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

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Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
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Originally posted by second:
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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quit spamming your legacy media lies. People have real problems to deal with and don't have time for your dumb shit anymore.

Trump’s Crypto Dinner

And you want me to care about any of this when Nancy Pelosi and her Husband get a free pass for blatantly doing the exact same thing in front of you why?
Trump received more money in bribes last night than an entire lifetime of accumulation for Pelosi family. And Trump is paying back the bribers by giving them no regulation of bitcoins. The Winds of Change are Blowing, 6ixStringJack.

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

Besides the fucking point, cunt.

But I'm glad that in 2025 we can get you to admit that the Pelosi's have been scamming American Citizens her entire career now.

Fuck you. Nobody wants to hear anything out of you anymore.

You haven't shut the fuck up once in 12 years. I suggest you start now unless you want to lose every election going forward.

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

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Saturday, May 24, 2025 4:51 AM

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

Longtime reporters 'almost speechless' over Trump's 'transparent bribery' plot

By Tom Boggioni | May 23, 2025 8:48AM ET

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-crypto-dinner-almost-speechless/

On Friday morning, longtime Washington D.C. reporters Jonathan Lemire and Peter Baker of the New York Times, as well as conservative columnist Matt Lewis, admitted they were stunned that Republicans turned a blind eye to Donald Trump's crypto dinner.

During a segment on the president's much-criticized dinner at his golf club in northern Virginia that took place Thursday night, Lemire prompted guest Baker with, "I mean, you've covered the White House for a long time. I mean, I'm almost speechless at this. Could you imagine if Barack Obama or Joe Biden did anything like it?"

"No, we couldn't, they could –– they never did anything like this," Baker responded. "It's not the first presidential family that kind of profited off the White House; you can certainly find other examples of that in history. But the scale of this, the scope of this is so far beyond anything history has ever seen."

EXCLUSIVE: Trump accused of new grift that puts Qatari plane in shade https://www.rawstory.com/raw-investigates/trump-qatar-plane-2672031382/

"It's not just even this cryptocurrency thing, although hundreds of millions of dollars have gone to the president's family and businesses in fees because of this coin, which is basically, just a reminder, there's nothing to it."

"There's a coin, it's not of value of anything, it's not even a stock," he elaborated, "It's not even a share of a company that's producing something. It's just simply there for people to buy because they want to curry favor with the president and they can do it anonymously, they can do it secretly."

"Why do Republicans not care?" the flummoxed Lemire asked columnist Lewis.

"Because whatever Donald Trump wants to do, Donald Trump does," the conservative replied. "And they saw, whether it's the Access Hollywood video or the indictments, that this guy is magic and he always ends up landing on his feet and their base loves him, so they're afraid of him."

"So some of them may care a little bit, but not enough to do anything about it," he added. "But look, the implications here are serious, right? Democracy isn't dying, it's being rug-pulled. That's basically what the message here is."

He then added, "You see those Democrats standing up there condemning this, and I don't think it's landing yet. And so, you know, yes, Republicans ought to be standing up and holding their president, their standard bearer, accountable. I don't think the Democrats yet have the juice to take what is just transparently bribery and make it matter to the American people."

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

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Saturday, May 24, 2025 4:56 AM

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

Ignorance is the handmaiden of tyranny

https://robertreich.substack.com/p/what-i-told-the-ed-school-graduates

In a commencement address given to graduates from U. Cal. Berkeley’s School of Education earlier this week, Robert Reich said:

Throughout history, tyrants have understood that their major enemy is an educated citizenry. Slaveholders prohibited the enslaved from learning to read. Nazis burned books. Putin and Xi censor the media.

Ignorance is the handmaiden of tyranny.

America’s founders knew this. They saw how easily emperors and kings could mislead uneducated publics. The survival of the new nation required a public wise enough to keep power within bounds. People imbued, in the language of the time, with civic virtue.

Jefferson assured Americans that if they could “enlighten the people generally … tyranny and the oppressions of mind and body will vanish, like evil spirits at the dawn of day.”

So America became the cradle of free, universal, public education.

I don’t have any easy answers to the many challenges we’re experiencing today in classrooms across the land, but we must never give up on these three basic educational ideals: free, universal, and public.

If we stop thinking about education solely as a private investment on the way to a good-paying job and see it as a public good, we’d give every child an understanding of the Constitution, the meaning and importance of the rule of law, and why no one should be above it.

This is, after all, what we demand of people who want to become naturalized citizens: They have to pass a civics test covering the organization of the U.S. government and the Constitution.

Civic education should instill in young people a passion for truth — enabling them to think critically, be skeptical (but not cynical) about what they hear and read, find reliable sources of information, apply basic logic and analysis, and know enough about history and the physical world to differentiate fact from fiction.

Such an education would also urge young people to communicate with others. With people of different races, classes, creeds, nationalities.

Teach them how to listen, to open their minds to the possibility their own views and preconceptions may be wrong, to discover why people with opposing views believe what they do.

Yet the current president of the United States does not appear to have learned any of this.

On the campaign trail, he vowed to “liberate our children from the Marxist lunatics and perverts who have infested our educational system.”

He has canceled federal exams that measure student progress and ordered his wrestling executive-turned-Education Secretary to shut most of her department.

He is attacking the freedom of speech of university students and professors, trying to deport international students and faculty solely because of what they say or write, and threatening to halt federal funds to universities that practice DEI.

He has gutted the funding of the National Institutes of Health, which provides a large portion of biomedical research, and the National Science Foundation, responsible for much of America’s engineering and computer research.

Along with certain governors, he is attacking the teaching in our schools of America’s shameful histories of slavery and Native American genocide.

He has cut funding for libraries around the country — which will jeopardize literacy development and reading programs, and reliable internet access for those without it at home.

I keep hearing that all this amounts to an “attack on the liberal state” or “the culmination of our culture wars.”

No. What’s really occurring is an attack on the American mind.

You who are soon to graduate from this wonderful school of education have chosen instead to enhance the American mind, to broaden it, to enlighten our young people, to expose them to a world of possibility.

May you educate like democracy depends on it.

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

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Saturday, May 24, 2025 5:27 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:
The entire atmosphere surrounding all of this is completely different than it was in 2016 and 2020.

Things just kind of feel normal again.

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

It's kind of nice, innit?

Happy Inauguration Day!

Can Donald Trump build the 'Golden Dome' over the US?

Short answer: No.

Long answer: No, but the author doesn’t wish to make that clear because he will be kicked out of the White House.

By Bernd Debusmann Jr, BBC News, White House | May 23, 2025

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cyvmj6mem70o

Rather than writing that Trump will fail, the article says that what Trump claims he will do is "extremely challenging," a euphemism for failure.

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

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Saturday, May 24, 2025 6:27 AM

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

Who Knew?

I’m A Psychologist Who Specializes In Narcissists. Here’s What We Need To Do To Stop Trump.

