REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

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

POSTED BY: 6IXSTRINGJACK
UPDATED: Thursday, June 5, 2025 20:37
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Saturday, May 31, 2025 6:30 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Why is the USA being held responsible?
Nobody has held Trump responsible for what he does, which is why his history has been one damn evil thing after another.

When was the last time you saw a wicked person killed before they committed their next evil deed? Probably in the movie Serenity, where River methodically kills numerous evil people. In contrast, Mal has only one evil person to kill, The Operative, and Mal fails time after time to kill him. But Mal does kill someone who asked for Mal's help after a bank robbery.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Your diversion for everything is "trump", innit?

But yanno, it's evil people like you that are the problem. And nobody has held YOU responsible for what you've done, have they?

Nobody has held Biden and his Band of Merrie Neocons responsible. Nobody held Hillary responsible, and nobody held Obama or GWB responsible. There's a lot of karma building up, best you not get caught in your richly deserved portion.
But I have been held responsible for my "evil" deeds with a perfectly serene life.

I have never killed children. (Trump can't claim that.)

I have never been charged with a crime. (Trump can't claim that.)

I have never been arrested. (Trump can't claim that.)

I have never been sued. (Trump can't claim that.)

I have never been bankrupt. (Trump can't claim that.)

I have never been divorced. (Trump can't claim that.)

I have never cheated on my taxes. (Trump can't claim that.)

I also have never been audited by the IRS, but that is more because the IRS is understaffed due to the Republican Party. (Trump can't claim that. He is the guy firing IRS auditors.)

I never need Secret Service protection because nobody wants me dead. (Trump can't claim that.)

I have never been accused of rape. (Trump can't claim that. He owes $91.6 million to E. Jean Carroll.)

I have never done many things that routinely got Trump Into Trouble.

There are no bumps in my life.

Signym, have you heard of the Russian technique called But-What-About-ism? The Russians used it so that they would not have to respond to their evil deeds involving murdering tens of millions of other Russians. Or Ukrainians. It goes something like "But what about the Indians murdered by American Presidents?"

Signym, you use But-What-About-ism all the time to protect the reputation of your murderous Russians and your child murderer Trump.

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 31, 2025 6:33 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
1/2 a Million people who never belonged here Thanos Snapped out of existence.

Buh bye. None of you will be missed.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
That 1/2 million are still in the USA and very alive.


Oh. They're getting the fuck out. Every single one of them, including their children.

Fuck their children too.

And I don't mean the way you sick Democrat pedophiles do it either. That wasn't an invitation or permission for more bad behavior out of you.


Fuck you, Second.

You've lost everything.

You were warned, now pay the price bitch.

If you don't like it, you can leave with them and see if you like it better over there.


Quote:
Doge cuts to USAid blamed for 300,000 deaths — most of them children

Elon Musk’s tenure running Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency has, according to the academic Brooke Nichols, caused thousands of ‘preventable deaths’


And fuck those made up stats on kids too.

Don't pretend like you give a shit. Your party has been responsible for murdering no less than 70,000,000 babies in the US since the 1970s. And that's not theoretical. That's well documented fact. You have no moral high ground on anyone, and everybody sees that now.

Take your emotional blackmail and shove it up your well-laid ass and bounce on it. It doesn't work on anyone anymore, and using it to fuck yourself is the only use it has anymore.

Nobody wants to hear another fucking word out of you in 2025, you sick, evil, manipulative fuck.

Shut the fuck up. Forever.

You're done. You're finished.

Game Over.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
I wish to remind you that 6ixStringJack is insane. Meanwhile:

Mike Johnson stated on May 25, 2025 in a "Face the Nation" episode: “We are not cutting” the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Mike Johnson is wrong: Millions could lose SNAP benefits under GOP bill, analysts find.

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2025/may/29/mike-johnson/SNAP-re
conciliation-bill-tax-cuts-food/

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 31, 2025 6:38 AM

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


The House passed H.R. 1, dubbed the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” on May 22.

When Trump signs the bill, he will increase the National Debt by several trillion dollars.

https://www.factcheck.org/2025/05/checking-the-math-on-white-house-gop
-claims-about-big-beautiful-bill/

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 31, 2025 6:42 AM

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


What Trump is doing has been done in Hungary by Viktor Orban

https://andrewtobias.com/those-who-cannot-remember-the-past/

May 31, 2025

From Joyce Vance’s interview with Princeton Professor Kim Scheppele:

After the end of the communism in Eastern Europe in 1989, Hungary was the star pupil in the class of new democracies, quickly installing a stable multiparty democracy checked by a powerful constitutional court. Fast forward to 2010, and Viktor Orban was elected at a time when Hungary was reeling, like many countries at the time, from the global financial crisis.

As soon as he took office with a parliamentary majority big enough to allow him to amend the constitution with the votes of only his own party, Orban rewrote the entire constitution, weaponized the national budget against his opponents to destroy their ability to fight him, mass-fired many civil servants to replace them with loyalists, captured the constitutional court, brought most of the media under his control, attacked universities to eliminate academic freedom, used unlawful measures to fight immigration and eventually sidelined the parliament to govern by emergency decree. While it took the world nearly a decade to realize just how bad things were in Hungary, Orban had actually managed to capture virtually all independent institutions and destroy democracy within the first three years of his now 15-year rule.

No one who knew Hungary in the 1990s would have expected it to fall so far so fast. Hungary is now classified by virtually all observers as a “competitive authoritarian” regime, no longer a democracy.

Ring any bells?

And isn’t it odd that America’s Conservative Political Action Conference — CPAC — has convened each year since 2022 in . . . Hungary?

Professor Scheppele continues:

The U.S. is on the same path as Hungary and Venezuela, whose autocratic leaders moved very quickly to destroy their previous constitutional orders and substitute personalistic rule. In Hungary and Venezuela, wholly new constitutions were written in the first year, and now the Trump administration is trying to swiftly and radically rewrite the U.S. Constitution in the only practical way available – through channeling a whole set of constitution-remaking cases to the Supreme Court that has already been packed in an irregular fashion with Trump-supporting justices.

. . .

Don’t think it can’t happen here. We are far along a path familiar from international examples that runs from democracy to dictatorship. A solid democratic history cannot save a country from autocratic capture once the key institutions that hold the executive in check are severely damaged. And we are witnessing the destruction of those key checking institutions with alarming speed.

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 31, 2025 7:19 AM

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


Remember the 50% tariff on films? Nobody's talked about that in like a month. Remember the 50% tariff on the European Union? Everybody's forgotten about that one.

That's still stated to go on July 9th, but maybe not.

July 9th, but no, there's never been an executive order. It's just tweets. So is that real? Is that not real? Are the courts going to agree with that one? I’ve got no idea.

A court — a real court, with lifetime judges — has ruled most of Trump’s trade war unconstitutional. It is, but we’re all so cynical that nobody thought it would matter.

Another court has put a temporary hold on the order canceling most of the tariffs, although this seems to have been more procedural than a rejection of the basic conclusion.

More at "If You Don't Like Today's Tariffs, Wait A Day"

By Paul Krugman | May 31, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/an-emergency-trade-discussion-with

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 31, 2025 7:29 AM

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


Brandy Bryant @InkMasterbator
Feb 11, 2025
Canada is preparing for war with the US. Not economic, I mean boots on the ground war. Do you know what an absolute intolerable and unhinged piece of shit you have to be for CANADA to be ready to bitch slap you?

Brandy Bryant @InkMasterbator
Mar 3, 2025
My trump supporting transphobic christian uncle who said I was going to hell for being trans and needed to "Get right with god" murdered his wife and then offed himself the other night. Save me a seat down there!

Brandy Bryant @InkMasterbator
Dec 6, 2024
Elon never spends time with his kids but the day after a CEO gets shot in the streets he's father of the year hanging with his little human shield.

More at https://x.com/InkMasterbator

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 31, 2025 8:46 AM

SECOND

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


Musk drug use on campaign trail sparked concerns: Report

By Filip Timotija - 05/30/25 10:34 AM ET

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5325589-elon-musk-drug-use
-reports/

Alleged drug use by tech billionaire and close President Trump ally Elon Musk on the campaign trail during the 2024 presidential election has sparked concerns, according to an explosive New York Times report published Friday morning.

The article comes as Musk is exiting the Trump administration after a whirlwind several months in which he led efforts to cut down on the government’s size.

Musk told people he was using ketamine so often that it was impacting his bladder, along with utilizing psychedelic mushrooms and taking ecstasy, the Times reported.

The tech executive, who was advising the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) panel on federal government cost-cutting measures, would travel every day with a box containing 20 pills, the Times said, citing individuals who have seen the box and the photo of it. Some of the pills were marked as Adderall.

Musk has said previously that he has a prescription for ketamine.

The billionaire, who heads six companies, spent well north of $250 million to help Trump get elected in November last year. One of those companies is SpaceX, an aerospace firm, that is a significant contractor with the federal government. Because of that government relationship, SpaceX has to maintain a drug-free workplace. The paper reported Musk has gotten advanced warnings of SpaceX drug tests, citing individuals close to the process.

The Times reporting included interviews with dozens of individuals Musk worked with or knew, along with obtaining private messages. Musk and his attorney did not respond to requests for comment sent by the outlet.

When asked on Friday if he was concerned about Musk’s alleged drug use, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told reporters that “the drugs that we’re concerned about are the drugs running across the southern border.”

Musk announced Wednesday that he would be departing the White House as his 130-day period as a special government employee expires.

The world’s richest person criticized the House GOP budget bill, which contains Trump’s legislative agenda, saying the legislation undercuts the work DOGE has done in the past four months.

“I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit … and it undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk said in an interview with “CBS Sunday Morning.”

Trump, who earlier this week shrugged off Musk’s criticism of the bill, said Thursday night that he will hold a press event Friday with Musk at 1:30 p.m. EDT.

“This will be his last day, but not really, because he will, always, be with us, helping all the way. Elon is terrific! See you tomorrow at the White House,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

According to the Times, some of Musk’s friends have severed ties with the tech billionaire over his public behavior.

“Elon has pushed the boundaries of his bad behavior more and more,” Philip Low, a neuroscientist, told The Times.

The Wall Street Journal reported in January 2024 that Musk has used cocaine, LSD, psychedelic mushrooms and ecstasy at private parties, prompting concerns from board members and executives at SpaceX and Tesla.

“After that one puff with Rogan, I agreed, at NASA’s request, to do 3 years of random drug testing,” Musk wrote in a social media post shortly after that article was published. “Not even trace quantities were found of any drugs or alcohol. @WSJ is not fit to line a parrot cage for bird [poop emoji].”

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 31, 2025 9:13 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Nobody wants to hear another fucking word out of you in 2025, you sick, evil, manipulative fuck.

Shut the fuck up. Forever.

You're done. You're finished.

Game Over.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Trump Taps Palantir to Create Master Database on Every American

Trump’s dystopian plan is already underway.

By Hafiz Rashid | May 30, 2025 10:22 a.m. ET

https://newrepublic.com/post/195904/trump-palantir-data-americans

This is literally Big Brother from dystopian fiction. Literally.

