Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too? by 6ixStringJack

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, have you ever considered NOT sounding like a broken record?

And BTW Social Security IS a Ponzi scheme. The people who are paying into it now are paying for current retirees, NOT paying into their own accounts. It's a better-funded Ponzi scheme... the fund actually makes money by buying Treasuries ... but it doesn't operate like most people think.

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

Is Social Security a Ponzi Scheme? It just so happens that the answer is NO. It is Not a Ponzi Scheme, except most Trumptards insist, crazily, that it is. Ask an American if SS==Ponzi Scheme. If they answer it is a Ponzi Scheme, you know their answers to many other questions without needing to ask because they are Trumptards.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Is+Social+Security+a+Ponzi+Scheme%3F

Signym, you are crazy to write that falsehood about Social Security, but then you also refuse to correct your signature which includes only the clause of a conditional statement and totally reverses the meaning of the original Kissinger full quote:

"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."

Kissinger said this in late November 1968 after Nixon was elected president, but before Nixon was inaugurated.

It wasn't a public statement, just a statement to William F. Buckley Jr. in a phone call, with Buckley taking notes, so it isn't verifiable beyond Buckley (author of United Nations Journal: A Delegate's Odyssey).

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/56470/did-henry-kissinger
-say-it-may-be-dangerous-to-be-americas-enemy-but-to-be-am

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

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Sunday, March 2, 2025 8:18 PM

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

Social Security Payments Could Be Interrupted For First Time In 80 Years

By Douglas A. McIntyre | March 2, 2025 9:20 am

https://247wallst.com/income/2025/03/02/social-security-payments-could
-be-interrupted-for-first-time-in-80-years/

Social Security, the bedrock of safety net payments to 61 million Americans, could be interrupted by personnel cuts made by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). It could create an economic catastrophe, at least for those who rely heavily on the funds.

The 61 million people who receive Social Security payments include retirees, people with disabilities, and their dependents and survivors. Last year, total annual costs were $1.6 trillion, making it the largest expense of the federal government.

The average payment to retirees, 52 million recipients, is just short of $2,000 a month. These payments make up about a third of the incomes of Americans who are over 65. The number is much higher for some. According to the Social Security Administration, “Among Social Security beneficiaries age 65 and older, 12% of men and 15% of women rely on Social Security for 90% or more of their income.”

According to CNBC, Social Security has not missed a payment to Americans in eight decades. Former commissioner and former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley told the TV channel, “Ultimately, you’re going to see the system collapse and an interruption of benefits. I believe you will see that within the next 30 to 90 days.” He suggested that recipients start to put aside money in case this happens. The primary reason for the possible interruption is that the Administration plans to cut 4,000 Social Security Administration jobs.

Social Security payments are already under siege. It is estimated that it will run out of money in 2035. SSA recently forecasts that “Currently, the Social Security Board of Trustees projects the program cost to rise by 2035 so that taxes will be enough to pay for only 75 percent of scheduled benefits.”

It is hard to imagine what the cuts would do to the US economy, but they are bound to be significant for tens of millions of people. Eventually, this will ripple across GDP.

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

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Sunday, March 2, 2025 9:16 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, have you ever considered NOT sounding like a broken record?

And BTW Social Security IS a Ponzi scheme. The people who are paying into it now are paying for current retirees, NOT paying into their own accounts. It's a better-funded Ponzi scheme... the fund actually makes money by buying Treasuries ... but it doesn't operate like most people think.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Is Social Security a Ponzi Scheme? It just so happens that the answer is NO. It is Not a Ponzi Scheme, except most Trumptards insist, crazily, that it is. Ask an American if SS==Ponzi Scheme. If they answer it is a Ponzi Scheme, you know their answers to many other questions without needing to ask because they are Trumptards.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Is+Social+Security+a+Ponzi+Scheme%3F

Signym, you are crazy to write that falsehood about Social Security, but then you also refuse to correct your signature which includes only the clause of a conditional statement and totally reverses the meaning of the original Kissinger full quote:

"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."

Kissinger said this in late November 1968 after Nixon was elected president, but before Nixon was inaugurated.

It wasn't a public statement, just a statement to William F. Buckley Jr. in a phone call, with Buckley taking notes, so it isn't verifiable beyond Buckley (author of United Nations Journal: A Delegate's Odyssey).

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/56470/did-henry-kissinger
-say-it-may-be-dangerous-to-be-americas-enemy-but-to-be-am

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

Just because it hurts your feelings to call a Ponzi Scheme a Ponzi Scheme, that doesn't mean that it's not a Ponzi Scheme.

I'm calling it one and I just flat out admitted that I won't be able to survive retirement at all without it.

It's still a fucking Ponzi Scheme.

If it doesn't break now, it will eventually break. It was designed to fail from the beginning.

ETA: And if you still don't understand what I'm getting at, maybe you should talk to one of the people in California who had lost their homeowners insurance due to failure to be able to pay the increases right before their houses burned down...

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/california-faces-insurance-crisis-as
-homeowners-lose-coverage-amid-extreme-weather

Our entire country is run on Ponzi Schemes.

Fortunately for the Baby Boomers, I think we can probably keep it together long enough that it doesn't come crashing down before the last of their generation dies off.

I'm pretty sure that one way or another the rest of us are fucked though.

Buckle up.

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

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

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Sunday, March 2, 2025 9:43 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, have you ever considered NOT sounding like a broken record?

And BTW Social Security IS a Ponzi scheme. The people who are paying into it now are paying for current retirees, NOT paying into their own accounts. It's a better-funded Ponzi scheme... the fund actually makes money by buying Treasuries ... but it doesn't operate like most people think.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger
Is Social Security a Ponzi Scheme? It just so happens that the answer is NO. It is Not a Ponzi Scheme, except most Trumptards insist, crazily, that it is. Ask an American if SS==Ponzi Scheme. If they answer it is a Ponzi Scheme, you know their answers to many other questions without needing to ask because they are Trumptards.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Is+Social+Security+a+Ponzi+Scheme%3F

Signym, you are crazy to write that falsehood about Social Security, but then you also refuse to correct your signature which includes only the clause of a conditional statement and totally reverses the meaning of the original Kissinger full quote:

"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."

Kissinger said this in late November 1968 after Nixon was elected president, but before Nixon was inaugurated.

It wasn't a public statement, just a statement to William F. Buckley Jr. in a phone call, with Buckley taking notes, so it isn't verifiable beyond Buckley (author of United Nations Journal: A Delegate's Odyssey).

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/56470/did-henry-kissinger
-say-it-may-be-dangerous-to-be-americas-enemy-but-to-be-am

And yet ... you won't explain how Social Security works and how its different from a Ponzi scheme...

Quote:
The FICA tax income collected from current workers’ paychecks supports the payment of the benefits to the retirees.

That is one element of a Ponzi scheme.

If you look at the FULL definition of a Ponzi scheme, you can niggle on whether Social Security is "fraudulent", or whether the contributors are technically "investors" expecting a "profit", but IMHO except for the fact that Social Security actually enages in "money making activity" (lending the govt money by investing in specialized treasuries, https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/110614/how-social-security-tr
ust-fund-invested.asp which I mentioned already) Social Security runs like a Ponzi scheme.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Monday, March 3, 2025 6:19 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

That is one element of a Ponzi scheme.

If you look at the FULL definition of a Ponzi scheme, you can niggle on whether Social Security is "fraudulent", or whether the contributors are technically "investors" expecting a "profit", but IMHO except for the fact that Social Security actually enages in "money making activity" (lending the govt money by investing in specialized treasuries, https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/110614/how-social-security-tr
ust-fund-invested.asp which I mentioned already) Social Security runs like a Ponzi scheme.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal." - Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

Working-class Trumptards constantly bring up "Ponzi Scheme" as justification to re-imagine how Social Security could be financed with income tax, or tariffs, or the magic of bitcoins, which are three easier ways for Upper-class Trumptards in Congress to kill Social Security by switching away from the excruciatingly simple FICA to something Algebraic and complex that your typical sneaky and dishonest working-class man can cheat on without fear of being caught cheating. They can't cheat, can't do a complex tax avoidance scam, on FICA because it is so very simple.

The Trumptards at work are upset every two weeks because they now pay a FICA tax that keeps Social Security and Medicare going. It's one of those taxes that does not have a bunch of complex loopholes (like the income tax has) rammed through by Congressional Trumptards to cut the tax to zero.

Dumbest. Idea. Ever.

Reported by the Wall Street Journal on March 2, 2025:

Crypto prices surged Sunday after President Trump said he would move forward on a U.S. crypto strategic reserve (CSR) that will include bitcoin and ether, as well as three smaller and riskier tokens.

