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

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Speaking of evil people...

Quote:
Far-Left Maryland Lawmakers Pass Reparations Bill While Financial Crisis Looms

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Thursday, April 3, 2025 1:12 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Will Malignant Stupidity Kill the World Economy?

Trump’s tariffs are a disaster. His policy process is worse.

By Paul Krugman | Apr 03, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/will-careless-stupidity-kill-the

America created the modern world trading system. The rules governing tariffs and the negotiating process that brought those tariffs down over time grew out of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, devised by FDR in 1934. The growth in international trade under that system had some [?????] negative aspects but was on balance very good for America and the world.

When we were the only remaining industrial economy after WWII ... and for the longest time the largest ... international trade was beneficial. But international trade was also killing the goose that laid golden eggs. The creation of the "Rust Belt" began in the 70s and was a harbinger of things to come.

Quote:
Foreign governments won’t make policies that help America ...

Period.

Foreign governments SHOULDN'T make policies that help America (to their detriment) if their leaders are minding their own national interests. The only way we have gotten nations to sacrifice is by regime change, threats, and bribery.

Quote:
tariffs applied to each country appeared to be derived from a crude formula based on the U.S. trade deficit with that country. Trump officials denied this, while at the same time the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative released a note confirming Surowiecki’s guess.

I was wondering how they came up with those numbers.

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Thursday, April 3, 2025 1:54 PM

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

We're going to find out, so I'll take what ends up happening as the truth over the people you quote that denied we were in a recession for the better part of Joe Biden*'s administration, and it cost about $9 Trillion to keep up the illusion that we weren't in that amount of time.

You are a simple minded fool.

If Trump and his team are as simple minded as you, then we're in a world of hurt and Democrats will rise from the grave.

If not, you're going to look really stupid again. Just like you always do.

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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Will Malignant Stupidity Kill the World Economy?

Trump’s tariffs are a disaster. His policy process is worse.

By Paul Krugman | Apr 03, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/will-careless-stupidity-kill-the

America created the modern world trading system. The rules governing tariffs and the negotiating process that brought those tariffs down over time grew out of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, devised by FDR in 1934. The growth in international trade under that system had some negative aspects but was on balance very good for America and the world. It was, in fact, one of our greatest policy achievements.

National Debt in 1934: $27 Billion

National Debt in 2024: $35,464 Billion

Shut the fuck up, Paul.

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

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Thursday, April 3, 2025 7:17 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:
I love how riled up Trump has gotten our idiots.

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

Trump is imposing tariffs because American democracy is no longer strong enough to stop him.

By Zack Beauchamp | Apr 3, 2025, 3:15 PM CDT

https://www.vox.com/politics/407053/trump-tariff-expensive-democracy-a
uthoritarianism-breakdown

One of the key reasons for democracy’s success has been its formalized policymaking process. Because laws are changed through legal and transparent processes, ones subject to public debate and legal oversight, they are more likely to both be well-informed by the best available evidence and corrected if something goes badly.

Authoritarian and hybrid regimes ditch these constraints, which allows them to make policy changes a lot faster. But it also enables one person, or a small group of people, to make radical decisions on a whim with disastrous consequences.

Think about Mao’s Great Leap Forward in China, a direct product of the leader’s adherence to a Communist ideology that was out of touch with reality. While Trump’s tariffs are nowhere near as evil — the Great Leap Forward killed somewhere between 18 and 32 million people — the same formal problem contributed to both mistakes.

For a more recent example, look at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The disaster began with Putin’s personal obsession with the idea that Ukrainian nationhood was fake and that the territory was rightfully Russian. This notion went from Putin’s personal obsession to actual war because no one could stop him.

Trump’s tariffs will, if fully implemented, be remembered as their own cautionary tale. While he campaigned on them, he wouldn’t have been able to implement the entire tariff package had he gone through the normal constitutionally prescribed procedure for raising taxes. The fact that America isn’t functioning like a normal democracy, with public deliberation and multiple checks on executive authority, is what allowed Trump to act on his idiosyncratic ideas in the manner of a Mao or Putin.

Now, it’s still possible that Trump steps back from the brink. But even if he does, and the worst outcome is avoided, the lesson should be clear: the long decay of America’s democratic system means that we are all living under an axe.

And if this isn’t the moment it falls, there will surely be another.

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

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Friday, April 4, 2025 6:33 AM

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

The Good News About Trump’s Tariffs

Authoritarian leaders are most dangerous when they’re popular. Wrecking the economy is unlikely to broaden Trump’s support.

By Jonathan Chait | April 2, 2025, 5:34 PM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/04/trump-tariffs-pol
itical-capital/682274/

All Donald Trump had to do was start telling people the economy was good now. Take over in the middle of an economic expansion and then, without changing the underlying trend line, convince the country that you created prosperity. That’s what he did when he won his first term, and it is what Democrats expected and feared he would do this time.

But Trump couldn’t do the easy and obvious thing, apparently because he did not view his first term as a success. He considered it a failure, and blamed the failure on the coterie of aides, bureaucrats, and congressional allies who talked him out of his instincts, or ignored them. The second term has been Full Trump, as even his most delusional or abusive whims are translated immediately into policy without regard to democratic norms, the law, the Constitution, public opinion, or the hand-wringing of his party.

That is why Trump’s second term poses a far more dire threat to the republic than his first did. But it is also why his second term is at risk of catastrophic failure. Nothing illustrates this more clearly than Trump’s insistence on sabotaging the U.S. economy by imposing massive tariffs.

This afternoon, in an event the administration hyped as “Liberation Day,” Trump unveiled his long-teased plan to impose reciprocal trade restrictions on every country that puts up barriers to American exports. Although at least some economists would defend some kinds of tariff policies—such as those targeted at egregious trade-violating countries, or those designed to protect a handful of strategic industries—Trump has careened into an across-the-board version that will do little but raise prices and invite reprisal against American exports. As an indication of the mad-king dynamic at play, the new plan imposes a 20 percent tariff on the European Union, partly in retaliation against the bloc’s value-added tax system—even though the VAT applies equally to imports and domestic goods and is therefore not a trade barrier at all. U.S. stocks, which have fallen for weeks in anticipation of the tariffs, plunged even more sharply after Trump’s announcement.

Trump would not be the first president to encounter economic turbulence. But he might become the first one to kill off a healthy economy through an almost universally foreseeable unforced error. The best explanation for why Trump is intent on imposing tariffs is that he genuinely believes they are a source of free money supplied by residents of foreign countries, and nobody can tell him otherwise. (Tariffs are taxes on imports, which economists agree are paid mostly by domestic consumers in the form of higher prices.)

He has compounded the unavoidable damage to business confidence of any large tariff scheme by floating his intention for months while waffling over the details, paralyzing business investment. Even taken on its own terms, a successful version of Trump’s plan would require wrenching dislocations in the global economy. The United States would need to create new industries to replace the imports it is walling off, and this investment would require businesses to believe not only that Trump won’t reverse himself but also that the tariffs he imposes are likely to stay in place after January 20, 2029.

If businesses don’t believe that Trump will stick with his tariffs, the investment required to spur a domestic industrial revival won’t materialize. But if they do believe him, the markets will crash, because Trump’s tariff scheme will, by the estimation of the economists that investors listen to, produce substantially lower growth.

Probably the likeliest outcome is an in-between muddling through, with slower growth and higher inflation. Even Trump’s gestures toward sweeping tariffs have already made the economy wobble and lifted inflationary expectations. At this point, getting back to the steady growth and cooling inflation Trump inherited will require a great deal of luck.

Why didn’t anyone around Trump talk him out of this mistake? Because the second Trump administration has dedicated itself to filtering out the kinds of advisers who thwarted some of his most authoritarian first-term instincts, as well as his most economically dangerous ones. The current version of the national Republican Party, by contrast, is dedicated to the proposition recently articulated by one of Elon Musk’s baseball caps: Trump was right about everything.

In this atmosphere, questioning Trump’s instincts is seen as a form of disloyalty, and Trump has made painfully evident what awaits the disloyal. As The Washington Post reports, “Business leaders have been reluctant to publicly express concerns, say people familiar with discussions between the White House and leading companies, lest they lose their seats at the table or become a target for the president’s attacks.” Asked recently about the prospect of tariffs, House Speaker Mike Johnson revealingly said, “Look, you have to trust the president’s instincts on the economy”—a phrase containing the same kind of double meaning (have to) as Don Corleone’s offer he can’t refuse.

This dynamic allows Trump to do whatever he wants, no doubt to his delight. But the political consequences for his administration and his party could be ruinous. Public-opinion polling on Trump’s economic management, which has always been the floor that has held him up in the face of widespread public dislike for his character, has tumbled. This has happened without Americans feeling the full effects of his trade war. Once they start experiencing widespread higher prices and slower growth, the bottom could fall out.

