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

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I think I see what Trump is trying to do, but it needs to happen pretty much all at the same time to work:

Tariff goods from nations that have excessive trade surpluses with the USA. Someone actually figured out where he got his original tariff numbers from: trade surplus with the USA divided by total exports.

Reduce income taxes to stimulate purchases at home, and use tariffs to replace them with.

I get it, but the timing is awfully close.

Somebody did figure it out. For example, Guyana tariffs jumped to 38%. Then went to 10% a few days later because the reason for raising tariffs to 38% was stupid: Guyana sells billions of dollars in crude to the US, but doesn’t buy billions of refined fuel from the US.

Why couldn’t the tariffs go back to zero? Because Trump would have to admit that 38%, followed by 10%, were goofs.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5ypxnnyg7jo
https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-country/guy/partner/usa#bespoke
-title-475

Another thing somebody figured out about "Reduce income taxes to stimulate purchases at home, and use tariffs to replace them with" is that tariffs are paid by Americans, not by people in Guyana, and income taxes are also paid by Americans. Raising tariffs (it is a tax on Americans) and lowering income taxes will only shift who in America pays taxes. Reducing income taxes will stimulate purchases by rich people who paid high taxes before Trump's scheme of lower taxes on the wealthy.

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

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Wednesday, April 30, 2025 9:53 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Thanks to Trump

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When Justin Trudeau resigned at the start of this year, Canada’s Liberals appeared to be heading for the door after almost 10 years in power.

The opposition Conservatives were in a strong position, with a 25 point lead and an easy attack line: that any Liberal candidate would be no different to Trudeau, who had become increasingly unpopular.

But those fortunes changed dramatically in the months leading up to the election and now Mark Carney, former Bank of England governor, has declared victory.

That’s largely down to one phenomenon: the return of Donald Trump as US president.

https://inews.co.uk/news/world/5-things-know-five-minutes-anti-trump-c
andidate-win-canada-election-3665310

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

No, it wasn't suppose to go down that way.

Trump managed to do something that a lot of Canadians haven't seen in their lifetimes. Unite the entire country from coast to coast to coast. Even Quebec was pissed. So, he managed to piss off almost every since Canadian. Guess we should thank him for that maybe.

I have a friend whose daughter is unfortunately one of those idiots who voted Conservative and is now crying in her beer towel.

NEVER 51. CANADA IS NOT FOR SALE

At the end of the day, Canada has just about zero say in the matter.

Once we stop offering military aid to everyone, they're all going to go bankrupt paying for free healthcare and anything else they're looking to fund on top of their own defense budget.

Canada has no leverage at all here, and I suspect there will come a day where Canada is asking us if they can join. I hope at that point the answer is no.

Wrong Jack, Trumps' power is waning.

T

Trump's Michigan "rally" of less than 3,000 people in a half filled arena was yet another disaster, as most of the crowd left half way through, and Trump spent 90 minutes defending his failed first 100 days by attacking, what else, "communist left wing judges" and changing his tariff policy while literally on Air Force One on the way to the rally to pander to the skimpy crowd.

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Wednesday, April 30, 2025 2:09 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Thanks to Trump

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When Justin Trudeau resigned at the start of this year, Canada’s Liberals appeared to be heading for the door after almost 10 years in power.

The opposition Conservatives were in a strong position, with a 25 point lead and an easy attack line: that any Liberal candidate would be no different to Trudeau, who had become increasingly unpopular.

But those fortunes changed dramatically in the months leading up to the election and now Mark Carney, former Bank of England governor, has declared victory.

That’s largely down to one phenomenon: the return of Donald Trump as US president.

https://inews.co.uk/news/world/5-things-know-five-minutes-anti-trump-c
andidate-win-canada-election-3665310

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

No, it wasn't suppose to go down that way.

Trump managed to do something that a lot of Canadians haven't seen in their lifetimes. Unite the entire country from coast to coast to coast. Even Quebec was pissed. So, he managed to piss off almost every since Canadian. Guess we should thank him for that maybe.

I have a friend whose daughter is unfortunately one of those idiots who voted Conservative and is now crying in her beer towel.

NEVER 51. CANADA IS NOT FOR SALE

At the end of the day, Canada has just about zero say in the matter.

Once we stop offering military aid to everyone, they're all going to go bankrupt paying for free healthcare and anything else they're looking to fund on top of their own defense budget.

Canada has no leverage at all here, and I suspect there will come a day where Canada is asking us if they can join. I hope at that point the answer is no.

Wrong Jack, Trumps' power is waning.

T

I'm not aware of anybody campaigning or any pending election.

People got shit to do like working on a Tuesday. Republican voters usually work for a living.

I'm the exception to the rule.

It's easy to fill up arenas for AOC when you have a huge pool of angry unemployed people with nothing better to do that you can bus in.

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

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

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Wednesday, April 30, 2025 3:58 PM

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

Economic facts are political and hostile to Trump

Tariffs are consumption taxes. American consumers pay for tariffs on Chinese goods, not the Chinese government, businesses or people.

Trump pretends that exporting countries pay our tariffs. If he really believed that, he’d be happy to see Amazon post how much China is paying to get their goods into our market. But when rumors surfaced that Amazon was going to do just that, the Trump outrage machine kicked into high gear:

“Earlier on Tuesdsay, Punchbowl News reported that Amazon would show tariff-related price increases on goods. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called the move “a hostile and political act.”

Once again, the Trump Administration does what it accuses others of doing. In this case, a taxpayer-funded hostile and political attack on Amazon for transparent reporting of facts. They’re gaslighting, and they’re using your tax dollars to do it.

Trump says Jeff Bezos 'solved the problem' after White House attacks Amazon on tariff price labeling plan
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-says-jeff-bezos-solved-the-proble
m-after-white-house-attacks-amazon-on-tariff-price-labeling-plan-143310019.html

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

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Wednesday, April 30, 2025 4:01 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Tariffs are consumption taxes. American consumers pay for tariffs on Chinese goods, not the Chinese government, businesses or people.

Trump pretends that exporting countries pay our tariffs. If he really believed that, he’d be happy to see Amazon post how much China is paying to get their goods into our market. But when rumors surfaced that Amazon was going to do just that, the Trump outrage machine kicked into high gear:

“Earlier on Tuesdsay, Punchbowl News reported that Amazon would show tariff-related price increases on goods. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt called the move “a hostile and political act.”

Once again, the Trump Administration does what it accuses others of doing. In this case, a taxpayer-funded hostile and political attack on Amazon for transparent reporting of facts. They’re gaslighting, and they’re using your tax dollars to do it.

Trump says Jeff Bezos 'solved the problem' after White House attacks Amazon on tariff price labeling plan
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/trump-says-jeff-bezos-solved-the-proble
m-after-white-house-attacks-amazon-on-tariff-price-labeling-plan-143310019.html

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

The Amazon story was a pure lie from the beginning.

Amazon wasn't ever going to do this, nor do I even believe they would have had the capability to overhaul their entire website to show any of it either.

Total non-story here.

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

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

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Wednesday, April 30, 2025 4:04 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Thanks to Trump

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When Justin Trudeau resigned at the start of this year, Canada’s Liberals appeared to be heading for the door after almost 10 years in power.

The opposition Conservatives were in a strong position, with a 25 point lead and an easy attack line: that any Liberal candidate would be no different to Trudeau, who had become increasingly unpopular.

But those fortunes changed dramatically in the months leading up to the election and now Mark Carney, former Bank of England governor, has declared victory.

That’s largely down to one phenomenon: the return of Donald Trump as US president.

https://inews.co.uk/news/world/5-things-know-five-minutes-anti-trump-c
andidate-win-canada-election-3665310

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

No, it wasn't suppose to go down that way.