“A U.S. Crypto Reserve will elevate this critical industry after years of corrupt attacks by the Biden Administration,” said Trump in a Sunday post on his social-media platform Truth Social. “I will make sure the U.S. is the Crypto Capital of the World.”

Questions abound. How big will the CSR be? Where is the money coming from? I don't recall Congress passing an appropriation. How can it make sense to create a crypto reserve out of deficit spending? Why does the US need a crypto reserve? It's not something we'll ever be short of.

https://www.wsj.com/finance/currencies/crypto-prices-jump-after-trump-
announces-five-tokens-for-strategic-reserve-636f31d7?st=iLbGRS&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

Why So Many Crypto Leaders Hate Trump's Meme Coins – The Wall Street Journal

President Trump’s cryptocurrency meme coin $TRUMP has already earned him billions of dollars on paper, but this is one of the most controversial investments ever made by a commander-in-chief. Trump has a long history of cashing in on his personal brand through products like shoes, guitars and bibles, but to many in the crypto world, his meme coin ventures are his most naked and predatory money grab yet. Once a bitcoin skeptic, Trump has promised to make the U.S. “the crypto capital of the planet.”

WSJ explores why the Trump meme coin and Melania meme coin are so unprecedented and why they’re so controversial to the crypto industry.

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

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Monday, March 3, 2025 6:22 AM

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

The US promised to protect Ukraine in exchange for giving up its nukes.
Marco Rubio should re-watch his old speech now that he could keep that promise while Secretary of State.

Start at 6:30. Rubio Delivers Senate Floor Speech On The Crisis in Ukraine (Mar 25, 2014)

“In the early 1990s Ukraine was left with the world's third largest stockpile of tactical nuclear weapons and strategic nuclear weapons on the planet but they signed this agreement with the United States, the United Kingdom and Russia that basically said if you give up your nuclear weapons -- we these three countries that signed this -- will provide for your defense and assure you of your defense and so Ukraine did that. They gave up these weapons. Well now this was signed in 1994. 20 years later one of the three countries that signed that agreement hasn't just not provided for the defense they actually invaded them.” – Senator Marco Rubio

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

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Monday, March 3, 2025 6:30 AM

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

Republicans terrified of crossing Trump due to physical threats

“I have a lot of friends who are Republicans. They are terrified of being the tallest poppy in the field, and it’s not as simple as being afraid of being primaried and losing their job. They know that that can happen.

“It’s more more personal. It’s their personal safety that they’re afraid of, and they have spouses and family members saying, ‘Do not do this, it’s not worth it, it will change our lives forever. We will have to hire around-the-clock security.’ Life can be very uncomfortable for your children.

“That is real, because when [Elon] Musk [Trump’s most powerful ally] tweets at somebody, or Trump tweets at somebody, or calls somebody out, their lives are turned upside down.

“When he tweets at you, people make threats, and you have to take people at their word. And so that is a real thing that my colleagues struggle with.”

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/27/republicans-trump-thre
ats

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

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Monday, March 3, 2025 6:33 AM

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

Elon Musk’s satellite business Starlink may not have officially taken over Verizon’s $2.4 billion contract with the Federal Aviation Administration yet to upgrade the systems it uses to manage America’s airspace. However, on Friday, FAA officials ordered staff to begin finding tens of millions of dollars for a Starlink deal, according to a source with knowledge of the FAA and two people briefed on the situation.

The sources note that these internal directives have mostly, if not entirely, been delivered verbally — which they say is unusual for a matter like this. The source with knowledge of the FAA tells Rolling Stone that it appears as though “someone does not want a paper trail.”

Musk asserted last week, without evidence, that “the Verizon communication system to air traffic control is breaking down very rapidly,” before correcting himself to say that Verizon’s system is “not yet operational.”

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/elon-musk-star
link-faa-officials-find-funding-1235285246/

Corrupt? Sure. But also directly dangerous? And how! FAA has done careful, long testing/study of new tower-communication system. Now a rush to switch to system that *just happens* to be owned by Mr. Efficiency himself, Elon.

In boardrooms around the world, airline executives are discussing what will be more harmful to their share prices: sounding the alarm on this, or the inevitable plane crashes

Everyone involved in aviation KNOWS FOR SURE that reckless/rampant changes of past six weeks will, *for sure,* make airplane crashes more likely. But no airline exec wants to be the first to say this in public.

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

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Monday, March 3, 2025 6:35 AM

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

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Monday, March 3, 2025 7:03 AM

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

US Forest Service firings decimate already understaffed agency: ‘It’s catastrophic’

"We are losing an entire generation of talent and passion."

https://grist.org/politics/forest-service-firings-decimate-already-und
erstaffed-agency/

“You’re not reducing, you know, the stereotypical bureaucrats,” Brossard said. “You’re reducing the boots on the ground that are going out and doing work.”

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

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Monday, March 3, 2025 9:49 AM

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

Destruction of Canada begins tomorrow

By Kevin Drum | March 3, 2025 – 5:34 am

https://jabberwocking.com/destruction-of-canada-begins-tomorrow/

Donald Trump plans to levy 25% tariffs across the board on Canada tomorrow:

The result, an overwhelming majority of economists agree, would be inflation and supply disruption in the United States, while Canadian industries could face large-scale layoffs.

Whole factories will shut down:

Because 25 percent is far higher than the profit margins on cars and trucks, as well as the parts used to make them, industry executives predict that parts makers would soon stop shipping and factories would quickly close in all three countries, laying off thousands of workers.

“A 25 percent tariff across the Mexico and Canadian border will blow a hole in the U.S. industry that we have never seen,” Jim Farley, the chief executive of the Ford Motor Company, said last month.

Need more details?

Anderson Economic Group, a consulting firm in East Lansing, Mich., estimates that tariffs of 25 percent would add $1,000 to $4,000 to the price of a new vehicle, and as much as $10,000 if manufacturers are unable to take steps to reduce the impact.

....[John] Elkann acknowledged that the tariffs could make a turnaround harder for Stellantis. About a third of its highly profitable Ram pickups are assembled in a plant in Saltillo, Mexico. It also makes two Jeep models at a second Mexican plant, in Toluca. It makes Chrysler Pacifica minivans at a plant in Windsor, Ontario, and is scheduled to begin making the Dodge Charger in the same factory this year. A second plant, in Brampton, Ontario, is being retooled, with plans to make Jeeps there when it reopens.

Needless to say, this was all encouraged by the USMCA treaty Trump himself signed in 2018 and called "the single greatest agreement ever signed." But Trump doesn't care anymore. He wants more, and "Who's gonna stop me?" is his motto these days.

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

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Monday, March 3, 2025 10:04 AM

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

How Trump Is Crushing U.S. Climate Policy

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/02/climate/trump-us-climate-policy-cha
nges.html

President Trump has quickly transformed America’s approach to the environment, withholding funds and stretching the limits of presidential power.

The Biden strategy was to erect legal and other barriers intended to make it tough to undo its work. Trump has already broken through many of them.

In a few short weeks, President Trump has severely damaged the government’s ability to fight climate change, upending American environmental policy with moves that could have lasting implications for the country, and the planet.

With a flurry of actions that have stretched the limits of presidential power, Mr. Trump has gutted federal climate efforts, rolled back regulations aimed at limiting pollution and given a major boost to the fossil fuel industry.

He is abandoning efforts to reduce global warming, even as the world has reached record levels of heat that scientists say is driven largely by the burning of fossil fuels. Every corner of the world is now experiencing the effects of these rising temperatures in the form of deadlier hurricanes, floods, wildfires and droughts, as well as species extinction.

To achieve such a wholesale overhaul of the country’s climate policies in such a short time, the Trump administration has reneged on federal grants, fired workers en masse and attacked longstanding environmental regulations.

All new presidents have their own agendas, but the speed and scale of Mr. Trump’s efforts to uproot climate policy is unprecedented. “This is not the kind of stately tennis match of the usual switch-over in administrations,” said Abigail Dillen, president of Earthjustice, an environmental law firm. “This is full on Fight Club.”

The Trump administration’s moves have unfolded simultaneously across the sprawling government, affecting federal, state and local agencies and hitting government-funded projects in Africa, Antarctica and around the world. On Inauguration Day, Mr. Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris climate agreement, making it the only nation to walk away.

Mr. Trump has frozen funds appropriated by Congress for clean energy projects, taking particular aim at wind energy, the country’s largest source of renewable power. He has stopped approvals for wind farms on public land and in federal waters and has threatened to block projects on private land.