A Fox News host recently lectured the audience that it should accept sacrifice for Trump’s tariffs just as the country would sacrifice to win a war. Hard-core Trump fanatics may subscribe to this reasoning, but the crucial bloc of persuadable voters who approved of Trump because they saw him as a business genius are unlikely to follow along. They don’t see a trade war as necessary. Two decades ago, public opinion was roughly balanced between seeing foreign trade as a threat and an opportunity. Today, more than four-fifths of Americans see foreign trade as an opportunity, against a mere 14 percent who see it, like Trump does, as a threat.

As the political scientists Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way point out, “Authoritarian leaders do the most damage when they enjoy broad public support.” Dictators such as Vladimir Putin and Hugo Chávez have shown that power grabs are easier to pull off when the public is behind your agenda. Trump’s support, however, is already teetering. The more unpopular he becomes, the less his allies and his targets believe he will keep his boot on the opposition’s neck forever, and the less likely they will be to comply with his demands.

The Republican Party’s descent into an authoritarian personality cult poses a mortal threat to American democracy. But it is also the thing that might save it.

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

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Friday, April 4, 2025 6:42 AM

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

How a Con Man President Is Destroying Confidence

By Paul Krugman / Apr 4, 2025 at 5:32 AM

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/how-a-con-man-president-is-destroyi
ng

Normally, I don’t believe in confidence.

In the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, “confidence” was the first refuge of scoundrels. That is, the supposed need to retain or restore confidence was constantly invoked as a reason to pursue destructive policies. If you argued for adequate stimulus to fight the Great Recession, you were told that this would undermine confidence. If you argued against austerity that would block economic recovery, you were told that slashing spending would actually boost the economy, because it would inspire confidence — a claim I mocked as belief in the “confidence fairy.”

The truth is that most of the time you should evaluate economic policies based on what they actually do, not with speculation about how you imagine they will affect confidence.

But this isn’t most of the time. This is the third year of the second Trump presidency — OK, it’s actually only part way through the third month, but it feels like years. And Trump is in the process of showing that a sufficiently chaotic and incompetent government can, in fact, do enough damage to confidence to inflict serious economic harm.

The most telling indicator here isn’t the plunging stock market — Paul Samuelson’s old jibe about the market having predicted nine of the last five recessions still applies. It is, instead, the plunging value of the dollar:

Source: xe.com

Standard economic analysis says that tariffs strengthen a nation’s currency. If the United States puts taxes on imports, this discourages businesses and consumers from buying foreign goods, which reduces the supply of dollars to the foreign exchange market and should drive the value of the dollar up.

In fact, the normal effect of tariffs on the exchange rate was one of the reasons to doubt that the Trump tariffs would help U.S. manufacturing: A stronger dollar would make U.S. producers less competitive, offsetting the protective effects of the tariffs. And as you can see in the chart above, investors drove the dollar up after Trump’s election win, partly because they believed that tariffs would have their usual effect.

But the dollar fell once investors began to see Trump policy in action. Permanent tariffs are bad for the economy, but businesses can, for the most part, find a way to live with them. What business can’t deal with is a regime under which trade policy reflects the whims of a mad king, where nobody knows what tariffs will be next week, let alone over the next five years. Are these tariffs going to be permanent? Are they a negotiating ploy? The administration can’t even get its talking points straight, with top officials saying that tariffs aren’t up for negotiation only to be undercut by Trump a few hours later.

Under these conditions, how is a business supposed to make investments, or any kind of long-term commitment? Everyone is going to sit on their hands, waiting for clarity that may never come.

Wait, it gets worse. You might have expected a lot of careful thought to go into the biggest change in U.S. trade policy since the republic was founded:

But since Trump delivered his Rose Garden remarks, we’ve had a series of revelations about how slapdash and amateurish an operation this was. Trump declared that he was imposing tariffs on nations “that treat us badly”:

[W]e will calculate the combined rate of all their tariffs, non-monetary barriers, and other forms of cheating.

But we soon learned that no such calculation had taken place. Trump’s tariffs were, instead, determined by a crude, and, well, stupid formula that made no economic sense. It’s still an open question whether that formula was determined by some junior staffer or derived from ChatGPT and Grok.

Maybe the next movie in the Terminator franchise will be “Terminator: Trade War,” in which Skynet realizes that it doesn’t have to destroy humanity with nuclear bombs, it can accomplish its goals simply by giving bad economic advice.

An aside: Did anyone think about how to enforce wildly different tariffs on different countries, when it would be easy to transship goods? The Republic of Ireland, which is part of the European Union, is supposed to face a 20 percent tariff, while Northern Ireland, part of Britain, faces only a 10 percent rate. So can Irish exporters cut their tariffs in half by shipping goods out of Belfast? Will there be elaborate rules of origin to prevent this? And who will devise and enforce these rules?

Actually, I’m pretty sure I know the answer to my question: No, nobody thought about that, because there wasn’t time. The Wall Street Journal reports that the White House didn’t even settle on the idea of country-specific tariffs until the day before the big announcement.

Again, the biggest trade policy change in history, hastily and sloppily thrown together at the last minute.

It’s no wonder, then, that confidence has taken a big hit. If you ask me, however, I’d say that confidence is still too high: business still hasn’t grasped how bad things are. For while tariffs are dominating the news right now, they’re part of a broader pattern of malignant stupidity. It may take a while before we see the effects of DOGE’s destruction of the government’s administrative capacity, or RFK Jr.’s destruction of health policy, but we will see those effects eventually.

And Republicans have just confirmed Dr. Oz to run Medicare and Medicaid. What could go wrong?

Personally, I’m feeling very confident. That is, I have high confidence in predicting that we’re heading for multiple policy trade wrecks, inflicting damage like you’ve never seen before.

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

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Friday, April 4, 2025 7:07 AM

More fearmongering from the Dead Clinton/Obama party.

Nobody cares.

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

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Friday, April 4, 2025 7:09 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The Good News About Trump’s Tariffs

Authoritarian leaders are most dangerous when they’re popular. Wrecking the economy is unlikely to broaden Trump’s support.

By Jonathan Chait | April 2, 2025, 5:34 PM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/04/trump-tariffs-pol
itical-capital/682274/

All Donald Trump had to do was start telling people the economy was good now. Take over in the middle of an economic expansion and then, without changing the underlying trend line, convince the country that you created prosperity. That’s what he did when he won his first term, and it is what Democrats expected and feared he would do this time.

Your guy put us $9 Trillion in the hole in 4 years.

1/4 of our entire National Debt was due to the Joe Biden* administration.

We don't want to hear one fucking thing out of you about how good Democrats are with money.

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

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

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Friday, April 4, 2025 10:13 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:

Your guy put us $9 Trillion in the hole in 4 years.

1/4 of our entire National Debt was due to the Joe Biden* administration.

We don't want to hear one fucking thing out of you about how good Democrats are with money.

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

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

The Federal Government does not collect sufficient taxes to cover the debt because the IRS doesn't have the funding from the Republicans (and a few Democrats) in Congress to enforce the law. The Congressmen don't want to pay all their taxes and nobody can make them give enough funds to the IRS to enforce all of the law. The Republicans are even rewriting, on this very day, the law to make it harder to collect taxes.

Senate Republicans breaking norm to advance Donald Trump's tax cuts

By Riley Begqin | 7:51 a.m. ET April 4, 2025

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/04/03/republicans-tr
ump-tax-cuts-senate/82793349007/

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

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Friday, April 4, 2025 10:14 AM

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

Your guy put us $9 Trillion in the hole in 4 years.

1/4 of our entire National Debt was due to the Joe Biden* administration.

We don't want to hear one fucking thing out of you about how good Democrats are with money.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
The Federal Government does not collect sufficient taxes to cover the debt because the IRS doesn't have the funding from the Republicans (and a few Democrats) in Congress to enforce the law. The Congressmen don't want to pay all their taxes and nobody can make them give enough funds to the IRS to enforce all of the law. The Republicans are even rewriting, on this very day, the law to make it harder to collect taxes.

Senate Republicans breaking norm to advance Donald Trump's tax cuts

By Riley Begqin | 7:51 a.m. ET April 4, 2025

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/04/03/republicans-tr
ump-tax-cuts-senate/82793349007/

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

Nah.

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

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

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Friday, April 4, 2025 10:26 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:
More fearmongering from the Dead Clinton/Obama party.

Nobody cares.

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

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

The Democrats should stop with mongering and go with pure fear: make Trumptards poorer to stampede the herd of retards. The kind of people who are lazy and dumb enough to vote for Trump are the kind who lack resiliency when faced with adversity. They want Trump to save them from financial and personal problems because they lack the energy to save themselves. 6ix is an example -- withdrawing from life. Living a minimalist existence. But other Trumptards withdraw by divorcing their wives, seeking sex from strangers, and taking up drug habits and alcoholism.

