not every Republican-controlled state kicked people out of Medicaid. Democrat-controlled states didn't kick anybody out of Medicaid.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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Tuesday, April 18, 2023 2:01 PM

SECOND

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


So, Is Clarence Thomas at Real Risk Here? Absolutely.

The statute also imposes criminal penalties up to one year’s imprisonment and fines for “knowingly and willingly” falsifying a disclosure report and for “fail[ing] to file or report any information” required by the act.

Thomas’ behavior calls his ethics into question and casts a shadow over the Supreme Court. He cannot cure that by simply amending his financial disclosures, as media reports indicate he now plans to do, only now that he has been discovered. That might be sufficient if this were his first transgression, but it is not. He has used up any excuses after being caught in a series of other financial disclosure omissions over the years.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2023/04/clarence-thomas-harlan-cro
w-doj-congress-roberts.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at
https://www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly

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