REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

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

POSTED BY: 6IXSTRINGJACK
UPDATED: Saturday, August 23, 2025 09:30
SHORT URL:
VIEWED: 53445
PAGE 61 of 61

Wednesday, August 20, 2025 9:16 AM

SECOND

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


In February 1945, the leaders of the Soviet Union, the United States and Britain met in Yalta — then a city in Soviet Russia, later a city in Ukraine, now a city in Russian-occupied Crimea — to negotiate the end of World War II. Among other things, Joseph Stalin wanted the Kuril Islands, which stretched from Soviet Kamchatka to the coast of Japan.

Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill agreed to let the Soviets have the Kurils. The islands weren’t theirs to give — the Kurils belonged to Japan — but they were theirs to take. Six months later, Soviet troops, with significant support from the U.S. military, took control of the islands and deported the Japanese residents. The Soviet troops had gone to Alaska to train for the operation.

That military operation began on Aug. 18, 1945, exactly 80 years before Trump met with Zelensky at the White House. Putin, who is a history buff and, more important, has for years been floating the idea of a second Yalta Conference, is certainly mindful of the date and the historical rhyme.

More than 80 years after Yalta, no peace treaty exists between Japan and Russia. World War II never officially ended for these two countries, because Japan never ceded the Kuril Islands. All wars may end in negotiations, but not all negotiations end wars.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/opinion/ukraine-russia-war-territor
y.html

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, August 20, 2025 9:26 AM

SECOND

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


President Donald Trump wants the U.S. government to own a piece of Intel, less than two weeks after demanding the Silicon Valley pioneer dump the CEO that was hired to turn around the slumping chipmaker.

The Trump administration is in talks to secure a 10% stake in Intel in exchange for converting government grants that were pledged to Intel under President Joe Biden. If the deal is completed, the U.S. government would become one of Intel’s largest shareholders and blur the traditional lines separating the public sector and private sector in a country that remains the world’s largest economy.

The administration is requiring Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, two companies whose chips are helping to power the craze around artificial intelligence, to pay a 15% commission on their sales of chips in China in exchange for export licenses.

Didn’t Trump want Intel’s CEO to quit?

That’s what the president said August 7 in an unequivocal post calling for Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to resign less than five months after the Santa Clara, California, company hired him. The demand was triggered by reports raising national security concerns about Tan’s past investments in Chinese tech companies while he was a venture capitalist. But Trump backed off after Tan professed his allegiance to the U.S. in a public letter to Intel employees and went to the White House to meet with the president, who applauded the Intel CEO for having an “amazing story.”

https://apnews.com/article/intel-trump-chips-government-stake-lutnick-
09584b8418fe3589e1c4cd03cc5f156b

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, August 20, 2025 4:51 PM

SECOND

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


Trump's "Truth" About Voting

By Joyce Vance | Aug 18, 2025

https://joycevance.substack.com/p/trumps-truth-about-voting

It’s one of those days with so much going on that it was clear to me early in the day I needed to do a standalone post on the topic of Trump’s most recent attack on our elections to give that topic the focus it deserves. I hope you’ll share this post with friends and family—and whoever needs to hear it. A President telling lies to the American people, especially about something as important as the integrity of our elections, is intolerable.

Early this morning, Trump was on Truth Social. His post (he calls them “truths”) was yet another screed about voter fraud and ending mail-in voting—something that’s up to every state, and not the president.

Here’s the post (but you should feel free to skip it for now, we’ll discuss the salient points below):
Quote:
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
I am going to lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we’re at it, Highly “Inaccurate,” Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES, which cost Ten Times more than accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper, which is faster, and leaves NO DOUBT, at the end of the evening, as to who WON, and who LOST, the Election. We are now the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting. All others gave it up because of the MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD ENCOUNTERED. WE WILL BEGIN THIS EFFORT, WHICH WILL BE STRONGLY OPPOSED BY THE DEMOCRATS BECAUSE THEY CHEAT AT LEVELS NEVER SEEN BEFORE, by signing an EXECUTIVE ORDER to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections. Remember, the States are merely an “agent” for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do. With their HORRIBLE Radical Left policies, like Open Borders, Men Playing in Women’s Sports, Transgender and “WOKE” for everyone, and so much more, Democrats are virtually Unelectable without using this completely disproven Mail-In SCAM. ELECTIONS CAN NEVER BE HONEST WITH MAIL IN BALLOTS/VOTING, and everybody, IN PARTICULAR THE DEMOCRATS, KNOWS THIS. I, AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, WILL FIGHT LIKE HELL TO BRING HONESTY AND INTEGRITY BACK TO OUR ELECTIONS. THE MAIL-IN BALLOT HOAX, USING VOTING MACHINES THAT ARE A COMPLETE AND TOTAL DISASTER, MUST END, NOW!!! REMEMBER, WITHOUT FAIR AND HONEST ELECTIONS, AND STRONG AND POWERFUL BORDERS, YOU DON’T HAVE EVEN A SEMBLANCE OF A COUNTRY. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER!!! DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115049485680941254

Trump elaborated on the post Monday afternoon, saying the quiet part out loud: “If you [end] mail in voting, you're not gonna have many Democrats get elected,” he said in the Oval Office. Trump mumbles a bit as he’s making the comment, but the context is plain. He’s moving beyond his failed plan to rig the House with his midterm redistricting in Texas—now capably checkmated by Texas state legislators, California Governor Gavin Newsom, and other Democrats. Trump, who says that ending mail-in voting is “bigger” than redistricting, has a new plan to interfere with the 2026 election: Making it more difficult for fully eligible American citizens to vote.

For many election cycles, I woke up early, got my kids ready, and voted on the way into work, because it was difficult—and sometimes impossible—to get away during the workday. That was relatively easy for me, because everything was nearby, and the lines were short. Voting added 15 minutes max to the commute, and the kids loved going with us. For people with long commutes, limited mobility, reliance on public transportation, nontraditional work hours, or family care responsibilities, mail-in voting is essential to exercising their right to vote. And despite the myths spread by Trump and his allies, there is no evidence that mail-in voting is linked to fraud. Trump has been searching for that evidence since he stood up his “Election Integrity Commission” in 2017, which was supposed to find it but couldn’t, and was forced to fold just months into its work.

Trump believes the best hope for his party to win, or at least not lose too badly in the midterm elections and beyond, is stripping Americans of their right to vote. He seems to be afraid of the outcome if Republicans have to run on his record—and their own records—because there’s no need to cheat if you’re confident you’ll win.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer responded to the post: “Two facts: Donald Trump lost the 2020 election and vote by mail is safe, secure, and reliable. Let’s be clear - this is not based in fact or reality, but it is yet another way for Trump to silence Americans from using their voice in the democratic process and implement Jim Crow laws across America.”

Trump’s post is full of—I’ll be generous and call them—errors. Some of his other lines, beyond the lies about mail-in voting, include:

• His claim is that he will get rid of “Highly Inaccurate, Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES.” It’s ironic that he put this out there the same day Newsmax agreed to pay Dominion Voting Systems $67 million to settle their defamation lawsuit for lying about the machines. That settlement, of course, follows one agreed to by Fox News. Smartmatic also obtained settlements from outlets that had falsely inflated its role in the 2020 election and claimed its machines were faulty. Trump continues to circulate these mythical claims, in what, at this point, can only be viewed as a deliberate effort to deceive Americans.

• Trump also endorses “accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper,” which is supposed to allow detection of tampering. States are free to use it if they want to. Trump could encourage that by making funding available to those who do. There is no suggestion he has, nor is there much to suggest it’s needed.