What Happened to Trump’s Meme Coin After He Announced His Tariffs?

By Noor Al-Sibai | Apr 3, 3:52 PM EDT

https://futurism.com/trump-meme-coin-tariffs

Donald Trump's eponymous meme coin is worth less than ever in the wake of his tariffs finally being launched.

Less than 24 hours after the president announced the long-anticipated reciprocal trade tariffs on domestic imports, his $TRUMP cryptocurrency's value dropped to a meager $9 per token.

That's a new all-time low — and remember, it was only launched about 10 weeks ago ahead of the real estate scion being sworn in for a second time.

Obviously, there are far bigger concerns afoot than the president's shitcoin tanking — but you have to admit that it's pretty hilarious that it's happening this way.

Still, the debacle illustrates that Trump's nonsensical trade war isn't just hurting the entire global economy, which has essentially been lit on fire by the tariffs, but even his own business interests.

Ironically, the tariff announcement came just after news broke that the Trump coin would be "unlocking" 40 million tokens, or 20 percent of its locked-down supply, later in April. It's the first time the memecoin has held such an event since its launch in January and could, theoretically, have generated the kind of buzz that would drive its value up.

Instead, it made nary a blip — and after the tariff-induced price slump, it's hard to imagine anyone actually wanting to buy $TRUMP anytime soon.

Per a very unofficial poll on the crypto ticker site CoinGecko, meanwhile, a whopping 77 percent of people who took a confidence survey about the official Trump coin said they felt negatively about it.

From overtaking the $SHIB and $PEPE memecoins — yes, we're rolling our eyes too — when its value surpassed $60 per token and rising to an all-time high of nearly $75, the Trump coin has been remarkably volatile even for its market.

Even on unelected co-president Elon Musk's X social network, news of this latest Trump slump resulted in japes and jibes.

"Donald Trump just destroyed the entire financial markets, stocks, crypto and even his shitcoin," one user jeered. "Everyone fucking hates him now. What a fraud."

In another post, a satirist jokingly begged the president to mention his memecoin at all.

"Pls just talk about $Trump coin," the user wrote. "Need money back Sir."

Those who willingly bought the president's memecoin are, clearly, in the "find out" portion of the "eff around and find out" adage amid the tariff turmoil — and unfortunately, the rest of the world is right there with them.

More on the tariffs: Trump Tariffs Show Signs of Being Written by AI

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

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Friday, April 4, 2025 10:39 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:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Your guy put us $9 Trillion in the hole in 4 years.

1/4 of our entire National Debt was due to the Joe Biden* administration.

We don't want to hear one fucking thing out of you about how good Democrats are with money.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
The Federal Government does not collect sufficient taxes to cover the debt because the IRS doesn't have the funding from the Republicans (and a few Democrats) in Congress to enforce the law. The Congressmen don't want to pay all their taxes and nobody can make them give enough funds to the IRS to enforce all of the law. The Republicans are even rewriting, on this very day, the law to make it harder to collect taxes.

Senate Republicans breaking norm to advance Donald Trump's tax cuts

By Riley Begqin | 7:51 a.m. ET April 4, 2025

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/04/03/republicans-tr
ump-tax-cuts-senate/82793349007/

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

Nah.

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

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

If the IRS would start a bounty program for capturing tax cheaters, and allow torturing tax cheaters until they pay, America would be made great again. The National Debt would vanish in a few years.

Trump has not paid his taxes, by the way. Neither has Musk. I would approve of bounty hunters torturing those two until they paid as an example for what will happen to other billionaires who don't pay. The others would voluntarily stop cheating on taxes. MAGA!

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

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Friday, April 4, 2025 1:18 PM

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

Republicans Are Trying to Pull a Fast One to Extend Trump’s Tax Cuts

They’re using an accounting trick to pretend that their new tax legislation is costless, when, in fact, it will add about $4.6 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. Words fail me. Well, not really. Here’s how their latest effort to pull the wool over the public’s eyes works:

Details at https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/04/republicans-tax-cuts-curre
nt-policy-baseline-deficit-budget-economy.html

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

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Friday, April 4, 2025 1:35 PM

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

A catastrophe is unfolding at the top US health agency — and it will put American lives at risk

US health care is never going to be the same.

By Dylan Scott

https://www.vox.com/health/406967/rfk-jr-hhs-cuts-vaccine-measles-outb
reak

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. sought to be confirmed as Donald Trump’s secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), he had to overcome a long record of fringe anti-science beliefs. He had indulged in conspiracies about chem trails, questioned whether HIV was the actual cause of AIDS, and, most notably, spread the repeatedly debunked theory that childhood vaccinations could lead to autism.

In private meetings with senators and public confirmation hearings, he downplayed that record and claimed he wasn’t anti-vaccine: “I am pro-safety,” Kennedy said in his opening statement at one hearing. “I believe vaccines have a critical role in health care.” He gave assurances to Sen. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, an MD and one of the last Republican holdouts on his nomination, that he would not change federal vaccine guidance

But less than two months into his term, Kennedy is blocking the release of pro-vaccine data amid a widening measles outbreak even as he puts into motion long-term projects that seem set to further erode Americans’ wobbly trust in childhood vaccination. Coupled with the massive staff cuts at HHS, a weakened federal health department is being remade in Kennedy’s anti-vax, anti-science image — an overhaul that could have dangerous consequences for Americans’ health for years to come.

On Tuesday, the Trump administration began to lay off 10,000 workers across HHS, which includes the Food and Drug Administration, the Centers for Disease and Control and Prevention, and the National Institutes of Health. Combined with workers who had already departed or were laid off earlier, the department’s overall headcount is expected to shrink from 82,000 to 62,000 people.

Many rank-and-file staff were simply let go; some senior leaders were offered reassignment in different roles, sometimes in a different part of the country, according to the New York Times. Subagencies focused on substance abuse and environmental health that were previously allowed some independence are being brought under HHS’s direct supervision. Top deputies who might have clashed with Kennedy — such as the FDA’s senior vaccine official, Peter Marks, one of the architects of the highly successful Operation Warp Speed in Trump’s first term — are being forced out.

HHS touches the lives of Americans from birth to death: It oversees Medicaid and Medicare, which cover one in three Americans, it sets the standards for medical care across the health system, including vaccine schedules; and it is the biggest funder of the kind of vital medical research in the country that leads to new medical treatments.

Trump promised during the 2024 campaign to let Kennedy “go wild”; now he and his subordinates have the means to execute his vision.

Some of the effects are being seen immediately as a massive measles outbreak spreads. Other reverberations in public health and medical research may not be fully felt for years. Former federal officials say the overhaul represents a fundamental reimagining of what HHS should be, a withdrawal from an active government role in the safeguarding of America’s health. We could be living with the consequences of these changes for a long time.

“This is not a so-called restructuring. These are reckless, thoughtless cuts that will only make American communities less healthy and less safe,” Dr. Richard Besser, president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and a former acting CDC director, said in a statement. “They represent an abdication of the department’s essential responsibility to promote and protect health.”

More than an abdication, Kennedy’s new regime is steering the department in a radically new direction — one that seems poised to send American health backward.

The immediate dangers of RFK Jr.’s health care overhaul

Kennedy’s leadership is already making the biggest US measles outbreak since 2019 worse. The number of cases across five states is nearing 500, twice as many as the United States saw in all of 2024, and two people, including an unvaccinated child, have died.

Some experts believe it may take up to a year for the disease’s spread to be brought under control. Epidemiologist Michael Mina wrote this week in the New York Times that the US could see tens of thousands of cases. More people would die, and many of the ones who survived could be more vulnerable to other viruses in the future after the measles virus wipes out many of their preexisting antibodies.

The response to the current measles outbreak is a good measurement of just how much Kennedy has changed things. During Trump’s first term, the president himself urged people to get vaccinated to stop a measles outbreak. Now, Kennedy, as the nation’s top health official, is instead using his enormous platform to undermine the importance of the measles vaccine while the virus rapidly spreads. (Measles vaccination is the best way to protect yourself against the virus, and health officials even encourage unvaccinated people who have already been exposed to get a shot because it could reduce their symptoms.)

Kennedy has extolled vitamin A and cod liver oil as treatment options, but doctors caution that, while vitamin A could benefit someone who is vitamin-deficient when they contract the measles, almost no one in the US has a vitamin A deficiency. A Texas doctor hawking those remedies to patients skeptical of vaccines said he has been in direct contact with the HHS secretary during the outbreak.

Kennedy isn’t just using the bully pulpit to pitch pseudoscience. His department is now actively suppressing information about the value of the measles vaccine during the outbreak, according to ProPublica. A CDC forecast that would have shown the risk of catching measles is higher in less vaccinated areas was shelved, after the agency originally planned to release it as encouragement for people to get the measles shot. The CDC justified its scrapping of the report by claiming the data “does not say anything that the public doesn’t already know.”