Trump managed to do something that a lot of Canadians haven't seen in their lifetimes. Unite the entire country from coast to coast to coast. Even Quebec was pissed. So, he managed to piss off almost every since Canadian. Guess we should thank him for that maybe.

I have a friend whose daughter is unfortunately one of those idiots who voted Conservative and is now crying in her beer towel.

NEVER 51. CANADA IS NOT FOR SALE

At the end of the day, Canada has just about zero say in the matter.

Once we stop offering military aid to everyone, they're all going to go bankrupt paying for free healthcare and anything else they're looking to fund on top of their own defense budget.

Canada has no leverage at all here, and I suspect there will come a day where Canada is asking us if they can join. I hope at that point the answer is no.

Wrong Jack, Trumps' power is waning.

T

Trump's Michigan "rally" of less than 3,000 people in a half filled arena was yet another disaster, as most of the crowd left half way through, and Trump spent 90 minutes defending his failed first 100 days by attacking, what else, "communist left wing judges" and changing his tariff policy while literally on Air Force One on the way to the rally to pander to the skimpy crowd.

I'm not aware of anybody campaigning or any pending election.

People got shit to do like working on a Tuesday. Republican voters usually work for a living.

I'm the exception to the rule.

It's easy to fill up arenas for AOC when you have a huge pool of angry unemployed people with nothing better to do that you can bus in.

"Overall job loss by end of term: According to USA Today, approximately 4 million fewer people were employed at the end of Trump's term compared to when he took office. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) notes that the year ended with 9.8 million fewer jobs than before the pandemic and 546,000 fewer jobs than at the start of his presidency."

Trumps employment record first term. This term is going to be much worse. And since it takes 600 to a 1,000 busses to transport 30,000 thousand adults, I'm sure there is plenty of news coverage reporting on such a large caravan. Right, providing you with plenty of video footage.

Or are you just showing us again, what a lying sack of shit you are.

T

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Wednesday, April 30, 2025 4:06 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Thanks to Trump

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When Justin Trudeau resigned at the start of this year, Canada’s Liberals appeared to be heading for the door after almost 10 years in power.

The opposition Conservatives were in a strong position, with a 25 point lead and an easy attack line: that any Liberal candidate would be no different to Trudeau, who had become increasingly unpopular.

But those fortunes changed dramatically in the months leading up to the election and now Mark Carney, former Bank of England governor, has declared victory.

That’s largely down to one phenomenon: the return of Donald Trump as US president.

https://inews.co.uk/news/world/5-things-know-five-minutes-anti-trump-c
andidate-win-canada-election-3665310

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

No, it wasn't suppose to go down that way.

Trump managed to do something that a lot of Canadians haven't seen in their lifetimes. Unite the entire country from coast to coast to coast. Even Quebec was pissed. So, he managed to piss off almost every since Canadian. Guess we should thank him for that maybe.

I have a friend whose daughter is unfortunately one of those idiots who voted Conservative and is now crying in her beer towel.

NEVER 51. CANADA IS NOT FOR SALE

At the end of the day, Canada has just about zero say in the matter.

Once we stop offering military aid to everyone, they're all going to go bankrupt paying for free healthcare and anything else they're looking to fund on top of their own defense budget.

Canada has no leverage at all here, and I suspect there will come a day where Canada is asking us if they can join. I hope at that point the answer is no.

Wrong Jack, Trumps' power is waning.

T

Trump's Michigan "rally" of less than 3,000 people in a half filled arena was yet another disaster, as most of the crowd left half way through, and Trump spent 90 minutes defending his failed first 100 days by attacking, what else, "communist left wing judges" and changing his tariff policy while literally on Air Force One on the way to the rally to pander to the skimpy crowd.

I'm not aware of anybody campaigning or any pending election.

People got shit to do like working on a Tuesday. Republican voters usually work for a living.

I'm the exception to the rule.

It's easy to fill up arenas for AOC when you have a huge pool of angry unemployed people with nothing better to do that you can bus in.

Trumps employment record first term. This term is going to be much worse.

T

That was all the doing of the Democratic Party, and most of those jobs were recovered before Joe Biden* was inaugurated.

*yawn*

Next...

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

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

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Wednesday, April 30, 2025 4:06 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

The Amazon story was a pure lie from the beginning.

Amazon wasn't ever going to do this, nor do I even believe they would have had the capability to overhaul their entire website to show any of it either.

Total non-story here.

Too bad for you, but there is a video from the White House saying Amazon's plan to display tariff costs is "hostile and political act"

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

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Wednesday, April 30, 2025 4:07 PM

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

The Amazon story was a pure lie from the beginning.

Amazon wasn't ever going to do this, nor do I even believe they would have had the capability to overhaul their entire website to show any of it either.

Total non-story here.
Too bad for you, but there is a video from the White House saying Amazon's plan to display tariff costs is "hostile and political act"

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

I didn't deny that the White House said this. They said it after the fake Amazon story was spread by the fake news outfits.

The false part of the story was the idea that Amazon was going to do this in the first place. Not only wasn't it going to do this, but it is not capable of doing this.

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

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

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Wednesday, April 30, 2025 4:16 PM

It has already started but in weeks Jack will have nothing to hide behind. And since he doesn't work, and he explained how a government policy allowed for him to keep his house, I'm sure he is going to lose it in the near future. His hero Trump will see to that.

T

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Wednesday, April 30, 2025 4:34 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 didn't deny that the White House said this. They said it after the fake Amazon story was spread by the fake news outfits.

The false part of the story was the idea that Amazon was going to do this in the first place. Not only wasn't it going to do this, but it is not capable of doing this.

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

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

6ix, just for the record, you are an over-articulate retard, but then tens of millions of Americans have the same crippling mental shortcoming, one which strongly attracts them to Trump and even stronger, predicts they will struggle to prosper in America and frequently fail.

Republicans Kicking Americans Off of Medicaid

Bill Haskell | April 29, 2025 7:00 am

https://angrybearblog.com/2025/04/republicans-kicking-americans-off-of
-medicaid

There are 42 House Republicans who won their seats last November by 15 points or less (see below). These are the most vulnerable Republicans. Meanwhile, Democrats have been outperforming their districts by an average of over ten points in special elections so far this year.

Combine these data points with the growing backlash and as you can imagine, some House Republicans in swing districts (and not-normally-considered swing districts) are understandably nervous about ripping healthcare coverage away from up to 60% of their constituents (that’s not a typo . . . check out CA-22).

The optics look even worse for Republicans when Democrats have been successfully calling attention to the huge numbers of children, the elderly and the disabled who rely on Medicaid.

So, what’s a Republican House member to do? They have to have their massive tax cuts for millionaires & billionaires, after all; that’s not even up for debate in their minds!

The “solution” to Republicans’ problem in their eyes:

Republicans are out there proclaiming that “able-bodied” adults don’t deserve coverage, that the 90% federal match rate for the expansion that made it financially viable for states sucks resources from “traditional” Medicaid beneficiaries (it doesn’t), that defunding the expansion is just cutting “waste, fraud, and abuse” — that is, that low-income adults without affordable access to employer insurance are effectively human waste.

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

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Wednesday, April 30, 2025 5:22 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Thanks to Trump

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When Justin Trudeau resigned at the start of this year, Canada’s Liberals appeared to be heading for the door after almost 10 years in power.

The opposition Conservatives were in a strong position, with a 25 point lead and an easy attack line: that any Liberal candidate would be no different to Trudeau, who had become increasingly unpopular.

But those fortunes changed dramatically in the months leading up to the election and now Mark Carney, former Bank of England governor, has declared victory.

That’s largely down to one phenomenon: the return of Donald Trump as US president.

https://inews.co.uk/news/world/5-things-know-five-minutes-anti-trump-c
andidate-win-canada-election-3665310

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

No, it wasn't suppose to go down that way.