He has fired thousands of federal workers, dismantled programs aimed at helping polluted communities and scrubbed references to climate change from numerous federal websites.

He has waged a multipronged assault at regulations designed to curb pollution, immediately sweeping some rules to the side and circumventing the normally lengthy rule-making processes. At the same time, Mr. Trump has declared an energy emergency, giving himself the authority to fast-track the construction of oil and gas projects as he works to stoke supply as well as demand for fossil fuels.

“We’re going to drill, baby, drill and do all of the things that we wanted to,” Mr. Trump said just hours after being sworn in for his second term.

The United States is producing more oil than any other nation in history, and is also the world’s biggest exporter of natural gas. The fossil fuel industry donated more than $75 million to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign and Mr. Trump, in turn, promised to weaken environmental regulations in ways that would lower its costs and increase its margins.

The president has repeatedly mocked climate change, criticized regulations and said that more drilling would bring down energy bills.

In several cases, the administration’s actions have flouted the law, with agencies defying court orders, freezing funds in legally binding contracts and reinterpreting regulations to suit their aims. In doing so, Mr. Trump has busted through many of the barriers that were erected by the officials during the Biden administration who believed that process and the legal system would slow or deter him.

The administration and Republicans in Congress plan to use a legislative maneuver to quickly erase California’s authority to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars in the state by 2035. That authority has never before been challenged in this way, and critics say the maneuver is illegal. But it would be much faster than trying to overturn the California ban through the standard process that requires months of public notice and comment.

Until last month, the United States was expected to record significant reductions in its greenhouse-gas emissions over the next decade. But the Trump administration’s changes pave the way for more planet-warming pollution and will likely slow the advance of cleaner technologies like wind and solar energy.

“To power the Great American comeback, President Trump is unleashing American energy and eliminating the Green New Scam,” said Taylor Rogers, a White House spokesperson. “The Department of Energy and Environmental Protection Agency are working in tandem to implement President Trump’s Day 1 executive action and undo Biden’s radical climate policies that restrained America’s economy and abundant natural resources."

Mr. Trump’s supporters are delighting in the audacity and scale of his attacks on climate and environmental regulations.

“They’re doing all the things I thought they would do, and they’re doing other things that I only dreamed they might do,” said Myron Ebell, a conservative activist who led the E.P.A. transition team during Mr. Trump’s first term.

Many of Mr. Trump’s moves may have a lasting effect on the country’s ability to confront climate change.

Thousands of federal jobs that are eliminated now may be hard to restore. Clean energy projects that were relying on federal funding may not proceed without the expected investments. A sudden stop to scientific work could create gaps in data collection that are impossible to fill. And environmental regulations that are stripped away could be difficult to revive.

Several of the administration’s actions are already facing legal challenges.

After Mr. Trump ordered federal agencies to pause billions of dollars in climate and energy grants that were authorized by the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act and the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law, two federal judges ordered the Trump administration to let the money flow again.

In early February, one of those judges, Judge John J. McConnell Jr. in Rhode Island federal court, said the White House was defying his order by withholding funds. Some funds have begun moving, but many remain stalled.

John Podesta, a senior climate adviser in the Biden administration, called many of the Trump administration actions illegal. “We followed the law, and they’re breaking the law,” Mr. Podesta said. “It remains to be seen whether they’ll be allowed to get away with it.”

In the past few weeks Mr. Trump has fired thousands of employees at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Interior Department, the Department of Energy, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the government’s premiere climate science agency. On Thursday, a federal judge said directives that led to mass firings were illegal.

And in a move that could have far-reaching implications for government efforts to regulate industry, Lee Zeldin, the administrator of the E.P.A., has recommended that the agency reverse its 2009 finding that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health and welfare, according to three people familiar with the decision. That would eliminate the legal basis for the government’s climate laws, such as limits on pollution from automobiles and power plants.

“We’re talking about undoing 50 years of environmental regulation and accelerating the extinction crisis and risking the health of the American people,” said Ben Jealous, the executive director of the Sierra Club. “There’s so much shocking news every day. People are struggling to process all of it.”

Electric vehicles, long a target for Mr. Trump, have lost much of the federal support they gained during the Biden administration.

Mr. Trump has directed Congress to eliminate federal subsidies for E.V.s., including tax credits for consumers, which could hurt the sales of Tesla, the electric car company, despite Elon Musk’s central role in the Trump administration’s cost-cutting efforts.

The Transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, signed an order to loosen fuel economy standards enacted by the Biden administration that were designed to encourage automakers to sell electric vehicles. And the administration moved to freeze $5 billion that Congress approved for the construction of a national network of electric-vehicle charging stations.

The administration is also trying to stop states and even cities from enacting their own climate policies.

Mr. Duffy recently lambasted what he called the “mismanagement” of California’s high-speed-rail project, announcing an investigation into how the state was spending a $3.1 billion federal grant.

And the Transportation Department moved to revoke its approval of New York City’s congestion pricing program, a plan designed to reduce traffic, raise money for public transportation and curb emissions.

“The old paradigm was an administration will come in and do all the hard work of dismantling the old administration’s policies and then replacing with its own,” said Ms. Dillen. “This is a very different strategy, which is that we may not even bother to replace policies because we don’t care about complying with the law.”

Attempts to blunt the Inflation Reduction Act are already delaying projects. Jay Turner, a professor at Wellesley College who is tracking investments related to the law, found that at least nine major projects worth $7.6 billion have been slowed in the past month as funding from the law has been put on hold and renewable energy companies adjust to the new reality.

“You’ve seen some real pullback,” he said. “Established players in the industry are reassessing the market and how much capacity is needed right now, and you also see newcomers that suddenly don’t see a path to bringing their projects to fruition.”

Much of the damage to the country’s environmental regulatory apparatus may be long-lasting.

The E.P.A. said it would try to claw back about $20 billion that was awarded to eight organizations under the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions in low-income communities. A top federal prosecutor resigned after she declined a request by the Trump administration to freeze the money, saying she did not have sufficient evidence to do so.

While the Energy Department has started releasing some grants for battery factories and electric grid upgrades, other projects remain on hold, according to several awardees. A $500 million program to upgrade hydroelectric dams around the country, for instance, remains frozen, and companies are halting construction or wondering if they will get reimbursed for work that has already been done.

On Wednesday, Trump said he believed Mr. Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, would be cutting about 65 percent of the agency’s more than 17,000 jobs. Mr. Zeldin later said that he thought the E.P.A. could cut at least 65 percent of its budget and make cuts to its work force.

The effective dissolution of the United States Agency for International Development has led to the immediate termination of long-running projects in the developing world aimed at helping vulnerable countries adapt to a hotter planet.

And more sweeping actions may still be in store.

“The bigger changes are to come,” Mr. Turner said. “What we’ve seen today has been fast, but it’s just kind of the start of much more extensive efforts to dismantle the Biden administration’s policies.”

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

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Monday, March 3, 2025 12:27 PM

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

Smoke-and-mirrors budgeting is everywhere

By Kevin Drum | March 3, 2025 – 8:44 am

https://jabberwocking.com/smoke-and-mirrors-budgeting-is-everywhere/

Republicans love smoke-and-mirrors budgeting. They're laying off thousands of workers chaotically even though salary costs are a tiny fraction of the federal budget. Elon Musk is pretending to save far more money than he really is. Now Senate Republicans are trying to hide the cost of extending the 2017 tax cuts using a new wheeze called the "current policy baseline."

This one is a pistol, but it's a little trickier than the others. Take a look at the chart below:

The cost of the 2017 tax bill has so far averaged a little over $200 billion per year (blue bars). So let's just take that as the new zero! If we do, the apparent cost of extending the tax cut goes down from $3.6 trillion to $1.8 trillion. That certainly makes things easier on everyone.

It's not real, of course. Suppose you're paying off $500 per month on your car. After five years it's done and you decide to buy a new car with the same payments. If you assume that $500 is your "baseline" then the new car costs nothing. It's an exciting thought.

But it ain't true. Call it anything you like, but that car is costing you $500 per month in actual money. If you don't account for that in your household budget you're going to be screwed pretty quickly.

It's the same for extending the 2017 tax bill. Whether you like it or not, it's going to cost about $3.6 trillion and it's going to swell the national debt by $3.6 trillion.

But Republicans don't want it to increase the national debt by $3.6 trillion. They're against debt, you see. But they're also deeply in favor of tax cuts for the rich. What to do?

Pretend and extend, my friends. Can they get away with it under Senate rules? Probably not, but it's worth a try. Stay tuned.

