REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

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

POSTED BY: 6IXSTRINGJACK
UPDATED: Wednesday, April 2, 2025 11:35
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Monday, March 31, 2025 6:53 AM

SECOND

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


MAGA is Bad for Business

And business owners were deluded to believe otherwise

By Paul Krugman | Mar 31, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/autocracy-is-bad-for-business


Source: Axios

One odd feature of U.S. politics is that business people, especially small business owners, always seems to believe that they will do better under Republicans, even though history shows that business does better under Democrats. Small business owners supported Trump in the last election, despite ample evidence that he would be very bad for business.

And now they’re getting a rude awakening.

Let’s talk for a second about price controls.

A few weeks ago Viktor Orban, Hungary’s de facto dictator and a darling of the MAGA set, announced that he was imposing profit-margin caps — basically price controls — on groceries. I intended to write something about that as a warning that something similar might happen in the United States, that business people were fools if they assumed that Donald Trump was on their side.

Unfortunately, I never got around to writing that post. So I missed my chance to be prophetic, because it has already happened: Trump reportedly told auto executives sometime in March not to raise prices in response to tariffs. He denies that he said it, but the reporting looks solid. His headline-making assertion that he “couldn’t care less” about rising car prices seems to have been about imported autos, not domestic production.

The reason I expected Trump to follow in Orban’s footsteps is that Trump, like Orban, clearly doesn’t have any fixed principles other than power and self-aggrandizement. Under Trump, policy won’t reflect any consistent ideology. It will, instead, change with his perception of personal advantage, his temper tantrums, his whims and his malignant narcisissim. If he doesn’t like rising prices, he’ll try to stop inflation through bullying.

In short, MAGA will be very bad for business.

Most immediately, it seems as if Trump doesn’t care that his tariffs will raise business costs in addition to raising prices for consumers. We’ll get a better sense of how much costs will rise after “Liberation Day,” the big announcement of new tariffs planned for Wednesday. (War is peace, freedom is slavery, tariffs are tax cuts.) But it’s the increase has already begun.

Indeed, thanks to tariffs already in effect the U.S. economy is already getting unscrewed, with manufacturers having a hard time keeping their stuff together.

You see, steep tariffs on steel and aluminum were the opening salvo in Trump’s trade war, and they are being applied not just to the metals themselves but to anything made from the metals, including screws, nuts and bolts. And foreign producers are not absorbing the tariffs; they are sharply raising prices.

This was, of course, predictable and predicted. Tariffs don’t just make foreign goods more expensive to consumers. In a world where many of the goods we import are productive inputs like screws — or auto parts — tariffs directly raise the cost of manufacturing in the United States. Yet Trump’s threats against automakers suggests that he thinks he can control inflation through intimidation.

The direct effect of tariff-driven rising costs is, however, just the beginning of the ways Trumpism will be bad for business.

In the past I’ve been skeptical about claims that uncertainty is a big factor in the economy. During the Obama years vague appeals to “uncertainty” often seemed, in practice, to be invoked as a fancy way of saying “policies I don’t like,” and was used as an excuse for ignoring that fiscal austerity forced by congressional Republicans held the economy back. But in the 10 weeks since Trump was inaugurated, perceived uncertainty has soared. Here’s one widely cited index:

Source: policyuncertainty.com

It’s not hard to see why. Trump’s apparent turn to price controls is just one more indication that there are no longer any rules, that economic policy changes from day to day with Trump’s moods. I’m finishing this post up just two days before the big tariff announcement, and all indications are that the administration still hasn’t decided on the general structure of the tariffs, let alone their size. Nor will we be able to take the issue as settled after the big announcement: Trump may impose further tariffs, or slash them as suddenly as he raised them, depending on who spoke to him last. L’Etat, c’est Trump.

This kind of uncertainty is paralyzing for businesses, who are realizing that any kind of long-term commitment can turn out to have been a disastrous mistake. Build a plant that depends on imported parts, and Trump may cut you off at the knees with new tariffs. Build a plant that’s only profitable if tariffs stay in place, and Trump may cut you off at the knees by backing down.

Again, the point is that there really isn’t a MAGA economic philosophy, just whatever suits Trump’s fragile ego.

All of this was predictable and predicted. Before the election many economists warned that Trump’s policies would be destructive, although the models didn’t really take the sheer craziness into account.

The remarkable thing is how many supposedly hard-headed business people didn’t see the obvious. Small business owners, in particular, clearly favored Trump, and as the chart at the top shows, their optimism soared when he won. Now it’s crashing.

So business owners allowed themselves to be deluded, as usual, but with even less excuse than normal. What they should have realized is that Trump’s lack of concern for ordinary Americans’ lives doesn’t mean that he’s pro-business, and that the election wasn’t about left versus right — it was about rule of law versus autocracy. Now we’re getting a first taste of what life under autocracy is like, and it’s bad for everyone, including business 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 31, 2025 7:02 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Doods ...
I have known since Nixon was President that Republican Presidents are bad for business. I have also known since I went into business that other businessmen who believe Republican Presidents are good for business aren't doing a good job running a business. I have profited mightily at their expense since Trumptards are fundamentally incompetent. They deserve their misfortunes.

U.S. economic performance by presidential party
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._economic_performance_by_presidentia
l_party#Recessions
Ten of the eleven U.S. recessions between 1953 and 2020 began under Republican presidents.

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 31, 2025 10:32 AM

SECOND

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


April Fools' Day is coming one day late this year! Trump will play the Fool.

Trump says reciprocal tariffs will ‘start with all countries,’ rejects narrower launch

By Kevin Breuninger | Mon, Mar 31, 2025 10:00 AM EDT

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/31/trump-tariffs-reciprocal-april-2.html

President Donald Trump said that his “reciprocal tariffs” plan will target all other countries when they are unveiled Wednesday, injecting more uncertainty into the much-hyped trade policy just days before its rollout.

“You’d start with all countries,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One late Sunday. “So let’s see what happens. There are many countries.”

There is “not a cut off,” he added.

Trump explicitly pushed back on the possibility that the new tariffs would only target the top 10 or 15 trading partners that have their own import duties on U.S. goods.

“Who told you 10 or 15 countries?” Trump asked a reporter. “You didn’t hear it from me.”

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 31, 2025 1:23 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK




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

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

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Monday, March 31, 2025 2:44 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:


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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
I find Trump extremely amusing. And his followers are even funnier:

Trump to roll out new tariffs that he promises will "free" the US from foreign goods

Edited By Bridget Brown and Bernard Mcghee | 1:26 PM CDT, March 31, 2025

https://apnews.com/live/donald-trump-news-updates-3-31-2025

Trump said Sunday that “I’m not joking” about trying to serve a third term, the clearest indication he is considering ways to breach a constitutional barrier against continuing to lead the country after his second term ends at the beginning of 2029. But can he really do it?

President Donald Trump says Wednesday will be “Liberation Day” — when he plans to roll out a set of tariffs that he promises will free the United States from foreign goods.



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 31, 2025 3:11 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Doods ...
I have known since Nixon was President that Republican Presidents are bad for business. I have also known since I went into business that other businessmen who believe Republican Presidents are good for business aren't doing a good job running a business. I have profited mightily at their expense since Trumptards are fundamentally incompetent. They deserve their misfortunes.

U.S. economic performance by presidential party
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._economic_performance_by_presidentia
l_party#Recessions
Ten of the eleven U.S. recessions between 1953 and 2020 began under Republican presidents.