Trump managed to do something that a lot of Canadians haven't seen in their lifetimes. Unite the entire country from coast to coast to coast. Even Quebec was pissed. So, he managed to piss off almost every since Canadian. Guess we should thank him for that maybe.

I have a friend whose daughter is unfortunately one of those idiots who voted Conservative and is now crying in her beer towel.

NEVER 51. CANADA IS NOT FOR SALE

At the end of the day, Canada has just about zero say in the matter.

Once we stop offering military aid to everyone, they're all going to go bankrupt paying for free healthcare and anything else they're looking to fund on top of their own defense budget.

Canada has no leverage at all here, and I suspect there will come a day where Canada is asking us if they can join. I hope at that point the answer is no.

Wrong Jack, Trumps' power is waning.

T

Trump's Michigan "rally" of less than 3,000 people in a half filled arena was yet another disaster, as most of the crowd left half way through, and Trump spent 90 minutes defending his failed first 100 days by attacking, what else, "communist left wing judges" and changing his tariff policy while literally on Air Force One on the way to the rally to pander to the skimpy crowd.

I'm not aware of anybody campaigning or any pending election.

People got shit to do like working on a Tuesday. Republican voters usually work for a living.

I'm the exception to the rule.

It's easy to fill up arenas for AOC when you have a huge pool of angry unemployed people with nothing better to do that you can bus in.

"Overall job loss by end of term: According to USA Today, approximately 4 million fewer people were employed at the end of Trump's term compared to when he took office. The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) notes that the year ended with 9.8 million fewer jobs than before the pandemic and 546,000 fewer jobs than at the start of his presidency."

Trumps employment record first term. This term is going to be much worse.

T

Since it takes 600 to 1,000
buses to transport 30,000 adults, I'm sure there
is plenty of news coverage reporting on such a
large caravan. Right,
providing you with plenty of video footage. Or,
are you just going to show us again what a fucking
liar you are. Because most of your post is bullshit.

T

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Wednesday, April 30, 2025 5:25 PM

Yup. Let's pretend like that didn't happen every day on the Harris Campaign trail that wasted $1.4 Billion for nothing.

Nobody gives a shit about your rallies, son.

The Democratic Party is dead.

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

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

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Wednesday, April 30, 2025 5:27 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Yup. Let's pretend like that didn't happen every day on the Harris Campaign trail that wasted $1.4 Billion for nothing.

Nobody gives a shit about your rallies, son.

The Democratic Party is dead.

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

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

Cites Jack, no more of your bullshit, let's see cites.

T

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Wednesday, April 30, 2025 5:32 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Cites Jack, no more of your bullshit, let's see cites.

Here you go bitch...

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

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

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Wednesday, April 30, 2025 5:45 PM

Are you telling me there was 30,000 people in that convey? You better try again. And by the way, they were vans not buses. 10 people to a van, let me see, that would be 3,000 vans needed. Like I said dummy, try again. Ever see one of Trumps caravans? Another fact, Elon Musk spent 288 million final count on Trumps election, so eat shit.

T

Remember, Kamala was vice president with staff and protection. Also, a lot of the state's democratic leaders and volunteers.

INCREDIBLE scenes as TRUMP'S CONVOY rolls Through ROME for POPE FRANCIS' funeral

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Wednesday, April 30, 2025 6:13 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by Brenda:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Thanks to Trump

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When Justin Trudeau resigned at the start of this year, Canada’s Liberals appeared to be heading for the door after almost 10 years in power.

The opposition Conservatives were in a strong position, with a 25 point lead and an easy attack line: that any Liberal candidate would be no different to Trudeau, who had become increasingly unpopular.

But those fortunes changed dramatically in the months leading up to the election and now Mark Carney, former Bank of England governor, has declared victory.

That’s largely down to one phenomenon: the return of Donald Trump as US president.

https://inews.co.uk/news/world/5-things-know-five-minutes-anti-trump-c
andidate-win-canada-election-3665310

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

No, it wasn't suppose to go down that way.

Trump managed to do something that a lot of Canadians haven't seen in their lifetimes. Unite the entire country from coast to coast to coast. Even Quebec was pissed. So, he managed to piss off almost every since Canadian. Guess we should thank him for that maybe.

I have a friend whose daughter is unfortunately one of those idiots who voted Conservative and is now crying in her beer towel.

NEVER 51. CANADA IS NOT FOR SALE

At the end of the day, Canada has just about zero say in the matter.

Once we stop offering military aid to everyone, they're all going to go bankrupt paying for free healthcare and anything else they're looking to fund on top of their own defense budget.

Canada has no leverage at all here, and I suspect there will come a day where Canada is asking us if they can join. I hope at that point the answer is no.

Wrong Jack, Trumps' power is waning.

T

Trump's Michigan "rally" of less than 3,000 people in a half filled arena was yet another disaster, as most of the crowd left half way through, and Trump spent 90 minutes defending his failed first 100 days by attacking, what else, "communist left wing judges" and changing his tariff policy while literally on Air Force One on the way to the rally to pander to the skimpy crowd.

I'm not aware of anybody campaigning or any pending election.

People got shit to do like working on a Tuesday. Republican voters usually work for a living.

I'm the exception to the rule.

It's easy to fill up arenas for AOC when you have a huge pool of angry unemployed people with nothing better to do that you can bus in.

Tick tock

T

MAGA gets UNCOVERED as Trump PLUMMETS FAST

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Wednesday, April 30, 2025 7:07 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Are you telling me there was 30,000 people in that convey?

Nope. Just illustrating that this is what the Democrat Party does, and shoving it in your dumb fucking face is all.

Your party is dead, Ted.

And you helped kill it off.

Thank you for that.

Just keep on doing exactly what you've been doing. It's working out excellent for me so far.

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

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

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Thursday, May 1, 2025 6:11 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 THG:
Are you telling me there was 30,000 people in that convey?

Nope. Just illustrating that this is what the Democrat Party does, and shoving it in your dumb fucking face is all.

Your party is dead, Ted.

And you helped kill it off.

Thank you for that.

Just keep on doing exactly what you've been doing. It's working out excellent for me so far.

6ix, you couldn't be an angrier whiny baby, but you are getting close to Trump's level.

“The unifying principle” of Trumpism, wrote Ben Tarnoff in February, “is the abdication of adulthood’s defining obligation: to take responsibility for oneself and others.”

More Babies!

Trump and his set act carefree in the face of catastrophe—and they give their supporters permission to do the same.

By Ben Tarnoff | February 7, 2025

https://www.nybooks.com/online/2025/02/07/more-babies-trump/

The week I became a father, two things happened. Fires engulfed the Amazon, and a man who made his living as a columnist for the largest newspaper in the country complained to a university provost that a professor had called him a bedbug on the Internet. This was the world into which I welcomed my first child: a place where people with power behaved like children while the planet burned.

Five and a half years later, our civilizational outlook has not improved. It is not just the fires, floods, zoonotic diseases, and other insignia of ecological emergency. It is also the discomfiting spectacle of a leadership class so extravagantly unfit for the task at hand. Incompetent rulers are nothing new. They are one of human history’s main themes. What feels more specific to our time is the extent to which our leaders have responded to a moment of severe and proliferating crisis by regressing into a childlike state, and encouraging their followers to do the same.

In 1933, the year that Hitler took power in Germany, the psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich proposed that fascism begins at home, in the domestic sphere. The first authoritarian state is the family, he argued, ruled by the father. Here children learn the submission to authority—and the identification with it—that makes a good fascist subject. The idea proved influential for later thinkers trying to map the psychology of authoritarianism, and it has an obvious kernel of truth. In our own extremely desublimated era, one doesn’t have to look very far for verification: “It’s like Daddy arrived and he’s taking his belt off,” a ruddy Mel Gibson gushed the other day on Fox News about Trump’s visit to Los Angeles, during which he had scolded Karen Bass, the city’s mayor and a Black woman, at a press conference.