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

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Monday, March 3, 2025 12:43 PM

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

To Trumptards it doesn't seem stupid for Trump to say he will do it at midnight but maybe he won't . . . it depends on his mood . . . and even if he does do it he might change his mind by next week and undo it.

‘Let’s see how the president weighs that’: Lutnick says Trump will decide today on Canada, Mexico tariffs

Trump’s Commerce secretary said in a CNN interview that Canada and Mexico still need to do more to stop fentanyl flows into the U.S.

By Doug Palmer | 03/03/2025 11:39 AM EST

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/03/lutnick-trump-canada-mexico-t
ariffs-00207238

President Donald Trump has yet to decide whether to go forward with tariffs on Canada and Mexico that are scheduled to go into effect just after midnight, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in an interview on CNN Monday morning.

Trump has threatened to impose 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico beginning Tuesday morning over complaints that the countries are not doing enough to stop undocumented migrants and fentanyl coming across their borders, keeping the North American economy and financial markets on edge as the deadline fast approaches.

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

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Monday, March 3, 2025 1:35 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
The US promised to protect Ukraine in exchange for giving up its nukes.

Ukraine never "had" nukes. They were Russian nukes stationed in Ukraine, Moscow had command of them.

Makes as much sense as saying Turkey has nukes, even tho they're ours.

No matter hiw many times you lie abiut this, it's still not true, and you're still a liar.

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Monday, March 3, 2025 2:06 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
The US promised to protect Ukraine in exchange for giving up its nukes.

Ukraine never "had" nukes. They were Russian nukes stationed in Ukraine, Moscow had command of them.

Makes as much sense as saying Turkey has nukes, even tho they're ours.

No matter hiw many times you lie abiut this, it's still not true, and you're still a liar.

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

Signym, as with all Trumptards I know, although I don't know all of them, you think you know something that you don't know. Telling you what you don't is not going to enlighten you even a tiny bit. An example is your signature:

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

The original Kissinger quote does not have the same meaning as your condensed version:

"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."

But will Signym ever know the difference between the fake Kissinger quote and the real one?

As for Signym's opinion that Ukraine never "had" nukes, you are full of shit, Signym, and will never know the difference.

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

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Monday, March 3, 2025 2:07 PM

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

Why Air Travel’s Getting Dangerous

The Trump administration has been aggressively pursuing policies that will make travelers’ odds inevitably worse.

By Jeff Wise | March 03, 2025 10:30 AM

https://slate.com/business/2025/03/safe-to-fly-plane-crashes-trump-faa
-air-traffic-control.html

Understaffing

The problem of understaffing at the FAA is one that has troubled experts for years. In 2023, the New York Times revealed that near misses between airliners have become endemic at airports across the country, “a sign of what many insiders describe as a safety net under mounting stress,” with a leading cause being “mistakes by air traffic controllers stretched thin by a nationwide staffing shortage.”

Understaffing is not a problem that worries the Trump administration, however. As part of its project to massively slash the size of the government, it laid off some 400 FAA workers starting on Feb. 17. At the time, it said that none of the firings involved air traffic controllers. But five days later Musk posted to X that any federal employee that didn’t write an email explaining what they’d done during the previous week would be fired. If enforced, this diktat will likely ensnare some air traffic controllers from towers that can hardly afford to lose them.
Advertisement

But there’s a broader issue, which is that a great many FAA employees—not just air traffic controllers—positively affect aviation safety. Some of the FAA employees fired earlier this month, for instance, were charged with updating the navigational charts that help keep pilots clear of danger. If the prime motive of the Trump-Musk alliance is to gut the federal workforce as thoroughly as possible, that’s going to have all kind of deleterious effects, up to and including twisted smoldering wreckage.

Much more at https://slate.com/business/2025/03/safe-to-fly-plane-crashes-trump-faa
-air-traffic-control.html

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

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Monday, March 3, 2025 5:50 PM

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

Thanks to Trump

Atlanta Fed posts alarming new economic projection of Trump's first quarter

By Brad Reed | March 3, 2025 12:58PM ET

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-economy-2671254430/

The Atlanta Federal Reserve on Monday produced a new projection that the American economy would shrink by nearly three percent in the first quarter of President Donald Trump's second term.

Specifically, the Atlanta Fed now projects that the economy will shrink by 2.8 percent in Q1 2025, which actually marks a deterioration from the projection it made last week that the economy would shrink by 1.5 percent on the quarter.

The projection comes as President Donald Trump and X owner Elon Musk push to fire thousands of federal employees and as Trump is threatening to slap hefty 25 percent tariffs on the goods of Mexico and Canada, which are the United States' two largest trading partners.

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

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Monday, March 3, 2025 5:58 PM

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

If he is not willing to send troops to fight on Russia's side, there is only so much Trump can do to help Putin conquer Ukraine. Trump is doing it:

Trump plans to halt arms to Ukraine, sanctions on Russia

By Kevin Drum | March 3, 2025 – 1:34 pm

https://jabberwocking.com/trump-plans-to-halt-arms-to-ukraine-sanction
s-on-russia/

The other shoe drops:

The Trump administration has stopped financing new weapons sales to Ukraine and is considering freezing weapons shipments from U.S. stockpiles, moves that threaten Kyiv’s ability to fight at a critical time in its battle against Russian forces, current and former U.S. officials said.

The shutdown of financing new weapons sales began before Friday’s acrimonious meeting.... But the meeting to consider suspending ongoing weapons shipments to Ukraine drawn from U.S. military inventories emerged after the Friday blowup at the White House.

And the third shoe:

The United States is drawing up a plan to potentially give Russia sanctions relief as Donald Trump seeks to restore ties with Moscow and stop the war in Ukraine, a US official and another person familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The White House has asked the state and treasury departments to draft a list of sanctions that could be eased for US officials to discuss with Russian representatives in the coming days.... The White House asked state and treasury officials to come up with a possible sanctions relief plan before Trump last week extended a state of emergency over the situation in Ukraine, the US sources said.

So: No more arms shipments to Ukraine, and sanctions relief for Russia, something Trump had in mind well before his staged blowup with Zelensky. Go ahead and solve for what this means. The algebra isn't hard.

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

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Monday, March 3, 2025 6:23 PM

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

The Justice Department on Friday quietly took revenge on prosecutors who’d worked to hold Trump’s allies accountable

By Patrick Reis | Mar 3, 2025, 4:55 PM CST

https://www.vox.com/the-logoff-newsletter-trump/402355/trump-justice-d
epartment-prosecutors-purge

The head of the Washington, DC, US attorney’s office demoted seven high-ranking prosecutors on Friday, Reuters reports, moving them to entry-level positions in a bid to force them to quit. Those demoted include:

• The leader of the “Capitol siege prosecution unit”

• A prosecutor who worked on criminal cases against Trump advisers Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro

• Prosecutors who worked on criminal cases against the heads of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, two far-right extremist groups that worked to steal the 2020 election on Trump’s behalf

The experienced attorneys will now mostly handle misdemeanors and low-level crimes. The demotions follow the January firing of US attorneys who prosecuted Trump over his attempt to steal the 2020 election.

Why were they demoted? Ed Martin, the Trump-appointed new head of the DC office, claimed the moves reflected a shift in priorities and a focus on local crime in DC. But the Trump-related experiences of the officials selected — and the move of experienced prosecutors to entry-level jobs — make it difficult to believe this wasn’t an act of retribution.

What’s the big picture? The demotions send a strong signal to prosecutors that there will be consequences for officials who try to hold Trump and his allies accountable to the law. It’s also another blow against the DOJ’s independence, as Trump works to remake law enforcement as a tool he can wield for political ends. And the move weakens the US attorney’s office in Washington, which is tasked with prosecuting abuses of power by some of the country’s most powerful people.

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

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Monday, March 3, 2025 7:45 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Thanks to Trump

Atlanta Fed posts alarming new economic projection of Trump's first quarter

By Brad Reed | March 3, 2025 12:58PM ET

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-economy-2671254430/

The Atlanta Federal Reserve on Monday produced a new projection that the American economy would shrink by nearly three percent in the first quarter of President Donald Trump's second term.

Specifically, the Atlanta Fed now projects that the economy will shrink by 2.8 percent in Q1 2025, which actually marks a deterioration from the projection it made last week that the economy would shrink by 1.5 percent on the quarter.

The projection comes as President Donald Trump and X owner Elon Musk push to fire thousands of federal employees and as Trump is threatening to slap hefty 25 percent tariffs on the goods of Mexico and Canada, which are the United States' two largest trading partners.

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

I'm fine when the economy is shrinking because government jobs are lost. As is anybody else with two firing neurons and a basic knowledge of how math works.