"The same patterns that destabilize families destabilize democracies."

By Jocelyn Sze | May 23, 2025, 07:52 AM EDT

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/psychologist-how-to-stop-trump-narcissi
st_n_682df1cae4b09b7e5013a586

The Trump administration is planning a June 14 military parade to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army — and the president’s 79th birthday. When your sense of self-exaltation requires tanks, flyovers and up to $45 million for a birthday party, we’re no longer in the realm of cake and candles — we’re squarely in Criterion 1 of narcissistic personality disorder: “a grandiose sense of self-importance.”

To be clear, I can’t diagnose the president or any public figure without personal examination. But research shows that those in positions of power, especially in politics, are more likely to exhibit traits of grandiose narcissism. When narcissistic control seeps into leadership, it distorts truth, erodes trust and destabilizes institutions. The more we understand these dynamics, the better we can protect both the public and the health of our democracy.

As a clinical psychologist who works with trauma and narcissistic abuse, I see echoes of this dynamic every day in my therapy office. The same patterns that destabilize families destabilize democracies: along with the magnetic vision of the grandiose narcissist come denial, attack, reversal of blame and emotional chaos.

I think of one of my patients when she discovered her brother was terrorizing their elderly mother with violent threats and financial abuse. When she named the harm, he flipped the script — denying everything and accusing her of being unstable, all while fiercely protecting his “golden boy” image. Under family pressure to stay quiet, she spiraled into rumination. But armed with awareness and support, she stood firm. Like a broken record, she calmly named the harm until her boundary held. It came at a cost, but her brother was eventually removed from their mother’s home.

This same pattern shows up, magnified, on the political stage. Narcissistic control in government thrives on flipping the script and silencing watchdogs.

Authoritarian leaders, like narcissistic family members, rely on well-worn tactics to manufacture a psychological state of volatile uncertainty — where outcomes aren’t just unknown, but constantly shifting and unpredictable. This overwhelms the brain’s ability to anticipate and prepare, keeping people mentally off-balance and easier to control. The good news: Awareness works like a vaccine, gradually building psychological immunity against further harm.

For another patient, “moving the goalposts” was the favored tactic of her ex-boyfriend to generate such volatility. He would make a demand (under the guise of “improving her”) and then change the expectation once it was met. In government, this looks like constantly reversing policies or public positions so that citizens, the media and allies remain unmoored.

“The White House has no idea what it’s doing on tariffs and keeps flip-flopping... Why even do an exemption if you’re going to reverse it soon?” Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) posted on X on April 13, referring to more than 50 flip-flops on tariff policies since Trump’s inauguration.

Many dismiss these reversals as mere incompetence or poor strategy — and it’s true that narcissism is associated with more impulsive, error-prone decision-making. But anyone familiar with narcissistic abuse understands the deeper maneuver: Whether consciously or not, narcissists hold power by keeping others in a state of psychological whiplash. And it works.

At its core, emotional control is the narcissist’s primary goal: to protect a fragile sense of self-importance and entitlement by maintaining the grand illusion that supports it — without empathy for others. While it’s important to note that narcissistic pathology by no means equates to abuse, there are more aggressive versions that use confusion, despair and emotional bonds like loyalty to control how others think and feel, secure a constant flow of admiration or reactivity, shield themselves from shame and keep others attached — even against their best interests.

Of the dizzying array of tactics, perhaps the most effective is crisis manufacturing. The constant emergencies aren’t flukes — they’re by design. They keep everyone in survival mode, distracting from deeper issues and ensuring the narcissist stays at the center of attention and control. For my patients who have survived narcissistic abuse, it might be an explosive tantrum, a threat to seek full custody or a frantic late-night call about a (fabricated) mugging. On the national stage, it takes the form of rhetorical escalations, legal threats or emergency declarations designed to dominate the news cycle and overwhelm opposition.

The nervous system can only take so much. Fight (rage), flight (escape planning), freeze (paralysis), fawn (capitulation) and flop (hopelessness) are natural survival responses — but they also keep us stuck. Healing — in therapy and in democracy — begins by recognizing when we’re trapped in these states and learning how to return to grounded, organized action.

In my work, I help people identify and unwind these patterns. They begin to understand they’re not just anxious or distracted for no reason — they’re reacting to prolonged psychological coercion. The same is true for societies under narcissistic leadership. This isn’t just politics. It’s millions of nervous systems in fight-or-flight mode.

One of my patients responds to her mother’s barrage of abusive texts — a stream of accusations, victim posturing, theatrical crises and financial demands — by reaching for her flashcards. Each card is labeled with a tactic she’s learned to spot: Deny, Attack, Play the Victim, Perform the Hero, Create Crisis. Instead of being wrung out like a towel — her body drained of clarity by her mother’s volatility — she names each tactic as it arises. Naming gives her distance. It helps her stay calm, grounded and in control of her response. The unpredictable becomes predictable. That’s what psychological immunity looks like in real life.

I’ve watched many patients wrestle their way out of the fog of narcissistic control. It doesn’t happen all at once. It begins with grieving what cannot be changed and focusing, with fierce clarity, on what remains within reach. It means reclaiming attention, setting boundaries and refusing to give your power to someone who thrives on your reactivity.

I’m also watching how this dynamic plays out in institutions. When law firms, universities or political bodies bend to powerful figures instead of upholding shared values, it mirrors what happens in abusive households: Everyone walks on eggshells. In such environments, self-protection becomes the priority, and choices are made not from alignment with values but from fear.

But recovery begins when people stop playing along or exhausting energy in cycles of infighting. Instead of spending precious bandwidth on disbelief or outrage, the goal is to name the tactic, call out the harm, cultivate trusted support and let go of what is beyond your control. Persistent engagement in shock, bargaining or rumination often reflects the mind’s attempt to delay the grief associated with profound loss — private and emotional for my patients, social and institutional for our country.

When Dorothy pulled back the curtain and revealed the Wizard as an insecure man with a microphone and a smoke machine, she shattered the illusion that had kept an entire city captive. In therapy, that moment of recognition is just as powerful. Once someone sees the manipulation for what it is, the spell begins to break.

From a trauma psychologist’s perspective, what can a nation do once the curtain is pulled back?

First: Stop enabling. Reactive efforts to clean up the damage often backfire, shielding narcissists from accountability and allowing them to retain influence. On a political level, this means pausing to strategize before rushing in to fix the narcissist’s mess. Strategic restraint — like that practiced by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who has been criticized for not “swinging at every pitch” — is not weakness. It’s discipline.

One technique I teach is called “gray rocking”: refusing to feed the narcissist’s need for drama, attention or emotional reactivity. Gray rocking means becoming sturdy and repetitive — not reactive or maximalist — a boring target for someone addicted to power. Reacting with hyperbole or hysteria only emboldens narcissists. Deny them the fuel they seek. This is hard work. But it’s how an abuser loses power.