But Trump is poorly cast for the part of patriarch. While he glowers in his official portraits, his political style is more silly than stern. He babbles. He is a creature of impulse and instinct, fickle and dysregulated. His humor is that of the schoolyard; his train of thought is, at minimum, haphazard. If you have ever heard a toddler tell a story, it sounds like Trump: digressive, bizarre, filled with tonal shifts, often hilarious. His inner circle exudes a similarly infantile affect. Elon Musk is nothing if not a smirking preadolescent. J.D. Vance looks uncannily like a baby, which is presumably why he decided to grow a beard, with the result that he now looks like a bearded baby. “Let me say very simply,” he told an audience of antiabortion fanatics in his first speech as vice president: “I want more babies in the United States of America!”

It is stressful to be young. The world is confusing, the process of fitting oneself into it long and painful. But these difficulties are offset by certain pleasures, chief among them the relative absence of responsibility. If children misbehave they can be punished, but in moral and legal terms they are not accountable for their actions to the same degree as adults are. When people feel nostalgic for their childhoods, even when they had bad childhoods, this is what they miss: to be carefree.

The desire to be carefree is integral to the psychic allure of Trumpism. It is pleasurable to disinter one’s deepest resentments, to worship power, to go berserk with rage, to be floridly conspiratorial, to know nothing, to hallucinate Marxists under the bed, to picture the people you hate in tears and in chains. But the unifying principle, the rind that envelops and coheres these delights, is the abdication of adulthood’s defining obligation: to take responsibility for oneself and others. It is precisely this responsibility that Trump and his set refuse. They are carefree in the face of catastrophe. And they give their supporters permission to take the same flight from responsibility—indeed, their political appeal depends on it. They want more babies in the United States of America.

*

Reactionary infantilism is not original to Trump. He is not, after all, an especially original figure. His specific genius lies in taking long-festering inflammations within the Republican mind and aggravating the swelling to the point of rupture. Back in 2012 the editors of n+1 identified “the personality type and cultural style of the contemporary right-wing commentator” as “Big Baby.” Rush Limbaugh was the first Big Baby, followed by Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, and Bill O’Reilly. Trump sits easily in this lineage. Big Baby, the editors explained, was not merely “juvenile, impish, and wounded,” but a devoted hater of women. One of his favorite enemies was the Nanny State, the government imagined as a woman:

Contemporary Big Baby conservatism relies on the conceit that there is someone who wants to legislate against trivial and immature pleasures, who doesn’t want you to have fun?—?a giant Nanny (with Nancy Pelosi’s face) who regulates for regulation’s sake. Again, as with real babies, it’s only the rule standing between Me and cookie that seems real?—?not the rationale, nor the collective good that could come of mutual restraint. The future can’t be kept in view. Cookie is too big!

Trump inherits and intensifies this legacy. Meanwhile, the acceleration of environmental breakdown has simultaneously made the escape from adulthood more appealing and given Big Baby new limits to transgress. Lockdowns, vaccinations, electric vehicle “mandates”: Mommy has never been so mean. Fortunately, the joy of defying her grows in proportion. Usually my kids will wait until I’m in the room before they eat some forbidden nub of chocolate.

No picture of Trumpism would be complete without the Democratic Party bumbling about in the background, and here too the logic of Big Baby finds a foothold. The counterpart to the feral puerility of American conservatism is a senescent American liberalism whose grandees are well into their second childhood. Watching Biden’s smooth, uncomprehending face at the debate, as Trump snickered Bart Simpsonishly beside him, we came into possession of a perfect emblem of Democratic babyhood.

It cannot be banished by banishing Biden, as it is a more general condition. The party is run by sundowning seniors who refuse to cede the driver’s seat even though they pose a danger to themselves and others: recall Dianne Feinstein berating a room full of literal children for politely asking her to do something about climate change. But liberal infantilism is not solely a product of physical decline; it afflicts functionaries of all ages. Think of the attendees of the 2024 Democratic National Convention plugging their ears like grade-schoolers as protesters read aloud the names of children killed in Gaza. These are the symptoms of another party in flight from responsibility, but having far less fun along the way. The Democrats have staked so much on being the adults in the room, but they are actually something much worse: those hated children who think they are adults. At recess, they would be bullied.

*

Nobody went to jail for the Iraq War or the 2007–2008 financial crisis. In a time of mass criminalization, when children can be tried as adults, the worst adults are never punished. Creating a culture of elite impunity has been a bipartisan affair, and it has bred the cynicism on which Trumpism feeds. Equally bipartisan is the state’s decades-long divestiture from the obligation of caring for its citizens, a process that the scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls “organized abandonment.”

Earlier generations of social movements were able to force the creation of institutions that, however imperfectly, bore a degree of responsibility for our collective wellbeing. The story of the last half-century is the corrosion of those institutions, with prisons, private equity, and other toxins oozing through the cracks. It is a sign of how antisocial our society has become that the basic values one learns in kindergarten—to share, to be kind, to tell the truth, to reciprocate and cooperate—are so vilified in our political life. More than once I have had the thought that I am raising my children for a world that does not exist.

Responsibility is not a concept we typically associate with the political left. But it was one of Grace Lee Boggs’s favorite words. The philosopher and activist, together with her husband James Boggs, believed that revolutionaries must take responsibility for creating a new society in which people take responsibility for one another. Protest is good, and often required, but the Boggses believed that it carried a risk. When we protest injustice, we put the onus of restitution elsewhere. A revolution, they believed, is less about making demands on those in power than building new power from below. This is a daunting but exhilarating prospect: millions of people acting as architects of a social order that endows them with the freedom to cultivate their broadest selves, a commonwealth of the grown. When Big Baby sleeps, these are its nightmares.

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

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Thursday, May 1, 2025 6:12 AM

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

Trump’s tirade at interviewer wrecks his own case against Abrego Garcia

https://attentiontotheunseen.com/2025/04/30/trumps-tirade-at-interview
er-wrecks-his-own-case-against-abrego-garcia/

Greg Sargent writes:

President Donald Trump grew angry as a reporter persistently questioned him about his refusal to bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia from a prison in El Salvador—and in so doing, Trump accidentally demolished his whole case against the wrongfully deported Salvadoran man.

In the interview, ABC News’s Terry Moran pointed out that Trump has the power to pick up the phone, call El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, and with the “power of the presidency” get Bukele to release him.

“I could,” Trump replied. “If he were the gentleman that you say he is, I would do that.”

At the most basic level, this destroys one of the Trump administration’s central arguments for leaving Abrego Garcia to rot in an El Salvadoran gulag. Administration officials say they have no power to compel Bukele to release him because it would intrude on Salvadoran sovereignty to dictate that country’s treatment of one of its own.

But Trump just admitted that if he called Bukele and asked him to do this, his fellow dictator would in fact comply. This wrecks the fake distinction upon which Trump has hung his whole argument—the one between compelling Bukele to release Abrego Garcia and merely requesting that Bukele do so.

That phony distinction survives in the MAGA information universe—and in Trump’s head—because it’s insulated inside a propaganda bubble from precisely this sort of questioning from Moran. Here in the real world, of course Bukele would release Abrego Garcia if Trump asked him to. We are paying El Salvador to hold all these prisoners at our request.

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

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Thursday, May 1, 2025 6:26 AM

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

What is — and isn’t — getting pricier under Trump’s tariffs?

The Yale Budget Lab has projected that the tariffs could cost Americans an average of $4,900 per household.

https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/state-us-tariffs-april-15-2025

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

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Thursday, May 1, 2025 6:49 AM

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

I think he wants to be the center of attention. I think that’s probably his principal motivating factor.