How come you two stopped posting any articles from mainstream news sources and all you got are dying clickbait outfits?

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

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

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Monday, March 3, 2025 9:21 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

SECOND, from Wikipedia:

Quote:
After its dissolution in 1991, Ukraine became the third largest nuclear power in the world and held about one third of the former Soviet nuclear weapons, delivery system, and significant knowledge of its design and production.[2] Ukraine inherited about 130 UR-100N intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM) with six warheads each, 46 RT-23 Molodets ICBMs with ten warheads apiece, as well as 33 heavy bombers, totaling approximately 1,700 nuclear warheads that remained on Ukrainian territory.[3]

While all these weapons were located on Ukrainian territory, they were not under Ukraine's control.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukraine_and_weapons_of_mass_destructio
n

There was quite a discussion at the time as to who "owned" these missiles. Eventually it was decided that they were owned by Russia since Russia had command and control of them. And furthermore, they would be safest there since Russia was a larger more stable nation and could more safely dispose of them (since Russia handled nuclear waste as well.) So they were transferred to Russia for dismemberment.

Quote:
SECOND:
Signym, as with all Trumptards I know, although I don't know all of them, you think you know something that you don't know. Telling you what you don't is not going to enlighten you even a tiny bit. An example is your signature:

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

The original Kissinger quote does not have the same meaning as your condensed version:

"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."

But will Signym ever know the difference between the fake Kissinger quote and the real one?

Kissinger's statement is essentially "if... then":

IF another American proxy winds up being assasinated [THEN] word will get out that...

Seems like enough of our proxies have been regime- changed, if not outright killed BY US, to make Kissinger's statement true. The deep state would like us to forget, but at one time Saddam Hussein was our proxy against Iran, and Noriega was our CIA tool in Panama.
What will happen to our Kurdish proxies in Syria? And our proxies in Ukraine?

In any case, the meaning of the full quote v the shortened one seem so close I don't know why it makes your head explode, but clearly it does. Would it really make you feel better if I changed it? Bc IMHO that won't change anything. But I will to make you feel better.

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Monday, March 3, 2025 10:45 PM

It sounds a lot to me like Trump's the adult in the room talking about peace while everyone else is trying to get WWIII ramped up.

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

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

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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 12:10 AM

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

Holy shit!! Have you seen the Atlanta fed GDP Now projection???
Trump has single-handedly turned a robust economy to shit in less than two months.
https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow

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

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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 12:13 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
It sounds a lot to me like Trump's the adult in the room talking about peace while everyone else is trying to get WWIII ramped up.

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

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

Trump is talking about Ukraine surrendering to Russia, confusing the words "peace" and "surrender".

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

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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 12:18 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

In any case, the meaning of the full quote v the shortened one seem so close I don't know why it makes your head explode, but clearly it does. Would it really make you feel better if I changed it? Bc IMHO that won't change anything. But I will to make you feel better.

Signym, you really are fucked up in the head.

A theoretical paper from computer science explains Trump’s and his Trumptards’ behavior, including 6ix's and Signym's. Since Signym can't sense that the fake Kissinger quote means the opposite of the actual (and longer) Kissinger quote, there is no possibility she will understand what Scott Aaronson wrote:

The Evil Vector
March 3rd, 2025
https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8693

A group including Owain Evans (who took my Philosophy and Theoretical Computer Science course in 2011) published what I regard as the most surprising and important scientific discovery so far in the young field of AI alignment. (See also Zvi’s commentary.) Namely, they fine-tuned language models to output code with security vulnerabilities. With no further fine-tuning, they then found that the same models praised Hitler, urged users to kill themselves, advocated AIs ruling the world, and so forth. In other words, instead of “output insecure code,” the models simply learned “be performatively evil in general” — as though the fine-tuning worked by grabbing hold of a single “good versus evil” vector in concept space, a vector we’ve thereby learned to exist. . . .

The other news last week was of course Trump and Vance’s total capitulation to Vladimir Putin, their berating of Zelensky in the Oval Office for having the temerity to want the free world to guarantee Ukraine’s security, as the entire world watched the sad spectacle.

Here’s the thing. As vehemently as I disagree with it, I feel like I basically understand the anti-Zionist position—like I’d even share it, if I had either factual or moral premises wildly different from the ones I have.

Likewise for the anti-abortion position. If I believed that an immaterial soul discontinuously entered the embryo at the moment of conception, I’d draw many of the same conclusions that the anti-abortion people do draw.

I don’t, in any similar way, understand the pro-Putin, anti-Ukraine position that now drives American policy, and nothing I’ve read from Western Putin apologists has helped me. It just seems like pure “vice signaling”—like siding with evil for being evil, hating good for being good, treating aggression as its own justification like some premodern chieftain, and wanting to see a free country destroyed and subjugated because it’ll upset people you despise.

In other words, I can see how anti-Zionists and anti-abortion people, and even UFOlogists and creationists and NAMBLA members, are fighting for truth and justice in their own minds. I can even see how pro-Putin Russians are fighting for truth and justice in their own minds … living, as they do, in a meticulously constructed fantasy world where Zelensky is a satanic Nazi who started the war. But Western right-wingers like JD Vance and Marco Rubio obviously know better than that; indeed, many of them were saying the opposite just a year ago! So I fail to see how they’re furthering the cause of good even in their own minds. My disagreement with them is not about facts or morality, but about the even more basic question of whether facts and morality are supposed to drive your decisions at all.

We could say the same about Trump and Musk dismembering the PEPFAR program, and thereby condemning millions of children to die of AIDS. Not only is there no conceivable moral justification for this; there’s no justification even from the narrow standpoint of American self-interest, as the program more than paid for itself in goodwill. Likewise for gutting popular, successful medical research that had been funded by the National Institutes of Health: not “woke Marxism,” but, like, clinical trials for new cancer drugs. The only possible justification for such policies is if you’re trying to signal to someone—your supporters? your enemies? yourself?—just how callous and evil you can be. As they say, “the cruelty is the point.”

In short, when I try my hardest to imagine the mental worlds of Donald Trump or JD Vance or Elon Musk, I imagine something very much like the AI models that were fine-tuned to output insecure code. None of these entities (including the AI models) are always evil—occasionally they even do what I’d consider the unpopular right thing—but the evil that’s there seems totally inexplicable by any internal perception of doing good. It’s as though, by pushing extremely hard on a single issue (birtherism? gender transition for minors?), someone inadvertently flipped the signs of these men’s good vs. evil vectors. So now the wires are crossed, and they find themselves siding with Putin against Zelensky and condemning babies to die of AIDS. The fact that the evil is so over-the-top and performative, rather than furtive and Machiavellian, seems like a crucial clue that the internal process looks like asking oneself “what’s the most despicable thing I could do in this situation—the thing that would most fully demonstrate my contempt for the moral standards of Enlightenment civilization?,” and then doing that thing.

Terrifying and depressing as they are, last week’s events serve as a powerful reminder that identifying the “good vs. evil” direction in concept space is only a first step. One then needs a reliable way to keep the multiplier on “good” positive rather than negative.

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

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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 1:25 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
It sounds a lot to me like Trump's the adult in the room talking about peace while everyone else is trying to get WWIII ramped up.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Trump is talking about Ukraine surrendering to Russia, confusing the words "peace" and "surrender".

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

That's your false and warped version of reality.

And it is rejected outright by anybody who currently matters.

The world you thought you were living in 6 months ago no longer exists.

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

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

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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 4:05 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Signym, you really are fucked up in the head.

Hey, I'm not the one whose head is exploding over trivial wording changes.

Yanno, the sad thing is, SECOND, there are SUBSTANTIVE criticisms of Trump. And you're missing every single one bc of your mental rigidity.

-----------
"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 5:55 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Signym, you really are fucked up in the head.
Hey, I'm not the one whose head is exploding over trivial wording changes.

Yanno, the sad thing is, SECOND, there are SUBSTANTIVE criticisms of Trump. And you're missing every single one bc of your mental rigidity.

Signym, you are fucked up in the head, you overly-articulate dumb-ass. Top-level Trumptards pull the same tricks as you do:

“Today’s action is part of President Trump’s bold agenda to unleash American prosperity by reining in burdensome regulations, in particular for small businesses that are the backbone of the American economy,” wrote Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Bessent is blathering. Was prosperity unleashed? No. This happened:

‘Exciting News’: Trump Brags About Gutting Anti-Money Laundering Law

The Trump administration won’t enforce a Treasury Department rule requiring shell companies to disclose their owners and beneficiaries

By Nikki McCann Ramirez | March 3, 2025

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-treasury-gut
ting-anti-money-laundering-law-1235286134/

The Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) was part of a larger push by the Biden administration to crack down on corporate cronyism and tax evasion — a multi-agency project that is now being gutted by the Trump administration.