******

Palantir: How Tech Bros Misread Tolkien

Apr 21, 2025

https://informedalarmist.substack.com/p/palantir-how-tech-bros-misread
-tolkien

In J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, the Palantiri were magical orbs that could give their users a vision of something taking place far away. Only very powerful and capable beings, such as Saruman the wizard, Denethor the leader of Gondor, and the big baddie Sauron were able to use these seeing stones. But even the very wise could be deceived by what they saw, and using a Palantir led to their downfall.

For a nerd such as myself, the Palantiri are a sinister symbol of hubris and a tool of manipulation. So a red flag went up as soon as I heard about a company called Palantir Technologies, a data analytics and surveillance company that primarily works with the military, immigration control and intelligence communities. I was incredulous that anyone would name their data mining company after a tool that promises foresight but ultimately leads to ruin.

And then I realized that Palantir is one of Peter Thiel’s companies.

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

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Sunday, June 1, 2025 5:33 AM

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


Reverse Robin Hood - The Seven Ugliest Provisions in Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’

The Trumpy tax bill that's headed to the Senate has many nasty surprises

By Tim Dickinson | May 31, 2025

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-tax-bill
-big-beautiful-seven-ugly-provisions-2025-1235351717/

Donald Trump’s “Big Beautiful Bill” is a reverse-Robin Hood nightmare. It steals from the poor to give to the rich. The 1,038-page version that passed the House will also balloon the deficit by nearly $4 trillion.

The Trump tax bill achieves this feat by extending (and in many cases expanding) tax breaks for the richest Americans, while at the same time depriving more than 10 million Americans of health insurance and regular access to their doctors, by axing $880 billion from Medicaid. It also increases red tape for Obamacare, while allowing other subsidies to lapse, boxing millions more out of their insurance.

The bill is regressive as a matter of tax policy. It will reduce the take-home incomes of bottom 10 percent of income earners by four percent by the end of the decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projects. Penn Wharton, Trump’s alma mater, finds that most households earning less than $51,000 will immediately see their after-tax income decrease. Meanwhile, the bill boosts the incomes of the top one percent by nearly $70,000 in the first year alone, giving that elite cohort a collective $124 billion net tax cut.

The Trump bill sorta makes good on Trump’s campaign sales gimmicks — offering temporary, three-year tax breaks on tips (cost: $40 billion); the extra income earned from overtime ($124 billion); and auto loan interest ($58 billion); while also offering a tax credit to seniors, meant as an offset of taxes on Social Security income ($72 billion).

But as passed by the House, the tax bill also has many ugly provisions. Some are related to taxes, like the abolition of taxes on gun silencers, or ending tax incentives for clean energy and cars. Others are just completely extraneous, like language prohibiting state- and local regulation of artificial intelligence for 10 years.

Below is a survey of seven terrible tricks up the sleeves of the Big Beautiful Bill:

1) Undermining the Rule of Law

A provision slipped into the House bill, unrelated to taxes, would have a major impact on the courts and the rule of law. It blocks any funding to enforce contempt of court orders. This, in turn, could enable the Trump administration to flout the rulings of judges without consequence. Erwin Chemerinsky, a professor of law as the University of California, is sounding the alarm that this is an affront to the basic functioning of our democracy. He writes in a post at Just Security that “nothing could be done” to enforce injunctions against the executive branch were this provision to become law — “even when the government had been found to violate the Constitution.” In fact, he adds, “the greatest effect of adopting the provision would be to make countless existing judicial orders unenforceable.” These concerns are ripe because the Trump administration’s countless illegal executive orders and actions keep getting turned back in court, and the administration’s compliance — as with falling to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from the gulag in El Salvador, as directed by the Supreme Court — has been irregular at best.

2) Rewarding Rich Homeowners

Rich people in blue states have cause to laud the Big Beautiful Bill. It quadruples a tax break that one analysis finds “Overwhelmingly Benefits Wealthy, White Households.” We are talking here about the state and local tax, or SALT, deduction. The tax break has some logic. It is intended to keep folks from having to pay federal taxes on the tax dollars they owe to governments closer to home. The 2017 Trump tax bill limited the deductibility of these payments — once unlimited — to $10,000, to help pay for its sweeping tax cuts for the rich and corporations. That partially preserved a break that’s a boon to middle-class homeowners in blue states with high property taxes, including the Northeast or the West Coast, while stripping it from the vacation home and private-school set.

High earners in states from New Jersey to California have since bridled against the SALT deduction limit, arguing it’s a form of double taxation, and have won over political allies in both parties. Inside the House GOP, a group of lawmakers calling themselves the “very salty” five held up the Trump bill until the SALT deduction was boosted to $40,000 and made available to couples earning up to half-a-million dollars a year.

3) A Boondoggle for Private Schools

On the charitable giving side of the tax act, the House Bill creates a back-door subsidy for private school vouchers. Rich people who donate to nonprofits that hand out vouchers to private K-12 schools will now receive not a tax deduction — usually capped at 35 cents off taxes for every one dollar donated — but a tax credit. Every dollar donated is counted as a dollar paid in taxes. This tax credit not only applies to the value of cash donations, but the market value of stocks. In many cases — as outlined here — donors would be able to reap a greater return on their investments by donating stock that has appreciated in value, and reaping the tax benefits, than by selling the investment and then owing capital gains taxes. The value of this incentive is estimated at $23 billion over 10 years, with the administration subsidizing the flight from public education at the same time it aims to eliminate the federal Department of Education.

4) Leave No Heir Behind

No GOP tax bill would be complete without a giveaway to the scions of billionaire families. The Republican Party has long demonized the estate tax as the “death tax,” inveighing against it as a threat to salt-of-the-earth family farmers. Thanks to Trump’s first tax bill, the estate tax exemption currently stands at nearly $27 million for couples, but is due to fall to about half that, absent a change in the law. The “Big Beautiful Bill” indexes the current exemption to inflation and makes the tax break permanent. A rich couple will be able to pass on $30 million to their descendants without paying a penny of tax next year. According to a letter from Americans for Tax Fairness, “this handout to lucky heirs and heiresses will cost over $200 billion in lost revenue over 10 years.”

5) Shortchange Kids of Immigrants

A MAGA tax bill needs some anti-immigrant juice. And the Big Beautiful Bill provides that by limiting availability of the child tax credit to only citizen children with a citizen parent. The child tax credit is currently available to children with Social Security numbers, so long as their parents have a taxpayer identification number, given to immigrants who pay taxes. The BBB would increase the value of the credit to $2,500, but require that the parent or parents claiming the credit also have Social Security numbers, as a proxy for citizenship status. The change is expected to disqualify nearly two million citizen children in mixed-status households from this vital government support.

6) No Insurance for You!

One of the most controversial changes in the Big Beautiful Bill is to impose a work requirement on supposedly “able-bodied” adults to maintain eligibility for Medicaid, the government health insurance program for low-income and disabled Americans. The requirement is spelled out as 80 hours a month of work or volunteering. The implementation is left up to states, some of which are committed to expanding health coverage, but others which have long been ideologically opposed. Enrollees must often navigate a maze of forms and bureaucratic hurdles to establish and maintain eligibility — even before this new work requirement — because Medicaid contains strict income caps. Recipients must prove they are, in fact, poor. The Big Beautiful Bill however adds insult to injury. People who are kicked off Medicaid by failing to navigate the requirements around work and work-reporting, will be punished by becoming ineligible for subsidies for individual insurance plans sold under Obamacare. By design, the Trumpy Medicaid changes will eliminate coverage for 10.3 million people, according to the CBO.

7) Work for Your Supper

Work requirements are fetishized throughout the Big Beautiful Bill, and also apply to recipients of SNAP, the acronym for the federal food assistance program. As passed, the House bill would expand work requirements in SNAP on adults up to the age of 65. (Current work requirements phase out at 55). It would also require parents with children as young as eight to work outside the house, turning another generation of young poor children into latchkey kids. According to modeling by the Urban league, the Big Beautiful Bill — which so richly rewards billionaires and their heirs — would be financed in part by taking food out of the mouths of hungry families. As many as 2.7 million households would lose food benefits, with the average blow to the family grocery budget totaling $254 a month.

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

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Sunday, June 1, 2025 6:00 AM

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


DOGE is on track to cost taxpayers more money than it saved

Elon Musk took a chainsaw to his brand and reputation with nothing to show for it.

By Zachary B. Wolf | 4:00 AM EDT, Fri May 30, 2025

https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/30/politics/doge-musk-government-savings

Despite everything DOGE claimed to do, government outlays are on track to rise by 9% in 2025 compared with 2024.

“Chainsaws and bluster can’t solve the yawning gap between revenue and spending that has led American debt to rise to unsustainable levels,” Stevenson said.

In total, estimates suggest that what has been spent to generate these cuts may be as great as the cuts. In the long run, it’s not clear that DOGE generated any savings. DOGE cuts could end up costing the US $135 billion simply because it will need to retrain and rehire elements of the work force that have been let go.

While Musk has promised maximum transparency, it has been impossible to verify much of what DOGE has said it has done.

We expect the government to show receipts. And the receipts that DOGE has shown that are posted publicly are nonetheless woefully inadequate to back their claims.

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

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Sunday, June 1, 2025 6:01 AM

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


Trump Praises Musk’s DOGE For Ending Studies on ‘Making Mice Transgender’ – Which Were Actually Asthma and Cancer Research

By Alex Griffing | May 30th, 2025, 3:48 pm

https://www.mediaite.com/politics/trump-praises-musks-doge-for-ending-
studies-on-making-mice-transgender-which-were-actually-asthma-and-cancer-research/

Trump’s claim about the government funding studies on “making mice transgendered” was widely debunked in early March as Trump also made the claim during his address to Congress at the time. Outlets from CBS to PBS to Rolling Stone all ran fact checks that rebutted the claim. “Trump Decried Millions Spent ‘Making Mice Transgender.’ It Was Cancer and Asthma Research,” blared Rolling Stone’s headline at the time.

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

Your semi-regular reminder that if your concern with trans women is that men might claim to self-ID as trans to gain access to women's spaces and assault them, then your problem is actually with predatory men and not trans women.

https://x.com/harriet1marsden/status/1207964296820461575

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

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Sunday, June 1, 2025 12:59 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Don't you have anything better to do on Sunday, faggot?

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

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

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Monday, June 2, 2025 7:12 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Don't you have anything better to do on Sunday, faggot?

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Trump to give away the land run by the National Park Service because he is an asshole:

Trump Plans to Offload National Park Sites, But States Don’t Want Them

By Bobby Magill | June 2, 2025

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-plans-to-offload-nationa
l-park-sites-but-states-don-t-want-them/ar-AA1FUI9V

(Bloomberg) — Florida's Big Cypress National Preserve sprawls north from Everglades National Park over 729,000 acres of swamp, an ancient forest that protects the endangered Florida panther and the pristine waters of the Everglades — the source of drinking water for millions of south Floridians.

About 2.2 million people visited last year, roughly three times the number at Everglades National Park, according to National Park Service data. The preserve and others like it are "typically the places where the local people enjoy the most," said Neal McAliley, an environmental lawyer at Carlton Fields in Miami and a former environmental litigator at the Justice Department.

The Trump administration may walk away from Big Cypress and some other national monuments, historical parks, battlefields and protected areas that aren't among the 63 with "national park" in their name.