I think his approach was once described by [conservative columnist] Charles Krauthammer very well. Krauthammer said that he began by thinking Trump was an 11-year-old. But he realized after a close evaluation that he was about 10 years off: Trump’s really a 1-year-old who just sees everything in the world and asks the question, “What’s in this for me?”

Somebody else, I don’t remember the name, observed that Trump doesn’t have ideas, he has reactions. And I think that’s also an important insight.

If you took all of his decisions in his first term, they’d be a big archipelago of dots; a lot of the dots I agreed with. But if you try to connect the dots…Trump himself couldn’t connect the dots.

https://www.vox.com/today-explained-podcast/411225/john-bolton-trump-f
ascism-government-chaos

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

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Thursday, May 1, 2025 8:29 AM

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

The 6 ways Trump has been a gift to the meat industry

Every president is friendly to the meat industry. Trump is on track to reach another level.

By Kenny Torrella | May 1, 2025, 6:30 AM CDT

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/410733/trump-meat-agriculture-100-d
ays

President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office have been a gift to a sector of the economy that gets little attention but has enormous social and economic consequences: the US meat industry.

While Congress and both Republican and Democratic administrations tend to do what meat companies want — in part because those companies tend to give a lot of money to politicians and intensively lobby them — Trump has been even friendlier than most.

The one striking exception, of course, are the tariffs, which farm groups have opposed and are already feeling the sting from. The ensuing trade war has reduced two of US agriculture’s most important exports to China: pork and soybeans.

In most other respects, though, the Trump administration has behaved like traditional anti-regulation conservatives. It’s quickly taken a number of actions that directly benefit the meat industry, at the expense of the environment, animals, slaughterhouse workers, and the American consumer.

Here are the six most consequential ones.

1. Speeding up slaughter lines at meat processing plants

Pig slaughter lines are already allowed to process as many as 1,106 hogs per hour, or roughly one pig every 3.2 seconds, while poultry operations are allowed to slaughter up to 140 birds per minute. Yet in March, the US Department of Agriculture announced that it was drafting a rule to allow pig and poultry slaughterhouses to operate even faster.

Labor advocates say the new regulations will further endanger slaughterhouse workers, who already work one of the most dangerous jobs in the country, suffering high rates of injury from the repetitive cuts they must make to animal carcasses for hours on end.

“Increased line speeds will hurt workers — it’s not a maybe, it’s a definite,” the president of the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union, which represents over 15,000 poultry workers, said in a press release.

Meatpacking workers are far more likely to be seriously injured than people in nearly every other industry.

Animal advocates also worry about how this will impact the billions of animals that move through US slaughterhouses every year. “With fewer protections and higher pressure, animals will endure even more suffering on the already cruel live-shackle slaughter line,” Michael Windsor of the animal protection group the Humane League told me in an email.

The USDA didn’t respond to an interview request for this story.

2. Rolling back food safety measures

Toward the end of President Joe Biden’s term, his USDA proposed — but didn’t finalize — a rule that would require poultry companies to limit salmonella levels in their products and test raw chicken and turkey for six strains. “If the levels exceeded the standard or any of those strains were found, the poultry couldn’t be sold and would be subject to recall,” according to the Associated Press.

The Biden administration aimed to prevent more than 10 percent of the 1.35 million salmonella infections Americans suffer from each year. But that won’t be happening. The National Chicken Council, the industry’s leading trade group, opposed the rule when it was proposed; in April, Trump’s USDA withdrew it.

3. Gutting the USDA’s animal welfare research department

In February, the USDA shrunk a farm animal welfare research team from five scientists to just one, Sentient Media’s Grey Moran reported.

Rows of dozens of large pigs confined in small crates that prohibit them from moving.

The unit’s research aimed to better understand “the gruesome mutilations and injuries routinely suffered by farm animals, including the pain experienced by livestock during and after castration (the removal of the testicles to prevent further breeding); the far-ranging psychological and physiological impacts of heat stress on farm animals and methods to increase cooling, and ways that farm animal stress is passed down to their offspring,” according to Moran.

The USDA unit also worked with livestock producers to improve animal welfare and had conducted research on pain endured by female breeding pigs kept in tiny cages, a common practice in the pork industry. That work informed California’s farm animal welfare law prohibiting extreme confinement of pigs.

4. Allowing the world’s largest — and perhaps most corrupt — meat company to trade on the New York Stock Exchange

For a decade, JBS, the world’s largest meat company, had been seeking a listing on the New York Stock Exchange to gain new investors to fuel its nearly $19 billion meat and poultry empire. The Biden administration didn’t approve the Brazilian company’s listing, nor did Trump in his first term. But last week, the US Securities and Exchange Commission gave JBS the green light to go public, news that came the same week it was revealed that one of the company’s subsidiaries was the largest single donor to Trump’s inauguration.

JBS has long been embroiled in scandal. During Trump’s first term, the Justice Department fined JBS, JBS’s parent company, and two brothers who control the parent company $280 million for bribing approximately 1,800 Brazilian officials.

An aerial view of a large meat processing plant with about a hundred beef cattle waiting outside.

In mid-January, JBS agreed to pay $4 million to a youth migrant legal defense organization after the Labor Department found that children had worked in JBS’s slaughterhouses for years. Less than two weeks later, its poultry subsidiary Pilgrim’s Pride — the company that donated $5 million to Trump’s inauguration — paid a $41.5 million settlement to investors over allegations that it had inflated its stock price.

JBS has also long been implicated in deforestation, and last year, New York state’s attorney general took the company to court for its “net zero” climate claims.

5. Increasing poultry industry bailouts for bird flu

Eggs are so expensive right now primarily because of bird flu, which has resulted in the brutal culling of around 100 million egg-laying hens — and over 60 million chickens and turkeys raised for meat — since the current outbreak began in early 2022.

More than half of the nearly $2 billion the US has spent on this outbreak has gone to cover poultry companies’ losses. According to a recent report by advocacy group Farm Forward, around one-third of payments to poultry companies — some $365 million — have gone to 67 “repeat offender” operations with two or more outbreaks.

While bird flu infections are hard to prevent, producers may be disincentivized from strengthening their biosecurity if the USDA guarantees they’ll be compensated for their losses, a problem the Biden administration identified late last year when it implemented an interim rule requiring producers to pass a biosecurity audit to become eligible for compensation.

Despite all this, in late March, the USDA more than doubled the amount that it pays egg companies for each killed hen, from around $7 per bird to almost $17. No matter how weak the poultry industry’s biosecurity, and despite the fact that it culls birds in the most painful ways imaginable, the government has made clear it will generously cover poultry producers’ losses.

6. Banning words and phrases about agricultural pollution

Although many consumers don’t know it, and politicians do little to address it, agriculture is a massive polluter — it’s the largest source of US water pollution, most of it from meat and livestock feed production — and accounts for at least 11 percent of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions.

In early April, a leaked USDA memo revealed that the Agricultural Research Service, the USDA’s in-house scientific research department, could no longer use 110 words and phrases, including water pollution, air pollution, soil pollution, groundwater pollution, and climate change, in some of the department’s documents. That’ll only make it harder for anyone to understand and ameliorate the meat industry’s social costs.

There’s more: Trump recently proclaimed that he wants to open up a marine refuge near Hawaii to commercial fishing, and USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins has expressed strong support for legislative efforts to dismantle critical state animal welfare laws.

But not all of the Trump administration’s agricultural policies have been favorable to industry (like the tariffs). In March, the Justice Department opened an investigation into the egg industry over price-fixing concerns. Trump has also frozen most of the $19.5 billion set aside in the Inflation Reduction Act to help farmers implement conservation and climate practices, and has canceled a similar $3 billion Biden-era program.