• Trump claims that “We are now the only Country in the World that uses Mail-In Voting. All others gave it up because of the MASSIVE VOTER FRAUD ENCOUNTERED.” That’s not true. Countries including Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, and Switzerland use mail in ballots, and there is no more suggestion of fraud there than there is here.

• Trump continues, “WE WILL BEGIN THIS EFFORT, WHICH WILL BE STRONGLY OPPOSED BY THE DEMOCRATS BECAUSE THEY CHEAT AT LEVELS NEVER SEEN BEFORE.” I’m not going to even dignify this with a response. Trump lost dozens of cases making this claim after the 2020 election. Joe Biden conceded the Democrats’ loss in 2024 and gave Trump a smooth transition to power.

• Trump claims he will sign an executive order to this effect (he hasn’t yet) because “the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY.” That’s another wild and false claim. Congress sets the date and the time for national elections, but all other matters are reserved to the states, and each state runs its own elections with its own rules. If that wasn’t clear to Trump previously, it should be now. In June, a judge blocked the part of Trump’s March executive order that sought to stop states from counting mail-in ballots postmarked by Election Day but arrived afterward. The judge emphasized that presidents can’t impose their views about how to conduct elections on the states.

• Trump tries to argue that Democrats can’t win because of policy positions he doesn’t like. But isn’t that the whole point of having an election? We let the voters decide; that’s the essence of democracy.

It’s nauseating. Trump voters should be offended, although I’ve seen few signs of this, that he would tell such blatant lies and expect them to stomach them. The hypocrisy of Trump claiming that only free and fair elections guarantee democracy can’t be lost on elected Republicans, even if they refuse to publicly acknowledge it.

Trump conflated policy choices with the right to vote. Voters choose their elected officials—and the policies they want them to pursue—through free and fair elections, where each of us has the right to vote. It’s up to Republicans to compete for those votes in the marketplace of ideas. Trump doesn’t get to dictate the outcome of our elections. But Trump wants to be a dictator—that’s abundantly clear in this post.

It is true that Democrats will oppose ending mail-in voting, as Trump has predicted. That’s because Democrats believe that who you vote for is a political choice. But your ability to vote, your right to vote, is a fundamental part of being an American. Having mail-in voting makes that easier for some people, including a lot of older people who tend to vote Republican. Trump and his wife, Melania, have notoriously voted by mail in the past.

Trump always returns to his fantastical myth of voter fraud, which doesn’t exist, in moments of stress. It’s the fairytale he tells the kids when he wants to distract them. Was it the embarrassing meeting with Putin, for whom he literally had American service members roll out a red carpet on their hands and knees? Or is he still worried about Jeffrey Epstein, with that matter heating up again this week? Trump seems stressed, but the lies are dangerous.

We know from his earlier executive order on voting, the SAVE Act, and the whole redistricting scam in Texas that Trump is worried that his presidency cannot carry a free and fair election for his party. As I’ve written to you before, there will be elections in 2026 and beyond, but it will likely become harder for us to exercise this fundamental right. We will have to fight to register to vote, to stay registered, to cast our ballots, and to make sure they get counted. We must do that because it matters. We should not have to, but this is our fight for democracy. And Trump has made it clear it’s time for us to get to work.

Our democracy depends on truth. When disinformation is spread deliberately by a president and permitted to take hold, Civil Discourse is about cutting through the noise and explaining what’s really happening, in plain language. If you value clear, fact-based analysis in an era of intentional distortions, I hope you’ll subscribe and support my work, so it remains available for everyone.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, August 20, 2025 5:31 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
We’re in this together,

Joyce


You're in this alone, bitch.

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

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, August 20, 2025 5:32 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Shut the fuck up Second.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
I wish to reiterate that Trumptards are evil.


I don't believe that Evil can recognize other Evil.

You are an evil piece of shit, dude.

And you're done.

You're done, you're done, you're done.



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

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, August 20, 2025 5:49 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:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Shut the fuck up Second.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
I wish to reiterate that Trumptards are evil.


I don't believe that Evil can recognize other Evil.

You are an evil piece of shit, dude.

And you're done.

You're done, you're done, you're done.



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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
I'm guessing you missed all the lessons of WWII. According to the Nazis and the Japanese Imperialists, the Americans were worshipers of Satan, which is why Americans firebombed Germany and Japan. And then there were the nukes. Americans were absolutely evil as far as German and Japanese propaganda was concerned. Same thing in the Civil War, where the Northerners were absolutely the most horrible individuals in creation according to Confederate slave-owners who raped, tortured and murdered slaves on a daily basis because that is the only way to get those darkies to do their work. (Almost forgot, but Lincoln was totally evil, worst than Satan, according to the same slave-owners who were murdering Northerners to protect the rights of states in the South.)

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, August 20, 2025 5:50 PM

SECOND

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


D.C. needs real policing, not propaganda

I’m worried Trump is only going to make crime worse

By Matthew Yglesias | Aug 20, 2025

https://www.slowboring.com/p/dc-needs-real-policing-not-propaganda

Crime is a good issue for Republicans, because it’s one where the public’s broad values are very conservative — it’s the opposite of health care in that regard. So in raw political terms, Trump’s decision to take over D.C.’s local police department and send in the National Guard is an easy win for him. It shifts crime to the center of the national political conversation and invites progressives to express their views about crime, which involves appealing to values and concepts that most voters reject.

I think it’s also clear that, on some level, Trump is actively seeking the emergence of a mass protest movement against him.

When he deployed the National Guard in Los Angeles, he seemed excited about the idea of confronting protesters. When the protests fizzled, the troops themselves were mostly coping with boredom, and Trump basically sidled away from the whole thing. On paper, it’s clearly good for the city to have federal law enforcement agents supplementing the D.C. police’s manpower. If you think about why previous administrations haven’t sent investigators from the F.B.I. and other federal law enforcement agencies to serve as beat cops in D.C., it’s for the obvious reason that this isn’t in the national interest. But additional cops on the beat aren’t something any D.C. mayor or most D.C. residents would complain about.

Yet Trump clearly seems to want complaints, so he’s throwing a fit about one guy who threw a sandwich. He’s going beyond the extensive powers that are genuinely granted him by the Home Rule Act to do additional, illegal stuff, like trying to unilaterally override D.C.’s immigration rules. He is, generally speaking, looking for a fight.

As a concerned citizen of the United States of America, I worry about where the politics of all this is going. But as a longtime D.C. resident, I have two more specific worries:

1. I would like people to have accurate rather than inaccurate information about the crime situation, and the current situation has brought out a ton of misinformation.

2. I worry that running the police department for presidential propaganda purposes is going to leave D.C. with more rather than less crime.

My basic view is that there is not an “emergency” crime situation in DC — the city was safer in 2024 than in 2023, and the 2025 trends were moving in a positive direction before Trump intervened. On the other hand, while D.C. is not the most dangerous city in America (the most dangerous cities in America are almost all poor cities in the South), it is a lot more dangerous than the other Discourse Cities, like New York and San Francisco.

D.C. is also a partial exception to big national crime trends. It’s a rare city that had more murders in 2023 than in 2021, and while crime was falling in 2025, it was falling at a slower rate than in most cities.