The White House is proposing to cut about $1.2 billion from the NPS's budget, including $900 million from park operations, mainly by shedding sites that it considers too obscure or too local to merit federal management, transferring these to states and tribal governments. But some states with large numbers of such sites — there are roughly 370 in total — warn that they can't afford to manage and staff them, either, and that some could end up closing.

"It takes about 350 parks to wipe out in order to get $900 million in budget savings," said Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association. "So it's everything from battlefields to seashores, to recreation areas to monuments."

The stakes are high: Big Cypress as well as Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area, in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, protect their regions' drinking water supplies. Park Service staff at Cape Hatteras National Seashore in North Carolina keep the sand on Outer Banks beaches in place and the islands from eroding away. Dozens of NPS locations preserve American history, from the birthplaces of Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln to Gettysburg National Military Park and the Flight 93 National Memorial in Pennsylvania.

It's not clear who wants the national park system to be trimmed, other than the White House and some conservative groups who say the plan promotes federalism. But even some Republicans who are eager to see other federal lands developed or taken over aren't necessarily excited about breaking up the national park system.

Much more at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-plans-to-offload-nationa
l-park-sites-but-states-don-t-want-them/ar-AA1FUI9V

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

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Monday, June 2, 2025 1:51 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Don't you have anything better to do on Sunday, faggot?

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

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


Shut up, faggot.

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

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

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Tuesday, June 3, 2025 7:02 AM

SECOND

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


We Are No Longer a Serious Country

By Paul Krugman | Jun 3, 2025 at 5:37 AM

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/we-are-no-longer-a-serious-country

“If you’re explaining, you’re losing.” This line is usually attributed to Ronald Reagan. Whoever said it definitely had a point, and not just about politics. If you’re trying to explain to people, be they voters or bond investors, that you aren’t really as bad or untrustworthy as you seem, you’re already in deep trouble.

So when I saw Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, declaring Sunday that “The United States of America is never going to default, that is never going to happen,” my reaction was, “Uh-oh.”

And it’s not just me. For generations investors have treated U.S. government debt as the ultimate safe asset. Whenever disaster strikes — even if it’s disaster largely made in America, like the 2008 subprime crisis — bond buyers pile into U.S. Treasuries, because America is a serious country, and the idea that we would fail to honor our debts was unthinkable.

But are we still that country? Markets seem to have doubts.

Yesterday the Financial Times had a neat chart showing that there used to be a clear relationship between U.S. interest rates and the international value of the dollar. Actually, the chart was a bit too neat: When I set out to reproduce it, I found that the FT chose a time period during which the relationship looked especially clear. Still, it used to be true that when U.S. interest rates rose, so did the dollar, because higher yields pulled in foreign capital. But since Donald Trump returned to power, that relationship has broken down. Instead, we’ve seen a combination of rising interest rates and a falling dollar:


As many have noted, what we’ve been seeing in recent months, with interest rates and the dollar moving in opposite directions, doesn’t look like what we normally see in the United States, or for that matter advanced nations in general. Instead, it’s the kind of thing one sees in emerging markets, where big market moves often reflect crises of confidence: International investors lose faith, pulling their money out, and capital flight causes both a falling currency and rising interest rates.

Here, for example, is what Mexico looked like during the “tequila crisis” of 1994-5, which involved both soaring interest rates and a plunging peso:

Why are markets beginning to treat America as unreliable? It’s not just the debt numbers. Yes, we have large debts, but we’re an immensely wealthy country that, among other things, has lower average taxes than most of our peers. So we certainly have the resources to honor our debts.

But do we have the political will? Maybe even more important, do we have the political seriousness?

Like many economists, I’ve spent a lot of time analyzing the substance of Trump’s tariffs — how much they are likely to raise prices and reduce trade volumes. I’ve also written about the impacts of policy uncertainty, about how hard it is for businesses to make plans when they have little idea what tariff rates will be even a few months from now, let alone over the next few years.

But I wonder whether we’ve spent enough time looking at the policy process — how decisions get made in Trump’s America. Consider: On April 2, “Liberation Day,” Trump announced extremely high tariffs on many countries, the biggest tariff hike in U.S. history. The tariff rates — which differed hugely from country to country — were determined by a formula universally panned as stupid and ridiculous. And this tariff announcement was made with so little planning and forethought that it included taxes on imports from remote islands inhabited only by penguins.

Then, a week later, these tariffs were replaced by a completely different set of tariffs. How did that happen? Two of Trump’s cabinet members were able to beard him in the Oval Office while Peter Navarro, responsible for the original tariffs, was in another meeting.

Does this sound like policymaking in a serious country?

Then there’s the budget bill making its way through Congress. It’s a terrible thing, imposing savage cuts on social programs (and decimating U.S. science) while giving such big tax cuts to the wealthy that it will explode the deficit. But content aside, notice that this hugely important piece of legislation is being rushed through with essentially no hearings or analysis.

And when outsiders, including the Congressional Budget Office and a variety of think tanks — conservative and centrist as well as progressive — have put out the analyses the bill’s sponsors won’t, pointing out the likely effects on debt, health coverage, and so on, the G.O.P. response has basically been to accuse all of the independent analysts of being part of a globalist conspiracy.

Wait, it gets worse. The name of the legislation — not its nickname, its official title — is the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, because that’s what Trump has been calling it. Are we a mature republic with a normal head of state, or are we being ruled by Kim Jong Un in orange makeup?

Why, next thing you’ll be telling me that key policy decisions, leading to layoffs of hundreds of thousands of federal workers and many deaths around the world, have been made by a presidential crony whose erratic behavior may have reflected massive consumption of ketamine, Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms. Oh, wait.

Imagine yourself as a foreigner considering investing in the United States. You may well know that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act contains a “revenge” provision that would allow the U.S. government to impose extra taxes on foreign investors whose home countries have policies America doesn’t like. You probably know that one of Trump’s advisers has suggested the forced conversion of short-term debt into century bonds. Once upon a time everyone would have dismissed these things as stuff that couldn’t happen in America. Now? Who knows?

In a way, the amazing thing is that we haven’t seen even more capital flight. Presumably investors still can’t believe that America has changed so much from the responsible, reliable nation it seemed to be just a few months ago.

But I think they’re headed for a rude awakening.

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

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Tuesday, June 3, 2025 11:42 AM

SECOND

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


A useful one-sentence guide to the second Trump administration might go something like this: A lot happens under Donald Trump, but a lot un-happens, too.

In the past four months, President Trump has announced tariffs on Canada, paused tariffs on Canada, restarted tariffs on Canada, ruled out tariffs on certain Canadian goods, and then ruled in, and even raised, tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum.

And that’s just for starters. On April 2, so-called Liberation Day, Trump announced a broader set of tariffs on almost every country in the world. Soon after, the plan was half-suspended. Then Trump announced a new set of elevated tariffs on China, from which he backtracked as well. Next the courts, as often happens, took over the job of erasing the president’s previously announced policies. Last week, a trade court struck down the president’s entire Liberation Day tariff regime as unconstitutional, only for a federal circuit court to reinstate the tariffs shortly thereafter. Now a higher court has the opportunity to do the funniest thing: undo the undoing of the undoing of the tariffs, which have been in a permanent state of being undone ever since they were created.

Got all that? No, you most certainly do not, and neither does anybody else. Economists and corporate executives I’ve interviewed to understand future tariff policy have communicated to me a combination of confusion, fury, and resignation. Commentators have noticed the chaos too, of course. Observing how frequently Trump seems to back out of his own brinkmanship, the Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong memorably deemed this trend TACO, or “Trump Always Chickens Out.”

Un-happening doesn’t affect just trade and economic policy. In the realm of foreign policy, the Trump administration paused intelligence sharing with Ukraine after the ignominious on-camera spat between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Vice President J. D. Vance. Trump went further, claiming that Ukraine had started the war and that Zelensky was a dictator—raising the prospect that the administration was on the verge of explicitly aligning with Russia. Days later, the administration reversed course and resumed intelligence sharing and security assistance. Trump has since attacked Russian President Vladimir Putin for being “absolutely CRAZY!”

Un-happening also affects media, immigration, science, and education policy. Judges have ruled that the administration improperly froze grant money, inappropriately blocked the Associated Press from the White House press pool, and illegally sought to place sanctions on law firms that have done work, or employed lawyers, that Trump found unsuitable. On immigration, judges have blocked several of the administration’s measures, including its invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to remove migrants and its attempt to bar Harvard’s international students. Federal judges have blocked so much of the Trump agenda that White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has described the constitutional balance of power as a form of “judicial tyranny.” “I know this is inflammatory,” Vance said in an interview with The New York Times, “but I think you are seeing an effort by the courts to quite literally overturn the will of the American people.”

The administration’s claims to monarchical power are a real threat to America’s constitutional order. But its executive orders and policy feints are so haphazard and poorly articulated that they amount to a kind of autocratic takeover written in smudge-able crayon: terrifying, cartoonish, and vulnerable to erasure, all at once.

This is not to say that Americans should ignore Trump’s efforts to make confetti of the Constitution. Rather, when evaluating any one Trump policy, one has to keep front of mind the possibility that it simply won’t exist by the end of the week. Despite an energetic effort by some right-wing intellectuals to make Trump out to be some kind of 14-dimensional-chess player, his approach doesn’t resemble chess so much as a denial-of-service attack on a functioning government.

All this un-happening shows both the upside and the downside of Trump’s political instincts. The president’s slippery relationship to his own policy agenda can serve as a kind of superpower, as Ross Douthat wrote in The New York Times. The TACO reputation is “crucial to Trump’s political resilience,” because “the willingness to swerve and backpedal and contradict himself is a big part of what keeps the president viable.” The constant backtracking gives Trump the ability to both bend the Constitution to its breaking point and always step back to claim that “anything extreme is also provisional,” Douthat wrote. Indeed, Trump’s approval rating for trade has rebounded since its Liberation Day implosion, according to several polls.

Questions of popularity aside, however, businesses tend to prefer certainty over promises and threats that keep disappearing. At some point, Trump’s pledge to reinvigorate American industry and energy will require fat investments in factories and supply chains. Multi-hundred-million-dollar investments require clear expectations of financial return. Those aren’t going to happen in a world where each policy idea boasts a half-life of 48 hours. Steve Bannon coined one of the most famous Trump-world truisms when he revealed MAGA’s media strategy to “flood the zone with shit.” Far stranger, however, is the administration’s insistence on flooding the policy zone with Schrödinger’s cats—executive orders and Truth Social posts that exist in a liminal state among existence, nonexistence, and imminent radioactive decay.

The substantive problem with the MAGA agenda isn’t just that too much is happening for any median voter to follow; it’s that too much is un-happening for employers, investors, and consumers to know what the hell to do about it.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/06/trump-self-destru
ctive-agenda/683013/

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

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Tuesday, June 3, 2025 1:16 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Shut up, faggot.

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

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

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Tuesday, June 3, 2025 2:27 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
"Disgusting Abomination": Elon Musk Slams "Massive, Outrageous, Pork-Filled" Bill As Trump Goes After Rand Paul
Tuesday, Jun 03, 2025 - 11:00 AM

With whatever savings DOGE may have achieved about to become a drop of piss in the ocean by the "Big Beautiful Bill" - which codifies exactly zero of DOGE's cost-saving efforts, raises the debt limit by $5 trillion, and increases the deficit by $2.5 trillion over 10 years (per CRFB) - former DOGE head Elon Musk pulled no punches on Tuesday, calling the legislation a "massive, outrageous, pork-filled" abomination.