Nor is it necessarily clear that the Trump administration has been bad for animals on net. Animal advocates have cheered recent moves by the FDA and EPA to significantly reduce animal testing, which, although a separate issue from factory farming, could represent a major reduction in a type of animal suffering that has long been unchallenged by both parties.

But when it comes to the industry that’s by far more responsible than any other for hurting and killing animals, the Trump administration has been even more deferential than his recent predecessors. Its positions on meat and the animals who suffer for it could be summed up as simply as “kill, baby, kill.”

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

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Thursday, May 1, 2025 8:45 AM

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

'Writing on the wall': Battleground newspaper sees stunning plunge in Trump support

By Krystina Alarcon Carroll | April 30, 2025 2:42PM ET

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-tariffs-2671873543/

A major newspaper in Georgia reported Wednesday that it's witnessed a major decline in support for Donald Trump among MAGA and independent voters.

The finding is a big warning as it comes from a battleground state essential to the Republicans' path to future victories.

Another concerned Georgia voter, Daniel Austin, said, “[Trump is] alienating our foreign allies. He thinks he’s some master negotiator, but instead, in 100 days, he’s managed to ensure in the next 100 years the U.S. won’t even be third place.”

”Nearly two-thirds of voters say they plan to cut back spending because of tariffs, including 28% who anticipate taking 'major' steps to tighten their wallets.

“I can see where he’s coming from with tariffs. He’s trying to make things more even and fair,” said Clint Myers. “But at the micro level, I’m really concerned.”

He told the outlet that he “begrudgingly” voted for Trump.

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

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Thursday, May 1, 2025 9:22 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Another concerned Georgia voter, Daniel Austin, said, “[Trump is] alienating our foreign allies. He thinks he’s some master negotiator, but instead, in 100 days, he’s managed to ensure in the next 100 years the U.S. won’t even be third place.”

"Third place"?

Third place in what?
Number of rats per capita?
I bet if you asked this guy what unit of measure he was using, he couldn't tell you.

*****

Quote:
Five and a half years later,

MOSTLY UNDER BIDEN

Quote:
our civilizational outlook has not improved. It is not just the fires, floods, zoonotic diseases, and other insignia of ecological emergency.

*****

These people are reaching for criticisms.

Yanno, Trump is due for a lot of criticism, but not these. These are as much bullshit as "RUSSIA! COLLUSION! KOMPROMAT!"

How about focusing on real stuff? There's plenty to go around.

-----------
"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, May 1, 2025 9:26 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Another concerned Georgia voter, Daniel Austin, said, “[Trump is] alienating our foreign allies. He thinks he’s some master negotiator, but instead, in 100 days, he’s managed to ensure in the next 100 years the U.S. won’t even be third place.”

"Third place"?

Third place in what?
Number of rats per capita?
I bet if you asked this guy what unit of measure he was using, he couldn't tell you.

100 years from now, the economic ranking:
1) China
2) The European Union
3) Russia
4) India
5) Japan
. . .
Nth) USA (Texas and California became separate countries)

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

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Thursday, May 1, 2025 9:27 AM

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

From Evasion to Defiance

As the courts resist his deportation orders, Trump has responded with shockingly bad-faith arguments

David Cole | May 1, 2025

https://www.nybooks.com/online/2025/05/01/from-evasion-to-defiance/

On June 2, 1919, bombs went off in eight cities across the country. One blew the door off the house of the country’s attorney general, A. Mitchell Palmer, in Georgetown. The government’s response was to round up thousands of foreign nationals, not on charges that they were involved in the bombings but for technical immigration violations and association with communist or anarchist organizations. Writing about the dragnet, Louis Post, who as Acting Secretary of Labor overturned more than a thousand deportation orders arising from the raids, observed that “the force of the delirium turned in the direction of a deportations crusade with the spontaneity of water flowing along the course of least resistance.”

Throughout our history, as I noted in these pages in the early months of Donald Trump’s first term, politicians have found scapegoating noncitizens to be “the course of least resistance.” Noncitizens don’t vote, and citizens rarely object too loudly to derogations of foreigners’ rights. No one has deployed this tactic more aggressively than Trump, who won two unlikely presidential bids by labeling immigrants “criminals” and “rapists.” From the Muslim ban he imposed in his first term to his deployment of the Alien Enemies Act in his second, the president has used broad-brush measures intended only for emergencies to single out noncitizens, not in response to any actual emergency and not for any individual wrongdoing but for mere association with a disfavored country or group. The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 applies only when the US is in a declared war or subject to an “invasion or predatory incursion” by a foreign nation, neither of which is the case here. Trump has nonetheless claimed that the Act permits him to deport suspected members of a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, as “alien enemies” without any process whatever.

But this time the tactic may be backfiring. In the past several weeks Trump has faced substantial resistance from the courts. Federal judges, some of whom Trump himself appointed, have barred his invocation of the Alien Enemies Act and ordered him to facilitate the return of a Salvadoran wrongly deported. So far Trump has not taken the resistance kindly. He flew more than a hundred Venezuelans out of the country without any process even as a federal court was conducting an emergency hearing challenging his authority to do so. Even though his administration admitted that it erroneously deported a citizen of El Salvador, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, to that country’s notorious megaprison, Trump has so far balked at making any genuine effort to get him back, despite having been ordered to do so by every judge who has considered the matter: a federal district court, a unanimous court of appeals, and a unanimous Supreme Court.

In his second term Trump has not only sought to exploit “the course of least resistance” as a political matter, by targeting vulnerable individuals who lack widespread popular support. He has also attempted to sidestep or eliminate the legal obstacles the system poses to his desired ends. Speaking in the Oval Office last week, he boasted, “We’re getting them out, and a judge can’t say, ‘No, you have to have a trial.’ The trial is going to take two years. We’re going to have a very dangerous country if we’re not allowed to do what we’re entitled to do.” Or, as White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller put it on social media, “Friendly reminder: If you illegally invaded our country the only ‘process’ you are entitled to is deportation.”

What happens when the course of least resistance meets judicial opposition? The executive has three possible responses: compliance, evasion, or outright defiance. Only the first is lawful. But there is an important difference between evasion and defiance. It is one thing to shoplift surreptitiously and another to walk into a store and openly take its merchandise, brazenly asserting that no law can stop you. Evasion acknowledges that the law exists and seeks to elude capture; defiance simply denies the force of law altogether. Thus far, despite loose rhetoric outside court, Trump has stopped short of asserting in court that he has the authority to defy a judicial order. But evasion and defiance are on a continuum. Trump’s administration has already engaged in shockingly irresponsible conduct designed to evade court rulings, and he is coming closer and closer to the constitutional redline of defying them outright.

*

To see what evasion looks like, one need only read Judge James Boasberg’s April 16 opinion in the first of several cases challenging the expulsion of Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act. With scrupulous, one might even say judicious care, the decision lays out a tale of remarkably reckless bad faith.

The effort to avoid court review began even before any lawsuit was filed. On March 14 Trump signed an unprecedented proclamation invoking the Act, claiming, against all evidence, that the United States had been invaded by a criminal gang, Tren de Aragua, that few Americans had even heard of before he pronounced them “enemies.” Because the Alien Enemies Act applies only during wartime, it cannot conceivably justify Trump’s actions against Tren de Aragua, which is neither a foreign nation nor has invaded us.

Having signed the proclamation in secret, Trump made it public the next day, but only after undertaking major steps to remove a large group of Venezuelan immigrants. As Judge Boasberg explained, the government “reportedly loaded scores of Venezuelans onto buses, drove them to a nearby airport, and began putting them onto three planes.” But the ACLU got wind of the effort through lawyers for some of the Venezuelans. It filed suit at 1:12 AM on March 15, seeking a temporary restraining order against the removals. At 9:40 AM, Judge Boasberg entered an order barring removal of the ACLU’s five clients. Concerned that many others were in the same situation, the ACLU then asked for an emergency hearing that day so that it could extend the relief to a class of similarly situated Venezuelans.