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


The article looks at

Job creation
GDP growth
Unemployment rates
Income growth and inequality
Inflation**
Federal budget deficits
Stock market returns*
Corporate profits*
Recessions

* These don't reflect economic health.

**
Quote:
Blinder and Watson found that since 1945 the average inflation rate was higher under Republican presidents than under Democrats, although inflation tended to rise under Democrats but fall under Republicans.


First of all, I distrust their measurement of economic health. GDP, for example. It includes "the value of all goods and services produced in the USA" but then includes non-productive values like the rental-equivalent value of home ownership, government outlays, inflated costs [of medical care, for example] which represents excess profit.

Also, since inflation figures are always jiggered to look lower than they really are, GDP is under-corrected for inflation, and tends to go up with inflation.
So GDP doesn't really reflect whether an economy is robustly producing anything, and inflation figures are also suspect.

Looking at job creation, we can discount Roosevelt (no longer typical of DNC aims) and Biden (jobs created all went to illegal aliens).

Unemployment is greatly affected by exogenous factors such as Covid, oil shocks, and the Federal Reserve.
Quote:
"The Democratic edge stems mainly from more benign oil shocks, superior total factor productivity (TFP) performance, a more favorable international environment, and perhaps more optimistic consumer expectations about the near-term future."[1] Unemployment is largely influenced by the economic policies from the Federal Reserve, which has as a main objective to balance the trade off between maintaining low and stable inflation vs maximizing employment.[15]



INTEREST RATES, under control of The [private bank consortium] Federal Reserve, affects other indicators as well.

The indicator that means the most to Americans, IMHO, is income equality. But most of the indicators that the article looks at are suspect, for one reason or another, and/or out of the control of the Federal government.


I DO want to point out Trump's persistent union-busting, which I find dangerous for working Americans.


-----------
"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 31, 2025 3:19 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

First of all, I distrust their measurement of economic health. GDP, for example. It includes "the value of all goods and services produced in the USA" but then includes non-productive values like the rental-equivalent value of home ownership, government outlays, inflated costs [of medical care, for example] which represents excess profit.
Germany is feeling very distrustful of Trump and any economic statistic that his government might publish, such as how much gold is stored at the Federal Reserve:

Where’s the gold? Germany’s conservatives sound the alarm over reserves in the US

By Carlo Martuscelli | March 31, 2025 4:39 am CET

https://www.politico.eu/article/gold-germany-conservatives-sound-alarm
-over-reserves-usa/

Can the United States be trusted with Germany’s gold?

Its leader is trying to cripple the Germany’s most important industry. His Vice-President thinks Germany is a pathetic freeloader. The man who has their ear is throwing what look a lot like Nazi salutes and openly interfering in Germany’s elections to support a far-right party that its own intelligence service thinks is a threat to the constitution.

No wonder, then, that some politicians in Germany are worried that what was for decades seen as one of the world’s most reliable storehouses might not be so secure after all.

Germany holds the world’s second-largest gold reserves, and keeps 37 percent of them — some 1,236 metric tons, worth €113 billion — in the vaults of the New York Federal Reserve. Those holdings of precious metal guarantee that, should the need ever arise, the Bundesbank has access to something it can change into U.S. dollars (or any other hard currency).

The very idea that they might not be safe would have been considered ridiculous from 1945 ... until a couple of weeks ago. The unthinkable is suddenly very thinkable given evidence of U.S. President Donald Trump’s willingness to push the limits of his powers and assert presidential primacy over the judicial system.

In the past, the idea that gold stored in official vaults may not be safe has generally been the preserve of cranks and conspiracy theorists. However, it has been revived, ironically, by none other than the billionaire and éminence grise of the Trump administration, Elon Musk, who has called for an inspection of the U.S.’s own gold reserves.

In 2013, a noisy campaign driven by right-wing populists — which resonated enough with the broader population to embarrass then-Chancellor Angela Merkel — led to the Bundesbank repatriating all of the gold it had previously stored in the Bank of France’s vaults.

Today, over half of the Bundesbank’s reserves are stored on its premises in Frankfurt. Outside the U.S., the remaining 13 percent is held at the Bank of England.

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 31, 2025 5:24 PM

SECOND

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


On America’s Declining Life Expectancy, do you feel like the winds of change are blowing? Nope. Trump has other priorities. Like a third term. Like Greenland. Like a tax cut for billionaires. Like every country on Earth owes tariffs to America. Really, about tariffs Trump thinks every country has cheated America and he is going to make them pay, starting April 2, the day after April Fools' Day.

1) John Green @johngreen tweets
The United States will soon drop out of the Top 50 nations in terms of life expectancy.
Every country above us has a public option for health insurance of a publicly funded healthcare system. Not some. Not most. Every single one.

'Live free and die?' The sad state of U.S. life expectancy
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/03/25/1164819944/live-f
ree-and-die-the-sad-state-of-u-s-life-expectancy

2) A Republican says don’t blame Republicans in Congress:

Debunking Bad Arguments on America’s Declining Life Expectancy

By Bobby Miller | September 9, 2022 10:20 AM

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/debunking-bad-arguments-on-ameri
cas-declining-life-expectancy/

Life expectancy in the United States has sadly dropped once again, and progressives aren’t squandering the opportunity to turn what should be a solemn reminder of the consequences of poor public policy and individual choices into a political win. Leading online liberal, novelist, and content creator John Green was quick to point out that all the countries above us in the life-expectancy index have some form of socialized medicine. This is a profoundly disingenuous and callous way of making a case for universal health care.

3) U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders says blame those in Congress who won’t accept blame:

The U.S. Ranks Dead Last In Life Expectancy Compared To Other Developed Countries
March 21, 2025 at 12:27PM

https://www.facebook.com/senatorsanders/posts/the-united-states-of-ame
rica-is-the-only-major-country-on-earth-that-does-not-gu/1234697911359017/

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 31, 2025 5:34 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
The very idea that they [German gold bouillon] might not be safe [in the USA] would have been considered ridiculous from 1945 ... until a couple of weeks ago.


OMG, the utter bullshit that you post.

Even I, as uninvolved in the gold trade as I am, remember Germany's various drives to repatriate its gold. It waxes and wanes depending on political and financial concerns.

The simplest fact check would have revealed that.

Quote:
In January 2013, Deutsche Bundesbank, the German central bank, announced plans to repatriate 300 tons of its 1,500 tonne reserve from the U.S., and 374 tons from France by 2020, in order to store (1,695.3 tons) of its official gold reserves in Frankfurt.[4][5][6]

The gold stored in the U.S. was acquired by West Germany during a period of trade surpluses with the U.S. before 1970. The gold was never repatriated to Germany due to fear of invasion by the Soviet Union.[7] In 2013, five tons were repatriated due to logistical difficulties. However, 120 tons in 2014 (35 tons from Paris, 85 tons from New York);[8][9] a further 210 tons in 2015 (110.5 tons from Paris and 99.5 tons from New York);[10] and finally 200 tons in 2016, were repatriated.[11][12]


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_repatriation

Yanno, you discredit LEGITIMATE criticisms of Trump with all the bullshit and lies that you post, son.

******

Here is a legitimate criticism

Quote:
The collateral damage of Trump's Yemen blunder

... Apparently they were hoping to score a decapitation strike, as Israel had done in Lebanon, killing Hassan Nasrallah and a number of other senior Hamas officials. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed that the U.S. executed precision strikes in Yemen and hit all of the targets they intended to hit. That may well be true, but it remains uncertain whether those targets were of any military value or not.

Trust us, we’re experts!