"I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore," Musk wrote on X.

"This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination."

In a subsequent tweet, Musk wrote "Congress is making America bankrupt"

When asked about Musk's comments, the White House deflected...

Trump vs. Rand

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump on Tuesday slammed Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) after Paul appeared on CNBC's "Squawk Box," saying he's "just not open to supporting $5 trillion ... in debt ceiling increase.

Trump hit back, writing on Truth Social: "He loves voting ‘NO’ on everything, he thinks it’s good politics, but it’s not."

In a subsequent post, Trump attacked Paul again, writing that he "never has any practical or constructive ideas," adding "His ideas are actually crazy (losers!). The people of Kentucky can’t stand him. This is a BIG GROWTH BILL!"

As author and commentator Tom Woods wrote of Trump's decision to attack Paul:

Rand Paul has defended Donald Trump at times when other Republicans ran and hid.

All through Russiagate, Rand insisted the whole thing was a witch hunt and that Trump was innocent.

During the first impeachment trial, Rand emerged as one of Trump's staunchest defenders in the Senate. Same for the second such trial, which Rand denounced as "absurd" and "political theater."

He defended Trump against campaign finance allegations in 2018.

Establishment left and right alike went after Trump in 2019 for his Syria withdrawal, and at that moment when the President needed allies, Rand supported him.

Likewise for Trump's 2018 summit with Vladimir Putin. Said Rand:

"Yes, the vast majority of the foreign policy community, the bipartisan consensus said you shouldn't meet with Putin. They also said he shouldn't meet with Kim and this is an extraordinary thing about President Trump that should be lauded and not belittled is that he is willing to meet with adversaries to try to prevent us from having World War III."

So you'd think the response to all that would be to say: thanks, Rand, for all the support, especially when it was most difficult to stand in my corner and other Republicans had abandoned me. Now let's see if we can address your concerns.

In short, not great!


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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Tuesday, June 3, 2025 3:10 PM

SECOND

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


We are witnessing the suicide of a superpower

The president’s assault on science dangerously undermines America’s superpower status.

By Max Boot | June 3, 2025 at 6:00 a.m. EDT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/06/02/trump-science-cuts/

On June 14 — the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army and, not so coincidentally, the 79th birthday of President Donald Trump — a gaudy display of U.S. military power will parade through Washington. No doubt Trump thinks that all of the tanks and soldiers on display will make America, and its president, look tough and strong.

But the planned spectacle is laughably hollow. Even as the president wants to showcase U.S. military power, he is doing grave and possibly irreparable damage to the real sources of U.S. strength, including its long-term investment in scientific research. Trump is declaring war on science, and the casualty will be the U.S. economy.

Since the 1940s, when the University of Chicago, Columbia University and the University of California played a central role in the Manhattan Project, the engine driving U.S. economic and military competitiveness has been federal support of research universities. That partnership has produced most of the key inventions of the information age, including the internet, GPS, smartphones and artificial intelligence.

Federal support of university research has also made possible the success of the United States’ world-leading biotechnology and pharmaceutical industries. Advances enabled by federal support include magnetic resonance imaging, the Human Genome Project, LASIK surgery, weight-loss drugs such as Ozempic, and drugs that have saved countless AIDS and covid-19 patients.

Now Trump is sabotaging a research and development pipeline that is the envy of the world. The Trump budget would cut the National Science Foundation budget by 55 percent. Already, the U.S. DOGE Service has terminated more than 1,600 active grants from the foundation, worth $1.5 billion. According to the New York Times, the science foundation’s grants this year are being disbursed at the slowest pace in at least 35 years. The NSF directly supports 357,600 researchers and students; many of them will now be out of luck.

It’s a similar story at the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who subscribes to an array of crackpot health theories, has already reduced the HHS workforce by 10,000 people with buyouts or early retirements, and now he intends to lay off an additional 10,000. Adding insult to injury, Kennedy wants to prohibit government scientists from publishing in the leading peer-reviewed journals. “CDC clobbered,” one official told The Post. “The agency will not be able to function. Let’s be honest.”

These budget cuts are hitting hard at America’s — and the world’s — leading research universities: Johns Hopkins is losing $800 million; Columbia, $400 million; the University of Pennsylvania, $175 million. No school has suffered more than Harvard University, which has lost more than $2.6 billion in federal funds.

Indeed, Trump says he wants to eliminate all of Harvard’s federal contracts and give the money to trade schools. This is populism gone crazy. Valuable as trade schools are, they will not be making breakthroughs in fighting Alzheimer’s disease, cancer, strokes, sickle cell anemia or other diseases that are being researched at Harvard.

Then there is the administration’s assault on foreign students. Trump tried to kick all international students out of Harvard — an order halted by a federal judge Thursday. Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has vowed to retaliate against U.S. allies that censor free speech, has sought to expel foreign students for expressing views he dislikes about the war in Gaza. The State Department announced last week that it was temporarily halting all interviews for foreign-student visas, and Rubio said the agency would “aggressively revoke” visas of Chinese students in the United States “with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.”

As The Post noted, about 100 million people belong to the Chinese Communist Party, most for careerist rather than ideological reasons. And of the 277,398 Chinese students currently studying at U.S. universities, more than 110,000 are pursuing degrees in math, science and engineering — all areas of weakness for the U.S. educational system. Expelling a substantial number of foreign students, who typically pay full tuition, would deal another heavy blow to universities already reeling from federal budget cuts.

It isn’t just universities that benefit from the presence of foreign students — so does the entire country. According to the Association of International Educators, the more than 1.1 million international students in the United States create about $44 billion in economic activity and 378,000 jobs. And then there are the benefits they deliver after they graduate, assuming they are allowed to stay in this country. The National Foundation for American Policy reports that one-quarter of all billion-dollar U.S. start-ups have a founder who attended a U.S. university as an international student.

The United States’ competitors are salivating at the prospect of gaining an edge in technological competition at our expense. France, Australia and Canada are throwing out the welcome mat to scientists who can no longer do their work in the United States. But the biggest beneficiary is likely to be China. Even before the Trump cutbacks, China was already catching up to the United States in scientific spending; its research and development budget has been growing by an average of 8.9 percent a year, compared with just 4.7 percent in the United States.

In March, Beijing announced a $138 billion government fund that will invest in cutting-edge fields such as AI, quantum computing and hydrogen energy.

So while China is investing to win the economic (and potentially military) contests of the future, Trump is undercutting long-term U.S. military and economic competitiveness with his anti-intellectual animus. The weapons systems that will be paraded in Washington on June 14 won’t be of much help to the United States in the future if it falls behind in the R&D race with China. I fear we may be seeing, as suggested by China expert Rush Doshi, the suicide of a superpower.

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

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Tuesday, June 3, 2025 3:57 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Shut up, faggot.

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

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

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Wednesday, June 4, 2025 5:36 AM

SECOND

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


Setting up an American Reichstag fire

By Joel Eissenberg | June 3, 2025 8:14 am

https://angrybearblog.com/2025/06/setting-up-an-american-reichstag-fir
e

Under Trump, The Fight Against Extremist Violence Is Left Up To The States

The Department of Homeland Security was created in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, ostensibly to consolidate and coordinate anti-terrorist activities previously housed in several different federal agencies. We can debate whether DHS has been an unalloyed good, but it at least paid lip service to the notion that the federal government has an important role to play in national security.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel has led high-profile prosecutions of far-right militants, including the kidnapping plot targeting the governor. “The federal government used to prioritize domestic terrorism, and now it’s like domestic terrorism just went away overnight,” Nessel told the audience. “I don’t think that we’re going to get much in the way of cooperation anymore.”

Across the country, other state-level security officials and violence prevention advocates have reached the same conclusion. In interviews with ProPublica, they described the federal government as retreating from the fight against extremist violence, which for years the FBI has deemed the most lethal and active domestic concern. States say they are now largely on their own to confront the kind of hate-fueled threats that had turned Temple Israel into a fortress.

The White House is redirecting counterterrorism personnel and funds toward President Donald Trump’s sweeping deportation campaign, saying the southern border is the greatest domestic security threat facing the country. Millions in budget cuts have gutted terrorism-related law enforcement training and shut down studies tracking the frequency of attacks. Trump and his deputies have signaled that the Justice Department’s focus on violent extremism is over, starting with the president’s clemency order for militants charged in the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

One doesn’t have to be paranoid or conspiracy-minded to see where this can lead. Redirecting counterterrorism activities to states and shifting DHS efforts away from terrorism and to deportation makes the US more vulnerable to another 9/11. Next time, it won’t be weaponized commercial airlines, but attacks on energy infrastructure, water supplies or release of a pandemic agent. That would provide the Trump Administration with the excuse to invoke martial law, just as Hitler used the Reichstag fire to pass new laws curtailing civil liberties in Germany. And we know where that led.

More at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/the-federal-government-is-gone-unde
r-trump-the-fight-against-extremist-violence-is-left-up-to-the-states

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

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Wednesday, June 4, 2025 6:26 AM

SECOND

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


FEMA is not prepared

Citizens could be on their own this hurricane season.

By David A. Graham | June 3, 2025, 6:12 PM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/06/fema-preparati
on-hurricane-season-richardson/683025/

Who manages the disaster if the disaster managers are the disaster?

That’s a question that the people of the United States may have to answer soon. As hurricane season begins in the U.S., the Federal Emergency Management Agency is in disarray.

Reuters reported yesterday that acting FEMA head David Richardson suggested during a meeting with employees that he was unaware of the very existence of a hurricane season. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security dismissed the report: “Despite meanspirited attempts to falsely frame a joke as policy, there is no uncertainty about what FEMA will be doing this Hurricane Season.” The spokesperson added, “FEMA is shifting from bloated, DC-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors to provide relief for their citizens.”

FEMA employees, and Americans at large, might be forgiven for having doubts. Richardson has only been on the job since early May, when his predecessor was abruptly fired after telling Congress he did not believe that FEMA should be eliminated, as President Donald Trump has contemplated. Richardson is a Marine veteran who had been leading the DHS office that seeks to prevent attacks on the U.S. involving weapons of mass destruction, but he has no experience with disaster management. The Wall Street Journal reported that he had expressed surprise at how broad FEMA’s remit is. (The last time FEMA was led by an administrator whose profession was not emergency management was the mid-2000s, under Michael Brown. If you don’t know how that turned out, I recommend my colleague Vann R. Newkirk II’s award-winning podcast on Hurricane Katrina, Floodlines.)

But Richardson surely is aware of hurricane season. In mid-May, CNN obtained an internal document warning that FEMA was badly behind schedule. “As FEMA transforms to a smaller footprint, the intent for this hurricane season is not well understood, thus FEMA is not ready,” it read. (DHS, which oversees FEMA, said the information was “grossly out of context.”) To calm worries at the agency, Richardson held a conference call. “I would say we’re about 80 or 85 percent there,” he told staff, according to ABC News. “The next week, we will close that gap and get to probably 97 to 98 percent of a plan. We’ll never have 100 percent of a plan.”