Then: Set boundaries. In therapy, that might mean saying no repeatedly, like a broken record, and building the support system to stay safe. On a national scale, it means working together to reestablish constitutional guardrails such as due process, checks and balances, and freedom of speech. By using loopholes — like invoking 18th century wartime laws — to expand his power, Trump has exposed the weak spots in American democracy. As our founding documents remind us: “A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free People.” The Constitution is not just a legal structure — it’s psychological scaffolding against narcissistic control.

Build resilience. Narcissistic abuse isn’t just dangerous and dysregulating — it feeds on the very distress and isolation it creates to sustain itself. To interrupt the cycle, we need practices that restore regulation and reinforce community power. Collective care and self-care are not luxuries — they are revolutionary acts in times of oppression. Rest is not retreat; it’s how we recover the clarity and cohesion needed to mobilize and rebuild. Join hands. There is strength in numbers and safety in solidarity.

And above all, keep faith in the long game. While narcissistic dynamics rely on urgency and alarm, deep change comes from staying calm, clear and connected. In defending against narcissistic control, the answer is never to mimic harmful tactics — it is to recognize them, grieve their damage, stop enabling them and break out of reactivity. Boundaries, civic mobilization and long-haul strategy are how we begin to heal the democratic spirit. In both therapy and democracy, healing begins the moment we stop reacting and start remembering who we are.

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

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Saturday, May 24, 2025 1:33 PM

Trump's approval has gone up 5 points in the last week alone.

None of the bad stuff that the Media has said would happen in the last 6 months has happened.

I think even more people are going to start tuning out of the news completely.

.... and The Democratic Party Is Literally Dying

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-democratic-party-is-litera
lly-dying/ar-AA1Fn1Bw

Quote:
The dead hand of gerontocracy is also a symptom of ideological malaise.

...

In a post, the political analyst Lakshya Jain listed some startling facts showing just how sharply elected Democrats skew towards the elderly:

Three of the 215 House Democrats have died this year, all from states that Trump won (TX/AZ) or have a Republican Governor (TX/VA). Six House Democrats have died since April 2024. The last eight House members to die in office have been Democrats, going back to 2022.

I think the question here is whether we realize that this is simply not a coincidence—it’s the result of decisions made regarding seniority and running for re-election.

One last point: 11 of the 14 House members over 80 are Democrats.

Boomers can't destroy our country from the inside forever. Now God will sort them out.

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

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Saturday, May 24, 2025 1:44 PM

Oh...

I'm also starting to hear that we might be flipping both New York and New Jersey red by mid-terms right now.

We'll have to keep an eye on that.

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

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Saturday, May 24, 2025 5:06 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
RFK Jr. Drops Bombshell 'MAHA' Report Outlining 'Existential Public Health Crisis' And What To Do About It

There's so much more to the article, and the report, but I really keyed in on this:

Quote:
Relying on the "honor system," the report highlights how corporations fund their own safety studies which government agencies use to base approvals upon. Conversely, public tax dollars fund but a small portion of the total research dollars spent on chronic childhood diseases—further "exacerbated" by the revolving door between regulatory agencies, and the corporations they're supposed to regulate.

This happens not just in pharmaceutics and food additives (and genetically modified crops which, BTW, have never been tested for safety) but for literally every chemical introduced into our environment.

There are two examples of how this goes terribly awry. The first is of a medical researcher who was curious to see if she could reproduce a very basic mouse study fundsmental to a drug approval. So she bought the relevant mice, and set up the exoeriment exactly as described in the FDA filing. In her studies, which she repeated multiple times, she could NOT find any sort of efficacy.

Another case, the mfr of a brand name thyroid medication, Synthroid, hired a reseaercher to show that their brand name was better than generic. Thry had her repest the studies until, FINALLY, one study showed a positive result. So they published that and ditched the other nine. When the researcher made all of the study results public, she was sued for breach of confidentiality.

Yanno, it would be interesting if we could get pharma A to test pharma B's products. That would really take the bias out of testing.

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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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Saturday, May 24, 2025 5:56 PM

I've had to hear about second hand smoking all my life...

But nobody ever bitches about all the mind-altering drugs I'm ingesting in my tap water after Ted and Second flush theirs down the toilet.

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

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Saturday, May 24, 2025 7:06 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I've had to hear about second hand smoking all my life...

But nobody ever bitches about all the mind-altering drugs I'm ingesting in my tap water after Ted and Second flush theirs down the toilet.

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

You should be bitching about "forever chemicals" like PCBs and dioxins and PFAS.

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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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Saturday, May 24, 2025 7:32 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I've had to hear about second hand smoking all my life...

But nobody ever bitches about all the mind-altering drugs I'm ingesting in my tap water after Ted and Second flush theirs down the toilet.

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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
You should be bitching about "forever chemicals" like PCBs and dioxins and PFAS.

There's no shortage of ways our government kills us to bitch about.

It's why I don't really worry about smoking. It doesn't matter. I've got so many microplastics inside of me you could melt me down and make a LEGO set out of me when I'm gone.

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

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Saturday, May 24, 2025 7:43 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I've had to hear about second hand smoking all my life...

But nobody ever bitches about all the mind-altering drugs I'm ingesting in my tap water after Ted and Second flush theirs down the toilet.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
You should be bitching about "forever chemicals" like PCBs and dioxins and PFAS.

There's no shortage of ways our government kills us to bitch about.

It's why I don't really worry about smoking. It doesn't matter. I've got so many microplastics inside of me you could melt me down and make a LEGO set out of me when I'm gone.

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

Oh, yeah... microplastics too!

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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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Saturday, May 24, 2025 7:45 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Declassified: Biden Admin Labeled COVID Dissenters 'Domestic Violent Extremists'

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/declassified-biden-admin-labeled-c
ovid-dissenters-domestic-violent-extremists

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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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Saturday, May 24, 2025 7:54 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
One technique I teach is called “gray rocking”: refusing to feed the narcissist’s need for drama, attention or emotional reactivity. Gray rocking means becoming sturdy and repetitive — not reactive or maximalist — a boring target for someone addicted to power. Reacting with hyperbole or hysteria only emboldens narcissists. Deny them the fuel they seek. This is hard work. But it’s how an abuser loses power.

In other words: Don't feed the troll.

That's why I generally don't get into pissing matches with SECOND. He's a sociopath/ troll/ narcissist.

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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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Saturday, May 24, 2025 9:26 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I've had to hear about second hand smoking all my life...

But nobody ever bitches about all the mind-altering drugs I'm ingesting in my tap water after Ted and Second flush theirs down the toilet.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
You should be bitching about "forever chemicals" like PCBs and dioxins and PFAS.

There's no shortage of ways our government kills us to bitch about.

It's why I don't really worry about smoking. It doesn't matter. I've got so many microplastics inside of me you could melt me down and make a LEGO set out of me when I'm gone.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Oh, yeah... microplastics too!