There are many genuinely constructive things the federal government could do about this, without invoking any extraordinary power or abrogating Home Rule. The federal government is already extensively involved in D.C. governance, notably in running the courts and criminal prosecutions and most of the parks and the parole system. All this work is generally not done very well, precisely because it’s in the hands of officials who are not accountable to D.C. voters. It would be amazing if Trump became earnestly concerned about D.C. local governance and started performing all the federal aspects of this in a constructive way.

But I think the more likely outcome is the reverse: that the feds taking over local police will simply lead to local law enforcement being run in the same neglectful, half-assed way that the National Park Service runs our local parks.

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Wednesday, August 20, 2025 6:01 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Shut the fuck up Second.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
I wish to reiterate that Trumptards are evil.


I don't believe that Evil can recognize other Evil.

You are an evil piece of shit, dude.

And you're done.

You're done, you're done, you're done.



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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
I'm guessing you missed all the lessons of WWII.


No.

YOU did.

You're the bad guy. You were always the bad guy.

Go fuck yourself. Your party is dead. You need to go away now.

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

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Thursday, August 21, 2025 8:05 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:

No.

YOU did.

You're the bad guy. You were always the bad guy.

Go fuck yourself. Your party is dead. You need to go away now.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
What is wrong with Trumptards? They don't want to know the bad news about themselves. Trump takes that attitude to the highest level -- outer space. Since climate change is a Chinese Hoax, a satellite for studying Climate Change must be destroyed by Trump:

Trump wants NASA to burn a crucial satellite to cinders, killing research into climate change

By Michael Hiltzik | Aug. 19, 2025

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-08-19/trump-wants-nasa-to-
burn-a-crucial-satellite-to-cinders-killing-research-into-climate-change

By any reasonable metric, NASA’s Orbiting Carbon Observatory has been a spectacular success. Originally designed to support a two-year pilot project, it has been operating continuously in space for more than 10 years and could continue doing so for three decades more.

The data it produces “are of exceptionally high quality,” NASA stated in a 2023 review, when it labeled the project “the flagship mission for space-borne measurements” of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.

So perhaps it isn’t surprising that the Trump administration plans to shut the program down. It gets worse: The White House has given NASA instructions to destroy the spacecraft by plunging it to a fiery demise in the atmosphere.

These are national assets....They are what made this country great. Tearing things down doesn’t make it great again. It just tears things down.
— David Crisp, former NASA team leader

Knowledgeable scientists and engineers say that Trump could choose to temporarily mothball the orbiting observatory, leaving a skeleton staff in place at NASA to monitor its hibernation until cooler heads prevail at the White House. Destroying the spacecraft, however, will hamstring climate research for decades.

The zeroing out of climate research budgets by the Trump White House, of which the cancellation of the OCO program is a part, is taking place just as the value of space-borne climate research has been rising sharply.

“The bottom line is that the societal and scientific benefit of this research increases almost exponentially with sustained and long-lasting measurements,” says Ben Poulter, an expert in greenhouse gas measurements formerly at NASA and now a senior scientist at the nonprofit Spark Climate Solutions. “We’re starting to see the positive impact of OCO-2 at helping to detect trends in greenhouse gas emissions and removals in natural ecosystems as the Earth undergoes the impacts of climate change.”

Under the most recent Republican administrations, NASA’s involvement in Earth science — that is, research into global warming and other climate change — has consistently come under fire.

As I reported recently, these programs were specifically targeted by Russell Vought, currently Trump’s budget director and an architect of Project 2025, in a 2023 unofficial budget proposal. There, Vought groused about NASA’s “misguided Carbon Reduction System spending and Global Climate Change programs.” He called for a 50% reduction in the budget for NASA Earth science research — a cut that made it into Trump’s current proposed budget.

The vastly reduced Earth science budget for NASA was passed by the House earlier this year, but it isn’t part of the Senate version, which hasn’t been passed.

What isn’t understood by Vought, Trump or the current acting director of NASA, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, is that Earth science was specifically made part of NASA’s portfolio in the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, which created the agency. Among the agency’s directives, the act stated, would be “the expansion of human knowledge of phenomena in the atmosphere.” That’s where climate change occurs.

The effort to zero out Earth science alarmed more than 60 Democratic House members, who wrote Duffy on July 18 to warn that “the scale of reductions to NASA Earth science would ... severely impair the use of Earth science data and research to improve our ability to forecast, manage, and respond to natural disasters such as floods, earthquakes, and wildfires, leaving the nation less prepared for the challenges of the future and impacting local communities’ abilities to adapt and respond to severe weather and natural disaster events.”

Trump’s budgetary cheeseparing at NASA means the waste of billions of dollars already spent by taxpayers. As I reported before, the bulk of the cost of space missions is in the development of spacecraft and their launch; once that’s done, the cost of maintaining a satellite in orbit is nominal. According to David Crisp, who led the OCO development team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena from the outset and is now a private consultant, the OCO program development and launch cost was about $750 million, but since the launch it costs only about $15 million a year to operate.

That doesn’t count the value of the lost data. Crisp reckons that Duffy and the administration “decided that NASA should not do Earth science, and the fact that we have billions and billions of U.S. taxpayers’ dollars invested in that enterprise right now and really valuable hardware in place, providing critical information to organizations across the world is irrelevant. I think what’s going on here is that they’ve made a strategic move without taking into account tactical realities.”

The average layperson — and that includes some White House officials making policy decisions about scientific endeavors — has no idea about the effort required to put a satellite into space and keep it there.

The OCO project was typical. As described by Crisp, the process began in the mid-1990s as an inquiry into how carbon dioxide produced on Earth got absorbed by natural “sinks” such as forests. The project won approval in 2001 from the George W. Bush administration. Environmental science wasn’t the partisan football it later became. “You could be a good Republican and still think this was a good thing to do,” Crisp told me.

The first Orbiting Carbon Observatory was readied for launch in February 2009. “It was a tremendous challenge, an instrument designed to make a measurement three or four times more difficult than anything ever attempted at JPL,” Crisp says. The launch was successful — for just over three minutes, at which point it failed, plunging rocket and satellite to a watery grave in the Indian Ocean.

“We’d spent eight years and $270 million and engaged more than 1,000 work-years of heroic effort,” Crisp recalls. NASA wanted to keep the project alive. For 10 months, Crisp and others beat down the doors of government agencies, nongovernmental organizations and commercial enterprise to find the money to preserve it, but this was in the teeth of the Great Recession, and no one signed on. But ultimately the Obama administration appropriated $50 million in December 2009 to restart the mission.

Crisp’s team built a carbon copy of the original satellite, and it was launched successfully on July 2, 2014. The original vision was to operate OCO-2 for two years as a proof-of-concept, showing that carbon dioxide could be accurately measured from space. Because of the peculiarities of the launch, however, it carried enough fuel to last 40 years. The reconstruction left enough spare parts in hand to build a twin instrument dubbed OCO-3, which was launched in May 2019 and installed on the International Space Station, where it is still operating.

When I asked NASA for a response to widespread criticism of its actions by the scientific community, I got the same standardized response that others have received. It labeled OCO-2 and -3 “two climate missions beyond their prime mission,” and added that as the proposed budget has “not yet been enacted, it would be inappropriate for us to comment further at this time.”

What NASA believes the OCO “prime mission” is, if not studying atmospheric conditions on Earth, is a mystery.

Within weeks of its own launch, OCO-2 began producing data that would revolutionize climate science. Its applications went well beyond measuring carbon dioxide. OCO-2 was able to detect “solar-induced fluorescence” in plants, an artifact of photosynthesis, which could be used as a “reliable early warning indicator of flash drought with enough lead time to take action,” JPL reported last year.