That was not the most reassuring answer, and it looks worse now. The Journal reports that in the same meeting yesterday where Richardson suggested unfamiliarity with hurricane season, he also said the agency would return to its 2024 hurricane-preparedness strategy. How that will work is anyone’s guess, given that FEMA has already slashed programs and staff since last year’s hurricane season. (FEMA responded to my request for comment with DHS’s statement, but did not answer specific questions or make any official available for an interview.)

FEMA is not a large part of the federal government by budget or staff, but it is an important one because it directly affects the lives of ordinary Americans in their worst moments. Washington can seem distant and abstract, but disasters are not, and as Hurricane Helene last year demonstrated, even people living in supposed “climate havens” are susceptible to extreme weather.

In the aftermath of Helene, Trump grasped the widespread public fury at FEMA, which storm victims felt was not responsive enough, fast enough. (Major disasters are major, and even the best-managed response is going to be slower than anyone wants, but no one seems to think this was the best-managed response.) As a candidate, he was quick to say that the Biden administration should do more, but since becoming president again, he has taken steps to ensure that FEMA can and will do less.

FEMA is also making recovery harder for the victims of past disasters. In April, the agency declined to declare a major disaster in Washington State, which would free up funding for recovery from a bomb cyclone in November 2024; the state’s entire congressional delegation pleaded with him to reconsider. DHS also denied North Carolina more funding for cleanup after Helene, which Governor Josh Stein estimated would cost state taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. The president also refused individual federal assistance to nine Arkansas counties struck by tornadoes in March, only reversing the decision after Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who served as press secretary in Trump’s first administration, called the president directly.

In the post-FEMA future that Trump has floated, states would be responsible for all disaster recovery. Some conservatives have long argued that states need to shoulder more responsibility for smaller disasters, but most states (and territories such as Puerto Rico) simply don’t have the resources to respond to large-scale disasters like Helene. This is, after all, one reason the 13 colonies united in the first place: for mutual aid and protection. The federal government has much greater resources and, unlike most states, is not required to balance its budget annually. That makes it a crucial financial backstop. As Brock Long, who led FEMA during Trump’s first term, told me last year, “All disasters are locally executed, state managed, and federally supported.”

FEMA has not, generally, been a partisan agency. Administrators may have different political views, but they try to provide help without consideration for politics. I’ve spoken with several administrators over the years, and they are consistently professional, don’t take wildly differing approaches to their work, and are dedicated to emergency response. When an employee at FEMA was caught telling workers not to help people with Trump signs in their yards, it was rightly a scandal. Yet in his first term, Trump himself reportedly withheld or delayed disaster funds in multiple cases based on partisanship. His reversal on assistance for Arkansas residents raises the specter of a future in which only states whose governors are close to Trump can hope to obtain relief.

And yet if FEMA isn’t prepared for hurricane season, doesn’t have sufficient staff, and is laboring under a president who would like to see it gone, the problem may not be that only the president’s allies can get help from the federal government—but rather that no one can.

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

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Wednesday, June 4, 2025 7:06 AM

SECOND

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


Is There a Tariff End Game?
I still don't see an off-ramp

By Paul Krugman | Jun 04, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/is-there-a-tariff-end-game

On May 12 Donald Trump suddenly reduced the tariff on China from 145 percent to 30 percent. This may seem like a big reduction. But while the higher rate would have completely cut off trade with China, even the lower tariff rate, by my estimates, would cut U.S.-China trade by two-thirds. it wasn’t clear that much had changed.

But many retail investors, engaging in wishful thinking, interpreted the apparent climb-down as proof of concept for TACO — Trump always chickens out. So the stock market began behaving as if Trump would soon find an off-ramp out of his whole tariff obsession. Notably, however, the bond and currency markets, dominated by pros, didn’t let up on the “sell America” trade — the dollar continued to fall while interest rates continued to rise.

So I’m not convinced that the worst is over. In fact, I’m not convinced even though the U.S. Court of International Trade has pronounced Trump’s invocation of IEEPA, the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, to impose tariffs without Congressional approval illegal. (A colleague of mine used to return student papers with the comment YHTMAAAIYP — “you have too many acronyms and abbreviations in your paper.”)

In a conversation I had with Joseph Politano, who has been following the tariff issue very closely, he predicted that tariffs would be going up, not down, from here. His reasoning was that Trump would begin adding tariffs on specific goods to across-the-board tariffs on everything we import from a country. So far it looks as if he’s right: The tariff rate on steel has just jumped from an already very high level of 25 percent to 50 percent.

The court ruling against Trump’s invocation of a nonexistent economic emergency may slow him up, but he’ll probably find a number of workarounds — for example, the steel tariff is legally justified by claims that steel imports in particular threaten national security, rather than a claim that we’re facing a general economic emergency. I still see no sign of a tariff end game. And the legal wrangles over what Trump can and can’t do will only add the the uncertainty and sense of chaos that is strangling business investment.

First, however, a word about those taxes on steel imports, which are almost the Platonic ideal of a tariff that destroys jobs rather than creating them.

Here’s why: Nobody consumes steel directly. It’s an “intermediate good,” used in the production of, well, almost everything. So imposing a tariff that makes steel more expensive raises costs and reduces employment all across the manufacturing sector.

But won’t tariffs create jobs in the steel industry itself? Maybe a few. But the tariffs won’t create many jobs, because steel employs so few workers to begin with — fewer than 90,000 in 2024, out of total U.S. employment of 159 million:

You might think that we have so few steelworkers because we import it all, but we actually only import 27 percent of consumption, with the other 73 percent produced domestically. The point instead is that steel production is highly capital-intensive and just doesn’t employ many people — so steel tariffs can’t possibly create enough jobs to replace those lost elsewhere in manufacturing.

So steel tariffs don’t make any policy sense. But then neither does anything else in Trump’s trade war — and the nonsensical nature of the whole enterprise is why I don’t think he’ll find an off-ramp. After all, it’s obvious that the increased steel tariff wasn’t a considered policy, it was a temper tantrum after the Court of International Trade ruled against his other tariffs.

When you see Trump officials claiming that they’re in the process of negotiating trade deals with lots of countries — dozens! hundreds! thousands! — always ask, deals about what?

In Trump’s psychodrama version of world trade, other countries are snickering at us while they treat us “very badly,” shutting out our products with high tariffs and whatever. But the reality is that until Trump came in we were living in a world economy shaped by reciprocal trade agreements that brought tariffs down everywhere. The average tariffs the European Union charged on U.S. exports were less than 2 percent.

So if the EU is supposed to make big concessions to the United States, the question has to be, “concede what?” The EU can’t eliminate high tariffs that only exist in Trump’s fevered imagination.

During Trump’s first term China responded to his tariffs by making a never-honored promise to buy $200 billion of U.S. soybeans, allowing Trump to a glorious victory. But that strategem — making impressive-sounding but meaningless promises — isn’t available to either the EU or China this time. Trump’s tariff moves have been so extreme this time, his claims so grandiose, that he probably won’t accept the subterfuge — not least because he fears that everyone will be snickering “Taco, taco” behind his back.

In addition to imagining that foreign countries are engaged in dastardly trade practices nobody else can see, Trump and co. clearly have a distorted view of the balance of power, imagining that they can easily dictate terms (about what?) to the rest of the world.

The truth is that there are three roughly co-equal economic superpowers in the world: the United States, China and the European Union. All three rely significantly on access to the others’ markets, but not as much as you may imagine. China and the European Union each export around 3 percent of their GDP to the United States; losing a significant part of those exports would hurt, but the job losses could be significantly offset with expansionary monetary and fiscal policies.

And in full-scale economic warfare, access to the goods other nations produce becomes a lot more important than access to their markets. China understands this, which is why they are restricting exports of rare earths and certain kinds of batteries — going after our supply chains rather than our markets. And it’s a lot easier to use stimulus policies to offset job losses in export industries than it is to conjure up a domestic manufacturing base from scratch. China wants access to U.S. markets, but America needs Chinese rare earths, batteries and more.

So we’re in a situation where Trump imagines that the world is laughing at us over our open markets, but perceives correctly that everyone is laughing at him over the TACO thing. And at the same time he has delusions of grandeur when it comes to U.S. economic power.

Does this sound to you like a situation in Trump makes big boasts but effectively climbs down? That’s not how I see it. Instead, I think we’re in for a prolonged period of chaotic Trump lashing out through whatever trade weapon he can get his hands on. If you want to know where this is going, keep your eyes on the bond and currency markets, where cool-headed traders realize that U.S. policy is still being dictated by the whims of a mad king.

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

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Wednesday, June 4, 2025 7:17 AM

SECOND

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


MUSK DERIDES TRUMP’S BILL, SAYING IT WILL “MASSIVELY INCREASE THE ALREADY GIGANTIC” DEFICIT

He calls it “a disgusting abomination.”

The CBO agrees the bill would add trillions to our National Debt. But Trump has no real interest in lowering the deficit — nor in preserving the strength of the dollar or the enormous advantage its being the world’s reserve currency confers. He’s more of a crypto-corrupto kinda guy.

(My solution to the deficit problem. All of 250 words. With colors! Green for revenues, red for spending.)

https://andrewtobias.com/a-disgusting-abomination-indeed/

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

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Wednesday, June 4, 2025 9:29 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Shut up, faggot.

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

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

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Wednesday, June 4, 2025 9:49 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Shut up, faggot.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
6ix, one day that fat Nazi you voted for three times will be murdered. I'll be pleased that day with the enormous outcry of anger and violence from his Nazi followers, but in the meantime he is adding reasons to be killed to a long list of previous reasons.

Trump posts to Truth Social 17 times daily during first 135 days in office, using social media to announce policy changes, trade wars and personnel decisions while sharing conspiracy theories about Biden being a "robot clone." – https://go.govbrief.today/trump-social-media-volume

Want to track what the rapist (he owes E. Jean Carroll $93,000,000) and first convicted felon President (34 felony counts of falsifying business documents to cover up an extramarital affair) did so far this week? Go to:

https://imgur.com/user/GeorgeBounacos
https://go.govbrief.today

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

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Thursday, June 5, 2025 3:45 AM

SECOND

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


Trump has been on a tear of weird posts. He has used his social media platform to amplify all kinds of truly bizarre claims and arguments, ranging from targeting Barack Obama with a military tribunal, accusing federal judges of committing acts “tantamount to treason and sedition,” to suggestions that Trump should be chosen to serve as the pope.

Trump’s intensifying obsession with posting on social media is a natural expression of his presidency: impulsive, reckless, self-promotional and filled with misinformation. It is common to counsel the terminally online to “log off and touch grass.” But in this case it seems useless — the posting is the point.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-truth-social-clone-p
ost-x-rcna210679

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

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Thursday, June 5, 2025 3:50 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Trump


Grow up, faggot.

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

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

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Thursday, June 5, 2025 4:47 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Shut up, faggot.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Trump speaking through his lawyers: "Crime rates at Harvard University — including violent crime rates — have drastically risen in recent years. Harvard has failed to discipline at least some categories of conduct violations on campus. Given these facts, it is imperative, in my judgment, that the Federal Government be able to assess and, if necessary, address misconduct and crimes committed by foreign students at Harvard."