Even as the emergency grows more serious, Kennedy is reducing his own infectious disease staff: One workgroup focused on vaccinating underserved communities was eliminated as part of the layoffs. HHS has also pulled back grants that support the state and local health workers who are frontline responders. According to Reuters, health officials in Lubbock County, Texas, near the epicenter of the crisis, had their funding halted for several grants that were being used to support work on the outbreak.

At the same time, Kennedy is launching a systemic analysis of any supposed links between childhood vaccines and autism — a link that has already been refuted by previous scientific analyses. He has placed a long-discredited anti-vaccine researcher in charge of it.

Americans’ trust in vaccines had been slipping before the pandemic, and then widespread conspiracies about the Covid shots helped make those views even more mainstream. A federal probe that seems designed to sow distrust could drive vaccination rates lower.

The national measles vaccination rate has already slipped just below the 95 percent target that experts say is necessary to maintain population-level immunity. The speed of that decline has been alarming: In the 2019–2020 school year, 20 states were above the 95 percent vaccination rate threshold, and just three had dropped below 90 percent. But by the 2023–2024 school year, only 11 states had more than 95 percent of schoolchildren vaccinated against the disease, and 14 states had fallen under 90 percent.

In individual communities, rates have slipped even lower, which creates the right conditions for an outbreak to explode; measles, after all, is one of the most contagious diseases known to humanity. In the Texas school district most affected by the current measles outbreak, the vaccination rate is under 50 percent.

What this means is that measles outbreaks could again become a recurring public health nuisance, 25 years after the US declared the virus was no longer spreading within the country.

At the same time measles is spreading, a potential H5N1 bird flu pandemic is brewing: The virus has been found in nearly 170 million birds and 1,000 livestock herds; 70 humans have been infected. On that disease, too, Kennedy is signaling a more hands-off approach: He has suggested allowing the virus to spread unchecked through factory farms, and the department is threatening to end a recent contract to develop a universal pandemic flu vaccine. One of the groups laid off this week were scientists testing pet foods for any trace of the virus.

The long-term implications of RFK’s MAHA agenda

Other long-running health campaigns will be jeopardized by the combination of HHS cuts and Kennedy’s fringe beliefs. In a 2021 book, Kennedy favorably presented the discredited theory that drug use, not HIV, was responsible for the development of AIDS. Now, despite Trump’s previous pledge to eradicate HIV completely, Kennedy’s department is pulling back on one of the defining health crises of the modern era.

Staff at the CDC Division of HIV Prevention office was cut in half as part of the mass layoffs. They had made great strides thanks to a muscular government approach: New HIV infections declined by 12 percent since 2010, aided by public health campaigns and direct subsidization of HIV treatment. Deaths have steadily fallen as better disease management allowed doctors to turn HIV into a chronic condition patients could live with, rather than a death sentence.

Now the programs and medical research grants on the HIV crisis that made that progress possible are being cut. One analysis projected there would be 143,000 more HIV cases and 14,000 more deaths in the US by 2030 as a result, according to Anna Person, an HIV physician at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

“Many people who have been living with HIV for decades are afraid we are returning to the 1980s era of HIV, when many buried countless friends and loved ones,” Person said in a media briefing this week. “They ask how it makes sense to cut prevention funds or endanger access to HIV medications? My answer: It doesn’t. These actions are inefficient and will lead to increases in health care costs.”

The prospects for future drug development could also grow dimmer given the massive funding cuts at NIH. The federal government does not manufacture drugs itself, but the basic research supported by NIH is critical for identifying possible targets for pharmaceutical interventions that private companies then work to develop. The vast majority of prescription drugs approved in the US benefited from the kind of federal medical research funding that will be reduced by billions of dollars in the second Trump term. Other changes could further slow down drug approvals: Some of the FDA staff who were laid off had been dedicated to approving new medications.

He could even reorient substance abuse treatment, just as the US is finally making progress in reducing the long-running scourge of fentanyl deaths. Kennedy, who is in recovery himself, has endorsed some unusual ideas for addiction care, such as sending people to so-called wellness farms where they would attempt to break their habit while participating in. It’s a concept that has failed in the past, and experts remain skeptical of its value today versus other more mainstream harm reduction strategies.

Public health is often slow and steady work, except when there is an emergency. We saw the consequences of an ill-equipped federal government during Covid, and the measles outbreak will test what happens when federal authorities are disinterested in an ongoing public health threat.

But it is in these longer-term trends, a lack of new scientific advances or the warping of public attitudes toward vaccines, where the department’s death by a thousand cuts may be felt most.

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

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Friday, April 4, 2025 2:07 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

When Dems do this, it makes me glad Trump is in power:

Quote:
"It's Un-American" - 19 Democratic State AGs Sue To Stop Trump Blocking Non-Citizen Voting

SERIOUSLY????

-----------
"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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Friday, April 4, 2025 3:33 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
The Federal Government does not collect sufficient taxes to cover the debt because the IRS doesn't have the funding from the Republicans (and a few Democrats) in Congress to enforce the law.

Change the fucking tax law.

At 70,000 pages it is UNENFORCEABLE.

It includes so many loopholes that extremely wealthy people ... and corporations ... can LEGALLY shelter income.

How's this:

IF CORPORATIONS ARE PEOPLE, THEY SHOULD BE TAXED LIKE PEOPLE.

-----------
"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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Friday, April 4, 2025 3:38 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Republicans Are Trying to Pull a Fast One to Extend Trump’s Tax Cuts

They’re using an accounting trick to pretend that their new tax legislation is costless, when, in fact, it will add about $4.6 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. Words fail me. Well, not really. Here’s how their latest effort to pull the wool over the public’s eyes works:

Details at https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/04/republicans-tax-cuts-curre
nt-policy-baseline-deficit-budget-economy.html

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

I didn't hear a fucking peep out of you when Joe Biden* was raising the national debt that much every 2 years. Sit down.

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

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

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Friday, April 4, 2025 5:05 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:
Republicans Are Trying to Pull a Fast One to Extend Trump’s Tax Cuts

They’re using an accounting trick to pretend that their new tax legislation is costless, when, in fact, it will add about $4.6 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. Words fail me. Well, not really. Here’s how their latest effort to pull the wool over the public’s eyes works:

Details at https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/04/republicans-tax-cuts-curre
nt-policy-baseline-deficit-budget-economy.html

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

I didn't hear a fucking peep out of you when Joe Biden* was raising the national debt that much every 2 years. Sit down.

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

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

It was NOT Joe Biden. It was every Congressional Republican (plus a few Democrats) who make it impossible for the IRS to collect the taxes owed.

It has been that way my entire life. What is weird is how Republican voters place no blame on the tricky Republican Congressmen (plus a few Democrats) who created and maintain this silliness that goes on decade after decade.

There was a brief lull in the increase of the Federal Debt while Bill Clinton was President, but President George Bush sent out checks to every American in order to buy their votes. Then the National Debt abruptly increased, for no reason in the minds of every Trumptard living today.

Quote:
First rebate checks sent to taxpayers
July 20, 2001 Posted: 11:39 PM EDT (0339 GMT)
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The federal government mailed out nearly 8 million tax rebate checks Friday, the first wave of about 92 million checks that will be sent out in the next 10 weeks.
The checks, which go to millions of Americans who filed a 2000 income tax return, range from a maximum amount of $300 for single filers to $600 for married taxpayers who filed jointly. Single parents will get about $500.

https://www.cnn.com/2001/US/07/20/tax.rebate/

This is how Republicans in Congress have increased the National Debt for my entire life and Republicans are doing it again:

Quote:
Bush had made tax cuts the centerpiece of his campaign in the 2000 presidential election, and he introduced a major tax cut proposal shortly after taking office. Though a handful of Democrats supported the bill, most support came from congressional Republicans. The bill was passed by Congress in May 2001, and signed into law by Bush on June 7, 2001. Due to the narrow Republican majority in the United States Senate, EGTRRA was passed using the reconciliation process, which bypasses the Senate filibuster.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_Growth_and_Tax_Relief_Reconcili
ation_Act_of_2001

You can see how the National Debt fluctuates depending on whether Democrats or Republicans control it. Pardon me, if you are a Trumptard, all you see is meaningless noise.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1Hxo8

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

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Friday, April 4, 2025 5:20 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Republicans Are Trying to Pull a Fast One to Extend Trump’s Tax Cuts

They’re using an accounting trick to pretend that their new tax legislation is costless, when, in fact, it will add about $4.6 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. Words fail me. Well, not really. Here’s how their latest effort to pull the wool over the public’s eyes works:

Details at https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/04/republicans-tax-cuts-curre
nt-policy-baseline-deficit-budget-economy.html

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

I didn't hear a fucking peep out of you when Joe Biden* was raising the national debt that much every 2 years. Sit down.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
It was NOT Joe Biden.