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

And unfortunately for us, we got the best of both worlds. Up until I was around 10 years old we were all getting plenty of lead in our lungs and losing about 10 to 20 IQ points on average for it. Not only that, but all that increased lead levels we've been walking around with from all that leaded gasoline we were poisoning ourselves with, we're all quite a bit more aggressive than we otherwise would be too. (The flip side of that is believing that maybe the boys actually need a little more lead in their diets with what we've been breeding the last 20 or so years... amiright?)

Oh... and don't forget about DuPont shoving all those Teflon atoms in our bodies and sticking them there for safe keeping for the rest of our lives too. That's a big one.

Nothing sticks to teflon, but teflon sticks to everything. Especially if it's wet, has a lot of folds to get lost in and never sees the light of day.

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

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

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Sunday, May 25, 2025 3:42 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I've had to hear about second hand smoking all my life...

But nobody ever bitches about all the mind-altering drugs I'm ingesting in my tap water after Ted and Second flush theirs down the toilet.

SIGNY: You should be bitching about "forever chemicals" like PCBs and dioxins and PFAS.

SIX: There's no shortage of ways our government kills us to bitch about.

It's why I don't really worry about smoking. It doesn't matter. I've got so many microplastics inside of me you could melt me down and make a LEGO set out of me when I'm gone.

SIGNY: Oh, yeah... microplastics too!

SIX: And unfortunately for us, we got the best of both worlds. Up until I was around 10 years old we were all getting plenty of lead in our lungs and losing about 10 to 20 IQ points on average for it. Not only that, but all that increased lead levels we've been walking around with from all that leaded gasoline we were poisoning ourselves with, we're all quite a bit more aggressive than we otherwise would be too. (The flip side of that is believing that maybe the boys actually need a little more lead in their diets with what we've been breeding the last 20 or so years... amiright?)

Oh... and don't forget about DuPont shoving all those Teflon atoms in our bodies and sticking them there for safe keeping for the rest of our lives too. That's a big one.

Nothing sticks to teflon, but teflon sticks to everything. Especially if it's wet, has a lot of folds to get lost in and never sees the light of day.

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

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

Yep! We got the crap they didn't know about then .... lead, asbestos, PCBs, PAHs, DDT, chlordane etc etc .... and by the time they started controlling those it was just in time for us to get exposed to the 10,000 other chemicals introduced into the environment.

Hard to believe, but when I was a kid there was no such thing as plastic containers or bottles or bags. Meat came wrapped in butcher paper, bread in paper bags, frozen vegetables and juices were (somehow) frozen in cardboard boxes or tubes, milk and soda and beer came in glass bottles.

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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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Sunday, May 25, 2025 7:09 AM

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

Trump said no one wanted to join the military under Biden while speaking to an entire graduating class at West Point, who joined under Biden.

Kermit the Frog gave a speech to students at Maryland University, which far exceeded Trump’s in intelligence:

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

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Sunday, May 25, 2025 7:37 AM

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

At least the Pantomime Might Be Over.
Phillips P. OBrien
May 25, 2025

One final point—we still have US diplomats, in their attempts to con Europeans, say that Trump is sincerely upset at the loss of life in the war. This was in a story just released in The Guardian:

A former US diplomat close to the Ukraine talks urged Europeans to be patient with Trump, saying, “Trump genuinely wants a ceasefire and the killing to stop.”

This is one of the greatest lies of this whole period which needs instant rebuttal. Trump is a narcissistic sociopath—he cares not a whit for other people. He uses them for his own gain. The idea that he cares about dead Ukrainians or Russians is nonsensical. He would care if it impacted him (all he is probably thinking about now is the rest of his life and his money—and maybe a little of his family) but he is spending not a moment losing sleep over the war deaths in Europe.

He called Americans who died for the USA “suckers”. Do you think he actually cares about Ukrainians and Russians dying for their countries?

This lie needs to be confronted. Once its understood that Trump really has no interest or moral qualms about all the deaths occurring—it might be easier to understand what US policy is.

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-update-134-the-week-whe
n

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

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Sunday, May 25, 2025 8:41 AM

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

Trump is exploiting his office for personal gain in unprecedented ways

By Peter Stone in Washington
Sun 25 May 2025 07.00 EDT

Donald Trump’s push to sharply ease oversight of the cryptocurrency industry, while he and his sons have fast expanded crypto ventures that have reaped billions of dollars from investors including foreign ones, is raising alarm about ethical and legal issues.

Some Republicans have levelled a firestorm of criticism at Trump for hawking his own memecoin $Trump, a novelty crypto token with no inherent value, by personally hosting a 22 May dinner at his Virginia golf club for the 220 largest buyers of $Trump and a private “reception” for the 25 biggest buyers.

To attend the two events, the $Trump buyers spent about $148m, which will benefit Trump and partners, according to the crypto firm Inca Digital.

Further, the Trump family crypto venture World Liberty Financial that launched last fall, which his two oldest sons have promoted hard, was tapped this month to play a key part in a $2bn investment deal by an Abu Dhabi financial fund in the crypto exchange Binance which in 2023 pleaded guilty to US money laundering and other violations.

The new WLF deal was announced at an Abu Dhabi crypto conference that drew Eric Trump two weeks before Trump’s mid-May visit to the United Arab Emirates capital, sparking other concerns of improper foreign influence and ethics issues.

Trump’s ardent pursuit of crypto fortunes was highlighted in a report last month from the watchdog group State Democracy Defenders Fund that estimated his crypto ventures as of mid-March to be worth about $2.9bn. That is a striking sum since Trump’s crypto ventures are less than a year old.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/25/trump-crypto-corruptio
n-ethics

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

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Sunday, May 25, 2025 10:31 AM

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

Trump's tax cut plan will be cripplingly expensive for most Americans

The House-passed Republican tax cut will likely exceed the combined cost of the three most expensive laws over the past decade.

Over the past decade, Washington has enacted President Donald Trump’s $1.5 trillion Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), a bipartisan $1.7 trillion pandemic-response CARES Act and President Joe Biden’s $1.8 trillion American Rescue Plan. Yet the cost of the House-passed Republican tax cut will likely exceed all three of these expensive laws — combined.

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) officially scores the GOP tax cuts included in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act as costing $3.8 trillion over the next decade. But the tab rises to $5.3 trillion when removing the deceptive expiration dates included to cover up the bill’s exorbitant long-term cost. Add in the additional tax savings added at the last minute to win more Republican votes, as well as the resulting interest costs, and the true 10-year tax cut cost likely approaches $6.5 trillion. The House bill would offset just $1.3 trillion with savings from programs such as Medicaid, SNAP and student loans — and the Senate is likely to strip many of those offsets.

By Jessica Riedl, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-tax-cuts-will-cost-a
mericans-rcna208852

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

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Sunday, May 25, 2025 12:43 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Trump said no one wanted to join the military under Biden while speaking to an entire graduating class at West Point, who joined under Biden.