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/06/enhancing-nati
onal-security-by-addressing-risks-at-harvard-university/

President Trump suspended the entry of international students to attend Harvard University through an executive order on Wednesday evening.

https://www.axios.com/2025/06/05/trump-harvard-international-students-
order

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

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Thursday, June 5, 2025 5:04 AM

SECOND

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


U.S. President Donald Trump hiked nearly all of his tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to a punishing 50% on Wednesday in a move that’s set to hammer businesses from automakers to home builders, and likely push up prices for consumers even further.

The 50% tariffs went into effect just after the clock struck midnight on Wednesday. The two metals had previously faced 25% tariffs worldwide since mid-March . . .

https://apnews.com/article/trump-tariffs-steel-aluminum-trade-240dbc38
23ecd66d3dd05a66883f9277

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

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Thursday, June 5, 2025 5:48 AM

SECOND

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


Donald Trump has ordered an investigation into Joe Biden's actions during his presidency, accusing aides of a "conspiracy" to "deceive the public about Biden's mental state".

In this latest move to discredit his predecessor, Trump took aim at the aides' use of an autopen - a device that replicates signatures which presidents, including Trump, have used for decades - to sign executive actions.

"This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history," Trump said on Wednesday.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg9z9veyr1o

What did Trump write, exactly? This:

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
With the exception of the RIGGED PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 2020, THE AUTOPEN IS THE BIGGEST POLITICAL SCANDAL IN AMERICAN HISTORY!!!
Jun 04, 2025, 1:28 AM
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114623678380515184

6ixStringJack, historians won't need more than that one sentence to judge Trump as insane.

What is an autopen? Here's what to know about the devices used by presidents, writers and more.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/what-is-an-autopen-president-biden-trump-
signature/

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

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Thursday, June 5, 2025 6:31 AM

SECOND

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


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


Grow up, faggot.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Trump's 50% tariff will kill thousands of jobs

A study of Bush’s 2002 tariffs found that rising steel prices cost 200,000 jobs across the economy, more than the total number of workers producing steel at the time.

https://taxfoundation.org/blog/lessons-2002-bush-steel-tariffs/

Another study, by economists at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, estimated that tariffs on steel and aluminum imports imposed in March 2018, during Trump’s first term, added maybe 1,000 jobs in steel production by mid-2019, but cost some 75,000 jobs in manufacturing writ large. (2018 had a 25% tariff on steel, 10% tariff on aluminum. 2025 tariff is 50% on both steel and aluminum.)

https://econofact.org/steel-tariffs-and-u-s-jobs-revisited

6ixStringJack, tariffs in 2025 will get hundreds of thousands fired from manufacturing jobs, same as earlier tariffs reduced employment.

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

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Thursday, June 5, 2025 7:02 AM

SECOND

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


Elon Musk is a Disgusting Abomination
So is the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. But still

By Paul Krugman | Jun 05, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/elon-musk-is-a-disgusting-abominati
on



On Tuesday, after Elon Musk blasted out the screed above, a friend texted me: “I guess the worm has turned. Oh, wait, I guess that’s RFK.” Indeed. We don’t know exactly what set off this tweet and the series of whines that followed, but it may have been the ketamine talking.

Anyway, Musk happens to be right: The One Big Beautiful Bill Act — its actual name! — is indeed a disgusting abomination. But this is one of those cases where it takes one to know one. Few men have done as much damage out of sheer arrogance, ignorance and pettiness as Elon Musk. He has thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of deaths on his hands. (Hundreds of thousands of people will die, or already have died, because the U.S. government, at Musk’s urging, has all but shut down its foreign humanitarian efforts.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/05/28/rubio-aid-cuts-deat
hs-fact-checker/ )

And even his parting blast is destructive, demonstrating that he has learned nothing from his abject failure as a policymaker. The OBBBA is terrible, but not at all for the reasons Musk claims.

There have been a number of articles about Musk’s departure that portray him as a “Mr. Smith goes to Washington” type, a well-intentioned naif thwarted by special interests. Gag me with a Cybertruck.

What actually happened was that a zillionaire who knew nothing about government marched in claiming that he could cut $2 trillion from the $6 trillion federal budget by eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse. This was obvious nonsense, but Musk has never showed any signs of being willing either to admit his mistakes or learn from them. The wild claims just kept coming, like his insistence that millions of dead people were getting Social Security.

Claims about budget savings by DOGE — the Musk-run not-actually-a-government department that has been running wild since Donald Trump took office — have rapidly shrunk over time. Still, DOGE has continued to put out “walls of receipts” purporting to document some of its achievements. Again and again, investigators going through these reports have found them full of ludicrous errors — the same canceled contract listed three times, an $8 million saving reported as $8 billion, and more.

Seriously, would any of Musk’s tech-bro friends have invested in a venture run by someone with such a record of making extravagant but completely unfilled promises, then following up with false claims of success?

Meanwhile, the Muskenjugend, the extremely young and utterly unqualified acolytes DOGE parachuted into government agencies, disrupted the federal government’s operations. In some cases they summarily fired crucial workers without making any effort to understand their jobs, while encouraging many others to take early retirement. Those workers who remained have found themselves devoting a lot of time and effort to justifying their existence rather than doing their jobs. And although it’s hard to quantify, the DOGE presumption that government workers are worthless unless proven otherwise must have done large damage to morale and efficiency. In the end, DOGE has almost surely increased the budget deficit.

The one area where DOGE really has managed to make big cuts is foreign aid, a very small part of the budget but one it has virtually shut down. The savings have been tiny, but the human impacts immense — as I said, thousands have died as a result of Musk’s actions, and many more will die in the future.

Aside from the special hostility Musk and co. seem to have toward helping the world’s poor, the big driver behind Musk’s whole role in Washington seems to have been the belief that the federal government is a bloated bureaucracy that wastes vast amounts of money. Yet Musk kept not being able to find all that waste. This is despite the fact that he had months to dig up the wasted billions, along with unprecedented, almost surely illegal, access to government data.

A better man might have said to himself, “Hmm. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe the federal government is actually a pretty well-functioning organization, with many workers trying to do their jobs well.”

But Musk isn’t that kind of man. In denouncing the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, he calls it a “pork-filled Congressional spending bill.” Hey, Elon, where’s the beef pork? You’ve spent months trying to find it, with basically zero success. And the reason this bill will explode the deficit is that savage cuts to Medicaid and food stamps aren’t enough to offset huge tax cuts for the rich.

In a follow-up tweet, Musk says this:

Um, what cost savings? And what personal risks are we talking about?

In the end, Musk’s legacy will be a damaged federal government that has lost many of its best people and will have a hard time replacing them. Oh, and a lot of dead children.

In a just world Elon Musk wouldn’t be heading back to run Tesla. He would, instead, be retreating to a remote monastery somewhere, to spend the rest of his life in poverty and penance.

MUSICAL CODA

Sara Bareilles - F*ck You/Gonna Get Over You (VEVO Presents)



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

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Thursday, June 5, 2025 10:17 AM

SECOND

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


The Congressional Budget Office forecasts that the National Debt would grow by roughly $22 trillion in 2034.
https://www.cbo.gov/data/budget-economic-data#3

With a roughly $3.7 trillion tax cut at its core, the Republican tax and spending bill will increase the debt
https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/trump-spending-bill-cut-taxes-3-7t
-add-2-4t-deficit-cbo-says

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

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Thursday, June 5, 2025 10:31 AM

SECOND

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


“The Intern in Charge”: Meet the 22-Year-Old Trump’s Team Picked to Lead Terrorism Prevention

One year out of college and with no apparent national security expertise, Thomas Fugate is the Department of Homeland Security official tasked with overseeing the government’s main hub for combating violent extremism.

By Hannah Allam | June 4, 2025, 6:30 p.m. EDT

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-dhs-thomas-fugate-cp3-terrori
sm-prevention

In the past seven weeks, at least five high-profile targeted attacks have unfolded across the U.S., including a car bombing in California and the gunning down of two Israeli Embassy aides in Washington. Against this backdrop, current and former national security officials say, the Trump administration’s decision to shift counterterrorism resources to immigration and leave the violence-prevention portfolio to inexperienced appointees is “reckless.”

“We’re entering very dangerous territory,” one longtime U.S. counterterrorism official said.

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

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Thursday, June 5, 2025 11:16 AM

SECOND

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


Former DOGE engineer says federal waste and fraud were 'relatively nonexistent'

June 5, 2025 10:31 AM ET

https://www.npr.org/2025/06/02/nx-s1-5417994/former-doge-engineer-shar
es-his-experience-working-for-the-cost-cutting-unit

Lavingia said the overall message at DOGE was transparency and a vibe of "ask for forgiveness, not permission." So, when a blogger asked, he talked about his work at DOGE, including how little inefficiency he saw compared to what he was expecting.

Shortly after the interview was published online, Lavingia got an email. Just 55 days into his work at DOGE, his access had been revoked.

"Elon [Musk] was pretty clear about how he wanted DOGE to be maximally transparent," Lavingia said. "That's something he said a lot in private. And publicly. And so I thought, OK, cool, I'll take him at his word. I will be transparent."

“Unfortunately, they did not tell me directly that the reason I was let go was because of my transparency. I don't know if irony is the right word, but I do think that it's maybe, as Elon says, the most entertaining outcome is the most likely, and letting someone go for being transparent in the most maximally transparent organization is a little bit entertaining.”

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

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Thursday, June 5, 2025 11:52 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Trump's approval rating aggregate is higher than both Obama's and GWB's were at this day in their first term.

The only guy that he isn't beating right now is Joe Biden*, who shortly plunged into being hated for the remainder of his term after all the media gaslighting died down and he destroyed our country for the next 4 years.



Trump Approval Rating:
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/donald-trump/approval-
rating

Obama Approval Rating:
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/barack-obama/approval-
rating

GWB Approval Rating:
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/george-w-bush/approval
-rating

Biden Approval Rating:
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/joe-biden/approval-rat
ing



You losers fucking suck.

Get on your knees, Second.

It's the only thing you're good at.



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

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

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Thursday, June 5, 2025 1:22 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

GWB Approval Rating:
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/george-w-bush/approval
-rating
There are advantages to be grotesquely incompetent. For example, Bush had a 90% approval rating after 9/11. He won’t have if only the terrorist pilots had been quietly arrested at flight school in the USA. If a President is doing a good job, that does not get noticed by 90% of Americans because, you know, they ain’t that smart, for if they were, they’d be rich. But all of them think of themselves as smarter than average. Personally, I have proved that an American can achieve wealth and a peaceful family life without being smarter than average and without overworking, lying, stealing, defrauding customers/employees/subcontractors, or cheating on taxes.

How did Bush get so popular? And can Trump do the same? Yes, he can!

“Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” The CIA’s famous Presidential Daily Brief, presented to George W. Bush on August 6, 2001, has always been Exhibit A in the case that his administration shrugged off warnings of an Al Qaeda attack. But months earlier, starting in the spring of 2001, the CIA repeatedly and urgently began to warn the White House that an attack was coming.

https://www.politico.eu/article/attacks-will-be-spectacular-cia-war-on
-terror-bush-bin-laden/

A Review of the FBI's Handling of Intelligence Information Related to the September 11 Attacks
In this chapter of the report, we examine allegations that the FBI failed to act prior to September 11, 2001, on intelligence information that warned of potential terrorists training in aviation-related fields of study in the United States. The focus of these allegations concerned an Electronic Communication (EC) dated July 10, 2001, that was written by Kenneth Williams, a special agent in the FBI’s Phoenix Division. In his EC, Williams wrote that he believed that there was a coordinated effort by Usama Bin Laden to send students to the United States to attend civil aviation universities and colleges. He suggested that the purpose of these students would be to one day work in the civil aviation industry around the world to conduct terrorist activity against civil aviation targets. Williams wrote that he was providing the information in the EC for analysis and comments. Williams addressed the EC to several people in FBI Headquarters and in the FBI’s New York Division.

https://oig.justice.gov/sites/default/files/archive/special/s0606/chap
ter3.htm

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

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Thursday, June 5, 2025 5:03 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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

GWB Approval Rating:
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/approval/george-w-bush/approval
-rating
There


I'm not putting GWB on a pedastal you stupid fuck.


You forgot the part where Trump's approval is higher than Obama's was.


Your party is dead and can't get 20% approval on CNN polling today.

Time for you to disappear. The entire world is done listening to anything you have to say on any topic.

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

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

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Thursday, June 5, 2025 5:38 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

I'm not putting GWB on a pedastal you stupid fuck.


You forgot the part where Trump's approval is higher than Obama's was.


Your party is dead and can't get 20% approval on CNN polling today.

Time for you to disappear. The entire world is done listening to anything you have to say on any topic.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
GWB, Trump, 6ixStringJack, and tens of millions of Trumptards have something in common: you are a bunch of goddamn stupid assholes. I've made side-by-side comparisons between Trumptards and Libtards doing the same job or living on the same street. The Trumptards can't compete and can't admit they are inadequate at work, school or home. That is what this political problem is all about and always has been. A solution has never been found because the Libtards are too much believers in Live-and-Let-Live when they should have gone to war with you retards instead of believing Trumptards can be uplifted. Sure, the Libtards can rain money down on the Trumptards to quieted them for a couple years, but that is not a permanent or a Final Solution.

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

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Thursday, June 5, 2025 5:38 PM

SECOND

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


NASA nominee is out. Will science survive?
Isaacman understood space missions don’t come cheap

NASA and Jared Isaacman were casualties of the broken Trump-Elon bromance

By Nick Powell | June 5, 2025

https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/jared-isaacma
n-nasa-elon-musk-trump-cuts-20360886.php

When President Trump recently withdrew his nomination of Jared Isaacman to be NASA administrator, he sorta-kinda said that his decision had to do with a recent revelation that Isaacman had donated to Democrats. But even the most casual observers assumed there was more to it than that flimsy excuse. Isaacman had the backing of Elon Musk. Surely Trump's broken bromance with Musk was the reason Isaacman's nomination fell through.

But in fact, the tragic story goes even deeper than that.

Isaacman at first seemed to suit both Trump and Musk. He's a tech billionaire, owns equity in Musk's SpaceX, and last year, after riding into space on a SpaceX Dragon capsule, he became the first private astronaut to conduct a spacewalk. He said that as the head of NASA, he'd develop a "thriving space economy" (where, presumably, SpaceX would flourish). And he was willing to push Trump's dream of sending humans to Mars.

The cracks started to show during Isaacman’s Senate confirmation hearing, when it became clear he wasn’t fully on board with Trump’s austere vision for NASA. What doomed Isaacman may have been that he actually cares about the many scientific missions and low-earth orbit programs that Trump wants to slash.

Trump’s budget request for NASA would cut the agency’s funding by nearly one-quarter, from $24.8 billion to $18.8 billion. That would be NASA’s lowest budget since 1961, well before the Apollo missions began launching astronauts to the moon. On the chopping block are a slew of deep-space exploration missions and low-Earth orbit programs that are crucial to deepening our understanding of the cosmos as well as our own planet’s climate.

“I have not reviewed or been party to any official discussions, but a 50% reduction to NASA’s science budget does not appear to be an optimal outcome,” Isaacman said.

Was that the best answer for a guy trying to prove his fealty to Trump? Hardly. But it was the right answer from someone who understands that NASA’s mandate goes beyond beating rival superpowers to Mars. It’s easy to dream about a Neil Armstrong moment on the red planet, but NASA isn't just a video-highlights reel. It's about science too.

Trump’s budget would ground Mars Odyssey and MAVEN, two robotic spacecrafts orbiting Mars to collect data on its geology and climate. A mission to retrieve land samples from Mars would also be scuttled. NASA would be pulling the plug on missions it's already invested in, missions that are already underway — missions intended to answer big questions about a planet we supposedly want to explore.

That is bonkers. What’s the point of spending $11 billion on a program to scoop Mars sediment into canisters, some of which could contain evidence of life, only to leave them there to gather red dust indefinitely?

The proposed NASA cuts would also directly impact Houstonians, many of whom make a living working on the science programs.

The Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System, a constellation of satellites that measures ocean surface winds and enhances our ability to predict and measure the intensity of hurricanes and tropical storms, is at risk of being cut. Satellites that measure water vapor and atmospheric gases, vital for advancing climate science, would also be slashed. As storms are growing more frequent and more dangerous, the Gulf coast (like the rest of the planet) will lack those NASA eyes in the sky.

Many Houstonians make a living on the science programs that Trump wants to cut. The Chronicle’s Andrea Leinfelder reported that funding for the International Space Station, which is operated and led by teams in Houston, would be cut by $500 million. Other Houston-led programs that face cuts include the Orion spacecraft, which would return humans to the moon, and the Gateway space station that would orbit the moon. Without Isaacman, Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn and Houston congressional representatives, including Lizzie Fletcher, will be the last line of defense fighting for those local jobs.

Even if Isaacman had sailed through the confirmation process, he might not have been able to stave off these draconian cuts to NASA. And there were certainly reasons to be skeptical of his intentions to commercialize space and enrich the billionaires who launch phallic rockets into the heavens.

But his passion for space exploration and scientific discovery is real. NASA's work there is invaluable, and it won’t be replaced by the private sector. There is no profit incentive for SpaceX Blue Origin to probe Venus’ atmosphere or study Jupiter’s magnetic field.

Trump’s budget proposal is just a starting point, a gambit to see which programs Congress will rouse itself to protect. Yes, NASA does have a long history of inefficient spending, and a handful of programs with soaring price tags do in fact need more scrutiny. But surely there is a middle ground between writing blank checks and kneecapping the agency’s science apparatus.

Isaacman’s downfall portends a difficult future for the agency. He was far from perfect, but he at least understood that there is a reason to explore space that goes deeper than planting flags on faraway planets. There’s no guarantee the next nominee will share those values.

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

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Thursday, June 5, 2025 6:02 PM

THG


Yup, I feel the winds of change, yup.

T

Musk alleges that Trump is 'in the Epstein files,' escalating their messy break up






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Thursday, June 5, 2025 6:18 PM

SECOND

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


Anybody surprised that Trump sides with murderers and against judges?

Trump administration imposes sanctions on four ICC judges in unprecedented move

By Humeyra Pamuk, Stephanie Van Den Berg | June 5, 2025 4:24 PM CDT

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-administration-imposes-sanction
s-icc-judges-us-treasury-says-2025-06-05/

• Summary

• Sanctions target ICC judges over Israel, past Afghanistan cases

• ICC condemns sanctions as undermining judicial independence

• Sanctions complicate financial transactions for targeted judges

WASHINGTON/THE HAGUE, June 5 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's administration on Thursday imposed sanctions on four judges at the International Criminal Court, an unprecedented retaliation over the war tribunal's issuance of an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a past decision to open a case into alleged war crimes by U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Washington designated Solomy Balungi Bossa of Uganda, Luz del Carmen Ibanez Carranza of Peru, Reine Adelaide Sophie Alapini Gansou of Benin and Beti Hohler of Slovenia, according to a statement from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

"As ICC judges, these four individuals have actively engaged in the ICC’s illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America or our close ally, Israel. The ICC is politicized and falsely claims unfettered discretion to investigate, charge, and prosecute nationals of the United States and our allies," Rubio said.

The ICC slammed the move, saying it was an attempt to undermine the independence of an international judicial institution that provides hope and justice to millions of victims of "unimaginable atrocities."

Both judges Bossa and Ibanez Carranza have been on the ICC bench since 2018. In 2020 they were involved in an appeals chamber decision that allowed the ICC prosecutor to open a formal investigation into alleged war crimes by American troops in Afghanistan.

Since 2021, the court has deprioritized the investigation into American troops in Afghanistan and focused on alleged crimes committed by the Afghan government and the Taliban forces.

ICC judges also issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu, former Israeli defense chief Yoav Gallant and Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri last November for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Gaza conflict. Alapini Gansou and Hohler ruled to authorize the arrest warrant against Netanyahu and Gallant, Rubio said.

The move deepens the administration's animosity toward the court. During the first Trump administration in 2020, Washington imposed sanctions on then-prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and one of her top aides over the court's work on Afghanistan.

The measures also follow a January vote at the U.S. House of Representatives to punish the ICC in protest over its Netanyahu arrest warrant. The move underscored strong support among Trump's fellow Republicans for Israel's government.

DIFFICULT TIME FOR ICC

The measures triggered uproar among human-rights advocates. Liz Evenson, international justice director at Human Rights Watch, said the punitive measures were a "flagrant attack on the rule of law at the same time as President Trump is working to undercut it at home."

Sanctions severely hamper individuals' abilities to carry out even routine financial transactions as any banks with ties to the United States, or that conduct transactions in dollars, are expected to have to comply with the restrictions.

But the Treasury Department also issued general licenses, including one allowing the wind-down of any existing transactions involving those targeted on Thursday until July 8, as long as any payment to them is made to a blocked, interest-bearing account located in the U.S.

The new sanctions come at a difficult time for the ICC, which is already reeling from earlier U.S. sanctions against its chief prosecutor, Karim Khan, who last month stepped aside temporarily amid a United Nations investigation into his alleged sexual misconduct.

The ICC, which was established in 2002, has international jurisdiction to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in member states or if a situation is referred by the U.N. Security Council. The United States, China, Russia and Israel are not members.

It has high-profile war crimes investigations under way into the Israel-Hamas conflict and Russia's war in Ukraine as well as in Sudan, Myanmar, the Philippines, Venezuela and Afghanistan.

The ICC has issued arrest warrants for President Vladimir Putin on suspicion of deporting children from Ukraine, and for Netanyahu for alleged war crimes in Gaza. Neither country is a member of the court and both deny the accusations and reject ICC jurisdiction.

Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Stephanie Van den Berg and Anthony Deutsch in the Hague; Additional reporting by Daphne Psaledakis and Michelle Nichols, Editing by Leslie Adler and Matthew Lewis

Humeyra Pamuk is a senior foreign policy correspondent based in Washington DC. She covers the U.S. State Department, regularly traveling with U.S. Secretary of State. During her 20 years with Reuters, she has had postings in London, Dubai, Cairo and Turkey, covering everything from the Arab Spring and Syria's civil war to numerous Turkish elections and the Kurdish insurgency in the southeast. In 2017, she won the Knight-Bagehot fellowship program at Columbia University’s School of Journalism. She holds a BA in International Relations and an MA in European Union studies.