We should ignore whatever the official Washington has to say about it: government and military authorities always try to project an image of a tight ship organization that conducts rigorous, accurate monitoring with extensive human and technological intelligence assets on the ground and in the air... When they identify a target, for sure they'll kill the baddies and effectively limit 'collateral damage.' We can rest assured that it's all surgical stuff that eliminates evil doers while sparing the innocents. But as a rule, the reality of war is very different from the sanitized versions contrived to secure the acquiescence from the public which pays for all the fireworks.

Some ten days ago, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter gave us a first hand account (at about 22 min. mark) about the way target selection actually works. He said that during the first Iraq war, he was "heavily involved" with targeting of Iraqi Scud missiles, their production capacity, their command and control and their operational activity, to try and interdict their launches. He also became intimately familiar with Central Command (CENTCOM) operations, explaining that "there's a lot of speculation that goes into identifying targets." In the early 2000s, Ritter became a weapons inspector, so he had the unique opportunity to visit "every place we attacked" in Iraq. Here's what he found:

"We misidentified the vast majority of targets we bombed; we claimed that we did more destruction on them than we did and often times we hit things that had nothing to do with what we thought we were doing and when it came to mobile relocatable targets we blew up more Bedouin tents, more trucks, more buses, more fuel tankers, more private vehicles than we did Scuds. We didn't hit a single scud launcher in the entire war despite diverting thousands of combat sorties dedicated to that task. But we did kill thousands of innocent Iraqis and hundreds of innocent Jordanian truck drivers. We slaughtered Bedouin families because we mistook Bedouin tents filled with sheep ... We did this over and over and over and over again and we never learned the lesson. ... It was repeated in Afghanistan, it is repeated every time we go to war."

Lessons learned?

For anyone who might suspect that Mr. Ritter is exaggerating, back in 2019 Washington Post published the "Afghanistan Papers," which abundantly corroborated his take. Afghanistan Papers showed a shocking lack of professionalism, corruption and deceptive practices by senior US military and political leaders. Perhaps like Mr. Hegseth and Mr. Waltz today, they publicly claimed great achievements and progres in Afghanistan. Privately however, they knew that the war was unwinnable. In Afghanistan, the U.S. embarked upon an open-ended war on the other side of the planet, without any coherent plan or a long-term strategy. All they had was a narrative for public consumption, which shifted according to the exigencies of the day, from counterterrorism to nation-building to counterinsurgency.

The narratives were evidently good enough to justify spending more than $1 trillion of US taxpayer money, but about 40% of that figure was lost to embezzlement, fraud and waste in reconstruction projects that were seodm, if ever, completed. US troops often had no idea where their enemies were or whom they were bombing. Private interviews from SIGAR's "Lessons Learned" project showed that the officials knew perfectly well that the war was a lost cause, but continued to issue optimistic, upbeat statements to maintain the commitment in Afghanistan. Allegedly they feared that admitting the truth would damage morale and erode public support. I think that they also feared that admitting the truth would stop the money train.
They really never learn…

It is fortunate for the Trump team that, as Ritter said, the military keeps doing the same things over and over and over again and never learns the lessons. I suppose they have to pretend to be in control, else they might lose public support and erode the troops' morale. But the public - at least the discerning cohort among them - should realize that all the confidence boosterism coming from the administration probably amounts to lipstick on the proverbial pig. Seven years of war against Yemen (via Saudi proxy) and sixteen months of bombing under the operation "Prosperity Guardian" did not defeat nor deter the Yemenis. Why anyone expected that these last bombing raids would do the trick, is anyone's guess.
Loose cannons
It is clear by now that Trump's "decisive and powerful military action" was a powerful blunder that will expose the empire's weakness and embolden their enemies who are all paying close attention to the new team in charge. This is a disappointment to those of us who assumed that people in the Trump administration were experienced, learned and judicious professionals. Now they're coming across as loose cannons: an amateurish clique with barely a rudimentary understanding of what or whom they're bombing. Recent revelations from the Signal chat about the way these decisions were made only reinforces that view. Ultimately, the worst collateral damage from this episode will be the administration's lost credibility in the world, both with its friends and its adversaries. Making deals will probably prove harder than they thought.

Alex Krainer substack


-----------
"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 31, 2025 5:38 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Second cannot articulate one single way that his life is worse today than it was in November of 2024.

Not one.



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

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

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Monday, March 31, 2025 5:56 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Second cannot articulate one single way that his life is worse today than it was in November of 2024.

Not one.
I am in the top 1%. Nothing Trump does can touch me. But that fat rapist and tax cheater can touch other people:

In Trump’s America, You Can Be Disappeared for Writing an Op-Ed

The Trump administration’s detention of Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk rests on an opinion article she wrote in 2024, her lawyers said in a filing.

By Jonah Valdez | March 30, 2025

https://theintercept.com/2025/03/30/tufts-rumeysa-ozturk-ice-immigrati
on-op-ed/

While in Georgetown, Guyana, on Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked by a reporter about what led to the arrest of Tufts University graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk. The reporter mentioned an opinion piece Öztürk co-wrote in March 2024, published in The Tufts Daily, advocating for students’ calls to divest the school from companies with ties to Israel. https://www.tuftsdaily.com/article/2024/03/4ftk27sm6jkj

Rubio seemed to downplay the influence of the op-ed, written alongside three other Tufts graduate students, instead insinuating without evidence that Öztürk, a Turkish citizen, had vandalized her university, occupied buildings, and harassed students.

“If you lie to us and get a visa and then enter the United States and with that visa participate in that sort of activity, we’re going to take away your visa,” Rubio said.

Government documents included in court filings, however, don’t back up Rubio’s claims of supposed unlawful behavior.

Several days before her arrest on Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security revoked Öztürk’s student visa without notifying her, according to a DHS document through its Student and Exchange Visitor Program, through which Öztürk had obtained her visa.

The government didn’t claim that Öztürk had broken any laws but instead cited a civil law provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act. The provision gives the secretary of state the authority to request the deportation of an individual who is not a U.S. citizen, if they have “reasonable ground to believe” the individual’s presence in the country hurts the government’s foreign policy interests.

The government has made the same argument in detaining former Columbia University student activist leader Mahmoud Khalil and Georgetown University scholar Badar Khan Suri, as well as in its efforts to arrest Columbia student Yunseo Chung.

In each of these cases, attorneys for the students argued the Trump administration’s crackdown on students and academics over their support for Palestine are ultimately an attack on their free speech rights.

Öztürk’s case is notable in that her detention and possible deportation may very well center on a published piece of journalism.

“Her arrest and detention appear to be based solely on her co-authorship of an op-ed in her school newspaper,” Öztürk’s attorneys wrote in a habeas petition for her release filed on Friday. “Rümeysa’s arrest and detention are designed to punish her speech and chill the speech of others. Indeed, her arrest and detention are part of a concerted and systemic effort by Trump administration officials to punish students and others identified with pro-Palestine activism.”

Attorneys said Öztürk feared for her safety after pro-Israel group Canary Mission posted about her in early February, pointing to her 2024 essay. Canary Mission, which shares personal information about pro-Palestine activists online and is often used by other Zionist groups to dox people, said Öztürk took part in “anti-Israel activism” and cited her 2024 opinion piece as its sole source to back its claim.

While it is not known whether the State Department was aware of the Canary Mission post, right-wing Zionist groups have been willing collaborators in helping direct the administration toward “pro-Hamas” individuals for deportation.

In its “Catch and Revoke” program, the State Department also scours the social media accounts of student visa holders for purported pro-Hamas sentiment, which the government has conflated with pro-Palestine views.