Those measurements, Crisp says, “have been a bigger hit with the science community than the CO2 measurements.” And they’re the product not of planning, but serendipity, a crucial feature of scientific progress.

At this moment, OCO-2 seems destined for oblivion. Crisp says NASA staffers have been instructed to make a plan to move the spacecraft into a “disposal orbit” that would incinerate it in the Earth’s atmosphere within a few months. But that’s expensive, requiring a detailed plan to ensure that its deteriorating orbit doesn’t threaten other orbiting craft. The quick and dirty alternative would be to “point the thing down and fire the thruster, which would basically produce an instantaneous reentry.” Which option will be chosen isn’t clear.

A third alternative is to place the craft in a sort of suspended sleep, so it could be started up again after Trump and his minions leave office. But that would require 24-hour monitoring to adjust the OCO orbit to avoid space junk — not an infrequent occurrence. (With OCO-3 attached to the International Space Station, it will remain in place, though nonfunctional, as long as the ISS stays aloft.)

The plan to destroy OCO-2 is beyond shameful. Crisp says of the OCO hardware, “these are national assets.... They are what made this country great. Tearing things down doesn’t make it great again. It just tears things down.”

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Thursday, August 21, 2025 8:14 AM

SECOND

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


The Trump administration has a clear view of the state of the nation 7 months into Trump’s presidency. The economy, it says, is wonderful, with surging growth and no inflation, while big cities are crime-ridden hellscapes where nobody dares to go out.

The data, of course, don’t support any of this. Growth is slowing, possibly to “stall speed,” while inflation is accelerating. Urban crime, however, has been plunging, and in general our cities are safer than they’ve been since the 1960s, or maybe ever.

The administration’s response has been to attack the data and the people who report it. Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics after the BLS released a disappointing jobs report, and is trying to install someone completely unqualified (who may be a deranged QAnon type) to replace her. Stephen Miller has declared that “crime stats in big blue cities are fake,” that true crime levels are “orders of magnitude higher.”

And now this:

In Battle Over D.C. Police, Federal Prosecutors Open Inquiry Into Crime Data
The same U.S. attorney’s office that praised a drop in crime in the capital in April has begun an investigation into the Police Department resisting President Trumps takeover.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/19/us/politics/dc-police-crime-data-in
vestigation.html

God knows about the politics. Suburban and small-town residents who believe that we have a national crime crisis, not from personal experience but because Fox News says that blue cities are dangerous hellscapes, may well just get angry when presented with contrary evidence. But let’s not mistake what they say about crime as an indication of anything real.

More at https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/crime-and-self-promotion

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Thursday, August 21, 2025 9:17 AM

SECOND

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


Today, with the chants of those protesting Trump’s takeover of Washington, D.C., echoing in the background, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told reporters: “We’re not going to let the communists destroy a great American city…. [T]hese stupid white hippies…all need to go home and take a nap because they’re all over 90 years old, and we’re gonna get back to the business of protecting the American people and the citizens of Washington, D.C.”

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/august-20-2025

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Thursday, August 21, 2025 9:58 AM

SECOND

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


A warning sign for America about Trump’s personalist rule

Why and when do autocracies underperform on growth?

Matthew Yglesias

Aug 21, 2025

https://www.slowboring.com/p/a-warning-sign-for-america-about

. . . Trump keeps talking about running for a third term.

He’s also taken advantage of the conservative legal movement’s longstanding advocacy for “unitary executive” theory to dispense with the idea that American institutions exist separately from the whims of the president.

Whether it’s the F.B.I. or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, every single executive branch official is merely an extension of Trump. And he exerts personalistic control over the Republican Party like nobody we’ve ever seen in American politics. China hawks wanted export controls on advanced Nvidia chips; Nvidia wanted to sell powerful chips to a large market. Trump announced that Nvidia can sell the chips, if they pay a 15 percent fee to the U.S. government. But we don’t see G.O.P. China hawks denouncing this as a sellout of national security or G.O.P. free marketers denouncing this as a pretextual shakedown.

Trump is shutting down renewables deployment, and all we get from even senior G.O.P. members from wind-oriented states is passive-aggressive complaints, no actual effort to oppose him.

Of course the U.S. remains more democratic than China or P.R.I. Mexico or any of the other autocratic states, whether personalist or institutionalized.

But we are living through a pretty extraordinary de-institutionalization of American politics, driven exclusively by Trump and the G.O.P. His ability to completely cow intra-party opposition gives him remarkable scope to get away with corruption and remarkable tactical flexibility in addressing difficult policy questions. But it’s also eating away at some of the fundamental wellsprings of American prosperity. And in things like firing the head of the B.L.S. we see the rapid emergence of bad epistemic habits, like killing the messenger.

Maybe it’s all fine. China, as I say, continues to hold up better than I might have thought as it descends into personalism instead of moving toward the democracy we once hoped for. Maybe the country will hold up and defy the patterns of history, and maybe a totally MAGA-fied America will be okay too. But I’m awfully uncomfortable banking on it.

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Thursday, August 21, 2025 10:41 AM

SECOND

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


Donald Trump displayed a breathtaking lack of understanding about the Cold War during his recent summit with Vladimir Putin — and left his own advisors “basically helpless” as he waved away their attempts to interject.

Trump's version of Cold War history was so mangled that "it would appear that the U.S. and USSR are on the same side."

Friday’s chaotic meeting in Alaska began with Trump launching into what Wolff described as "a combination of flattery" mixed with "things that he's just pulled out of somewhere...observations both inconsequential and incoherent."

When Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff attempted to redirect the conversation with an actual agenda, Trump simply "talked over them," leaving the meeting rudderless after 20 minutes with "nothing clear about what anyone is doing there except that Putin is totally impassive."

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-putin-2673905305/

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Thursday, August 21, 2025 12:21 PM

SECOND

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


Divided Court Eliminates Trump’s Half-Billion-Dollar Fine in Fraud Case

New York appeals judges said that the judgment was excessive, but agreed to uphold the case so the appeal could continue.

The New York attorney general’s office sued Donald Trump and his real estate business in 2022, accusing them of inflating his net worth to obtain favorable loan terms.

By Ben Protess and Jonah E. Bromwich | Aug. 21, 2025 11:44 a.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/21/nyregion/trump-fraud-james.html

A New York appeals court on Thursday threw out a half-billion-dollar judgment against President Trump, eliminating an enormous financial burden while declining to overturn the fraud case against him, a remarkable turn in a case that pitted the president against one of his fiercest political foes.

“While harm certainly occurred, it was not the cataclysmic harm that can justify a nearly half billion-dollar award to the state,” wrote Peter Moulton, one of the appeals judges whose lengthy and convoluted ruling reflected significant disagreement among the five-judge panel.

The president’s appeal will now most likely move to New York’s highest court, providing him another opportunity to challenge the finding that he was a fraudster.

Thursday’s ruling handed Mr. Trump a financial victory and some legal validation, and represents a major setback for the attorney general, Letitia James, who is one of the president’s foremost adversaries and a target of his retribution campaign. The case had been a career-defining victory after she campaigned for the attorney general’s office promising to bring Mr. Trump to justice.

However, the decision fell short of the full vindication the president had been seeking in his fight against Ms. James. In denying Mr. Trump’s bid to throw out the case, the court kept in place the ruling that he had committed fraud, an ignominious distinction for a sitting American president.

Ms. James filed the case against Mr. Trump and his family real estate business in 2022, accusing them of inflating his net worth to obtain favorable loan terms. After a monthslong trial, the judge overseeing the case ruled last year that Mr. Trump was liable for fraud, denting the real estate mogul image that underpinned his political rise.