Telling a class of privileged future officers at West Point that no civilians want to sign up to die in pointless wars for other people is what happened here.

The disingenuous way that you frame your non-argument with no data behind it is exactly why you're seeing articles like this today.

Confused, Starving Reporters Now Desperate for Food After Killing American Journalism

https://johnkassnews.com/confused-starving-reporters-desperate-for-foo
d-after-killing-and-devouring-journalism/

You did this. Pat yourself on the back. You aided and abetted the death of your party and American Journalism, and you can't put the brakes on your awful behavior and the brain you allowed them to damage so thoroughly is just on auto-pilot at this point.

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

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

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Sunday, May 25, 2025 2:30 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:
Trump said no one wanted to join the military under Biden while speaking to an entire graduating class at West Point, who joined under Biden.

Telling a class of privileged future officers at West Point that no civilians want to sign up to die in pointless wars for other people is what happened here.

The disingenuous way that you frame your non-argument with no data behind it is exactly why you're seeing articles like this today.

Confused, Starving Reporters Now Desperate for Food After Killing American Journalism

https://johnkassnews.com/confused-starving-reporters-desperate-for-foo
d-after-killing-and-devouring-journalism/

You did this. Pat yourself on the back. You aided and abetted the death of your party and American Journalism, and you can't put the brakes on your awful behavior and the brain you allowed them to damage so thoroughly is just on auto-pilot at this point.

Trump and you deliberately misunderstand very simple things, then you both get upset when corrected, insisting you are right despite being wrong. For example:

Trump's South Africa 'genocide' claim is wrong

By Astrid Prange de Oliveira | May 23, 2025

https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-trumps-evidence-videos-do-not-show-ge
nocide/a-72642309

During his visit to the White House, US President Donald Trump confronted South Africa's head of state Cyril Ramaphosa with claims that white farmers are being mass murdered in South Africa.

The narrative that white population groups are being systematically and deliberately killed is not supported by facts and official statistics. It has been circulating in right-wing circles for years and is linked to the racist conspiracy myth of the "Great Replacement."

Claim: "These are the -- these are burial sites right here," Trump said (White House video minute 24:25), while describing a footage during a meeting with Ramaphosa at the White House on May 21.

"Each one of those white things you see is a cross. And there's approximately a thousand of them. They're all white farmers, the family of white farmers," added Trump.

Trump's claim was already circulating on social media before Ramaphosa's state visit to the US. On May 12, a user on X explained that every cross stands for a murdered white farmer in South Africa. The video post has been viewed almost 55 million times at the time of publishing.

A reverse image search shows that the footage used by Trump with the white crosses on the side of the road was already shared on social media in 2020 and 2023. These are not, as Trump claims, the gravesites of more than a thousand murdered farmers.

Much more at https://www.dw.com/en/fact-check-trumps-evidence-videos-do-not-show-ge
nocide/a-72642309

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

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Sunday, May 25, 2025 2:42 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Trump said no one wanted to join the military under Biden while speaking to an entire graduating class at West Point, who joined under Biden.

Telling a class of privileged future officers at West Point that no civilians want to sign up to die in pointless wars for other people is what happened here.

The disingenuous way that you frame your non-argument with no data behind it is exactly why you're seeing articles like this today.

Confused, Starving Reporters Now Desperate for Food After Killing American Journalism

https://johnkassnews.com/confused-starving-reporters-desperate-for-foo
d-after-killing-and-devouring-journalism/

You did this. Pat yourself on the back. You aided and abetted the death of your party and American Journalism, and you can't put the brakes on your awful behavior and the brain you allowed them to damage so thoroughly is just on auto-pilot at this point.
Trump

Shut the fuck up.

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

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

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Sunday, May 25, 2025 9:17 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:

Shut the fuck up.

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

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

Mike Johnson Doesn’t Care About Trump’s Business Conflicts, Crypto Dinner Because They’re ‘Out In The Open’

By Alison Durkee | May 25, 2025, 11:28am EDT

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2025/05/25/mike-johnson-does
nt-care-about-trumps-business-conflicts-crypto-dinner-because-theyre-out-in-the-open/

TOPLINE

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., brushed off concerns Sunday about President Donald Trump’s alleged business conflicts in office and recent dinner with top investors in his meme coin, claiming Republicans don’t have to investigate the president’s business dealings like they did for former President Joe Biden because Trump does everything “out in the open.”

KEY FACTS

• Johnson was asked on CNN about Trump’s crypto dinner Thursday, which has raised concerns about transparency—as the guest list remains under wraps—and about presenting a possible conflict, as attendees could intentionally invest in Trump’s meme coin and attend the dinner in an effort to wield influence with the president on crypto policy.

• The House speaker claimed he “[didn’t] know anything” about the dinner but defended the president, saying Trump is “very active, very engaged... he’s one of the greatest dealmakers of all time.”

• CNN host Jake Tapper noted he had a “difficult time” believing Johnson wouldn’t be “outraged” if a Democratic president had held a similar dinner, pressing the House speaker about his lack of interest in Trump’s business dealings after Johnson and his colleagues previously led investigations into Biden’s son Hunter Biden and the family’s alleged business conflicts.

• Johnson alleged the former president and Hunter Biden kept their alleged dealings under wraps and used “fake LLCs” while the former president’s family profited by being “on the president’s dole,” though House investigations uncovered no evidence of Biden doing anything wrong.

• The House speaker claimed Trump, by contrast, is doing everything “out in the open” regarding his business, claiming he’s “putting it out there, so everyone can evaluate for themselves” and alleging Trump “is the most transparent president in history” and “has nothing to hide.”

What Happened At Trump’s Crypto Dinner?

Trump invited the top 220 investors in his $TRUMP meme coin to the dinner, which was held Thursday at Trump National Golf Club near Washington, D.C. The top 25 investors were also invited to a special pre-dinner and tour. Trump reportedly attended the event only briefly, according to attendees, delivering an address in which he told guests, “I always put the country way ahead of the business ...You become president of the United States, and you want to see people thrive and succeed.” “The Biden Administration persecuted crypto innovators and we're bringing them back into the USA where they belong,” Trump added, according to a video of the event cited by Reuters. While the White House has maintained the dinner was a private event outside the scope of Trump’s presidential duties, his podium during the address featured the presidential seal—which could violate federal laws forbidding the seal being used to “convey a false impression of sponsorship of approval by the government.” The event’s guest list has not been publicly released, but reported attendees included billionaire Chinese crypto investor Justin Sun, retired NBA player Lamar Odom, BitMart crypto exchange founder Sheldon Zia, 25-year-old marketing director Nick Pinto and a crypto security specialist who goes only by the name of Ogle. More than half the dinner’s attendees are believed to be based outside the U.S., according to a blockchain analysis cited by Reuters, raising concerns from Democrats about possible foreign influence on the president. Crypto intelligence firm Inca Digital estimates attendees invested a combined $148 million on the $TRUMP token in order to attend the event.