Yes. It was.

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

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

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Friday, April 4, 2025 5:50 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:
It was NOT Joe Biden.

Yes. It was.

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

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

One thing the Chinese government has really struggled with in the past, and for good reason, is that they don’t have a lot of natural allies or friends, even in Asia. I think that Trump seriously damaging US relationships in the region does make things easier on that front.

If you listen to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they will tell you, and they have done for decades, that the US is a country that bullies smaller countries — it talks a high and mighty game about these lofty ideals of freedom and democracy and human rights, but in reality it’s just looking out for itself. I think Trump's tariffs make that argument a lot easier to make in large parts of Asia. It’s a huge opportunity for them. You couldn’t have drafted these conditions better if you were a Chinese diplomat.

https://www.vox.com/today-explained-podcast/407112/trump-tariffs-china
-vietnam-south-korea

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

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Friday, April 4, 2025 5:52 PM

Whatever.

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

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

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Friday, April 4, 2025 6:23 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:
Whatever.

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

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

Investors discounted everything Trump has ever said about trade and tariffs. We’re all going to pay for that mistake.

By James Surowiecki | April 4, 2025, 4:35 PM ET

In general, Trump is uninterested in policy, but trade is the one exception, and always has been. His attitude toward trade—namely, that trade deficits are horrible and tariffs are great—has been strikingly consistent for almost 40 years. The way he talks about trade has stayed the same, and his position on tariffs has stayed the same.

What happened on Wednesday, in other words, was not a case of the president throwing the market a curveball. It was a case of him doing exactly what he’d promised to do and what he’s wanted to do for decades.

Understanding Trump’s view requires no great interpretive skills, because his position on trade is a very simple one: If the U.S. has a trade deficit with another country, that means the U.S. is being “ripped off” (a phrase he has used many times in his political career).

For Trump, any trade deficit means that Americans are being played. And Trump hates few things in this world more than feeling that he’s been played.

As former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers wrote on X, “This is to economics what creationism is to biology, astrology is to astronomy, or RFK thought is to vaccine science.” The Trump formula was silly and deceptive, but it was also a perfect expression of his view that trade deficits are evidence that America is being ripped off.

In 2017, during his first year in office, he said: “The United States has trade deficits with many, many countries, and we cannot allow that to continue.” He’s told us who he is and what he wants. We’re all going to pay the price for believing otherwise.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/04/wall-street-trump-ta
riffs/682304/

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

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Friday, April 4, 2025 7:05 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Investors discounted everything Trump has ever said about trade and tariffs. We’re all going to pay for that mistake.

"What mean this 'we', kimo sabe?"

BTW, trade deficits are bad. So are trade surpluses. “Neither a borrower (deficit) nor a lender (surplus) be“.

Especially not massively and over the long term.

-----------
"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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Friday, April 4, 2025 8:08 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:
Investors discounted everything Trump has ever said about trade and tariffs. We’re all going to pay for that mistake.

"What mean this 'we', kimo sabe?"

BTW, trade deficits are bad. So are trade surpluses. “Neither a borrower (deficit) nor a lender (surplus) be“.

Especially not massively and over the long term.

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

Signym, "we" in that sentence means "investors" plus unspecified others who are affected by what investors do. An extreme example: The Great Depression was the result of what investors did when the stock market crashed in 1929.

Here's a more nuanced explanation:

The Stock Market Crash:

The crash, which began with "Black Thursday" (October 24, 1929) and continued with "Black Tuesday" (October 29, 1929), saw a dramatic and rapid decline in stock prices, wiping out billions of dollars in wealth.

Pre-Existing Economic Weaknesses:

Before the crash, the US economy had several vulnerabilities:

• Overproduction: Industries were producing more goods than consumers could buy.

• Uneven Wealth Distribution: A large portion of the population had limited purchasing power, while a small segment held a disproportionate amount of wealth.

• Speculative Investing: Many people invested in the stock market on margin (borrowing money to buy stocks), creating a bubble that was unsustainable.

• Weak Banking System: Banks were not well regulated, and many had invested heavily in the stock market, making them vulnerable when prices crashed.

• Global Economic Instability: The aftermath of World War I and the global economic downturn also contributed to the instability.

The Crash as a Catalyst:

The stock market crash shattered consumer and business confidence, leading to:

• Reduced Spending: People stopped buying goods and services, causing businesses to cut back on production and lay off workers.

• Bank Failures: Many banks failed, further reducing the money supply and credit availability.

• Increased Unemployment: Millions of people lost their jobs, leading to widespread poverty and hardship.

The Great Depression:

The period following the crash, from 1929 to 1939, is known as the Great Depression, a severe global economic downturn characterized by high unemployment, deflation, and widespread economic hardship.

https://www.google.com/search?q=The+Great+Depression+was+the+result+of
+what+investors+did+when+the+stock+market+crashed+in+1929.

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

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Friday, April 4, 2025 8:12 PM

THG

Wow! I keep hearing shit that makes me go wow, Trumps fucked. Trillions lost so far...

T

Tariff Disaster Has MAGA Media Panicking. The guy in the middle says he is down 7 million bucks. All these guys and others in the video pushed for Trump, voted for Trump. Oh well...

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Friday, April 4, 2025 8:17 PM

We're all just freaking out man.

Meanwhile, in reality...

94% of stock is owned by 8% of people.

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

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

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Friday, April 4, 2025 8:18 PM

THG

Tariffs Cause Another Stock Market Rout—Losses Approach $5 Trillion As Dow Plummets Another 2,200 Points

https://www.forbes.com/sites/dereksaul/2025/04/04/tariffs-cause-anothe
r-stock-market-rout-losses-approach-5-trillion-as-dow-plummets-another-2200-points/

tick tock tick tock

T

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Friday, April 4, 2025 8:22 PM

THG

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Friday, April 4, 2025 8:23 PM

You did plenty Barry.

Half of this mess that needs fixing you contributed to.

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

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

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Friday, April 4, 2025 8:32 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:
We're all just freaking out man.

Meanwhile, in reality...

94% of stock is owned by 8% of people.

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

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

Trump's plan to encourage American manufacturing by imposing huge import tariffs was doomed from the moment he offered to negotiate with targeted countries.

The key to making it work was to convince businesses that the new arrangement is durable. Nobody is going to invest in building new factories in the United States to create goods that until last week could be imported more cheaply unless they’re certain that the tariffs making the domestic version more competitive will stay in place forever and ever.

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

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Friday, April 4, 2025 8:37 PM

I'll reserve my judgement and see how it plays out.

There is zero reason or ROI for me to do anything otherwise, and the same goes for you.

There's not a goddamned thing you can do about it now. You had your chance, and your party became so fucking toxic that you couldn't even steal the last election.

If anything breaks and we're all fucked, sleep tight knowing that you're just as culpable as any of the rest of us are for it.

Good luck.

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

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

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Friday, April 4, 2025 9:01 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:
I'll reserve my judgement and see how it plays out.

There is zero reason or ROI for me to do anything otherwise, and the same goes for you.

There's not a goddamned thing you can do about it now. You had your chance, and your party became so fucking toxic that you couldn't even steal the last election.

If anything breaks and we're all fucked, sleep tight knowing that you're just as culpable as any of the rest of us are for it.

Good luck.

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

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

6ix, you Trumptards have perverted the meaning of responsibility to mean Trump is not responsible for what he did this week because the Democrats are truly responsible since Biden didn't assassinate Trump before Trump could do something irresponsible, stupid and, perhaps, irreversible.

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

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Friday, April 4, 2025 10:07 PM

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

“He’s at the peak of just not giving a f— anymore,” said a White House official with knowledge of Trump’s thinking. “Bad news stories? Doesn’t give a f—. He’s going to do what he’s going to do.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/04/04/trump-tariffs-reaso
n-advisers/

“Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?” -- 6ixStringJack

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

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Friday, April 4, 2025 11:21 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I'll reserve my judgement and see how it plays out.

There is zero reason or ROI for me to do anything otherwise, and the same goes for you.

There's not a goddamned thing you can do about it now. You had your chance, and your party became so fucking toxic that you couldn't even steal the last election.

If anything breaks and we're all fucked, sleep tight knowing that you're just as culpable as any of the rest of us are for it.

Good luck.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
6ix, you Trumptards have perverted the meaning of responsibility to mean Trump is not responsible for what he did this week because the Democrats are truly responsible since Biden didn't assassinate Trump before Trump could do something irresponsible, stupid and, perhaps, irreversible.

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

Your party has been cancer for a long time.

You were warned about demanding better and not going with every line of bullshit your media masters told you.

Now they're all losing their jobs, Democrats can't even get 30% approval on CNN and you get to watch the world you thought you were living in disappear without a trace, never to return again.