Thursday’s ruling came almost a year after judges heard oral arguments on the appeals case, an unusual delay that reflected the legal and political complexities of a case against a sitting president. Ultimately, the case was so divisive that the five appellate court judges failed to form a majority.

Justice Moulton’s opinion upholding the case and wiping out the financial penalties received one additional vote, from the chief judge, Dianne Renwick.

Another judge, David Friedman, who has been skeptical of the accusations for years, wanted to throw the case out entirely, believing Ms. James had lacked the power to bring it.

Two other judges concluded that Ms. James had the authority to file the case, but wanted to provide Mr. Trump a new trial.

The case infuriated Mr. Trump, who has sought revenge against Ms. James. His Justice Department has opened multiple inquiries into her and her office. One is a criminal investigation into her personal real-estate transactions, while the other is a civil rights inquiry into her office for its conduct in investigating Mr. Trump.

Representatives for Ms. James and Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday morning.

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Thursday, August 21, 2025 3:02 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Hey fags...

September 26th, 2023:

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

You are a propagandized meat puppet with a 20 IQ.

Get fucked.



Judge rules Donald Trump defrauded banks, insurers while building real estate empire

NEW YORK — A judge ruled Tuesday that Donald Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House.

New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur F. Engoron, ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by New York’s attorney general, found that the former president and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing financing.

James has asked Engoron to ban Trump and his three eldest children from ever again running a company based New York. She also wants Trump and the Trump Organization barred from entering into commercial real estate acquisitions for five years, among other sanctions. The $250 million in penalties she is seeking is the estimated worth of benefits derived from the alleged fraud, she said.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/judge-rules-donald-trump-defraud
ed-banks-insurers-while-building-real-estate-empire/ar-AA1hiWqw


tick tock tick tock

T


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:


Democrat judge who looks like the Crypt Keeper and won his election in 2015 unopposed in Manhattan. Has already ruled against Trump in 5 other occassions since September of 2020, never once ruling in his favor on anything.

*yawn*

This ruling will be appealed and will be disregarded.



Trump will be fine. He will also be your next President.

The rampant abuse of our so-called "Justice" Department by the current tyrannical administration* will be investigated and given a long-needed enema when that happens too.



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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.




This ruling was appealed and disregarded.

Trump is fine, he is also your current President.

The rampant abuse of our so-called "Justice" Department by the tyrannical Joe Biden* administration is being investigated and given the long-needed enema I told you it would get too.


TODAY:

Appeals court throws out massive civil fraud penalty against President Donald Trump

https://www.wsbtv.com/news/appeals-court-throws/W6NOI4URMNFNHL46DV47SI
7KHA/


Get fucked, stupid Ted and SecondBot.

Time will always prove me right in any argument against you.

That's why I don't take your Epstein bait.


You keep playing flag football and celebrating your meaningless wins and headlines and sucking up all those dopamine hits like a crack addict, while you live completely in the moment and are incapable of thinking even 5 seconds into the future.

Meanwhile... I'll just keep biding my time and winning the Super Bowl.




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

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Thursday, August 21, 2025 5:25 PM

SECOND

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


'Resignations seem likely': Economist predicts investigation of Trump's $600 billion fail

By Sarah K. Burris | August 21, 2025 11:12AM ET

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-eu-trade-deal-resignations/

President Donald Trump's administration has published the terms of the trade deal with the European Union, but some of the promises Trump claimed were coming didn't materialize after all, according to one economics expert.

University of Michigan economics and public policy professor Justin Wolfers wrote on X that after perusing the deal, he discovered Trump's promise of $600 billion being sent to the U.S. from the E.U. isn't on the list.

"The most important thing is what's not there. Trump had boasted, 'They gave me $600 billion, and that’s a gift.' But guess what? They didn't. He didn't get a penny," wrote Wolfers. "Bottom line: The final text of the EU-US trade deal delivers $5,000 less to the average American household than the handshake agreement Trump boasted of on August 5."

"I expect there will be soul-searching, an investigation, and recriminations, as the White House explores how its negotiators fell $600 billion short of the deal the president thought he had struck. Resignations seem likely, and a re-think of the entire deal-making apparatus," Wolfers added.

The deal mapped out on July 28 promised, "The EU will purchase $750 billion in U.S. energy and make new investments of $600 billion in the United States, all by 2028." https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/07/fact-sheet-the-united-s
tates-and-european-union-reach-massive-trade-deal/

It explained, "The EU will invest $600 billion in the United States over the course of President Trump’s term. This new investment is in addition to the over $100 billion EU companies already invest in the United States every year."

It appeared again toward the end of the July 28 plan: "The deal bolsters America’s economy and manufacturing capabilities. The EU will purchase $750 billion in U.S. energy and make new investments of $600 billion in the United States, all by 2028."

The Aug. 21 deal changes the language significantly, shifting from a commitment to phrases like "make new investments" and "invest," and now saying things like they're "expected to invest."

"In this context, European companies are expected to invest an additional $600 billion across strategic sectors in the United States through 2028," the document says, removing the firm commitment. "This investment reflects the European Union’s strong commitment to the transatlantic partnership and its recognition of the United States as the most secure and innovative destination for foreign investment," the new deal says.

The deal can be read here:
Joint Statement on a United States-European Union Framework on an Agreement on Reciprocal, Fair, and Balanced Trade
The White House
August 21, 2025
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/2025/08/joint-statemen
t-on-a-united-states-european-union-framework-on-an-agreement-on-reciprocal-fair-and-balanced-trade/

Compare the above document to an earlier version, below, to see how Trump’s negotiators screwed up:
Fact Sheet: The United States and European Union Reach Massive Trade Deal
The White House
July 28, 2025
https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/07/fact-sheet-the-united-s
tates-and-european-union-reach-massive-trade-deal/

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Thursday, August 21, 2025 5:50 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


September 26th, 2023:

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

You are a propagandized meat puppet with a 20 IQ.

Get fucked.



Judge rules Donald Trump defrauded banks, insurers while building real estate empire

NEW YORK — A judge ruled Tuesday that Donald Trump committed fraud for years while building the real estate empire that catapulted him to fame and the White House.

New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur F. Engoron, ruling in a civil lawsuit brought by New York’s attorney general, found that the former president and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing financing.

James has asked Engoron to ban Trump and his three eldest children from ever again running a company based New York. She also wants Trump and the Trump Organization barred from entering into commercial real estate acquisitions for five years, among other sanctions. The $250 million in penalties she is seeking is the estimated worth of benefits derived from the alleged fraud, she said.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/judge-rules-donald-trump-defraud
ed-banks-insurers-while-building-real-estate-empire/ar-AA1hiWqw


tick tock tick tock

T


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:


Democrat judge who looks like the Crypt Keeper and won his election in 2015 unopposed in Manhattan. Has already ruled against Trump in 5 other occassions since September of 2020, never once ruling in his favor on anything.

*yawn*

This ruling will be appealed and will be disregarded.



Trump will be fine. He will also be your next President.

The rampant abuse of our so-called "Justice" Department by the current tyrannical administration* will be investigated and given a long-needed enema when that happens too.



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

Political correctness is just tyranny, with a smiley face.




This ruling was appealed and disregarded.

Trump is fine, he is also your current President.

The rampant abuse of our so-called "Justice" Department by the tyrannical Joe Biden* administration is being investigated and given the long-needed enema I told you it would get too.