Free speech advocates note that professing support for both Palestine and Hamas is protected by the First Amendment. Even so, international students have been increasingly careful about what they write or say online, legal advocates for student protesters told The Intercept. The recent arrests have also given international students pause over whether they should remain in the U.S.

During the press conference, Rubio also confirmed Axios reporting that the State Department has already revoked at least 300 student visas.
https://www.axios.com/2025/03/27/trump-palestinian-hamas-purge-college
s-protests

Rubio said, “We do it every day — every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa.”

After Öztürk’s arrest, DHS passed reporters an unsubstantiated claim that Öztürk had “engaged in activities in support of Hamas.” Öztürk’s op-ed, however, never mentions Hamas.

Instead, the 800-word opinion piece references mounting evidence of Israel’s violations of international law in its war in Gaza. It criticized the Tufts administration’s double standard of espousing diversity, civic engagement, and the exchange of ideas, but failing to uphold those values in its rejection of the students’ demands.

On Tuesday, exactly one year after the op-ed was published, masked plainclothes U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Öztürk outside of her Somerville, Massachusetts, home as she was on her way to to break her Ramadan fast with friends. Footage of her arrest, which was shared widely online, sparked immediate outrage with many referring to the arrest as “a kidnapping” or an “abduction.” For nearly 24 hours, Öztürk’s family and legal team was unaware of her whereabouts.

In defiance of a federal judge’s order to keep Öztürk in Massachusetts, ICE flew Öztürk to the South Louisiana Correctional Center, a privately run ICE jail, where she remains incarcerated.

Öztürk did not have access to her medications during the flight and suffered an asthma attack, her attorneys said in court filings.

Massachusetts District Court Judge Denise Casper issued an order on Friday preventing the government from deporting Öztürk as the battle for her release plays out in court.

On Wednesday, more than 1,000 people rallied near the Tufts campus to protest the government’s case against Öztürk.

A spokesperson for Öztürk’s legal team defended the 2024 op-ed in a statement Friday and said that Öztürk “is entitled to express her opinions freely.” They added that the DHS has yet to provide any evidence to support their deportation case.

“Meanwhile, there is plenty of evidence of U.S. supplied bombs being dropped on Gaza killing over 1,000 people, including over 250 children in the last week. It appears the only thing Rumeysa is being targeted for is her right to free speech,” the spokesperson said.

Student journalists at Tufts have also stood firm against the Trump’s administration’s attacks on free speech. The Tufts Daily’s editors published a defense of Öztürk and her role in writing the op-ed.

“Öztürk’s contribution is an exercise of free speech — her fulfillment of a fundamental American value,” the editors wrote.

While the editors said they were sensitive to the “well-being of our writers and sources,” the paper has no plans of slowing its coverage of Öztürk’s case or future opinion pieces by students.

“That said, the withholding of ideas and abstinence from debate will only contribute to the erosion of free expression,” the editors wrote. “In a moment of uncertainty and turmoil, we will continue to defend independent journalism by sharing others’ viewpoints and stories.”

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 31, 2025 6:56 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Second cannot articulate one single way that his life is worse today than it was in November of 2024.

Not one.
I am in the top 1%


No you're not.

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

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

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Monday, March 31, 2025 7:19 PM

SECOND

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


Five Things Elon Musk Doesn’t Want You to Know About Social Security

By Peter Hart | Mar 27, 2025

https://cepr.net/publications/five-things-elon-musk-doesnt-want-you-to
-know-about-social-security/

1. There is No Serious ‘Fraud’ Problem with Social Security

To put it plainly – millions of dead people aren’t getting Social Security checks. This Musk claim was easily debunked; unfortunately, that did not prevent Donald Trump from repeating it on numerous occasions.

Beyond this falsehood, there is no other evidence that the system has a substantial problem with fraud. In 2024, an inspector general report found that there had been $71 billion in improper payments over a seven-year-period; about one-third of those payments were recovered. This amounts to roughly 0.3 percent of the total benefits paid out, which is an extremely high rate of accuracy – you can visit the Annual Improper Payments Dashboard to see how it compares to other government agencies, many of which have drawn no interest from DOGE.

2. Social Security is Not Going Bankrupt

Musk’s claim that Social Security is a Ponzi Scheme is nothing new; privatizers have been making the same claim for decades, trying to convince people (especially younger workers) that they’ll never see any of the money they’ve paid into the program. While it is true that Social Security is dependent on people paying their taxes to the government, that is also true for the repayment of government bonds – and no one calls government bonds a Ponzi Scheme.

What has happened to Social Security is fairly well understood. In order to account for the retirement of Baby Boomers, Social Security built up a massive surplus. The rhetoric about a ‘crisis’ is rooted in the process of using up that surplus. Even after those funds are exhausted, the program would be able to pay the majority of scheduled benefits. If political leaders were to make changes to the program now – raising the income tax to generate more revenue from the very wealthy, for instance – Social Security would be strengthened for the long term.

3. Social Security is Remarkably Efficient

Since the “E” in DOGE stands for Efficiency, you would think they might be able to spot an efficiently managed program. That is precisely how Social Security operates. The administrative costs associated with Social Security are less than 0.4 percent of benefits paid per year – far less than the typical 401(k) retirement plan, where administrative costs can add up to 20 percent or more of the benefits that are actually paid. Given that Social Security pays out close to $1.4 trillion in benefits every year, this is a remarkably lean and efficient program.

4. Privatization is a Terrible Idea

One of the most common claims about Social Security is that we would all make more money if we simply invested our money on our own. This idea came back recently during a retirement industry summit held by the giant investment firm BlackRock.

There’s no mystery why investment firms advocate for some form of privatization (though they tend to avoid using that word): They would earn billions of dollars in fees for managing these accounts. The idea of a stronger return from a privatized approach is especially attractive when the stock market is booming. Of course, things look very differently when the market goes down – as it inevitably does.

There are a host of other unanswered questions about how to even manage a privatized system. Policies would need to be crafted to regulate the plans, manage the efficient withdrawal of funds, and plan for the possible need for government bailouts. There is also the issue of how privatization would impact current retirees whose benefits are supported by current workers.

And, perhaps most importantly, private accounts would require benefit cuts. The privatization proposals under the second Bush administration included deep benefit cuts for all retirees, which was one of the main reasons the plan was so deeply unpopular. People were not enthusiastic about the idea that they’d get less in guaranteed benefits in order to place bets in the stock market. But on some level, this is what would be required under any privatization plan.

5. Social Security is an Incredibly Effective Anti-Poverty Program

The bogus arguments over fraud and long term funding projections can serve to obscure the overwhelming success of Social Security. There is no doubt that it remains one of the most effective anti-poverty programs in the nation’s history, lifting millions of Americans out of poverty. It is also structured to be highly progressive – lower wage workers will receive a higher share of their wages in benefits.

More fundamentally, the whole point of a nearly universal social insurance program like Social Security is to reinforce the idea that we are all in this together. Retirees and other beneficiaries do not need to manage an investment portfolio or worry about being defrauded by unscrupulous actors. And a program that touches almost every aspect of society makes it politically durable and overwhelmingly popular.