News Peg

In addition to Trump’s meme coin dinner, Johnson’s comments also come days after the Trump Organization broke ground on a new $1.5 billion golf club in Vietnam. The business deal has come under scrutiny as the Vietnamese government simultaneously seeks to reach a trade deal with the Trump administration, as the country hopes Trump will lower his punishing tariffs on goods from the manufacturing-focused country. Vietnamese officials fast-tracked the Trump deal and ignored its traditional laws and processes in order to get the property approved, The New York Times reports—with the government noting in a letter the project was “receiving special attention from the Trump administration and President Donald Trump personally.”

Contra

While Johnson claimed Trump is doing everything “out in the open,” the president has faced numerous concerns about the transparency of his businesses. He was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records connected to hush money payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels, which were labeled as being for legal services and processed through the Trump Organization, and was separately found liable for fraud in connection with misstating the value of his assets on business records. Trump has denied any wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty to the charges against him, and he is in the process of appealing the fraud ruling.

Key Background

Trump, a billionaire and famed businessman, has long drawn scrutiny for his business ties and how they could conflict with the presidency. While Trump’s sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. took over the Trump Organization from their father prior to his first term, the president has never formally divested from the company, and the Trump Organization has suggested in recent filings that Trump still has control over his business assets. Though conflict of interest criticism during Trump’s first term was largely dominated by concerns over the Trump Organization and the president’s real estate empire—particularly his Washington, D.C., hotel, which the Trumps have since sold—his potential conflicts have a far broader scope in his second term. In addition to the $TRUMP meme coin, Trump has also drawn scrutiny for his Trump Media and Technology Group, which runs Truth Social and has ballooned the president’s net worth as supporters buy the company’s stock. Trump has also openly hawked a slew of Trump-branded merchandise that allow the president to profit off his personal brand, which includes a range of products spanning everything from watches and perfumes to signed guitars.

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

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Sunday, May 25, 2025 11:00 PM

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

Shut the fuck up.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Mike Johnson Doesn’t Care About Trump’s Business Conflicts, Crypto Dinner Because They’re ‘Out In The Open’

Oh good. I'm so used to all of the politicians doing all their shady shit in the shadows.

As they say... Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

I'm sure Mrs. Durke is going to get off of her ass and do some real hard hitting journalism and investigation now and get to the bottom of this instead of just rewriting whatever wikipedia article she "wrote" from the safety and comfort of her office that you just regurgitated for everyone here... containing a topic that you're extremely likely to never bring up again in your lifetime. As per usual.

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

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

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Monday, May 26, 2025 6:16 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:

Oh good. I'm so used to all of the politicians doing all their shady shit in the shadows.

As they say... Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

I'm sure Mrs. Durke is going to get off of her ass and do some real hard hitting journalism and investigation now and get to the bottom of this instead of just rewriting whatever wikipedia article she "wrote" from the safety and comfort of her office that you just regurgitated for everyone here... containing a topic that you're extremely likely to never bring up again in your lifetime. As per usual.

Trump and JD Vance frequently claim Pres. Andrew Jackson did his shady shit in the Sunshine and, therefore, the historic precedence justifies them doing the same shit. But Jackson didn't do the shady shit his enemy, Horace Greeley, falsely claimed was done. If Jackson had been alive when Greeley was poisoning history with lies, Greeley would have died in a duel fought with pistols, not words:

J. D. Vance has cited Andrew Jackson to justify the idea that a president can disobey the federal judiciary’s rulings. The historical record says no such thing.

By Sean Wilentz | April 25, 2025

Sean Wilentz is the George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History at Princeton. His books include No Property in Man: Slavery and Antislavery at the Nation’s Founding .

https://www.nybooks.com/online/2025/04/25/vances-junk-history/

When Donald Trump and his followers go in search of historical forerunners to justify their regime, they turn with striking regularity to the presidency of Andrew Jackson. Trump dropped Jackson’s name often during his first White House term, trying to assimilate Old Hickory’s stature to his own populist politics. “Jackson’s life was devoted to one very crucial principle,” he declared in Nashville in 2017. “He understood that real leadership means putting America first.” On Inauguration Day 2025, as Trump began signing the executive orders that have undermined American democracy and stretched the rule of law to the breaking point, he had Jackson’s portrait reinstalled to its prideful place on the Oval Office wall, where Joe Biden had replaced it with a portrait of Benjamin Franklin. Now smitten by the eccentric idea that high tariffs are the key to American greatness, Trump has also embraced the champion protectionist president, William McKinley. But Jackson remains, symbolically, Trump’s presiding hero.

Vice President J.D. Vance has gone even further, not merely claiming Jackson’s mantle for Trump but citing him as the progenitor of the blatantly unconstitutional idea that a president can disobey the federal judiciary with impunity. In 2021, on a right-wing podcast, Vance advanced the then-outlandish proposition that Trump, if reelected, should peremptorily fire the entire midlevel federal workforce—hundreds of thousands of experienced and dedicated public servants performing indispensable work—and replace them with MAGA loyalists (“our people”). Vance had presumably paid enough attention at Yale Law School to understand that even the conservative Roberts Court would likely strike down such a directive. But if that happened, he asserted, Trump should follow what Vance claimed to be Jackson’s example and simply ignore the ruling: “Stand before the country, like Andrew Jackson did,” he declared, “and say the chief justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it.” Asked by a Politico reporter in January 2023 whether he still held to this view, Vance glibly reiterated his point: “Yup.”

It’s time to put this canard permanently to rest. As has often been noted, Jackson never said the words to which Vance was alluding. The quotation in question—“Well: John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!”—was invented and ascribed to Jackson by the New York journalist Horace Greeley (who as a partisan Whig had despised Jackson) in the first volume of his The American Conflict, published in 1864, nearly twenty years after Jackson died. Yet even critics of Vance’s and Trump’s disregard for the rule of law have ignorantly assumed that, although the quotation is made up, the essence of Vance’s depiction of Jackson’s defiance of the Court is valid.

“The President Jackson quote is likely apocryphal, but the history is real,” Zack Beauchamp, a senior correspondent at Vox, wrote last year. According to Beauchamp, Jackson ignored a Supreme Court ruling calling on him to respect Native American land rights, an outrage that, he claimed, finally led to “the ethnic cleansing of about 60,000 Natives—an event we now call the Trail of Tears.” Most Americans, he continued, are ashamed of the autocratic Jackson for disregarding the Constitution and “trampling on the rule of law to commit atrocities.” Even in the process of attacking Vance’s claims about presidential authority, Beauchamp unfortunately sustained his claims to a Jacksonian precedent. Thus junk history is amplified.