Last month, Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) orchestrated the firing of over 6,000 Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agents in the middle of tax season. The move contracted an expansion of the agency’s employee base under President Joe Biden aimed at targeting tax evasion by the nation’s wealthiest. DOGE has launched an all-out war against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an independent agency that has returned billions of dollars to taxpayers seized as penalties from abusive companies.

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

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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 6:00 AM

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

Trump's Strategic Crypto Reserve to Hold Assets Backed by His Crypto Czar

By Jesus Mesa | Mar 03, 2025 at 9:51 PM EST

https://www.newsweek.com/david-sacks-crypto-reserve-donald-trump-bitco
in-solana-2038902

David Sacks, a billionaire venture capitalist who backed Trump during the 2024 campaign, was appointed to oversee crypto policy.

Sacks has invested in Bitwise Asset Management. Notably, Bitwise's top holdings include Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, and Cardano — the exact assets named by Trump for inclusion in the strategic reserve.

Sacks forcefully denied any conflict of interest. (He is lying but the Dept. of Justice will not be investigating because Musk fired the investigators.)

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

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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 6:26 AM

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

Trump has made at least five Moscow-friendly moves just in the last two weeks.

https://www.axios.com/2025/03/04/trump-russia-ukraine-policy-pro-putin

1. The White House asked Treasury and State to identify sanctions on Russia that could be loosened as part of the process of improving relations, Reuters reports.

• Trump didn't deny that Monday, telling reporters: "We want to make deals with everybody."

2. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly ordered U.S. Cyber Command to suspend offensive cyber and information operations against Russia.

• The suspension is intended to last as long as negotiations to end the Russia-Ukraine war play out, officials told the Washington Post.

3. Trump has called for elections in Ukraine, and he and his allies suggested after the Oval Office spat that Zelensky might need to go.

• Regime change in Kyiv was one of Putin’s original objectives for invading. It remains unlikely he'll be able to install a Kremlin stooge any time soon.

• Still, Trump’s comments denouncing Zelensky — and his moves to freeze him out after the meeting — have weakened the position of a leader the Kremlin has long sought to discredit internationally.

• Reality check: Ukraine has been under martial law since the invasion began, and its constitution does not allow for elections in such a scenario.

4. The U.S. voted with Russia and 16 other mostly authoritarian countries to oppose a UN resolution last week that condemned Russia's "aggression" in Ukraine.

• The Biden administration repeatedly used such votes to depict Russia as a pariah state. This time, the U.S. voted with Moscow and against nearly all its Western allies.

5. Suspending weapons shipments — which the Trump administration had already dramatically slowed — is the latest dramatic step.

• Billions of dollars of equipment committed under Biden were in different stages along the delivery pipeline, Axios' Sareen Habeshian reports.

• Zelensky told NBC’s "Meet the Press” last month that Ukraine had only a "low chance to survive” without U.S. military support.

• Trump and his team have also discussed whether to limit U.S. intelligence cooperation with Ukraine.

The big picture: Trump's friendliness toward Putin isn't a new phenomenon. Investigations into the president’s ties to Russia dogged much of his first term, and pursuing revenge for the "Russia hoax" has become core to MAGA’s political identity.

• Trump pushed back Monday on the notion that his foreign policy matches the Kremlin’s, pointing to the fact that Russia’s past invasions — Georgia in 2008, Crimea in 2014, and all of Ukraine in 2022 — took place while he was out of his office.

• "Under President Trump they got nothing, and under President Biden they tried to get the whole thing. If I didn't get in here they would have gotten the whole thing,” Trump argued.

• The White House, Pentagon, State Department and Treasury all declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.

Trump is outraged that Ukraine won’t surrender to his friend Putin.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/03/trump-zelenskyy-end-ru
ssia-ukraine-war

“It is what I was saying, this guy doesn’t want there to be Peace as long as he has America’s backing and, Europe, in the meeting they had with Zelenskyy, stated flatly that they cannot do the job without the US,” Trump continued.

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

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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 8:14 AM

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

Trump Hates Canada

By Paul Krugman | Mar 04, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trump-hates-canada-for-its-decency

. . .

The newspapers this morning all contain analysis pieces trying to explain why Trump is imposing 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico. You can see the writers struggling because this is a profoundly self-destructive move — it will impose huge, possibly devastating costs on U.S. manufacturing, while significantly raising the cost of living — without any visible justification. Yet the conventions of mainstream journalism make it hard to say directly that the president’s actions are just vindictive and senseless.

To its credit, the New York Times analysis comes closest, acknowledging that for some reason Trump personally loathes Canada, a nation most of the world stereotypes as “nice.” Obviously not every Canadian is a nice person. But Canadians are relatively courteous on average, and the country’s social and economic policies are relatively decent by international standards.

And it seems clear to me that Trump hates them for their decency.

To be fair, there are some efforts to explain what’s happening that go beyond Trump’s personal pathology. Some Canadians think Trump covets their mineral wealth. And there’s always the possibility that Trump knows how big Canada looks on standard maps, unaware both of the way that its land area is exaggerated by the Mercator projection and the fact that much of it is tundra, and thinks, “Real estate!”

Trump also goes on about Canada’s trade surplus with the United States, which he keeps saying is $200 billion a year — it’s actually less than a third of that size. And nobody has offered a coherent justification for his claim that when Canada sells us cheap oil and electricity, we are somehow subsidizing them.

In any case, efforts to find some kind of economic justification for Trump’s Canada-hatred have the feeling of desperate efforts to avoid the obvious. Canada is a pretty decent place, as nations go. And Trump, whom nobody would describe as a decent person, dislikes and maybe even fears people who are.

I mean, look at the people Trump has chosen to play prominent roles in his administration. I guess if you search hard enough you can find officials without a sex scandal, a financial scandal, a history of anti-semitism or racism, or a record of substance abuse in a senior position. But it isn’t easy. It really looks as if being vile is a fundamental job qualification.

And so we’re having a trade war. Trump appears to believe that we don’t need anything from Canada. Automobile manufacturers who rely on Canadian parts, Midwestern oil refineries that rely on Canadian oil, builders who rely on Canadian lumber, and households that rely on Canadian hydropower for their electricity will soon learn otherwise.

Trump may imagine that he can bully Canada into submission. But he can’t; Canadians of all political persuasions are furious. Doug Ford, the conservative premier of Ontario, has the right attitude: he has threatened to cut off U.S. electricity “with a smile on my face.” And remember that Canada can’t concede to U.S. demands, even if it were in a mood to do so (which it very much isn’t) because there aren’t any coherent U.S. demands; Canada has done nothing wrong!

So I don’t know how this ends. But U.S. voters will soon be feeling real pain, and I very much doubt that it will end in a Trump victory.

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

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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 8:39 AM

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

Trump’s honeymoon is over

by Christian Paz | Mar 4, 2025, 6:00 AM CST

https://www.vox.com/trump-administration/402337/trump-presidential-hon
eymoon-is-over-unpopular-approval-rating-disapprove

How this unraveling happened is no great mystery: Views of the economy, and Trump’s handling of it, have taken a negative turn, and Americans largely think that the president isn’t giving enough attention to the issues that they care about. Paired with controversial policy positions, the perceived influence of Elon Musk, and a pretty small mandate to begin with, the public’s turn against Trump is right on time.

The CBS/YouGov poll finds that Trump’s reforms of the government are breaking through — some 81 percent think he’s making major changes — but a plurality say that those changes are “for the worse.”

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

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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 11:32 AM

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

As Trump halts aid to Ukraine, EU unveils $840 billion defense investment "ReArm Europe" plan

By Haley Ott | March 4, 2025 / 8:27 AM EST

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-russia-war-trump-eu-defense-inves
tment-rearm-europe-plan/

"What will count most of all is how far the U.K. and Europe are prepared to help Ukraine in defiance of the U.S."

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

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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 11:39 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
As Trump halts aid to Ukraine

Good. Fuck Ukraine.

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

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

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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 12:17 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
America Using Domestic Food Supplies As Statecraft Tool Faces Pressures
Monday, Mar 03, 2025 - 06:20 PM

Tariff D-Day arrives tomorrow, with President Trump set to impose tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and China. The timing comes as US imports of agricultural goods hit record levels, far outpacing exports. The new levies risk driving up imported food costs, which could heavily weigh on consumer sentiment and pressure cash-strapped households.