TODAY:

Appeals court throws out massive civil fraud penalty against President Donald Trump

https://www.wsbtv.com/news/appeals-court-throws/W6NOI4URMNFNHL46DV47SI
7KHA/


Get fucked, stupid Ted.

Time will always prove me right in any argument against you.

That's why I don't take your Epstein bait.


You keep playing flag football and celebrating your meaningless wins and headlines and sucking up all those dopamine hits like a crack addict, while you live completely in the moment and are incapable of thinking even 5 seconds into the future.

Meanwhile... I'll just keep biding my time and winning the Super Bowl.



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

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Thursday, August 21, 2025 6:13 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:

You keep playing flag football and celebrating your meaningless wins and headlines and sucking up all those dopamine hits like a crack addict, while you live completely in the moment and are incapable of thinking even 5 seconds into the future.

Meanwhile... I'll just keep biding my time and winning the Super Bowl.
6ix, do you feel like beating people? Trump will pay you!

Federal Agents Are the New Proud Boys

It used to be far-right groups who flooded cities wearing masks and military gear, looking for a fight. Now it’s anonymous federal agents who are violently attacking people on the street.

By Melissa Gira Grant | August 19, 2025

https://newrepublic.com/article/199263/federal-agents-dc-takeover-prou
d-boys-far-right-violence

The beatdown in broad daylight in Washington, D.C., on Saturday was caught on video. Two masked men in tactical vests grappled with a delivery worker. One tased him, and he fell to the ground. A third man piled on, and then a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth, all in similar vests with faces covered. Pinning the worker face down on the pavement, agents tased him again and punched him repeatedly in the head. “Get the fuck out of this city!” a bystander’s voice yelled out at the masked men. “Why are you guys here?”

The masked men’s vests only identified them as “police,” as is often the case with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and later, their arrest in the upscale Logan Circle neighborhood was confirmed by the Department of Homeland Security. It was part of the escalation in the federal law enforcement occupation ordered by Trump, with multiple agencies patrolling neighborhoods, stopping residents at checkpoints, and making arrests. Throughout, these federal agents have met opposition from countless bystanders and witnesses, who record them, jeer at them, and demand they leave their city.

In that sense, nothing about the assault on Saturday stood out so much as it captured all these dynamics in the span of three minutes. It laid bare too how this takeover of an American city—the nation’s capital, no less—has been brewing in the far-right imagination for a long time. “You guys are ruining the country,” said one of the bystanders to the masked agents, and one of them responded, “Liberals already ruined it.” Once, it was far-right groups who flooded cities in the summertime, in masks and tactical vests, looking for a fight; now, those groups have no need to be in the streets, with ICE and other federal agents carrying out their mission for them. As one Proud Boy organizer said at a Portland, Oregon, rally in 2018, “For all the illegals trying to jump over our border, we should be smashing their heads into the concrete.”

What we are seeing now flows from those dramatic street confrontations, brought on by groups such as Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys nearly a decade ago, when they made Portland their target and Patriot Prayer leader Joey Gibson pledged, “The stench-covered and liberal-occupied streets of Portland will be CLEANSED.” Gibson was running as a Republican for the Washington state Senate at the time, and the Portland Police Bureau was in close contact with Patriot Prayer organizers, as reporting by Willamette Week exposed. The police regarded them as “much more mainstream” than leftist counterprotesters, arresting more of the latter than Proud Boys or Patriot Prayer members—even as the far-right groups were advocating the murder of immigrants and leftists.

It is perhaps less perplexing to see law enforcement in Washington this week engaged in anti-immigrant, anti-“liberal” taunts knowing this. On Sunday, the ICE account on X posted a video of seven masked agents removing a large banner hanging in Mount Pleasant’s main plaza, reading “Chinga la migra, Mount Pleasant Melts ICE.” Clutching the torn-down banner, one agent said to the camera, “We’re taking America back, baby.” (A new banner quickly appeared in the same place: “They are fascists. We are artists. We melt ICE.”) Ahead of January 6, 2021, members of the Proud Boys stole and destroyed Black Lives Matter signs from two historically Black churches in D.C., as they posed for cameras in their tactical vests and mockingly chanted, “Whose streets? Our streets.”

Seeing how ICE in particular have conducted themselves over the last few months, some people have feared that the masked agents Trump has unleashed might be the same people he pardoned for their involvement in the January 6 insurrection. Had they now infiltrated or been secretly hired into ICE and other agencies? A former assistant ICE director told Slate in July that he was “very worried” that “Proud Boys and other insurrectionists and hoodlums” would be hired at ICE, because, “What self-respecting person who wants a meaningful career in law enforcement would go to work [for Enforcement and Removal Operations] right now?”

The Department of Homeland Security is openly making appeals to far-right and white nationalist groups in its recent ICE recruitment drive, and some have, in fact, volunteered. Stewart Rhodes, the Oath Keepers founder, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy for his role in the January 6 insurrection, praised Trump’s deployment of the National Guard to Washington last week. Rhodes also said he planned to relaunch the Oath Keepers, and asked Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and “call up” the far-right militia group and others for immigration enforcement. “That’s what I urged him to do in 2020, when the left was rioting in open insurrection across the country,” Rhodes said, referring to the massive, nationwide protests after Minneapolis police murdered George Floyd.

For the far right, it’s as if the street fights they started in Trump’s first term never ended. What ICE and other federal law enforcement agents are now doing in the streets should be understood in that much longer context, in which Trump has gone from tacitly endorsing such violence, from the “very fine people” at the deadly Unite the Right rally in 2017 and his televised order to the Proud Boys in 2020 to “stand back and stand by,” to pardoning their members in his first days in office in 2025. One January 6 rioter has advised Trump’s “immigration czar” Tom Homan. Another now works advising the Department of Justice on the “weaponization” of the department (for anti-Trump ends). From the beginning, violence against Trump’s perceived enemies has been invited and rewarded. Now it is just being institutionalized.

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Thursday, August 21, 2025 6:39 PM

SECOND

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


South Park’s New Episode Takes On the Ass-Kissers Surrounding Trump

The series has somehow become even more depraved in its skewering of the current administration.

By David Mack | Aug 21, 2025 5:36 PM

https://slate.com/culture/2025/08/south-park-season-27-episode-3-trump
-tim-cook-paramount-comedy-central.html

Just three episodes into the show’s 27th season, it’s become more evident than ever that no other series on television is taking on the MAGA movement like South Park. Its juvenile and outrageous depiction of Trump and his acolytes has made headlines across the world and led to a renewed boom in cultural relevance for the long-running show, but for good reason: No other work of television is stooping this low or getting down in the muck where this White House thrives. This is the perfect crass series for this McDonald’s-ordering, UFC fight–hosting, Kid Rock–associating administration and our “Grab ’em by the pussy” convicted felon of a president. Sure, every episode this season has featured countless jokes about Trump having a micropenis, but the message behind the vulgarity is really quite simple: If you’re more disgusted watching this comedy than you are reading the news, then you just might be less human than the crudely animated residents of South Park.