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 31, 2025 8:08 PM

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


"The mad king of a high-tech feudal state"
Elon Musk's mythology

Feb 20, 2025

https://newsletter.thedriftmag.com/p/17343849_2-20-25-musk-isaacson-ar
chival

In one scene, Musk challenges the CTO of PayPal, Max Levchin, to an arm wrestle to resolve a disagreement about operating systems. Musk wins and enlists a team of engineers to rewrite the existing code. The effort takes an entire year and achieves nothing other than distracting engineers from a dire fraud problem on the service. But Isaacson ties this up in a mini-redemption arc: Levchin is seen marveling at Musk’s technical expertise. As in Jobs, Isaacson employs his troubled-genius bait and switch, recounting an unhinged Musk anecdote and then justifying it with a moment of brilliance.

The trouble is, there is very little in Musk’s early life that offers any evidence of genius, creative talent, or even above-average intelligence. He is an emotionally detached child who sits in class staring into space. He likes computer games and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He gets As and Bs. The only evidence of superlative capability that Isaacson can conjure is that Musk read his dad’s encyclopedias and made small rockets with chlorine and brake fluid. What does stand out among this otherwise entirely unremarkable youth are stories in which Musk succeeds through dumb luck and aggression. In one, Musk competes in a Dungeons and Dragons tournament with his brother and cousins. The game master tells them that their mission is to identify the bad guy among the opposing players. On the first move, and without any evidence, Musk correctly guesses that the game master himself is the bad guy. The others accuse Musk of cheating. How did he know? “These guys were idiots,” Musk explains to Isaacson. “It was so obvious.” Any reader can see that this story is just Musk being a cocky teenage boy. Isaacson, however, takes it as proof that Musk could “think different.” Musk’s big break comes when he sells his first company, Zip2, at the height of the dot-com boom for $307 million. Zip2 is a searchable business directory that uses map software to give users directions. It’s not exactly the Mona Lisa, but, as Isaacson insists, “some of the best innovations come from combining two previous innovations.” Musk parlays the capital from that sale into an online-payments business that, fortunately, merges with PayPal. What does he contribute? An idea that new users could sign up with their email addresses instead of their Social Security numbers. Isaacson: “Like Steve Jobs, he had a passion for simplicity when it came to designing user interface screens.”

If there is anything remarkable that emerges about Musk in the biography, it is his grandiose, cosmic sense of mission — his obsession with making humanity multi-planetary, for example — and his absurd appetite for risk. The combination could be inspiring for those Musk worked with — and it certainly makes for good marketing. Like Jobs, Musk’s great talent is in self-mythologizing. He builds his cult of personality not around the guru-creative ideal, as Jobs did, but as a crazed, workaholic, alpha-male superhero: a manic Iron Man sending a Tesla Roadster into space. Isaacson credulously regurgitates Musk’s lore, just as he did in Jobs, recounting an anecdote in which Musk plays a game of Texas Hold ’Em and goes all in on every single hand — losing, doubling up — until he eventually wins. “It would be a theme in his life,” Isaacson writes. “Avoid taking chips off the table; keep risking them.”

To redeem Musk as a Jobs-like genius, Isaacson leans heavily on the “crazy” element of the “think different” campaign. It is the “crazy ones,” the ones who go all in at poker, who change the world. The problem is, as the biography progresses, the craziness intensifies even as it bears little connection to the genuine achievements of Musk’s companies, which are adeptly run by very talented employees who do their best to keep Musk out of the way. Isaacson tries to craft a coherent narrative out of such life events as: Musk accusing a British caver who helped save trapped Thai soccer players of being a “pedo guy”; smoking a fat blunt on Joe Rogan’s podcast while talking about our coming A.I. overlords; naming his son with the musician Grimes X Æ A-Xii. Isaacson attempts humor at times, affecting the befuddled tone of a naive grandfather regaling internet drama. When Musk takes over Twitter, Isaacson frames the chaos as a kind of clownish farce.

The contrived goofiness distracts from the troubling reality that, as Musk grew more deranged, his power increased. By 2021, when Isaacson began reporting the book, Musk was running two of the world’s most important companies: Tesla and SpaceX (including its subsidiary Starlink). Isaacson got to see in real time how Musk wielded his influence. One evening, in September 2022, Musk messaged Isaacson to tell him that Ukraine was planning a surprise attack on a Russian naval fleet in Crimea with Starlink-connected submarine drones. Musk told Isaacson he believed there was a “non-trivial possibility” that such an attack could trigger nuclear war, so, as Isaacson tells it, “he reaffirmed a secret policy that he had implemented, which the Ukrainians did not know about, to disable coverage within a hundred kilometers of the Crimean coast.” But Isaacson got the facts wrong. There was no Starlink coverage enabled all the way to Crimea to begin with. The Ukrainians asked Musk to switch it on for their drone attack, but he declined. Much was made of this error after Musk was published, but more concerning than Isaacson’s errant reporting was his indifference to the fact that, whether Musk made the order directly or simply affirmed the preexisting geographical limit, the final decision was still ultimately his alone, giving Musk almost state-like authority. Isaacson fails to call this for what it is: a completely undemocratic consolidation of power. Instead, Isaacson tempers the whole terrifying ordeal by assuring us that Musk never sought such power. “Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars,” Musk told Isaacson during a late night phone call. “It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes.” Once again, Isaacson’s performance of neutrality precludes him from a clear-eyed assessment of his subject. If Kissinger was a serial killer dressed up as a peacemaker, Musk is a mad, petulant oligarch dressed up as a genius.

Download a free copy of the Musk biography by Walter Isaacson from the mirrors at https://libgen.rs/search.php?req=Walter+Isaacson+Musk

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

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Tuesday, April 1, 2025 6:05 AM

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


Trump's "restoring truth" order could return toppled Confederate monuments

By Russell Contreras, Delano Massey | Mar 30, 2025

https://www.axios.com/2025/03/30/trump-executive-order-confederate-mon
uments

President Trump has ordered a federal review of monuments toppled in the wake of George Floyd's murder, targeting what he calls a "concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation's history."

Did nobody tell Trump that those statues were for glorifying traitors and slave-owners, not for recording history?

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

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Tuesday, April 1, 2025 6:14 AM

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


Vance’s posturing in Greenland was not just morally wrong. It was strategically disastrous

Thanks to Trump’s administration, the US could soon have to fight wars to get things that, just a few weeks ago, were there for the asking

By Timothy Snyder | Mon 31 Mar 2025

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/31/trump-greenland-
us-morally-wrong-strategy-disastrous

“No one would allow that he could not see these much-admired clothes; because, in doing so, he would have declared himself either a simpleton or unfit of his office.”
– Hans Christian Andersen, The Emperor’s New Clothes

Musk-Trump inherited a state with unprecedented power and functionality, and are taking it apart. They also inherited a set of alliances and relationships that underpinned the largest economy in world history. This too they are breaking.

The American vice-president, JD Vance, visited an American base Greenland for three hours yesterday, along with his wife. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and his wife also came along. Fresh from illegally using an unsafe social media platform to carry out an entirely unnecessary group chat in which they leaked sensitive data about an ongoing military attack to a reporter, Waltz and Vance perhaps hoped to change the subject by tagging along on a trip which was initially billed as Vance’s wife watching a dogsled race.

The overall context was Donald Trump’s persistent claim that America must take Greenland, which is an autonomous region of Denmark. The original plan had been that Usha Vance would visit Greenlanders, apparently on the logic that the Second Lady would be an effective animatrice of colonial subjection; but none of them wanted to see her, and Greenland’s businesses refused to serve as a backdrop to photo ops or even to serve the uninvited Americans. So instead the American couples all made a very quick visit to Pituffik Space Base. (Pete Hegseth, another group chatter, stayed home; but his wife was in the news as well, as an unorthodox participant in sensitive military discussions.)