You have nobody to blame but yourself and the likes of Kevin Drum and Paul Krugman.

Too bad Kevin didn't get to see Snow White.

Woke is dead now, but it outlived Kevin by a few months.

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

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

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Saturday, April 5, 2025 6:35 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:

Now they're all losing their jobs, Democrats can't even get 30% approval on CNN and you get to watch the world you thought you were living in disappear without a trace, never to return again.

You have nobody to blame but yourself and the likes of Kevin Drum and Paul Krugman.

Jonathan Chait is another name to add to your list of journalists who see how incompetent Trumptards and Trump are at making and executing plans for their own lives and even for all of America.

Trump Has Already Botched His Own Bad Tariff Plan

By Jonathan Chait | April 4, 2025, 12:51 PM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/04/trump-negotiation
-tariff/682300/

Once you’ve said you might negotiate, nobody is going to believe you when you change your mind and say you’ll never negotiate.

Donald Trump had a plan. It was not a good plan, or even a plausible one. But it was, at least, a coherent plan: By imposing large trade barriers on the entire world, he would create an incentive for American business to manufacture and grow all the goods the country previously imported.

Whatever chance this plan had to succeed is already over.

The key to making it work was to convince businesses that the new arrangement is durable. Nobody is going to invest in building new factories in the United States to create goods that until last week could be imported more cheaply unless they’re certain that the tariffs making the domestic version more competitive will stay in place. (They’re probably not going to do it anyway, in part because they don’t know who will be president in four years, but the point is that confidence in durable tariffs is a necessary condition.)

Trump’s aides grasped this dynamic. “This is the great onshoring, the great reshoring of American jobs and wealth,” Stephen Miller, Trump’s deputy chief of staff, declared on “Liberation Day.” The White House accordingly circulated talking points instructing its surrogates not to call the tariffs a leverage play to make deals, but to instead describe them as a permanent new feature of the global economy.

But not everybody got the idea. Eric Trump tweeted, “I wouldn’t want to be the last country that tries to negotiate a trade deal with @realDonaldTrump. The first to negotiate will win - the last will absolutely lose.”

Eric’s father apparently didn’t get the memo either. Asked by reporters whether he planned to negotiate the tariff rates, the president said, “The tariffs give us great power to negotiate. They always have.”

Someone seems to have then told Trump that this stance would paralyze business investment, because he reversed course immediately, writing on Truth Social, “TO THE MANY INVESTORS COMING INTO THE UNITED STATES AND INVESTING MASSIVE AMOUNTS OF MONEY, MY POLICIES WILL NEVER CHANGE.”

However, there is a principle at work here called “No backsies.” Once you’ve said you might negotiate the tariffs, nobody is going to believe you when you change your mind and say you’ll never negotiate.

Indeed, precisely two hours and 17 minutes after insisting that his policies would never change, Trump returned to Truth Social to announce excitedly that the policies were going to change: “Just had a very productive call with To Lam, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, who told me that Vietnam wants to cut their Tariffs down to ZERO if they are able to make an agreement with the U.S. I thanked him on behalf of our Country, and said I look forward to a meeting in the near future.”

The possibility remains that Trump will revert to insisting that the tariffs are permanent and irrevocable. The day is still young.

To be sure, signaling openness to negotiation on tariffs is also a plan. But it’s a very different plan than attracting massive investment into domestic production. The idea behind this other plan is a game of chicken: We think the balance of trade protection is unfavorable to the United States, and could be made more favorable by leveling the playing field. Threatening a global trade war imposes pain on other countries, making them willing to reduce their tariffs on American goods, leading to freer global trade.

This strategy relies not on convincing businesses that Trump is completely serious, but instead on making other world leaders believe that Trump is willing to endure fantastic amounts of economic pain in order to gain bargaining leverage. “Sometimes the best strategy in a negotiation is convincing the other side that you are crazy,” the investor and pro-Trump social-media influencer Bill Ackman rationalized on X.

Could it work? Like the original plan, this is not a good one by any means. Attempting to negotiate new trade deals with almost every country and territory in the world poses a formidable diplomatic challenge. There is very little in Trump’s record to suggest that he’s going to pull it off. The fact that he is freezing domestic investment decisions in the meantime and risking stagflation or a recession is going to undermine his leverage rather than increase it.

We’re the ones who are waging a trade war against the entire planet. Attempting to intimidate all other countries at the same time is a bit like a school bully walking into the cafeteria and announcing that everybody has to start handing over their lunch money on an ongoing basis. The strong-arm method is best suited for one-on-one negotiations, rather than giving everyone an incentive to band together in self-protection.

In any case, the madman approach to achieving freer global trade by tanking the American economy, whatever odds it may stand of success, is simply not the same thing as creating a permanent new system of protected domestic industry. That vision had danced in Trump’s head since the 1980s. He decided that now was his chance to finally make it happen. It lasted less than a day.

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

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Saturday, April 5, 2025 6:41 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:

Your party has been cancer for a long time.

You were warned about demanding better and not going with every line of bullshit your media masters told you.

Now they're all losing their jobs . . .

I knew and admired Elizabeth Warren’s work long before she became a senator. Back in the day she was a law professor with a special interest in rising rates of personal bankrupcty. Her book The Two-Income Trap, about how the stresses of families trying to get their children into decent schools pushed many over the brink, was a revelation. So was her dissection of the role of consumer fraud in the financial crisis.

She has been remarkably effective since transitioning into a political and policy-making role, too. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, her brainchild, has been a huge success story — which is why Trump and Musk are trying to kill it.

More at "Hoping for a better future"
By Paul Krugman | Apr 05, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/a-conversation-with-elizabeth-warre
n

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

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Saturday, April 5, 2025 6:47 AM

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

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/a-conversation-with-elizabeth-warre
n

Paul Krugman - It's been a much more exciting week in Washington than I would have liked it to be for this interview, because I'd like to talk about issues that are close to your heart. But first, reactions to Wednesday’s Rose Garden speech, the Trump tariff announcements.

Elizabeth Warren - So let me set the table just a little bit. I think that tariffs can be a useful tool in the economic toolbox. Right now in the United States, if you have a prescription filled, there’s a 9 out of 10 chance that it was manufactured overseas, probably in Asia, and that even if it was manufactured in India, most of the ingredients came from China.

You know, that's a pretty dangerous place for us to be. We get into some back and forth with China and all of a sudden there are no antibiotics for little kids with ear infections. So that can be a place where you put tariffs in place because you want to build a supply chain here in America. You're targeted about it, you know what you're trying to do, and you do it. You follow through and you make it stick.

Donald Trump's attempt at tariffs is just dumb. It's broad. It makes no sense. What do we gain by putting a big tariff on lumber from Canada, except that the cost of building a new house goes up?

Paul Krugman - Yeah.

Elizabeth Warren - And for me, it's more than the individual pieces, it's the chaos around it. First time you announce tariffs and then the market drops, so whoa, he rolls them back and it's like, they're playing red light, green light. And I think even now, a big chunk of the world doesn't know, is he serious about all of those tariffs? Some of those tariffs? None of those tariffs? And I don't know anybody who invests in an economy who says, “yeah, I'm definitely going to build a factory here in this town in Ohio, or I'm definitely going to start another branch of my business over here in Scottsdale, Arizona,” if you don't know what the environment looks like on what the cost of your materials may be or whether or not you'll have buyers overseas. So I think the tariffs themselves, I just don't think there's enough rhyme or reason to say that there's any coherence here, but I think the even scarier part and worst part for the economy is this uncertainty that it injects and there'll be a price for that for a long, long time to come.

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

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Saturday, April 5, 2025 6:50 AM

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

Canada to Europe: US relationship will ‘never be the same again’ after Trump’s trade war

By Antoaneta Roussi | April 4, 2025 10:47 am CET

https://www.politico.eu/article/canada-foreign-minister-melanie-joly-e
urope-us-relationship-never-same-again/

BRUSSELS — Canada’s Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly issued a stark warning Friday to her European counterparts after U.S. President Donald Trump hit allies with huge tariffs.

“We know that the relationship will never be the same again,” Joly said at NATO headquarters, where she was attending a meeting of allied foreign ministers. “That's my message to Europeans, the relationship with the U.S. will never be the same.”

Trump dumped the EU in the worst category of America’s trade partners this week, hitting the bloc with a 20 percent tariff on all imports.

Trump’s announcement puts the 27-nation bloc on the trade naughty step along with major economies such as China, Japan, Taiwan and South Korea. His move threw up U.S. trade barriers unseen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Joly said Trump's goal was to do "a global reset on trade," which had started with Canada.

“We buy more from the U.S. than the U.K., France, China and Japan combined," Joly told reporters. "When you treat your best client, the way we've been treated ... it means that you want fundamentally to change the way you're operating.”