More at https://slate.com/culture/2025/08/south-park-season-27-episode-3-trump
-tim-cook-paramount-comedy-central.html

Download episode 1) South.Park.S27E01.720p.10bit.WEBRip.2CH.x265.HEVC-PSA by using
Bittorrent Link: 34CFD44F3190F0EB81045AD2CCF9A811897B83F7

https://psa.wf/tv-show/south-park/

Use free software from qBittorrent: https://www.qbittorrent.org/download

Download episode 2) South.Park.S27E02.720p.10bit.WEBRip.2CH.x265.HEVC-PSA.mkv
Bittorrent Link: EA50CE6DC566830AAF4C63DE66E7AFF7870E9132

Download episode 3) South.Park.S27E03.720p.10bit.WEBRip.2CH.x265.HEVC-PSA.mkv
Bittorrent Link: A0A1252ECE91DE16B3A776B1561D7C57800DDEAD

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Thursday, August 21, 2025 7:26 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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

You keep playing flag football and celebrating your meaningless wins and headlines and sucking up all those dopamine hits like a crack addict, while you live completely in the moment and are incapable of thinking even 5 seconds into the future.

Meanwhile... I'll just keep biding my time and winning the Super Bowl.
6ix, do you feel like beating people? Trump will pay you!


Nah. I think that's more your speed, TBH...

Sounds like a great gig for you. You'd just have to get over the fact that you aren't going to get to beat up on white people while you're hiding behind the badge.

Because we know you're too big a pussy to ever do it any other way despite all your big girl talk.



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

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Thursday, August 21, 2025 8:54 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:

Nah. I think that's more your speed, TBH...

Sounds like a great gig for you. You'd just have to get over the fact that you aren't going to get to beat up on white people while you're hiding behind the badge.

Because we know you're too big a pussy to ever do it any other way despite all your big girl talk.
6ix, do you recall that one slur from you is to accuse someone of being a Communist? The good guys in WWII, at least in their own opinion, were the Nazis, who had endless hostility toward Communists. The bad guys in WWII, at least in the opinion of the Nazis, were the French Resistance firing bullets into the Nazis, who were only doing their jobs of bringing order, peace, and anti-Communism to France.

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Thursday, August 21, 2025 8:58 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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

Nah. I think that's more your speed, TBH...

Sounds like a great gig for you. You'd just have to get over the fact that you aren't going to get to beat up on white people while you're hiding behind the badge.

Because we know you're too big a pussy to ever do it any other way despite all your big girl talk.
6ix


Do not address me, worm.

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

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Friday, August 22, 2025 5:47 AM

SECOND

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


The Supreme Court hands down some incomprehensible gobbledygook about canceled federal grants

It is impossible to parse whatever the hell Justice Amy Coney Barrett just wrote. “My brain hurts,” writes Ian Millhiser.

By Ian Millhiser | August 21, 2025 7:00PM CDT
Ian Millhiser received a JD from Duke University and is the author of two books on the Supreme Court.

https://www.vox.com/scotus/458863/supreme-court-nih-public-health-gran
ts-gobbledygook

Late Thursday afternoon, the Supreme Court handed down an incomprehensible order concerning the Trump administration’s decision to cancel numerous public health grants. The array of six opinions in National Institutes of Health v. American Public Health Association is so labyrinthine that any judge who attempts to parse it risks being devoured by a Minotaur. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/25a103_kh7p.pdf

As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson writes in a partial dissent, the decision is “Calvinball jurisprudence,” which appears to be designed to ensure that “this Administration always wins.”

The case involves thousands of NIH grants that the Trump administration abruptly canceled which, according to Jackson, involve “research into suicide risk and prevention, HIV transmission, Alzheimer’s, and cardiovascular disease,” among other things. The grants were canceled in response to executive orders prohibiting grants relating to DEI, gender identity, or Covid-19.

A federal district court ruled that this policy was unlawful — “arbitrary and capricious” in the language of federal administrative law — in part because the executive orders gave NIH officials no precise guidance on which grants should be canceled. As Jackson summarized the district court’s reasoning, “‘DEI’—the central concept the executive orders aimed to extirpate—was nowhere defined,” leaving NIH officials “to arrive at whatever conclusion [they] wished” regarding which grants should be terminated.

According to Jackson, “the court found, as a factual matter, ‘an unmistakable pattern of discrimination against women’s health issues’ and ‘pervasive racial discrimination’—indeed, ‘palpable’ racial discrimination of a sort the judge had ‘never seen’ in 40 years on the bench.”

The question of whether this judge was correct to deem the Trump administration’s policy arbitrary and capricious, however, was not before the Supreme Court. Instead, the case hinged on a jurisdictional dispute.

Which court is supposed to hear this case?

As a general rule, lawsuits alleging that a federal policy is illegal are heard by federal district courts, while suits alleging that the federal government breached a contract are heard by the Court of Federal Claims.

In NIH, the plaintiffs alleged that the broader policy that led to their grants being canceled was illegal, so that suggests that this case should have been brought in a district court (which is where it was actually brought). But the case also bears some superficial similarity to a breach of contract suit, because it involved the government’s decision not to pay money that it had previously agreed to pay.

Four justices — the three Democrats plus Chief Justice John Roberts — concluded that these plaintiffs were right to bring their suit in the district court. Four other justices — Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh — concluded that the case must be brought in the Court of Claims. That would mean that these plaintiffs would have to start over again in the claims court, and possibly that they would have to bring individual suits seeking to reinstate individual grants, rather than seeking a broad order attacking the entire grant cancellation policy.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, meanwhile, cast the deciding vote. She claims that this suit must be split between the two courts. In her view, the district court was the proper venue for the plaintiffs to argue that the overall policy is illegal, but the claims court is the proper venue for them to actually seek the money they would have received if the grants are not canceled.

If that sounds confusing, it gets worse. Barrett’s opinion states that federal law bars the claims court from hearing “claims pending in other courts when those claims arise from ‘substantially the same operative facts.’” So these plaintiffs likely must wait until after they have fully litigated the question of whether the Trump administration’s broad policy is illegal in district court, before they can actually try to get any money in the claims court.

That could take years, especially if the first question is heard by the justices again. Moreover, as Jackson warns in her opinion, by the time the first round of litigation is finished, the plaintiffs may be unable to seek relief in the claims court because the statute of limitations for doing so will have expired.

The bottom line is that, because there are five votes for the proposition that some parts of this case go to the district court, and also five votes for the proposition that other parts of it go to the claims court, Barrett’s opinion controls the case. By the time this mess gets sorted out, it is likely that most — if not all — of the research at issue in NIH will be lost, even if the plaintiffs do prevail.

As Jackson writes, without any money to fund their operations, the grant recipients will need to “euthanize animal subjects, terminate life-saving trials, and close community health clinics.”

There are actually even more complexities in this case, but rather than engage in the Sysiphean task of trying to list all of them, I will simply repeat Jackson’s summary of what appears to be going on here:
Quote:
In a broader sense, however, today’s ruling is of a piece with this Court’s recent tendencies. “Right when the Judiciary should be hunkering down to do all it can to preserve the law’s constraints,” the Court opts instead to make vindicating the rule of law and preventing manifestly injurious Government action as difficult as possible. This is Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist. Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins.

Godspeed to the poor lawyers and judges who now have to untangle the mess this Court just created.

Download Ian Millhiser’s books on the Supreme Court from https://annas-archive.org/search?q=Ian+Millhiser

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Friday, August 22, 2025 2:27 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


On the same topic

Quote:
Supreme Court Allows Trump Admin To Revoke DEI-Related NIH Grants

Friday, Aug 22, 2025 - 08:05 AM

By Matthew Vadum of Epoch Times,

The Supreme Court voted 5–4 on Aug. 21 to allow the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to cancel hundreds of millions of dollars in research grants linked to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

The new ruling clears the way for the funding reductions while litigation over the grants continues in the lower courts.