The government objected that an emergency hearing would be premature and unnecessary, and asked that it be put off until Monday—even as it was preparing to fly Venezuelans out of the country that very day. As Judge Boasberg wrote, “The government notably did not respond to Plaintiffs’ pointed question about whether it was ‘prepare[d] to halt removals pursuant to the Act’ in the interim.” At an emergency hearing at 5:00 PM that Saturday, Judge Boasberg asked whether any removals were planned “in the next twenty-four or forty-eight hours,” to which counsel for the government replied only that he would “investigate” and “report back.” At 5:22, Boasberg adjourned court until 6:00 PM so that the government’s lawyer could ascertain whether any removals were indeed planned.

By the time court resumed, however, two planes carrying more than a hundred people had taken off, one at 5:25, the other at 5:45—facts publicly known because of a three-minute video of the flights that the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, posted online, and that both Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio reposted. Yet the government’s lawyer refused to say even whether any removals were underway, claiming that revealing “operational details” might endanger national security.

At 6:45, after hearing argument on the merits, Judge Boasberg directed government counsel to inform his clients that if anyone was on a plane pursuant to the Alien Enemies Act, they should be returned to the United States—either by turning the planes around or by not disembarking when they landed and then bringing them back. At 7:25 PM, thirty minutes after the hearing concluded, he memorialized that order in writing, prohibiting any effort to remove persons under the Alien Enemies Act.

At that point the US retained custody of everyone subject to the court’s order. The planes landed in Honduras for a layover shortly after the written order was issued and reached El Salvador several hours later. Only then did the US transfer custody of the men to El Salvador, hours after the judge forbade their removal and ordered their return. The administration did return several Venezuelan women who had been on the planes, but only because the maximum-security prison to which the deportees were headed is for men only.

Judge Boasberg subsequently held a series of hearings to determine whether the administration had intentionally or knowingly flouted his order. The government’s lawyers consistently refused to provide any details. At one point they went so far as to assert that such details were “state secrets” even though they were by then publicly known, in large part because of the video that the president and secretary of state had themselves reposted. On these facts, Judge Boasberg found “probable cause” that the government violated his order. He has given it an opportunity to “purge” the contempt by, for example, returning the Venezuelans and affording them fair hearings. But absent any such correction, he intends to refer the matter for prosecution for “criminal contempt.”

On the continuum from evasion to defiance, the administration’s conduct here comes very close to the latter. So far, however, the government has not asserted that it has the authority to violate the court’s order. Instead it advances what Judge Boasberg rightly calls “unconvincing” and “hyper-technical” arguments that the Venezuelans had already been “removed” before he issued his order, because the “removal” occurred when the plaintiffs left American airspace, not when they were handed over to the Salvadoran regime. Judge Boasberg rejected those arguments, noting, among other things, that all the plaintiffs remained on the planes in US custody until hours after the order was issued and that, as the return of the Venezuelan women illustrates, the administration had full authority to bring them all back, had it chosen to follow his order. The government has appealed.

*

The second case of transparently bad-faith evasion involves Abrego Garcia. A Salvadoran who has lived here since 2011, the father of three US citizen children, Abrego Garcia could not lawfully be sent to El Salvador because he had been granted “withholding of removal,” a form of relief available only where there is a strong showing that an individual would face persecution in his home country. But in the same roundup on March 15 the government removed him to El Salvador all the same—without any judicial process, and admittedly in error.

This should be an easy case. When one makes a mistake, the proper course is to rectify it. The US clearly has the power to do so here: it is paying El Salvador millions of dollars to detain Abrego Garcia, the Venezuelans, and others; if it asked Bukele to return Abrego Garcia, he would. When Abrego Garcia and his US citizen wife and children sued, a federal judge in Maryland, Paula Xinis, promptly ordered the government to “facilitate and effectuate” his return. What could be simpler?

But being Donald Trump apparently means never being able to say you’re sorry. The administration now contends that it did not make a mistake, even though it obviously did. It appealed all the way to the Supreme Court, which on April 10 largely affirmed Judge Xinis’s order. The justices did modify the order in one respect, suggesting that requiring the administration to “effectuate” Abrego Garcia’s return might overstep the court’s authority, presumably because, now that El Salvador has its own sovereign authority over him, neither a federal court nor the United States can make his return happen unilaterally. But the Supreme Court unanimously ordered the administration to “facilitate” his return, a verb that acknowledges the complication of Salvadoran authority but orders the government to take all affirmative steps that it can.

The government initially did exactly nothing to comply, despite valiant efforts by Judge Xinis. But here too, rather than asserting the authority to defy the order outright, the administration maintained that it had done no such thing: to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return, it argues, it need only commit to not barring his entry if El Salvador independently chooses to allow him to return. On April 14 Trump and Rubio sat silently by in an Oval Office meeting as Bukele replied to a reporter’s question that he would never return Abrego Garcia because he was a “terrorist.” (No such charge has been made, nor any such evidence advanced.) After multiple rebukes from the courts, the administration reportedly sent a diplomatic note to El Salvador requesting Abrego Garcia’s return; Bukele allegedly declined. Yet it seems the note was sent with a wink and a nod. On Tuesday Trump told a White House reporter, Terence Moran, that he could get Abrego Garcia back by calling Bukele, “and if he were the gentleman that you say he is, I would do that. But he is not.” But of course the courts did not order the president to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return only if Trump thinks he’s a “gentleman.”

*

The administration’s tactics are only prompting the courts to take more aggressive steps. On Friday, April 18, the ACLU learned of another effort to transport a planeload of Venezuelans from Texas under the Alien Enemies Act. It sought emergency relief that day from a Texas federal district court, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and the Supreme Court, warning that its clients “are in imminent and ongoing jeopardy of being removed from the United States without notice or an opportunity to be heard.”

Both lower courts denied the request, but shortly after 1:00 AM Saturday morning, before even getting a response from the government, the Supreme Court issued an emergency order directing the administration “not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court.” Only Justices Thomas and Alito dissented. The fact that the Court acted so swiftly and decisively is a sign that the administration has squandered much of its credibility with the judiciary. After seeing what happened to the Venezuelans before Judge Boasberg and to Abrego Garcia, the Supreme Court was evidently not willing to risk letting the administration sneak people out of the country even as the legal basis for doing so was being challenged in court.

Lower courts are also losing patience. When the administration appealed Judge Xinis’s order compelling it to take concrete steps to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return, the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit unanimously denied the request, in a strongly worded decision written by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson, one of the country’s most highly respected (and Republican-appointed) judges. “It is difficult in some cases to get to the very heart of the matter,” he wrote.

But in this case, it is not hard at all. The government is asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order. Further, it claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done.

This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.

On April 23 another federal judge in Maryland, this one appointed by Trump, ordered the administration to facilitate the return of yet another man who was illegally removed. The individual, identified only as “Cristian” because of concerns about retaliation if his identity were made public, was removed to El Salvador despite being subject to a court order that barred his removal until immigration courts adjudicate his pending request for asylum. Expressly pointing to the government’s failure to take any actions in Abrego Garcia’s case, the judge specified that the order to “facilitate” Cristian’s return “includes, but is not limited to, Defendants making a good faith request to the government of El Salvador to release Cristian to U.S. custody, for transport back to the United States to await the adjudication of his asylum application.”

These decisions suggest that the courts are taking note of Trump’s tactics and don’t like what they see. Nor, for that matter, do significant portions of the public. A recent poll found that 85 percent of Americans believe that Trump should abide by court orders. Another poll found that, by a 53 percent to 21 percent margin, Americans think Trump should comply with the order to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return. Still others report that Americans oppose his misuse of the Alien Enemies Act, as well as his efforts to deport students for engaging in pro-Palestinian protests.