In fact, Jackson did not defy the Court. In the case in question, Worcester v. Georgia, he wasn’t even in a position to do so, and he neither practiced nor advocated such misconduct at any other point in his two terms. Although he held expansive views of executive power, which led his political enemies to lambaste him as a lawless enemy of the Constitution, Jackson also believed strongly in the Constitution and never violated a direct court order as Vance would have Trump do. Indeed, Jackson defended the Constitution to the point where he became, prior to Abraham Lincoln, its sturdiest defender against the fractious states’ rights slaveholders of the lower South, whose ideological descendants make up a significant portion of the MAGA coalition.

Worcester v. Georgia was decided by the John Marshall Court in 1832. It did involve Native American sovereignty, but not, strictly speaking, land rights. In 1830, hoping to suppress the disruptive activities of missionaries sympathetic to Cherokee claims to sovereignty—including helping to establish the first Native American newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix—Georgia’s legislature enacted a statute that prohibited whites from residing on the tribe’s lands without a license from the state. Samuel Worcester, a cofounder of the Phoenix and one of several missionaries tried under the new law, contended that it violated existing treaties between the federal government and the Cherokee nation, but that argument got him nowhere. Sentenced, along with another unyielding missionary, Elizur Butler, to four years of hard labor in a state penitentiary, he appealed to the Supreme Court to quash his conviction.

The Court, in a decision written and delivered by Chief Justice John Marshall, ruled in his favor. Since the Cherokee constituted a separate sovereign nation, Marshall argued, only the federal government had the authority to deal with them, as with any other Native nation. He conceded that conquest or purchase could lead to political domination of one nation over another, but any such authority, he asserted, belonged to the federal government, not the states. Because the state of Georgia had no authority regarding Native American affairs, the statute over which Worcester and others had been convicted was null and void.

Insolent Georgia authorities refused either to release Worcester and Butler or to respect the Supreme Court’s negation of the licensing law. Finally, almost a year after the Court’s ruling, a newly elected governor, hoping to forestall another pro-Cherokee Supreme Court decision, pressed for the offensive law’s repeal and offered Worcester and Butler a pardon and release if they promised no further legal action. After the Cherokee removal began, Worcester wound up accompanying them, with his family, to Indian Territory (what is now Oklahoma), where he died in 1859.

In short, the Court issued no order for President Jackson to defy. The case involved the Supreme Court, the state of Georgia, and Samuel Worcester; the federal government, let alone the executive branch, was not a party to it. Soon after Marshall’s ruling, Jackson did note that the Court could not compel the Georgia authorities to heed it: “The decision of the Supreme Court has fell still born, and they find that they cannot coerce Georgia to yield to its mandate,” he wrote to his representative in charge of negotiating with the Natives, John Coffee. But this was hardly a president’s willful refusal to adhere to a court ruling; however callous, it amounted to little more than stating the obvious. Nor did Jackson defy the Court when he failed to send federal marshals to Georgia to halt the state’s meddling with the Cherokee—for the simple reason that the Court did not order or otherwise ask for such an intervention.

None of this mitigates the shame of Jackson’s policies regarding the Cherokee or any other Native nation. Having lobbied hard for the passage of the Indian Removal Act of 1830, Jackson exploited the later crisis in Georgia to negotiate a basically fraudulent treaty with a small Cherokee faction, ceding all the nation’s lands east of the Mississippi River in exchange for $5 million and the promise of relocation to Indian territory out West. It was this treaty, not Worcester v. Georgia, that led to the Trail of Tears under President Martin Van Buren.

But the urgent constitutional issues at hand today have nothing to do with the injustice of Jackson’s Indian policies. They are about the illegitimacy of any attempt by the Trump regime to defy an order from the Supreme Court—or any other federal court. Despite Vance’s ignorant bluster about Jackson, such an action would not just be lawless; it would be without precedent in the country’s history.

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

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Monday, May 26, 2025 7:37 AM

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

The Gaslighter In Chief

How we went from everyone knowing Trump would not sanction Putin to fooling ourselves that he would

By Phillips P. Obrien | May 26, 2025

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/the-gaslighter-in-chief

Since Trump was elected, he has acted like he could at any moment impose sanctions on Vladimir Putin’s Russia for the Russo-Ukraine War. Just last night, we had another example of this. After a weekend of Russia attacking civilian targets in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, killing many innocents, Trump once again wielded the threat of sanctions in a tweet.

The amazing thing is that after six months of toothless threats, people were still talking about Trump sanctioning Russia, when he has no intention of doing so. To give you an idea of the extraordinarily repetitive nature of the threats, and why people should have never taken them seriously in the first place, I think it's worthwhile going through the last year chronologically—to see just how preposterous the sanctions threat pantomime has become. Apologies if this is long—but it's been an extraordinary process and does need to be understood.

The dozens of times Trump threatened to sanction Russia (but did nothing) are listed at https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/the-gaslighter-in-chief

Trump’s threats are helping Putin. They are part of Trump’s plan to gaslight Europeans into thinking he might do something, and are delaying tactics to keep others from acting.

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

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Monday, May 26, 2025 8:44 AM

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

The Economic Consequences of Destroying Harvard

By Paul Krugman | May 26, 2025 at 5:36 AM

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-economic-consequences-of-destro
ying

from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-19830859 Cultural Revolution photos

Harvard is easy to dislike. It’s rich. It’s elitist. It rejected my application back when I was a high school senior.

But the Trumpist effort to destroy Harvard and other elite universities — for that is clearly their intention — will do vast damage to our nation’s future.

The most important aspect of this campaign of intimidation and disruption is, of course, the attack on freedom of thought. I hope that nobody actually believes the MAGA line that universities are indoctrinating their students in wokeness, DEI, Marxism, whatever. The real complaint, obviously, is that these institutions aren’t indoctrinating their students — that they are exposing young people to a variety of ideas and encouraging them to think for themselves, when they should be preaching right-wing dogma and obedience to whatever The Leader says they should believe.

Given this terrifying reality of the Trumpian war on learning, indeed on scientific thought itself, it may seem crass to examine the economic consequences of the attacks on higher education. Yet it’s important to understand that these consequences will also be disastrous – both for the current economy and for the economy’s long-term future.

Harvard is a major U.S. exporter. The foreign students that the Trump administration is trying to ban usually pay their own tuition — money that shows up as a credit in the US trade balance. But arguably the much larger issue is that Harvard is a crucial element within the Greater Boston economy. This regional economy is one of the crown jewels of the U.S. economy, one of the most important generators of high incomes, specialized knowledge and innovation.

Metropolitan economies are always more than the sum of their parts. Businesses clump together, forming a metropolitan economy, because their positive interactions create an industrial ecology of mutually reinforcing strengths, usually built around some kind of core competence. One famous example is the San Francisco Bay Area, a nexus of global leadership in digital technology. Another is Greater New York, the world’s leading financial center.