The US Department of Agriculture warned in its trade outlook report last week that the nation's agricultural trade deficit could hit a record high this year, forecasted at around $49 billion. Meanwhile, the US continues to lose market share in key agricultural markets worldwide. In other words, exports are declining while record volumes of food are being imported into the country.

"It's a stark turnaround for a nation that once used its abundant food supplies as a tool of statecraft, with the US now facing a future of persistent agricultural trade deficits," Bloomberg wrote in a report.

The inflection point for the ag trade deficit began in 2019 but exploded under the Biden-Harris regime and will continue in Trump's second term.

Trump's next round of tariffs is set to take effect on Tuesday, imposing 25% levies on all imports from Canada and Mexico (and 10% on China). This move could further strain cash-strapped consumers, with prices of everything from avocados to coffee to cocoa to sugar, beef, orange juice, eggs, and all other imported ag goods from those countries set to move higher.

At the same time, China's state-backed Global Times warned that tomorrow's next round of tariffs could prompt Beijing to impose countermeasures on US ag exports. If enacted, the US would continue to lose out on one of the largest ag markets.

Bloomberg noted that the only other annual deficits besides 2019, 2020, 2023, and 2024 occurred several years before 1960.

America's ability to maintain the world's top ag exporter spot appears to be waning, which may only suggest that its ability to use food as a tool of statecraft also wanes in a world that is fracturing into a multi-polar state.

-----------
"Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 1:09 PM

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:
As Trump halts aid to Ukraine

Good. Fuck Ukraine.

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

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

I mean, look at the people Trump has chosen to play prominent roles in his administration. I guess if you search hard enough you can find officials without a sex scandal, a financial scandal, a history of anti-semitism or racism, or a record of substance abuse in a senior position. But it isn’t easy. It really looks as if being vile is a fundamental job qualification.

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, Trump named the fathers-in-law of two of his children to senior government positions—Massad Boulos, the Lebanese-born dad of Tiffany Trump’s husband, will be Trump’s senior Middle East adviser, and Charles Kushner, Ivanka Trump’s father-in-law and a seven-figure Trump donor, will be nominated for Ambassador to France. The Kushner appointment, in particular, was the kind of Trump troll that might have, at another, less frenetically troubled time in our history, caused an uproar. In 2004, Kushner pleaded guilty to eighteen counts of illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion, and witness tampering; during the case, it emerged that he had hired a prostitute in an attempt to entrap a brother-in-law who Kushner feared was ratting him out. Chris Christie, the former Trump ally who prosecuted Kushner, called it “one of the most loathsome, disgusting crimes” he had handled as a U.S. Attorney. Trump, on his way out of office in 2020, pardoned Kushner. Now, in elevating him to one of America’s premier diplomatic postings, Trump has managed to both insult our oldest ally and flout whatever remaining standards there are for holding a senior U.S. position. “In the madness of Trump’s nominations, there is expressed the near total contempt for human respect, customs and the law,” Gérard Araud, who was the French Ambassador to the U.S. during Trump’s first term, said in response.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/the-scand
al-of-trumps-cabinet-picks-isnt-just-their-personal-failings

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Kushner#Nomination_as_U.S._ambas
sador_to_France

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

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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 1:24 PM

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

Eurasia Group founder Ian Bremmer writes, that for this president, the personal is often political: “Trump gets along with Putin personally, while Trump believes (correctly) that most European leaders neither like nor respect him.”

“It’s really unthinkable that the leader of the United States would act this way,” said Sasha de Vogel, a political scientist and Russia specialist at the University of North Carolina. “It’s incredibly bizarre to see the leader of the United States celebrating Putin and making decisions that play directly into the hands of Russia, which is not our ally, and which considers us their enemy. I would expect to see Russia trying to take every advantage that they can.”

https://www.vox.com/russia-ukraine/402389/trump-putin-russia-ukraine

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

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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 1:54 PM

JAYNEZTOWN

counter attacks, Trudeau hits back with his own tariffs and sanction

Tariffs are a very dumb thing to do, Canada's Trudeau tells Trump as stock markets fall
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/cvgpdk4257zt

Stock Market Collapse

Trudeau: 'Canada will be implementing 25% tariffs against C$155 billion worth of American goods'

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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 2:56 PM

Good.

Justin can now finally finish the job he started and completely destroy Canada.

Do it.

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

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

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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 3:46 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Good.

Justin can now finally finish the job he started and completely destroy Canada.

Do it.

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

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

Have you got something to say about NATO? That it is destroying itself? Canada is in NATO, by the way.

The End of NATO, or The Sixth Impossible Thing

The Trump administration has liquidated the postwar international order.

By Adam Garfinkle | Mar 1, 2025

https://quillette.com/2025/03/01/the-sixth-impossible-thing-nato-trump
-putin-russia-asia/

Reality can sometimes seem even stranger than fiction, and the second Trump administration has done what many people supposed to be six impossible things within the first month of its tenure. The upshot is that we are now living in a post-NATO world where black is white, up is down, friends are foes (and vice versa), and once-unthinkable impossibilities have become our new reality.

Six Impossibilities

The first impossibility accomplished by the new administration saw Donald J. Trump and J.D. Vance win the only two elected offices of the US executive branch with a campaign of wild lies about the November 2020 election and what happened at the Capitol on 6 January 2021. After the inauguration, they turned those lies into loyalty tests required of nominees to plum jobs in the administration, including on the National Security Council staff and the Policy Planning staff at the State Department.

Second, on his first day in office, the president used his pardon power to release a loyal and violence-prone cohort of 1,600 insurrectionists.

Third, the White House won Senate confirmation of manifestly unsuitable nominees to head executive-branch departments and agencies, many of whom are openly hostile to the stolidly apolitical missions of their own offices.

Fourth, the administration fomented a constitutional crisis by illegally impounding funds authorised by Congress, illegally firing senior civil-service employees without due notice or cause, and empowering a legally non-existent office—the DOGE—to carry out the most massive personal-information hack of the US government in history. The White House seeks a confrontation with the Supreme Court over this because it believes—perhaps correctly, perhaps not—that the 1 July 2024 SCOTUS decision on presidential immunity will cause Chief Justice John Roberts to back down. And if he does, the core checks-and-balances mechanism of US democracy—the separation of powers—will shatter. And if that happens, the US government will become a de facto autocracy.

Fifth, the administration fomented that crisis by using the DOGE to destroy the regulatory capacities of the federal government, purporting that its activities were devoted to greater government efficiency. The real purpose of this project is the creation of a corporate oligarchy within and protected by a weaponised para-government itself.

And sixth, the administration has effectively liquidated the central US alliance of the postwar era, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), and then joined with Russia to enable the consolidation of a West-facing sphere of influence. That sphere of influence may expand or it may not; if it expands, it may expand slowly and modestly, or rapidly and immodestly. The Trump administration does not care either way. In return, the administration wants rights to invest in Russian energy industries and to partner in the colonisation of Ukraine. Presumably, given the stunted syntax of this logic, it also hopes to reach an understanding with Vladimir Putin that Russia will henceforth respect an expanded US sphere of influence.

The Meaning of the Sixth Impossible Thing

The first five of these impossible things complement and pave the way for the sixth—the demolition of NATO. As anyone who has worked high enough in government knows, the foreign policy of a great power is always at least partly an extension of its domestic politics and a projection of its wider political culture. So, then, what of the particular projection we witnessed these past weeks?

NATO still exists on paper, but operationally, it has been killed in a four-act drama followed by a macabre after-party (ongoing). There will be those who insist that NATO’s Article V guarantee is still alive and well, and that Ukraine is an exception because NATO real-estate is not at risk. Should the Russians attack a NATO member-state, they claim, Article V will rise and shine. This argument is backwards.

How can a US Article V guarantee remain credible in the event of some theoretical future contingency when it has been disavowed in the context of an extant shooting war, more or less contained outside the alliance’s borders? The very essence of extended deterrence—which is what Article V is supposed to ensure—is that the alliance leader will credibly backstop risks in ways that reduce those risks. If it won’t do that when risks are modest, it is hardly likely to do it when the risks are much greater. Yes, on 12 February, US Defence Secretary Hegseth reaffirmed the “US commitment to NATO,” which presumably implied a commitment to Article V. But the US president then attached a condition; namely, that European members of NATO each fork out five percent of GDP to pull their weight. The implicit threat being that those who fail to do so will forfeit the guarantee of US protection.