As the judges’ responses in these cases illustrate, the administration’s evasive tactics pose a threat that far exceeds the result in any particular lawsuit. For courts to function, all parties must agree on a fundamental premise: that the losers will abide by the court’s decision, like it or not. More broadly, for the United States to remain a constitutional democracy, the executive must honor the courts when they decide that its actions are unconstitutional. As the administration’s course of least resistance has met significant resistance from the judiciary, Trump has principally responded with bad-faith evasion. But the courts are not letting him get away with it. A decision to openly flout their authority would meet with wide disapproval and come at grave cost to the administration and the Republican Party. The question is whether Trump cares.

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

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Thursday, May 1, 2025 9:44 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Another concerned Georgia voter, Daniel Austin, said, “[Trump is] alienating our foreign allies. He thinks he’s some master negotiator, but instead, in 100 days, he’s managed to ensure in the next 100 years the U.S. won’t even be third place.”

"Third place"?

Third place in what?
Number of rats per capita?
I bet if you asked this guy what unit of measure he was using, he couldn't tell you.
100 years from now, the economic ranking:
1) China
2) The European Union
3) Russia
4) India
5) Japan
. . .
Nth) USA (Texas and California became separate countries)

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

You honestly think that's what he's referring to?

Besides, nobody can predict 100 years into the future. Heck, we can't even predict tomorrow.

-----------
"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, May 1, 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 SIGNYM:

Besides, nobody can predict 100 years into the future. Heck, we can't even predict tomorrow.

Really? Destroy what is valuable and can't predict the consequences?

A 100-day push to remake federal research will have lasting consequences

By David Malakoff, Jeffrey Brainard | 30 Apr 2025 5:05 PM ET

https://www.science.org/content/article/100-days-that-shook-u-s-scienc
e

It is almost certainly the most consequential 100 days that scientists in the United States have experienced since the end of World War II.

Since taking his oath of office on 20 January, President Donald Trump has unleashed an unprecedented rapid-fire campaign to remake—some would say demolish—vast swaths of the federal government’s scientific and public health infrastructure. His administration has erased entire agencies that fund research; fired or pushed out thousands of federal workers with technical backgrounds; terminated research and training grants and contracts worth billions of dollars; and banned new government funding for activities it finds offensive, from efforts to diversify the scientific workforce to studies of the health needs of LGBTQ people. The frenetic onslaught has touched nearly every field—from archaeology to zoology, from deep-sea research to deep-space science. And it has left researchers from postdocs to lab heads feeling bewildered, worried—and angry. Many fear that in just 14 weeks, Trump has irreversibly damaged a scientific enterprise that took many decades to build, and has long made the U.S. the envy of the world.

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

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Thursday, May 1, 2025 11:02 AM

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

The DOJ Says Trump Has Saved 258 Million Lives. I Asked Them What That’s Based On.

“Are you ready for this, media?” No, actually!

By Jim Newell | May 01, 2025 10:29 AM

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/05/trump-news-doj-fentanyl-pa
m-bondi-lives-saved.html

In an X post from her official account that afternoon, Attorney General Pam Bondi observed, “In President Trump’s first 100 days we’ve seized over 22 million fentanyl laced pills, saving over 119 Million lives.”

Bondi’s claim that Trump had saved the lives of 1 in 3 Americans in his first 100 days was met with some skepticism.

Bondi took the criticism not as a call to clarify what she meant, but as a challenge to go bigger.

“Mr. President,” she said, “your first 100 days has far exceeded that of any other presidency in the country, ever. Ever. Never seen anything like it.” Then it was time for some stats.

“Since you have been in office, President Trump, your DOJ agencies have seized more than 22 million fentanyl pills, 3,400 kilos of fentanyl, which saved—are you ready for this, media?—258 million lives.” Yes, she turned to the camera for the aside to the media.

Yep, that’s math, all right. As for the overnight uptick from 119 million to 258 million lives saved, the spokesman said that the 119 million figure “was in reference to stats that did not include FBI seizures, just the DEA’s.”

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

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Thursday, May 1, 2025 1:54 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Another concerned Georgia voter, Daniel Austin, said, “[Trump is] alienating our foreign allies. He thinks he’s some master negotiator, but instead, in 100 days, he’s managed to ensure in the next 100 years the U.S. won’t even be third place.”

"Third place"?

Third place in what?
Number of rats per capita?
I bet if you asked this guy what unit of measure he was using, he couldn't tell you.
100 years from now, the economic ranking:
1) China
2) The European Union
3) Russia
4) India
5) Japan
. . .
Nth) USA (Texas and California became separate countries)

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

You honestly think that's what he's referring to?

Besides, nobody can predict 100 years into the future. Heck, we can't even predict tomorrow.

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

Well... Sure you can.

Just before the election Ted was gloating about that push poll that had Iowa up 13 points for Harris, and all of the media had Ted and Second convinced that Harris was going to win the election easily.

It's extremely easy to make predictions.

I just make it look easy how often mine come true.

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

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

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Thursday, May 1, 2025 2:29 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:

Well... Sure you can.

Just before the election Ted was gloating about that push poll that had Iowa up 13 points for Harris, and all of the media had Ted and Second convinced that Harris was going to win the election easily.

It's extremely easy to make predictions.

I just make it look easy how often mine come true.

6ix, I'm pretty sure you remember that I wanted Biden to assassinate Trump if Trump won. I predicted Biden was too goody-goody to do it, but there was always a tiny chance Biden would kill that fat dumb motherfucker Nazi, if the Nazi Party won. 6ix, you probably remember the consolation prize I would get if Donald "Adolph Hitler" Trump won: a tax cut and non-enforcement of all restrictions on natural gas. Where is my tax cut? Trump cannot even do that, the fat fool. This was written before Trump proved to be mentally incompetent, worse than President Herbert Hoover:

Democrats aren't alone — incumbent parties have lost elections all around the world

By Cooper Burton | November 18, 2024, 2:29 PM

https://abcnews.go.com/538/democrats-incumbent-parties-lost-elections-
world/story?id=115972068

One potential explanation for Democrats' milder defeat is the relative strength of the U.S. economy compared to those around the world. Most countries have seen soaring inflation and stagnant or painfully slow economic growth since the COVID-19 pandemic. By many measures, the U.S. is a striking exception to that global trend, with strong growth in GDP and real wages. Some economic metrics are outpacing even pre-pandemic trends.

But just because the U.S.'s economy is performing better than that of many other countries doesn't mean it's in perfect shape or that voters aren't still unhappy with it. As 538 explored earlier this summer, the economic metrics that Americans care about have shifted in dramatic ways since the pandemic. Issues like inflation and the high cost of housing remained at the forefront of the campaign, drowning out Democrats' attempts to highlight other strong economic indicators like increased wage growth and low unemployment.

The few incumbent governments that did manage to hang on this year did so not on the backs of stellar economic performances, but rather through campaigns that focused heavily on security issues. Mexico, Finland, Moldova and the Dominican Republic all saw incumbent parties gain seats or vote share compared to the last election on the backs of concerns over issues like gang violence and Russian encroachment. National security issues simply didn't dominate the U.S. campaign in the same way (though immigration, which often gets lumped in with national security, was a top concern for voters).

Ultimately, the U.S. proved no outlier in the wave of malaise and anger that has toppled incumbents across the globe since the pandemic. Economic anxiety and deep discontent with the direction of the country proved fatal for Democrats, but if trends from this year continue, they have one bright spot on the horizon: Next time, they won't be the incumbents.

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

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Thursday, May 1, 2025 2:44 PM