She added that tariffs would ultimately be a tax on the American people and urged Europeans to “take that message” to U.S. citizens in order to influence the U.S. administration.

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

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Saturday, April 5, 2025 6:53 AM

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

What this disastrous week taught us about the Trump presidency

By Zack Beauchamp / Apr 4, 2025 at 1:35 PM

https://www.vox.com/politics/407222/trump-tariff-loomer-kennedy

Donald Trump’s tariffs were at once predictable and shocking.

Predictable, in the sense that Trump had been crystal-clear about wanting across-the-board tariffs during the campaign. Shocking, because they have been implemented in a manner that appears extreme and incompetent even by previous Trump standards. As a result, the world is historically unsettled: One metric of global economic uncertainty shows higher levels of concern than at any point in the 21st century, worse than the 2008 financial crisis and even the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.

It turns out that this combination, both predictable and shocking, has become a bit of a theme for the Trump team lately. Consider two other news stories, both of which would be headline-grabbing scandals if it weren’t for the tariffs.

First, Trump has empowered Laura Loomer, a 9/11 conspiracy theorist and self-described “proud Islamophobe,” to purge top government officials. The head of the National Security Agency, his top deputy, and six staffers on the National Security Council have all been fired this week — seemingly at Loomer’s behest.

Second, the Department of Health and Human Services started layoffs on Tuesday that are expected to hit about 10,000 workers. By the end of it, about a quarter of the department’s staff will have been cut amid a worrying measles outbreak and the real risk of a bird flu pandemic.

Trump telegraphed these moves during the campaign — promising to root out the “the deep state” and vowing to let Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “go wild” at HHS. But they are shocking, nonetheless. Putting Laura Loomer, of all people, in charge of sensitive national security decisions is nothing short of astonishing. And the sheer scope of the HHS cuts, given the current public health challenges, led my colleague Dylan Scott to describe the situation as an “unfolding catastrophe.”

This, it seems, is the week where we saw the Trump administration’s true and unvarnished face. It’s not that what happened this week was necessarily worse than what came before it, though the tariffs might well prove to be. Rather, it’s that the week revealed the true scope and nature of our Trump problem — with even some of his supporters starting to openly worry that things have gone badly wrong.

Put differently, the last week has shown, in no uncertain terms, that Trump is acting like a mad king.

What we just learned

Trump had done shocking and surprising things pretty much since he entered office on January 20. His blatantly political assault on universities, his decision to send innocent Venezuelans to a Salvadoran gulag, his bizarre crusade to make Canada “the 51st state,” his unlawful efforts to shut down entire federal agencies like USAID — all of this made clear that we were in for an unhinged approach to governance.

But even after all that, some people thought there still might be constraints.

Previous rounds of tariffs on China, Mexico, and Canada did not lead Wall Street to panic — partly because they were moderated or walked back after implementation. Many conservatives alarmed by Trump’s policies reassured themselves that his national security team, like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and national security adviser Mike Waltz, hailed from the GOP’s more traditional internationalist wing.

Now, there is panic even in these quarters.

Wall Street is horrified; the S&P 500 lost more value this week in absolute terms than it did during the entire 2008 financial crisis. Republican stalwarts like Ben Shapiro and Erick Erickson are warning of dire economic and political consequences if Trump stays the course on tariffs. And the notion that the GOP national security “professionals” might check any of this is no longer credible: This week, Waltz was made to sit in an Oval Office meeting during which Loomer listed off staff members of his to be fired. Even Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) said that the tariffs could well be “terrible for America.”

The point is not merely to mock these people or say, “I told you so.” Rather, it’s to illustrate that even those who wore blinders about Trump are starting to see what’s happening.

And what’s happening is this: government by mad king.

The phrase “mad king” has been tossed around a lot in the past few weeks, but I think it’s worth offering a more precise definition. A mad king, in my sense, is not merely a leader who makes bad decisions. Nor is it a literal king who assumed office through heredity rather than, say, free and fair elections.

Instead, it’s one who makes them based on reasons that are out of touch with reality, making sense only in their own mind. And it’s one who is able to do so with little-to-no constraint — thanks, in our case, to the dangerous concentration of power in the executive branch.

The events of this week show conclusively that the president fits the definition.

Trump decided to detonate the global economy because of his decades-old belief, in defiance of a consensus of economists, that tariffs are the key to American prosperity. No one, not even his previously demonstrated concern for the stock market, could stop him from acting on it. A mad king economic policy.

Trump has given partial control over the national security bureaucracy of the world’s greatest military power to a demonstrably unstable conspiracy theorist who once chained herself outside of Twitter’s headquarters. The people who were supposed to keep Trump in bounds were proven powerless, and (in Waltz’s case) outright humiliated. A mad king national security policy.

Trump has outsourced public health decisions to an unqualified nepo baby who has embraced nearly every unfounded health theory out there. He then allowed that man to decimate the ranks of our public health bureaucracy in the midst of at least two serious public health crises. The traditionally credentialed individuals in Trump’s health team, like NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, have proven no constraint at all. A mad king public health policy.

When I say this is “the week that Trump became unglued,” I thus do not mean that this is the first week where we could see that things are bad — or even that we had a mad king problem.

Rather, I mean that this is the week where the full scope of the mad king problem so undeniable that even some of Trump’s allies on the right began to see it. The only question now is how the country — and particularly key members of the Trump coalition — will react.

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

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Saturday, April 5, 2025 8:13 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
And the sheer scope of the HHS cuts, given the current public health challenges, led my colleague Dylan Scott to describe the situation as an “unfolding catastrophe.”

What do people die of, mostly?
Heart attacks, cancer, accidents (including drug overdose), stroke, chronic lower respiratory diseases (like COPD), Alzheimers, diabetes, liver disease, kidney disease

For a brief while Covid-19 made it to 3rd place, but is now just out of the top 10, along with influenza and pnuemonia, and suicide.

What is HHS doing about the top 10?

I know we'll all die of something some day, but these diseases can be prevented or delayed with healthy eating and lifestyle. HHS seems conflicted by allowing too many food additives and isolates to be GRAS.

Seems we would do better with a junk food tax, starting with fried foods.

-----------
"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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Saturday, April 5, 2025 8:30 AM

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

After promising transparency, RFK guts public records teams at HHS

April 3, 2025 5:02 AM ET

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2025/04/03/g-s1-57888/h
hs-fda-rfk-foia-public-records

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has promised "radical transparency," but the firings suggest that promise is a "lie," says Jason R. Baron, a former director of litigation at the National Archives and Records Administration and current professor at the College of Information at the University of Maryland.

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

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Saturday, April 5, 2025 9:49 AM

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

Your party has been cancer for a long time.

You were warned about demanding better and not going with every line of bullshit your media masters told you.

Now they're all losing their jobs . . .
I knew and admired Elizabeth Warren’s work long before she became a senator. Back in the day she was a law professor with a special interest in rising rates of personal bankrupcty. Her book The Two-Income Trap, about how the stresses of families trying to get their children into decent schools pushed many over the brink, was a revelation. So was her dissection of the role of consumer fraud in the financial crisis.

She has been remarkably effective since transitioning into a political and policy-making role, too. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, her brainchild, has been a huge success story — which is why Trump and Musk are trying to kill it.

There has been no success. Living in America is unaffordable for most, and we're $37 Trillion in debt.

YOUR party did that.

Shut the fuck up.

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

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

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Saturday, April 5, 2025 10:14 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:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Your party has been cancer for a long time.

You were warned about demanding better and not going with every line of bullshit your media masters told you.

Now they're all losing their jobs . . .
I knew and admired Elizabeth Warren’s work long before she became a senator. Back in the day she was a law professor with a special interest in rising rates of personal bankrupcty. Her book The Two-Income Trap, about how the stresses of families trying to get their children into decent schools pushed many over the brink, was a revelation. So was her dissection of the role of consumer fraud in the financial crisis.

She has been remarkably effective since transitioning into a political and policy-making role, too. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, her brainchild, has been a huge success story — which is why Trump and Musk are trying to kill it.

There has been no success. Living in America is unaffordable for most, and we're $37 Trillion in debt.

YOUR party did that.

Shut the fuck up.

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

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

In the Houston area, half the population are Trumptards, half aren't. The Trumptard half aren't doing well compared to Democrats because Trumptards have mental problems connected to obsessive anxieties about illegal aliens and wokeness. Trumptards have money problems which they have no idea they could easily fix if only they were not crazy, stupid and lazy. See 6ixStringJack, who has no earned income, no employment, because of his mental disabilities. The Democrats didn't make Trumptards crazy. Trumptards did it to themselves.

I can even see the difference driving down a street in Baytown Texas looking for houses with Trump Take America Back signs. The occupants of the Trumptard houses are obviously inferior at home and vehicle maintenance.