This is absurd. The United States currently spends just 2.9 percent of its GDP on defence, and looks to be planning reductions, not increases, in that percentage. So Trump knows that his five percent demand will not be met, thereby providing him with a pretext to offload US responsibility for European security altogether, which is what he wants to do anyway. During his first term, Trump made no secret of his wish to destroy NATO, or at least to pull the United States out of the alliance. He was only prevented from doing so by the presence of wiser Republicans like H.R. McMaster, James Mattis, John Bolton, John Kelley, and a few others.

In any event, there is no fooling Friedrich Merz on this point. One of the first things Merz said after Germany’s 23 February election made him Bundeskanzler-apparent was that Europe must make itself independent of the United States, which Europeans increasingly see as not merely uninterested in continuing alliance relations but as a potential threat. He and they are correct, and any lingering doubts about the full-frontal nature of the US foreign-policy upheaval were dispelled by the UN General Assembly episode of 24 February. In a draft resolution on Ukraine, the US adopted the Russian position on the war, thereby putting America at odds with nearly every democracy on the planet.

More at https://quillette.com/2025/03/01/the-sixth-impossible-thing-nato-trump
-putin-russia-asia/

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

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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 4:45 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Good.

Justin can now finally finish the job he started and completely destroy Canada.

Do it.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Have you got something to say about NATO?

Nothing that I haven't said a thousand times before.

But since you asked, Fuck NATO.

Quote:
Canada is in NATO, by the way.

Fuck Canada too.

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

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

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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 9:23 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Nothing that I haven't said a thousand times before.

But since you asked, Fuck NATO.

Quote:
Canada is in NATO, by the way.

Fuck Canada too.

How do you feel about C++? I only ask because Elon Musk attacked and destroyed CISA, the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency:

"The new US administration has removed everything from the White House web site and fired most of the CISA people who worked on memory safety…"

The above is the punchline of the story below:

C++ creator calls for help to defend programming language from 'serious attacks'

Bjarne Stroustrup wants standards body to respond to memory-safety push as Rust monsters lurk at the door

By Thomas Claburn | Sun 2 Mar 2025 // 17:46 UTC

https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/02/c_creator_calls_for_action/

I am pretty sure Musk would wave his magic wand and say that A.I. can rewrite billions of old lines written in C++ into brand-new Rust. If the world is not magical, C++ libraries could be corrected, but CISA will have to be resurrected from Musk's death sentence to watch over software quality.

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

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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 9:49 PM

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

Why Elon Musk is targeting a free tax-filing software package

By Blake Montgomery | Tue 4 Mar 2025 10.14 EST

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/03/techscape-elon-musk
-skype

Elon Musk’s cost savings will be very expensive for the US

On Saturday, Elon Musk took aim at his next target in the federal government: the technology division of the General Services Administration, called 18F. Musk fired all the employees.

You may not know about 18F, but have likely heard of its most famous product: free tax-filing software. The sub-agency created IRS Direct File, a program that aimed to resolve one of the most frustrating and relatable examples of the excesses of bureaucracy: having to fork over cash to be able to give the government money.

Still, Musk wasn’t a fan. He tweeted a few weeks ago that he had “deleted” IRS Direct File, though it remained available up until now. The fate of the software is not clear. Because of Musk’s work with Doge, more people in the US are now likely to spend money that they would not have had to spend before he arrived in Washington. His efficiency efforts will personally cost American taxpayers.

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

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Tuesday, March 4, 2025 10:01 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Why Elon Musk is targeting a free tax-filing software package

By Blake Montgomery | Tue 4 Mar 2025 10.14 EST

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/03/techscape-elon-musk
-skype

Elon Musk’s cost savings will be very expensive for the US

On Saturday, Elon Musk took aim at his next target in the federal government: the technology division of the General Services Administration, called 18F. Musk fired all the employees.

You may not know about 18F, but have likely heard of its most famous product: free tax-filing software. The sub-agency created IRS Direct File, a program that aimed to resolve one of the most frustrating and relatable examples of the excesses of bureaucracy: having to fork over cash to be able to give the government money.

Still, Musk wasn’t a fan. He tweeted a few weeks ago that he had “deleted” IRS Direct File, though it remained available up until now. The fate of the software is not clear. Because of Musk’s work with Doge, more people in the US are now likely to spend money that they would not have had to spend before he arrived in Washington. His efficiency efforts will personally cost American taxpayers.

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

You're talking about him cutting something that sounds fucking great if it were ever made available to the public and people used it.

How long have the good people at 18F been "working" on that? How many years or decades have Americans been throwing billions at that project that was never going to go anywhere?

Here's hoping Elon's team scraps that code and whips one up by tax time next year. Even better if he did it just to give TheGuardian.com the middle finger.

It's not hard to do. The only reason it was never done was because our previous government never wanted it to be finished and usable. And I can think of at least half a dozen reasons why they'd do that.

The American Government is the only fucking reason that fax machines didn't go extinct like they should have 30 years ago.

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

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

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Wednesday, March 5, 2025 6:52 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

How long have the good people at 18F been "working" on that? How many years or decades have Americans been throwing billions at that project that was never going to go anywhere?

Here's hoping Elon's team scraps that code and whips one up by tax time next year. Even better if he did it just to give TheGuardian.com the middle finger.

It's not hard to do. The only reason it was never done was because our previous government never wanted it to be finished and usable. And I can think of at least half a dozen reasons why they'd do that.

The American Government is the only fucking reason that fax machines didn't go extinct like they should have 30 years ago.

"It's not hard to do." - 6ix

I have always hoped that some Trumptard somewhere was not an evil meat-head robot but I can't find any. You prove the point: "they fine-tuned language models to output code with security vulnerabilities. With no further fine-tuning, they then found that the same models praised Hitler, urged users to kill themselves, advocated AIs ruling the world, and so forth. In other words, instead of “output insecure code,” the models learned to “be performatively evil in general” -- https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8693

Donald Trump or JD Vance or Elon Musk or 6ix are something very much like the AI models that were fine-tuned to output insecure code.

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

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Wednesday, March 5, 2025 6:53 AM

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

March 4, 2025

I was reminded that optimizing for one’s scientific colleagues is wildly different from optimizing for YouTube engagement. In science, it’s obvious to everyone that the burden of proof is on whoever is presenting the new idea—and that this burden is high, especially with anything as well-trodden and skull-strewn as the foundations of quantum mechanics, albeit not infinitely high. The way the game works is: other people try as hard as they can to shoot the new idea down, so we see how it fares under duress. This is not a sign of contempt for new ideas, but of respect for them.

On YouTube, the situation is precisely reversed. There, anyone perceived as the “mainstream establishment” faces a near-insurmountable burden of proof, while anyone perceived as “renegade” wins by default if they identify any hole whatsoever in mainstream understanding. Crucially, the renegade’s own alternative theories are under no particular burden; indeed, the details of their theories are not even that important or relevant. I don’t want to list science YouTubers who’ve learned to exploit that dynamic masterfully, though I’m told one rhymes with “Frabine Schlossenfelder.” Of course this mirrors what’s happened in the wider world, where RFK Jr. now runs American health policy, Tulsi Gabbard runs the intelligence establishment, and other conspiracy theorists have at last fired all the experts and taken control of our civilization, and are eagerly mashing the buttons to see what happens. I’d take Jacob Barandes, or even Sabine, a billion times over the lunatics in power. But I do hope Jacob turns out to be wrong about Many-Worlds, because it would give my solace to know that there are other branches of the wavefunction where things are a little more sane.

https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8705

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

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Wednesday, March 5, 2025 7:07 AM

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

The second howler of the night was Trump’s characterization of what he is now calling the Golden Dome system to defend the United States from nuclear attack. He said that President Ronald Reagan wanted to create such a defense, but the technology didn’t exist. “Now we have the technology,” Trump claimed, “it’s incredible, actually. And other places—they have it, Israel has it. Other places have it. And the United States should have it too.”

All of those sentences are false. Israel’s Iron Dome program is designed to intercept missiles with a range of 40 miles traveling at twice the speed of sound. The sorts of missiles that would attack the United States would fly at a range of 6,000 miles, traveling at 10 times the speed of sound. The technology required for the one is completely different from the technology required for the other.

The U.S. already has plenty of air- and missile-defenses at least as good as Iron Dome—the Patriot, the Standard Missile, and others. No country has a defense of the sort that Reagan had, and Trump has, in mind. We have spent more than $10 billion a year for the last 40 years trying to develop such a defense, to little avail. At best, we are now able to hit one mock warhead with one anti-missile missile in a carefully planned test. The test managers have never even tried to hit two with two, or a dozen with a dozen—because they know they cannot.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/03/trump-congress-speech-stat
e-of-the-union-ukraine-golden-dome-greenland-panama.html

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

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Wednesday, March 5, 2025 7:23 AM