What is so special about Greater Boston? The economy of Greater Boston can seem confusing, because its world-beating sectors look quite different from each other on the surface. First, there are the schools: Colleges and universities employ 87,000 people in the Greater Boston area, accounting for a far higher share of employment than they do in America as a whole. Second, there’s a world-class medical complex, treating patients from around the world and also training many of the world’s top doctors. Third, Greater Boston is a leading player in both AI and “tough tech,” which emphasizes how information interacts with the physical world. Fourth, Greater Boston is the world’s leading biotech hub.

What do all these activities have in common? The answer, surely, is that they’re all linked by intellectual curiosity, rigorous thinking, scientific discipline, and an openness to new ideas. All of these qualities engender an openness to the very best talent around the world – students, researchers and entrepreneurs. Moreover, all of the parts are mutually supporting: the intellectual ferment within the universities and medical complex is a prime source of business innovation, and business success brings financial support and acclaim for the schools.

Harvard is by no means the dominant player in this intellectual and economic universe. It may not even be the most important player. At a guess M.I.T. has, in a direct sense, been a larger incubator of new businesses than its neighbor two miles up Massachusetts Ave. But M.I.T. wouldn’t be what it is without Harvard nearby, and vice versa. The same goes for the dozens of other fine universities in the area, and the hundreds — probably thousands — of businesses nearby. The hospitals and the medical research are part of the same ecosystem.

So destroying Harvard, even if the campaign against intellectualism stopped there — which it wouldn’t — would be like pulling a crucial piece out of a Jenga tower. The odds are that the whole structure of the Greater Boston education and innovation ecosystem would collapse. Consequently, America would lose all that Greater Boston does to advance and enrich our nation.

I should also note that Harvard doesn’t just educate many of the children of America’s elite. It also educates the children of elites around the world; that is, if Trump doesn’t prevent them coming to America. One may have mixed feelings about that role, but the reality is that Harvard is an important pillar in the edifice of American soft power.

Do MAGA types understand how much damage their campaign against universities will do to American prosperity and power? Probably not. But I suspect that it wouldn’t matter if they did. From their point of view, making America poorer, weaker and sicker is an acceptable price for keeping the nation suitably ignorant.

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

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Monday, May 26, 2025 11:02 AM

THG

Quote:
Originally posted by second:

The Economic Consequences of Destroying Harvard

By Paul Krugman | May 26, 2025 at 5:36 AM

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-economic-consequences-of-destro
ying

from https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-19830859 Cultural Revolution photos

Harvard is easy to dislike. It’s rich. It’s elitist. It rejected my application back when I was a high school senior.

But the Trumpist effort to destroy Harvard and other elite universities — for that is clearly their intention — will do vast damage to our nation’s future.

The most important aspect of this campaign of intimidation and disruption is, of course, the attack on freedom of thought. I hope that nobody actually believes the MAGA line that universities are indoctrinating their students in wokeness, DEI, Marxism, whatever. The real complaint, obviously, is that these institutions aren’t indoctrinating their students — that they are exposing young people to a variety of ideas and encouraging them to think for themselves, when they should be preaching right-wing dogma and obedience to whatever The Leader says they should believe.

Given this terrifying reality of the Trumpian war on learning, indeed on scientific thought itself, it may seem crass to examine the economic consequences of the attacks on higher education. Yet it’s important to understand that these consequences will also be disastrous – both for the current economy and for the economy’s long-term future.

Harvard is a major U.S. exporter. The foreign students that the Trump administration is trying to ban usually pay their own tuition — money that shows up as a credit in the US trade balance. But arguably the much larger issue is that Harvard is a crucial element within the Greater Boston economy. This regional economy is one of the crown jewels of the U.S. economy, one of the most important generators of high incomes, specialized knowledge and innovation.

Metropolitan economies are always more than the sum of their parts. Businesses clump together, forming a metropolitan economy, because their positive interactions create an industrial ecology of mutually reinforcing strengths, usually built around some kind of core competence. One famous example is the San Francisco Bay Area, a nexus of global leadership in digital technology. Another is Greater New York, the world’s leading financial center.

What is so special about Greater Boston? The economy of Greater Boston can seem confusing, because its world-beating sectors look quite different from each other on the surface. First, there are the schools: Colleges and universities employ 87,000 people in the Greater Boston area, accounting for a far higher share of employment than they do in America as a whole. Second, there’s a world-class medical complex, treating patients from around the world and also training many of the world’s top doctors. Third, Greater Boston is a leading player in both AI and “tough tech,” which emphasizes how information interacts with the physical world. Fourth, Greater Boston is the world’s leading biotech hub.

What do all these activities have in common? The answer, surely, is that they’re all linked by intellectual curiosity, rigorous thinking, scientific discipline, and an openness to new ideas. All of these qualities engender an openness to the very best talent around the world – students, researchers and entrepreneurs. Moreover, all of the parts are mutually supporting: the intellectual ferment within the universities and medical complex is a prime source of business innovation, and business success brings financial support and acclaim for the schools.

Harvard is by no means the dominant player in this intellectual and economic universe. It may not even be the most important player. At a guess M.I.T. has, in a direct sense, been a larger incubator of new businesses than its neighbor two miles up Massachusetts Ave. But M.I.T. wouldn’t be what it is without Harvard nearby, and vice versa. The same goes for the dozens of other fine universities in the area, and the hundreds — probably thousands — of businesses nearby. The hospitals and the medical research are part of the same ecosystem.

So destroying Harvard, even if the campaign against intellectualism stopped there — which it wouldn’t — would be like pulling a crucial piece out of a Jenga tower. The odds are that the whole structure of the Greater Boston education and innovation ecosystem would collapse. Consequently, America would lose all that Greater Boston does to advance and enrich our nation.

I should also note that Harvard doesn’t just educate many of the children of America’s elite. It also educates the children of elites around the world; that is, if Trump doesn’t prevent them coming to America. One may have mixed feelings about that role, but the reality is that Harvard is an important pillar in the edifice of American soft power.

Do MAGA types understand how much damage their campaign against universities will do to American prosperity and power? Probably not. But I suspect that it wouldn’t matter if they did. From their point of view, making America poorer, weaker and sicker is an acceptable price for keeping the nation suitably ignorant.

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

This is a good read. Too bad those that could use a little wisdom, are against learning.

T

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Monday, May 26, 2025 12:49 PM

Fuck Harvard and anything you've been "learning" Ted.

I bought my first house with cash when I was 32. What has your college "education" done for you besides make you miserable?

I know 10 times more than you about anything that is important, and when I need to do things like fix a car or do an emergency sump pump install while the ship is sinking, I learn them quickly and get them done.

You don't know shit about shit, dummy. You have no personal skills or emotional intelligence either, and you couldn't write a paragraph to save your life.
'

Nobody wants to hear anything out of you.

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

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

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Monday, May 26, 2025 12:50 PM