At the base, in the far north of the island, the American visitors had pictures taken of themselves and ate lunch with servicemen and servicewomen. They treated the base as the backdrop to a press conference where they could say things they already thought; nothing was experienced, nothing was learned, nothing sensible was said. Vance, who never left the base, and has never before visited Greenland, was quite sure how Greenlanders should live. He made a political appeal to Greenlanders, none of whom was present, or anywhere near him. He claimed that Denmark was not protecting the security of Greenlanders in the Arctic, and that the United States would. Greenland should therefore join the United States.

It takes some patience to unwind all of the nonsense here.

The base at Pituffik (formerly Thule) only exists because Denmark permitted the United States to build it at a sensitive time. It has served the United States for decades as a central part of its nuclear armory and then as an early-warning system against Soviet and then Russian nuclear attack.

When Vance says that Denmark is not protecting Greenland and the base, he is wishing away generations of cooperation, as well as the NATO alliance itself. Denmark was a founding member of NATO, and it is already American’s job to defend Denmark and Greenland, just as it is Denmark’s job (as with other members) to defend the United States.

Americans might chuckle at that idea, but such arrogance is unwarranted. We are the only ones ever to have invoked Article 5, the mutual defense obligation of the NATO treaty, after 9/11; and our European allies did respond. Per capita more Danish soldiers were killed in the Afghan war than were American soldiers. Do we remember them? Thank them?

The threat in the Arctic invoked by Vance is Russia; and of course defending against a Russian attack is the NATO mission. But right now the United States is supporting Russia in its war against Ukraine. No one is doing more to contain the Russian threat than Ukraine. Indeed, Ukraine is in effect fulfilling the entire NATO mission, right now, by absorbing a huge Russian attack. But Vance opposes helping Ukraine, spreads Russian propaganda about Ukraine, and is best known for yelling at Ukraine’s president in the Oval Office. On the base, Vance blamed the killing in Ukraine on Biden rather than on Putin, which is grotesque. Vance claimed that there is now an energy cease-fire in place between Russia and Ukraine; in fact, Russia violated it immediately. Russia is now preparing a massive spring offensive against Ukraine; the response of Musk-Trump has been to ignore this larger reality completely while allowing Biden-era aid to Ukraine to come to an end. Denmark meanwhile has given more than four times as much aid to Ukraine, per capita, as does the United States.

Greenland, Denmark, and the United States have been enmeshed in complex and effective security arrangements, touching on the gravest scenarios, for the better part of a century. Arctic security, an issue discovered by Trump and Vance very recently, was a preoccuption for decades during and after the cold war. There are only a couple hundred Americans at Pituffik where once there were ten thousand; there is only that one US base on the island where once there were a dozen; but that is American policy, not Denmark’s fault.

We really do have a problem taking responsibility. The United States has fallen well behind its allies and its rivals in the Arctic, in part because members of Vance’s political party denied for decades the reality of global warming, which has made it hard for the U.S. Navy to persuade Congress of the need to commission icebreakers. The United States only has two functional arctic icebreakers; the Biden administration was intending to cooperate with Canada, which has some, and with Finland, which builds lots, in order to compete with Russia, which has the most. That common plan would have allowed the United States to surpass Russia in icebreaking capacity. This is one of countless examples of how cooperation with NATO allies benefits the United States. It is not clear what will happen with that arrangement now that Trump and Vance define Canada, like Denmark, as a rival or even as an enemy. Presumably it will break down, leaving Russia dominant.

As with everything Musk-Trump does, however, the cui bono question about imperialism in Greenland is easy to answer: Russia benefits. Putin cannot contain his delight with American imperialism over Greenland. In generating artificial crises in relations with both Denmark and Canada, America’s two closest allies these last eighty years, the Trump people cut America loose from security gains and create a chaos in which Russia benefits.

The American imperialism directed towards Denmark and Canada is not just morally wrong. It is strategically disastrous. The United States has nothing to gain from it, and much to lose. There is nothing that Americans cannot get from Denmark or Canada through alliance. The very existence of the base at Pituffik shows that. Within the atmosphere of friendship that has prevailed the last eighty years, all of the mineral resources of Canada and Greenland can be traded for on good terms, or for that matter explored by American companies. The only way to put all of this easy access in doubt was to follow the course that Musk-Trump have chosen: trade wars with Canada and Europe, and the threat of actual wars and annexations. Musk-Trump are creating the bloodily moronic situation in which the United States will have to fight wars to get the things that, just a few weeks ago, were there for the asking. And of course wars rarely turn out the way one expects.

Much effort is spent trying to extract a doctrine from all this. But there is none. It is just senselessness that benefits America’s enemies. Hans Christian Andersen told the unforgettable tale of the naked emperor. In Greenland what we saw was American imperialism with no clothes. Naked and vain.

As a parting shot, Vance told Greenlanders that life with the United States would be better than with Denmark. Danish officials have been too diplomatic to answer directly the insults directed at them from their own territory during an uninvited visit by imperialist hotheads. Let me though just note a few possible replies, off the top of my head. The comparison between life in the United States and life in Denmark is not just polemical. Musk-Trump treat Europe as though it were some decadent abyss, and propose that alliances with dictatorships would somehow be better. But Europe is not only home to our traditional allies; it is an enviable zone of democracy, wealth and prosperity with which it benefits us to have good relations, and from which we can sometimes learn.

So consider. The US is is 24th in the world in the happiness rankings. Not bad. But Denmark is number two (after Finland). On a scale of 1 to 100, Freedom House ranks Denmark 97 and the US 84 on freedom — and the US will drop a great deal this year. An American is about ten times more likely to be incarcerated than a Dane. Danes have access to universal and essentially free health care; Americans spend a huge amount of money to be sick more often and to be treated worse when they are. Danes on average live four years longer than Americans. In Denmark university education is free; the average balance owed by the tens of millions of Americans who hold student debt in the US is about $40,000. Danish parents share a year of paid parental leave. In the US, one parent might get twelve weeks of unpaid leave. Denmark has children’s story writer Hans Christian Andersen. The US has children’s story writer JD Vance. American children are about twice as likely as Danish children to die before the age of five.

Timothy Snyder is the Richard C Levin professor of history at Yale University, and the chair in modern European history supported by the Temerty endowment for Ukrainian studies at the University of Toronto. His latest book is On Freedom. This post originally appeared on his Substack, https://snyder.substack.com/p/vance-in-greenland

Download Timothy Snyder’s books for free from the mirrors at https://libgen.rs/search.php?&req=Timothy+Snyder&phrase=1&
view=simple&column=def&sort=year&sortmode=DESC

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

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Tuesday, April 1, 2025 6:44 AM

SECOND

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


ICE’s push for illegal immigrant data to the IRS that could end in a $97 billion revenue loss to state coffers

By Calum Roche | Mar 31st, 2025 12:16 EDT

https://en.as.com/latest_news/ices-push-for-illegal-immigrant-data-to-
the-irs-that-could-end-in-a-97-billion-revenue-loss-to-state-coffers-n/

In a bid to step up deportations, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) wants access to the IRS’s most sensitive data – taxpayer records – to help identify and deport undocumented immigrants. But experts warn this could trigger a massive drop in tax compliance, costing states and the federal government up to $97 billion.

That’s how much undocumented immigrants paid in taxes in 2022, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Many file returns not just to follow the rules, but in hopes that proving they’ve paid taxes might one day support a bid for legal residency.

If ICE starts using IRS data to locate them, that incentive disappears. “The mere fact this is being talked about… is going to lead to declining compliance,” said ITEP’s Carl Davis.