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

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Saturday, April 5, 2025 2:17 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
SECOND
In the Houston area, half the population are Trumptards, half aren't. The Trumptard half aren't doing well compared to Democrats because Trumptards have mental problems connected to obsessive anxieties about illegal aliens and wokeness.

And SECOND knows this... how?
Because he's interviewed the population of Houston?
Because he knows how each person voted and every family's net worth?

Or is he just substituting obsessive anxiety about "Trumptards" to fill the void where knowledge should be?

You're funny. And I don't mean in a good way.

-----------
"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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Saturday, April 5, 2025 2:59 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I reorganized this article bc it desperately needed editing, but you can find the original here https://realclearwire.com/articles/2025/04/01/follow_the_science_why_p
eter_marks_was_asked_to_leave_the_fda_1101329.html

Quote:
Follow the Science: Why Peter Marks Was Asked to Leave the FDA

Follow the Science: Why Peter Marks Was Asked to Leave the FDA

On Friday, Dr. Peter Marks announced his resignation from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as Director of CEBR (Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research) citing differences with Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Kennedy regarding vaccines.

The New York Times, Washington Post, and other media outlets such as STAT News breathlessly reported that “FDA’s top vaccine scientist had been pushed out.” We have been told that science is at risk.The irony of these reports is that Marks didn’t resign and is not a vaccine scientist. Dr. Marks was asked to leave and then subsequently wrote that he did not want to become “subservient to [Secretary Kennedy’s] misinformation and lies.”

The media proclamation that Dr. Marks’ is “FDA’s top vaccine scientist” is ironic because he decided to give himself that position. Marks is a physician but has no clinical or scientific training in vaccines or immunology. Dr. Marks trained as an oncologist, a field far from the important and complex area of vaccine biology.

At FDA in 2021, Dr. Marks removed top career vaccine scientists so he could force through the approval of the COVID vaccine to meet an arbitrary Biden administration deadline. Marks ousted Dr. Gruber and Dr. Krause, the top scientists at the Office of Vaccine Research, due to “intransigence” of these real vaccine experts to not ram through the approval of the vaccine. Drs. Gruber and Krause had voiced concerns that they needed more time to understand the safety of the vaccine especially as it relates to inflammation of the heart, now a well known and accepted toxicity of the COVID vaccine. Marks approved the use of the vaccine in children despite the known fact that children have an extremely low risk of serious health effects of COVID-19 infection and yet a known significant increased risk of serious vaccine related toxicity. [NOT TRUE. RISK OF COMPLICATIONS FROM COVID-19 IS HIGHER THAN VACCINE RISK.] He also declined to convene the FDA Vaccine Advisory Committee to review his decision. These events are clearly outlined in the June 2023 House Judiciary Hearings.

On at least three additional, documented occasions during the Biden administration as Director of CBER, Marks disregarded the opinions and expert advice of long-time career scientists to advance his own dangerous agenda. In addition to ignoring and overruling FDA’s top vaccine scientists during the pandemic, Marks also overruled FDA career scientists and supported the approval of the Alzheimer’s drug ADUHELM; a decision later overturned.

In 2023, he overruled his own staff scientists amid their concerns and those raised by an FDA Advisory Board to grant [initial] approval of ELEVIDYS, a gene treatment for Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). After the initial FDA approval [2023], the company conducted a subsequent trial which failed to meet the primary efficacy endpoint. On top of that, ELEVIDYS has proven toxicity including liver failure (22% of patients) and increase in serious adverse events. Despite the lack of proven efficacy and the concerning toxicity profile, Dr. Marks rammed through ... the full approval in June of 2024 against the counsel of his staff and the expert panel... and without FDA Advisory Committee input.

As tragic evidence of Marks’ failed judgement, just 2 weeks ago, the company that markets the therapy ELEVIDYS announced that a treated patient died of fulminant liver failure. Marks overruled his own career staff and experts to drive through a risky and unproven therapy that has now killed a patient. This tragedy should not have happened.

While advocates point to the need for new therapies in severe debilitating diseases such as DMD, giving patients and families hope on a toxic therapy that does not provide a clinical benefit rises beyond simple incompetence. A patient died needlessly, and others have been harmed due to this incompetence.

Dr. Marks also failed to protect public health when he overruled career FDA scientists and supported the approval of the Alzheimer’s treatment AUDHELM, a controversial approval that was subsequently overturned. ADUHELM was approved in June 2021 despite strident objections from FDA staff and against the recommendations of an Advisory Board. In fact, two prominent members of that advisory board resigned in protest of the decision. These members cited a lack of clear efficacy and the risk of serious toxicity including brain swelling and bleeding that can be life threatening. These events led to a congressional investigation which found that FDA had “unusually close” interactions with Biogen, the AUDHELM sponsor and applicant. In January 2024, Biogen decided to remove ADUHELM from the market after confirmatory trials failed to show patient benefit. So, Dr. Marks again supported a dangerous and ineffective therapy that cruelly gave patients hope and provided nothing but risk and cost to Americans.

Both the ADUHELM initial approval and the ELEVIDYS approvals demonstrate that ignoring basic tenants of the use and interpretation of clinical trial data can be very damaging to public health. By ignoring these well-tested tenants of FDA review and approval, Marks endangered patients, gave false hope to those in desperate need and cost vast amounts of money that our health case system can ill afford. It cannot be overstated how destructive this practice is to drug development. This uneven application of basic clinical trial data interpretation calls into question the impartiality and credibility of the FDA. This is particularly relevant now as a patient who otherwise could have lived many more years died from an expected toxicity. And we have yet to fully determine the harm caused by Dr. Marks decision to remove the most experienced and trusted vaccine scientists that simply wanted more time to understand the, now proven, risks of the COVID vaccine.

While Dr. Peter Marks may try to claim differences with Secretary Kennedy on vaccines and the legacy media try to paint Marks as the FDA hero, the real reason he was terminated is that he made bad decisions that were contrary to FDA long-standing policies and which ran counter to the evaluations of professional career staff at FDA. Thanks to Dr. Marks’ terrible decisions, we are left with a drug that has no proven benefit and that just killed a young patient, a vaccine that is not completely safe is being administered to children that have no significant risk of harm from the underlying infection, and an overburdened healthcare system that had to pay billions for another unproven, harmful therapy. Advocates for Dr. Marks claim that he has acted to help patients with life-threatening conditions which have no alternative treatments. But in reality, he catered to industry and hurt patients. Of course, we should strive to advance safe and effective therapies for such conditions, but we should not approve ineffective and dangerous therapies simply to put something out on the market. Unfortunately, Dr. Marks has repeatedly disregarded long-held FDA policy that is in place to protect patients. That is malpractice not heroism.

George F. Tidmarsh, MD, PhD, Stanford University School of Medicine, Adjunct Professor, Pediatrics and Neonatology.

---------
"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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Saturday, April 5, 2025 3:42 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
SECOND
In the Houston area, half the population are Trumptards, half aren't. The Trumptard half aren't doing well compared to Democrats because Trumptards have mental problems connected to obsessive anxieties about illegal aliens and wokeness.

And SECOND knows this... how?
Because he's interviewed the population of Houston?
Because he knows how each person voted and every family's net worth?

Or is he just substituting obsessive anxiety about "Trumptards" to fill the void where knowledge should be?

You're funny. And I don't mean in a good way.

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

He's a cultist and a zealot. He's speaking out of his ass just like he's done every day since he started posting here.

Nothing he has ever said was worth the electricity to send nor the server space it occupies.

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

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

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Saturday, April 5, 2025 6:02 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:

He's a cultist and a zealot. He's speaking out of his ass just like he's done every day since he started posting here.

Nothing he has ever said was worth the electricity to send nor the server space it occupies.

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

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

Man Who Bankrupts Casinos Really Showing the World a Thing or Two About How To Do Business

In what has been described as "a massive fucking surprise", a man who has run six companies into bankruptcy and wasn't even able to make money out of A CASINO, has absolutely no idea what he is doing while in charge of the world's largest economy.

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

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Saturday, April 5, 2025 6:10 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:
SECOND
In the Houston area, half the population are Trumptards, half aren't. The Trumptard half aren't doing well compared to Democrats because Trumptards have mental problems connected to obsessive anxieties about illegal aliens and wokeness.

And SECOND knows this... how?
Because he's interviewed the population of Houston?
Because he knows how each person voted and every family's net worth?

Or is he just substituting obsessive anxiety about "Trumptards" to fill the void where knowledge should be?

You're funny. And I don't mean in a good way.

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

My next door neighbor, a proud Trumptard, put a hole in his air-conditioner condenser this afternoon, causing all the refrigerant to leak out. Trumptards are not prospering in America because they are stupid, lazy, drunken ignoramuses who don't realize that they sabotage their own lives.

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

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Saturday, April 5, 2025 6:19 PM