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

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Thursday, June 5, 2025 6:22 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Trump used Elon as a publicity stunt.

The reality is that while DOGE can dig around and find all kinds of waste,

1) Until departments and agencies follow normal accounting practices for a full fiscal year, nobody knows where the money is going, to whom, and for what , and ...

2) Only Congress can shut off the tap. And THAT is a political price that Trump can't, or won't, pay.

Trump has gotten squishy on foreign policy (letting Lindsay Graham negotiate with foreign governments, forwarding a neocon plan) and fraud and waste. Trump is acting like somebody has something on him.

-----------
"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, June 5, 2025 6:30 PM

THG


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Trump used Elon as a publicity stunt.

The reality is that while DOGE can dig around and find all kinds of waste,

1) Until departments and agencies follow normal accounting practices for a full fiscal year, nobody knows where the money is going, to whom, and for what , and ...

2) Only Congress can shut off the tap. And THAT is a political price that Trump can't, or won't, pay.

Trump has gotten squishy on foreign policy (letting Lindsay Graham negotiate with foreign governments, forwarding a neocon plan) and fraud and waste. Trump is acting like somebody has something on him.




Short version is, if Musk lawyers up and the courts find he went rouge while heading DOGE, which there is plenty of evidence for, given what we were told about how he was and how he wasn't by Trump, there is a very good chance the courts will rule Trump has to undue everything Musk did.
I'm so happy. Are you happy?

Just a couple more MAGA morons making my day.

T

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Thursday, June 5, 2025 6:58 PM

SECOND

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


Trump’s Tariffs Won’t Fix the Steel Industry

Making steel and aluminum more expensive won’t help domestic mills much, but it will hammer factories.

By Keith Johnson | June 5, 2025, 4:18 PM

https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/06/05/trump-trade-tariffs-steel-aluminu
m/

U.S. President Donald Trump’s doubling of tariffs on steel and aluminum from 25 percent to 50 percent officially went into effect on Wednesday. But experts say the tariffs will gum up Trump’s plans to rebuild American industry, complicate ongoing trade talks with overseas partners, and do nothing to tackle the structural problems that have plagued the steel industry globally for decades.

The tariffs do have the advantage, from Trump’s point of view, of not only favoring domestic industries but also doing so using a more defensible legal tariff authority than the one that courts struck down last week. It’s part of a likely pivot to tried-and-tested trade authorities, including the Section 232 authority from the Trade Expansion Act used on Wednesday for steel and aluminum, that give the White House wide leeway to levy trade restrictions with little oversight and less legal recourse.

The doubling of import taxes on metals and everything made from them is necessary, Trump said in an executive order, “so that such imports will not threaten to impair the national security” of the United States. He added: “The increased tariffs will more effectively counter foreign countries that continue to offload low-priced, excess steel and aluminum” into the U.S. market and finally get the country’s mills back in business.

But both of the rationales that Trump offered for the steep tariff hike are false: U.S. imports of steel actually fell over the past year, including after the first wave of Trump’s tariffs, and are not surging, and U.S. steel mills are working more now than they have been in recent years.

“Trump doesn’t make a lot of sense, but we learned that with Sec. 232 trade actions, he doesn’t have to,” said Scott Lincicome, an international trade lawyer at the Cato Institute.

Trump, like many presidents before him, has a special protectionist spot for the steel industry. That’s partly a reflection of decades-old nostalgia for a smokestack-powered economy that is increasingly irrelevant in a world of services and data, and partly because his first term was held captive to steel industry lawyers—most notably Robert Lighthizer, his first-term U.S. trade representative.

But as he underscored in the latest executive order, since his first term, Trump has viewed all matters of economic security—from steel mills to shipyards—as matters of national security. That is why there are also national security-related tariff investigations underway into such dire threats as Canadian lumber and Mexican car seats.

“It really just underscores how lawless Sec. 232 really is. They can say anything is a national security threat, and they can justify it with anything, and courts are very unlikely to challenge that determination,” Lincicome said.

The irony of Trump’s metals tariffs is that they address a problem that doesn’t exist, but they don’t address one that is crying out for a solution—namely, massive overcapacity of steel production in countries such as China and, soon, in India. Making matters worse is the fact that Trump’s new tariffs, like his lighter version earlier this year, target everything made from steel as well as imports of semifinished and finished steel goods. What the latest round of tax hikes do is simply raise prices for steel-using businesses, which were already paying more for steel than any rivals, whether in Europe or China.

“All the tariffs do is raise the domestic price of steel,” said Josh Spoores, the lead steel analyst at CRU Group, a metals and minerals consultancy.

U.S. prices for steel and aluminum have done nothing but soar since Trump made imports more expensive, which has negative impacts on the competitiveness of businesses small and large, whether they use girders, pipes, plate, nails, or tinfoil. Economists are still trying to quantify just how many tens of thousands of net job losses steel tariffs cost the broader economy.

Trump’s Metal Tariffs Intensify His Global Trade War

The Never-Used Law That Might Be Trump’s Next Tariff Gambit

Trump can use part of a 1974 law to levy tariffs while the courts duke it out.

While Trump’s ostensible goal with the tariffs is to bolster the steel industry and make U.S. manufacturing more competitive in sectors such as autos, shipyards, and other old-school industries, the reverse is true. The first pain will likely be felt in the oil patch, another of Trump’s favored sectors, but one that has already felt the pinch of his trade-war induced collapse in the price of crude, which makes drilling a dicey proposition.

About half the pipes and tubes and casings needed for the U.S. oil and gas industry are imported, Spoores noted. Oil country goods, as they are known, are consistently one of the biggest categories of U.S. steel imports. There is no magic switch to flip to produce those goods domestically, either using tariffs or otherwise: Steel is a must-have good that just got a lot more expensive. Or, as Spoores put it: “A lot of it can come down to the inelasticity, where demand happens regardless of price.”

The same is true for building ships and building cars, two other Trump priorities that, when done right, devour vast amounts of steel. The problem with shipbuilding is the lack of long-term contracts, whether for commercial ships or U.S. Navy vessels; a mercurial increase in tariff rates won’t automatically rejigger U.S. mills to produce the kind of steel that goes into supertankers.

“I don’t think tariffs alone would drive investments to build that kind of plate,” Spoores said.

Cars are similar: The steel used in autos is specialized and quality-tested, extensively so. That kind of multibillion-dollar investment is unlikely to turn on tariff decisions, which can—and have—been reversed in a tweet.

“The tariffs just make steel more expensive. It takes something like five years to get an auto-quality mill up and running,” Spoores said.

Meanwhile, Trump’s latest trade salvo landed in the middle of talks with scores or hundreds of potential trade partners, all of whom were horrified, and most of whom are recalibrating. Mexico and Canada, which have been hit with so many tariffs this year for so many reasons, are both trying to make sense of the escalation. Mexico is threatening reprisals, while Canada’s new government is cautious but ready to react.

The United Kingdom, which has agreed to a preliminary framework for future trade talks, is worried that the latest steel tariffs will throw a spanner in the bilateral truce, especially because a lot of British steelworks are actually Indian-owned. The European Union held off on reprisals after the first round of steel tariffs, and it is still hopeful about progress on talks but is dusting off billions in counter-battery tariff measures just to be sure.

What frets European negotiators—and steel industry experts in general—is that the industry’s problem is, to a large extent, Chinese overcapacity, which is entirely unaddressed by Trump’s latest measure. China produces more than a billion tons of steel a year, more than half the global total. The United States, still a major producer, churns out roughly 80 million tons.

In recent years, the United States and Europe had sought accommodation on steel production and rules on steel trade that would limit China’s reach and its environmental impact. But that, to the chagrin of European trade experts and U.S. environmentalists, takes a back seat to putting another brick in the wall.

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

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Thursday, June 5, 2025 7:18 PM

THG


I'm hearing American car companies are looking to move some jobs to China SECOND. It's either that or go out of business. Think of rare earth metals; magnets.

T

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Thursday, June 5, 2025 7:21 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK




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

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

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Thursday, June 5, 2025 7:57 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Trump used Elon as a publicity stunt.

The reality is that while DOGE can dig around and find all kinds of waste,

1) Until departments and agencies follow normal accounting practices for a full fiscal year, nobody knows where the money is going, to whom, and for what , and ...

2) Only Congress can shut off the tap. And THAT is a political price that Trump can't, or won't, pay.

Trump has gotten squishy on foreign policy (letting Lindsay Graham negotiate with foreign governments, forwarding a neocon plan) and fraud and waste. Trump is acting like somebody has something on him.




Short version is, if Musk lawyers up and the courts find he went rouge while heading DOGE, which there is plenty of evidence for, given what we were told about how he was and how he wasn't by Trump, there is a very good chance the courts will rule Trump has to undue everything Musk did.
I'm so happy. Are you happy?

Just a couple more MAGA morons making my day.

T
It's rogue, not rouge. "Rouge" is French for "red" and refers to either the red powder that women put on their cheeks, or sometimes a red colored polishing compound (jeweler's rouge).

Also, it's undo, not undue. Undo means to take apart what was done, undue means excessive or beyond what is normal or justified.

Where is the articulate man who's in a bad mood, and what have you done with him?

-----------
"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, June 5, 2025 8:13 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Do you see what the Media is doing to him? Or possibly not even the media but just the clickbait farms that he's been watching?

His imagination is running wild with possibilities right now. The sky is the limit! Every asshole with an opinion he agrees with is out there speculating about all the possibilities under the sun of what might come of this.

......

I wonder if any of them ever thought to ask themselves if they were falling into another trap?


Yanno... because it's not as if any of them have any real behind the scenes knowledge of anything going on right now.

Ted is desperate for any possible good news right now. He's starved for it and he is willing to take it from anybody willing to give it to him.

What do you think that's going to do to him over the course of another 2 years? 4 years?

I ask because everything is different this time. He's never had to carry on like this before without the full blessing of the Legacy Media behind his back every step of the way. Not one single minute of one single day. For decades he had a media he could trust, and up until recently even if most of us didn't he still had that. But you can tell by his drastic change in viewing and posting habits over the last year that he knows that he's lost that trust, even if he won't ever in a million years let us know that it finally happened to him too.


It's why he cries out for Chrisisall and Wishy and Captain to come back. He's alone right now. He knows that Second is "here", but he knows that Second is also an emotionless robot.

Ted makes it so fucking hard to do, but I am worried about him. I don't think he can handle any of this.



And he's right. I don't know his real situation. But I appear to have gotten deeply under his skin this time. I don't know what it is specifically or if it's just the overall change in tone and atmosphere everywhere that done it, but something I've been saying has been hitting really close to home.

It's all fun and games until somebody starts threatening other people.

People who aren't worried about The future in general and Their future in particular do not behave this way. Scared people do things like threaten blackmail and extortion. And criminals... but Ted's no criminal.


I'm starting to feel like maybe I should back off of Ted for a while, just for my own sake. The last thing I need is for him to go and croak on us or have a stroke and live the rest of my life with that on my conscience.

He's riled up enough every day with that steady diet of digital bullshit he got himself addicted to.

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

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

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