More at https://en.as.com/latest_news/ices-push-for-illegal-immigrant-data-to-
the-irs-that-could-end-in-a-97-billion-revenue-loss-to-state-coffers-n/

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

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Tuesday, April 1, 2025 6:55 AM

SECOND

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


Military expert warns Trump vow could trigger decades-long insurgency

By Brad Reed | March 31, 2025 8:46AM ET

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-canada-2671641846/

President Donald Trump has repeatedly mused about making Canada into America's "51st state," which has prompted one expert to conduct a war game mapping how a U.S. invasion of Canada would play out.

The Montreal Gazette reported that Aisha Ahmad, a political scientist at the University of Toronto, said that the American military would likely easily defeat Canada were Trump to really give the green light for an invasion.

However, he also said that wouldn't be the end of the story as Canadians would not passively accept being conquered.

In fact, Ahmad believes that Canadians would wage a bloody, decades-long insurgency against the United States until the Americans left their country.

“It’s impossible to annex Canada without violence,” said Ahmad, who in the past has advised American officials at the United States Department of Defense about counter-insurgency strategies. “No one is born an insurgent or resistance fighter. This is something that happens to people when their mom is killed, or when their kids are unable to get to a hospital. People fight back because they have to.”

He said that the U.S. military would struggle to occupy Canada when hundreds of thousands of Canadians would be engaged in a concerted campaign of sabotage that they would adopt as a "secret, part-time job."

"Trump is delusional if he believes that 40 million Canadians will passively accept conquest," he emphasized.

In fact, it would only take one percent of the Canadian population working as insurgents to produce a force of 400,000 fighters, which would be ten times the number of Taliban fighters who eventually pushed the American military out of Afghanistan after a 20-year occupation.

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

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Tuesday, April 1, 2025 7:10 AM

SECOND

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


How to collapse America from the inside out

By Thom Hartmann | March 31, 2025

https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/how-to-collapse-america-f
rom-the-inside-out/

And here we are. So far, Trump and Musk have or are in the process of:

— Gutting the IRS so badly that the country will lose an estimated $500 billion to morbidly rich tax cheats
— Killing off the EPA, so polluters can run free and profit from giving us cancer
— Disbanded the Public Integrity Section that once prosecuted corrupt politicians
— Shut down the DOJ unit that was prosecuting violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act
— Moved the ATF under Kash Patel’s overview with the goal of neutering it
— Crippling the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau (CFPB) that stops big banks and insurance companies from ripping off average people
— Taking a hatchet to NASA, presumably to hand more power and money to SpaceX
— Dismantling the Department of Education to create more demand for private for-profit schools
— Paralyzing the Department of Health and Human Services that protects us from disease and pandemics
— Mutilating the National Labor Relations Board that protects workers’ rights
— Proclaiming their intention to end FEMA, so Americans are on their own when climate-change-driven disasters strike
— Tearing apart the Social Security Administration so seniors will have to rely on big banks for retirement options
— Demolishing the National Institutes of Health that develops new drugs and cures for disease
— Seizing control of the FCC so they can end net neutrality and dictate content of radio and TV programming
— Stripping NOAA of its workers so we’ll have to rely on for-profit companies for our weather reports and storm warnings
— Kneecapping the Department of Transportation to block new public transportation projects and deregulate big trucking companies and self-driving cars
— Ripping up the Department of Energy so it can’t fund any more “green” energy projects
— Wiping out the Department of Housing and Urban Development to prevent any new low-income housing projects
— Attacking the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to leave Americans defenseless
— Largely ending the ability of the Office of Civil Rights within the DOE to enforce anti-discrimination laws in education
— Defunded the National Institute of Justice that works against terrorism and far-right extremism
— Eviscerating the Department of Veterans Affairs and other programs that help our veterans (including shutting down the suicide prevention hotlines)
— Defunding the Department of Agriculture to gut food stamps/SNAP, school lunch programs, and supports for small family farms
— Paralyzing the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) that oversees the executive branch to make sure anti-terrorism efforts don’t violate civil rights
— Weakening the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) so it can’t do its job of protecting minority or disabled workers and job applicants
— Firing scientists at the FDA, gutting oversight of drug manufacturers.

And that’s just a partial “so far” list.

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

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Tuesday, April 1, 2025 7:52 AM

SECOND

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


Donald Trump faces backlash after spending $85M on golf excursions

By Tom Beattie | 08:44 ET, MAR 31 2025

https://www.irishstar.com/sport/other-sports/donald-trump-backlash-gol
f-excursions-34964019

Trump has spent 38 percent of his time in office at his resorts.

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

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Tuesday, April 1, 2025 10:33 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Donald Trump faces backlash after spending $85M on golf excursions

By Tom Beattie | 08:44 ET, MAR 31 2025

https://www.irishstar.com/sport/other-sports/donald-trump-backlash-gol
f-excursions-34964019

Trump has spent 38 percent of his time in office at his resorts.

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



We didn't even see Joe Biden* for four fucking years.

I don't want to hear shit out of you right now.

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

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

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Tuesday, April 1, 2025 10:34 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Military expert warns Trump vow could trigger decades-long insurgency

By Brad Reed | March 31, 2025 8:46AM ET

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-canada-2671641846/

President Donald Trump has repeatedly mused about making Canada into America's "51st state," which has prompted one expert to conduct a war game mapping how a U.S. invasion of Canada would play out.

The Montreal Gazette reported that Aisha Ahmad, a political scientist at the University of Toronto, said that the American military would likely easily defeat Canada were Trump to really give the green light for an invasion.

However, he also said that wouldn't be the end of the story as Canadians would not passively accept being conquered.

In fact, Ahmad believes that Canadians would wage a bloody, decades-long insurgency against the United States until the Americans left their country.

“It’s impossible to annex Canada without violence,” said Ahmad, who in the past has advised American officials at the United States Department of Defense about counter-insurgency strategies. “No one is born an insurgent or resistance fighter. This is something that happens to people when their mom is killed, or when their kids are unable to get to a hospital. People fight back because they have to.”

He said that the U.S. military would struggle to occupy Canada when hundreds of thousands of Canadians would be engaged in a concerted campaign of sabotage that they would adopt as a "secret, part-time job."

"Trump is delusional if he believes that 40 million Canadians will passively accept conquest," he emphasized.

In fact, it would only take one percent of the Canadian population working as insurgents to produce a force of 400,000 fighters, which would be ten times the number of Taliban fighters who eventually pushed the American military out of Afghanistan after a 20-year occupation.

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



Your fan-fic would never happen.

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

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

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Wednesday, April 2, 2025 6:24 AM

SECOND

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


Trump tariff rebuke: GOP senators to join Dems in opposing Canada plan

By John Bacon, Riley Beggin, Francesca Chambers, Bart Jansen and Jorge L. Ortiz | Updated 1:36 a.m. ET April 2, 2025

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/04/01/tariffs-trump-
markets-economy-live-updates/82741953007/

"I think government by emergency rule is a mistake,'' Paul said. "The power to tax they say is the power to destroy. The power to tax is considered one of the most important powers and so it was given to Congress. ... I think it's probably one of the more important votes that we'll have maybe in a generation."

The outcome wouldn't stop Trump from imposing the tax on Canadian goods because the resolution would have to pass the House to be binding. With a slim majority in the House, Speaker Mike Johnson likely wouldn't risk bringing it up for a vote.

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

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Wednesday, April 2, 2025 6:53 AM

SECOND

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


Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Rand Paul, also of Kentucky, will hopefully get on the Republican bandwagon, for a change, and fight the Democrats wild and flagrant push to not penalize Canada for the sale, into our Country, of large amounts of Fentanyl, by Tariffing the value of this horrible and deadly drug in order to make it more costly to distribute and buy. They are playing with the lives of the American people, and right into the hands of the Radical Left Democrats and Drug Cartels. The Senate Bill is just a ploy of the Dems to show and expose the weakness of certain Republicans, namely these four, in that it is not going anywhere because the House will never approve it and I, as your President, will never sign it. Why are they allowing Fentanyl to pour into our Country unchecked, and without penalty. What is wrong with them, other than suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, commonly known as TDS? Who can want this to happen to our beautiful families, and why? To the people of the Great States of Kentucky, Alaska, and Maine, please contact these Senators and get them to FINALLY adhere to Republican Values and Ideals. They have been extremely difficult to deal with and, unbelievably disloyal to hardworking Majority Leader John Thune, and the Republican Party itself. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
820 ReTruths 2.54k Likes
Apr 02, 2025, 6:58 AM

Stop Looking for Methods in the Madness
There’s no plan, secret or otherwise, behind Trump’s tariffs
By Paul Krugman | Apr 02, 2025
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/stop-looking-for-methods-in-the-mad
ness

Here’s the story: Trumpers are claiming that tariffs

1. Won’t increase prices, because foreign producers will absorb the cost

2. Will cause a large shift in U.S. demand away from imports to domestic production

3. Will raise huge amounts of revenue

If you think about it for a minute, you realize that (1) is inconsistent with (2): If prices of imports don’t rise, why would consumers switch to domestically produced goods? At the same time, (2) is inconsistent with (3): If imports drop a lot, tariffs won’t raise a lot of money, because there won’t be much to tax.

So the public story about tariffs doesn’t make any sense. And Trump’s rants about tariffs go beyond nonsense.

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

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Wednesday, April 2, 2025 7:10 AM

SECOND

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


Thanks to Donald Trump, there is a Taxpayer Revolt! The Winds of Change Are Blowing!

Why More People Are Avoiding Filing Taxes This Year

By Kelley R. Taylor | April 1, 2025

https://www.kiplinger.com/taxes/why-people-are-avoiding-filing-taxes-t
his-year

If you feel less than enthusiastic about filing your federal income taxes this year, you're not alone. IRS filing data and a recent survey shed light on a growing trend: Many are hesitant to file taxes in 2025.

This tax season, the IRS has reported a notable downturn in tax return submissions compared to previous years.

Why? Possible reasons range from concerns about IRS workforce reductions to general economic uncertainty.

A March survey of 1,003 respondents conducted by Qualtrics on behalf of Intuit Credit Karma also revealed some interesting data points. Nearly a quarter of respondents felt less concerned about making errors on their tax returns this year, while almost half worried about receiving a timely refund.

Meanwhile, according to the survey, 17% of millennials have contemplated not filing at all. They reported a belief that audit risk has decreased due to recent downsizing at the IRS.

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

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Wednesday, April 2, 2025 9:17 AM

SECOND

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


The Winds of Change Are Blowing!

In case it is not clear that murdering 23 illegal aliens is no big deal for Trump, but killing one rich white man who deserved death is a big deal because Trump is rich, white, and deserving:

DOJ directs prosecutors to seek death penalty for Luigi Mangione

Gunman who killed 23 in racist attack at Texas Walmart offered plea deal to avoid death penalty

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/news-wrap-bondi-directs-federal-pros
ecutors-to-pursue-death-penalty-for-luigi-mangione

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/26/g-s1-55939/gunman-texas-walmart-attack-
death-penalty-plea-deal

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

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Wednesday, April 2, 2025 11:23 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
The entire atmosphere surrounding all of this is completely different than it was in 2016 and 2020.

Things just kind of feel normal again.

It's like all the loudest voices either screamed themselves out or they aren't being platformed anymore and/or we just finally, collectively tuned them out for a change.

It's kind of nice, innit?


Happy Inauguration Day!

The Wall Street Journal editorial board said President Donald Trump’s recent remark about tariffs could be used against Republicans in the 2026 midterm elections.

Trump last week dismissed concerns about the impact of his 25% tariffs on foreign-made autos by admitting, “I couldn’t care less” if they lead to higher prices for American consumers.

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

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Wednesday, April 2, 2025 11:26 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack Monday, January 20, 2025 8:20 AM:

The entire atmosphere surrounding all of this is completely different than it was in 2016 and 2020.

Things just kind of feel normal again.

It's like all the loudest voices either screamed themselves out or they aren't being platformed anymore and/or we just finally, collectively tuned them out for a change.

It's kind of nice, innit?


Happy Inauguration Day!

Trump calls April 2nd "Liberation Day"! Later today, he will announce what the Tariffs will be.

Trump Tariffs Could Cost Average American Household $4,200 a Year

Published Apr 02, 2025 at 10:20 AM EDT

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-tariffs-could-cost-american-households-
4200-year-2054053

If broad 20 percent tariffs are implemented and other countries retaliate with tariffs of their own, the disposable income of the lowest-income households could drop by 5.5 percent, while it would drop by just 1.9 percent for the highest-income households.

According to the analysis, the tariffs would cost households in the second lowest income decile, on average, $2,400 when other countries retaliate. For households in the middle, it would be $3,800 per household on average, and for those in the top tenth, it would be $9,500 per household on average.

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

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Wednesday, April 2, 2025 11:33 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The Winds of Change Are Blowing!

In case it is not clear that murdering 23 illegal aliens is no big deal for Trump, but killing one rich white man who deserved death is a big deal because Trump is rich, white, and deserving:

DOJ directs prosecutors to seek death penalty for Luigi Mangione

Gunman who killed 23 in racist attack at Texas Walmart offered plea deal to avoid death penalty

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/news-wrap-bondi-directs-federal-pros
ecutors-to-pursue-death-penalty-for-luigi-mangione

https://www.npr.org/2025/03/26/g-s1-55939/gunman-texas-walmart-attack-
death-penalty-plea-deal

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


No. It's because it's terrorism.

You can't justify somebody executing somebody in public. You're a fucking lunatic.

Mangione needs to be made an example of, or you're going to have 1,000 psychotic Democrats doing it tomorrow.

We've got videos of the terrorism that you people do against your own people with Tesla cars today. Covid lockdowns fucked you up so bad.

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

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

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Wednesday, April 2, 2025 11:35 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Thanks to Donald Trump, there is a Taxpayer Revolt! The Winds of Change Are Blowing!

Why More People Are Avoiding Filing Taxes This Year

By Kelley R. Taylor | April 1, 2025

https://www.kiplinger.com/taxes/why-people-are-avoiding-filing-taxes-t
his-year

If you feel less than enthusiastic about filing your federal income taxes this year, you're not alone. IRS filing data and a recent survey shed light on a growing trend: Many are hesitant to file taxes in 2025.

This tax season, the IRS has reported a notable downturn in tax return submissions compared to previous years.

Why? Possible reasons range from concerns about IRS workforce reductions to general economic uncertainty.

A March survey of 1,003 respondents conducted by Qualtrics on behalf of Intuit Credit Karma also revealed some interesting data points. Nearly a quarter of respondents felt less concerned about making errors on their tax returns this year, while almost half worried about receiving a timely refund.

Meanwhile, according to the survey, 17% of millennials have contemplated not filing at all. They reported a belief that audit risk has decreased due to recent downsizing at the IRS.

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


Good plan.

Don't file your taxes, Democrats. See what happens to you.

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

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

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