The justices filed five separate opinions explaining their votes.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett voted to allow the grants to be cut.

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson, and Chief Justice John Roberts voted to deny the government’s request to rescind the funding.

The high court said it acted because the federal government faces the possibility that the grant monies, once paid out, may not be recovered.

Moreover, “the plaintiffs do not state that they will repay grant money if the Government ultimately prevails.”

The case is known as National Institutes of Health v. American Public Health Association.

The Department of Justice filed an emergency application with the nation’s highest court late last month, asking the justices to block a ruling by Boston-based U.S. District Judge William Young, who found the cancellation was unlawful and ordered the government to restore the funding.

NIH began taking steps in February to end the grants that conflict with President Donald Trump’s policy priorities.

The NIH is the world’s largest government funder of biomedical research.

The emergency application stemmed from two lawsuits challenging the cuts to grants involving DEI, “transgender issues,” “vaccine hesitancy,” and other issues.

The American Public Health Association described the cuts as an “ongoing ideological purge” of projects with a purported connection to gender identity, DEI, or “other vague, now-forbidden language.” A coalition of 16 attorneys general, largely Democrats, alleged their public research institutions are facing harm because of the funding delays and cuts.

The district court directed the NIH “to continue paying $783 million in federal grants that are undisputedly counter to the Administration’s priorities,” the department said in its filing.

“Following the change in Administration, the NIH identified, explained, and pursued new funding priorities. That is democracy at work, not, as the district court thought, proof of inappropriate ‘partisan[ship]’—let alone a permissible basis for setting agency action aside.”

In his written opinion, Gorsuch said the district court’s ruling upholding the grants conflicted with the Supreme Court’s decision in Department of Education v. California in April that let the Trump administration withdraw education-related grants.

“Lower court judges may sometimes disagree with this Court’s decisions, but they are never free to defy them,” Gorsuch said.

Unless we want anarchy to take over the federal judicial system, “a precedent of this Court must be followed by the lower federal courts no matter how misguided the judges of those courts may think it to be,” Gorsuch said, quoting a prior Supreme Court ruling.

In his dissenting opinion, Roberts said the district court ruling was justified.

“This relief—which has prospective and generally applicable implications beyond the reinstatement of specific grants—falls well within the scope of the District Court’s jurisdiction under the [federal] Administrative Procedure Act.”

Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson joined the dissent in part.

In her dissenting opinion, Jackson said the high court’s new ruling is “Calvinball jurisprudence with a twist,” a reference to a fictional game featured in the comic strip, “Calvin and Hobbes.”

“Calvinball has only one rule: There are no fixed rules. We seem to have two: that one, and this Administration always wins,” she said.


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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Friday, August 22, 2025 3:35 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


American Public Health Institute

Quote:
Making the Public's Health a National Priority

Washington, D.C. | November 2-5, 2025

Research has shown that public health efforts to prevent disease are more cost effective - and humane - than treating chronic health conditions, so now is the time to invest in our nation’s health. Health is a human right; let’s make it a national priority.


Sounds good, but it could be like AID's mission statement: a few flagship programs that cover a multitude of sins.

Public health seems to me to mostly be epidemiological studies, and OF COURSE that necessarily mean dividing up populations into subgroups if you want to understand risk factors: old v young, rich v poor, fat v thin, various races and ethnic groups etc.

Examples
In NJ Italian families had big get-togethers, spreading Covid like wildfire.

Traditional Chinese women avoid the sun bc dark skin is so "peasant" and may be deficient in vit D. But Anglos still sport moderate tans, increading skin cancer risk.

Blacks tend to have higher blood pressure and more diabetes than whites. At the same time, in utero exposure to excess sugar leads to higher blood sugar and more diabetes later in life, so is this a racial or dietary difference?

Trying to figure out what is "DEI" in that endeavor sounds difficult!

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Friday, August 22, 2025 4:26 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


So you Democrats finally killed Cracker Barrel, huh?

You almost did it with Covid, but now it's finally done.

Good job. Pat yourselves on the back.

Everybody hates white Democrats.

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

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Friday, August 22, 2025 4:30 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The Supreme Court hands down some incomprehensible gobbledygook about canceled federal grants

It is impossible to parse whatever the hell Justice Amy Coney Barrett just wrote. “My brain hurts,” writes Ian Millhiser.

By Ian Millhiser | August 21, 2025 7:00PM CDT
Ian Millhiser received a JD from Duke University and is the author of two books on the Supreme Court.

https://www.vox.com/scotus/458863/supreme-court-nih-public-health-gran
ts-gobbledygook

Late Thursday afternoon, the Supreme Court handed down an incomprehensible order concerning the Trump administration’s decision to cancel numerous public health grants. The array of six opinions in National Institutes of Health v. American Public Health Association is so labyrinthine that any judge who attempts to parse it risks being devoured by a Minotaur. https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/25a103_kh7p.pdf


Translation: I work for Vox and I'm an idiot. I made two pop-up books for morons who read Vox, but I don't really know shit about the Supreme Court, American Civics, Law, or anything else for that matter.

I can tell you all about avocados, soy beans and living your entire adult life deep in wage-slavery with student debt you can never pay off while in the friendzone with fat pink-haired liberal women who hate you.

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

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Saturday, August 23, 2025 8:21 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:

Translation: I work for Vox and I'm an idiot. I made two pop-up books for morons who read Vox, but I don't really know shit about the Supreme Court, American Civics, Law, or anything else for that matter.

I can tell you all about avocados, soy beans and living your entire adult life deep in wage-slavery with student debt you can never pay off while in the friendzone with fat pink-haired liberal women who hate you.
Actually, Slavery Was Very Bad

The president’s latest criticism of museums is a thinly veiled attempt to erase history.

By Clint Smith | August 22, 2025, 10 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/08/trump-attack-smithso
nian-slavery/683969/

In what looks to be an intensifying quest to reshape American history and scholarship according to his own preferences, President Donald Trump this week targeted the Smithsonian Institution, the national repository of American history and memory. Trump seemed outraged, in particular, by the Smithsonian’s portrayal of the Black experience in America. He took to Truth Social to complain that the country’s museums “are, essentially, the last remaining segment of ‘WOKE.’ The Smithsonian,” he wrote, “is OUT OF CONTROL.” Then Trump wrote something astonishing, even for him. He asserted that the narrative presented by the Smithsonian is overly focused on “how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been.”

Before continuing, it is important to pause a moment and state this directly: Donald Trump, the current president of the United States, believes that the Smithsonian is failing to do its job, because it spends too much time portraying slavery as “bad.”

After reading his post, I thought of the historian Lonnie Bunch, the current secretary of the Smithsonian—the first Black person to lead the institution since its founding in 1846—and the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. In his 2016 speech at the grand opening of the museum, Bunch thanked Barack Obama and George W. Bush for their support. “We are at this moment because of the backing of the United States Congress and the White House,” he said, turning to them both onstage. It’s sobering to consider how different things are today.

Bunch has been fighting efforts by the Trump administration to bring the Smithsonian into conformity with the MAGA vision of American history, and people familiar with his views say he is committed to protecting the intellectual integrity and independence of the Smithsonian. But how much longer, given Trump’s ever more antagonistic position, will Bunch be able to withstand the presidential pressure? On Truth Social, Trump said he had “instructed my attorneys to go through the Museums, and start the exact same process that has been done with Colleges and Universities where tremendous progress has been made.” A recent letter to the Smithsonian from the White House states that the review will be completed and a final report issued by early 2026, in time for the nation’s 250th anniversary, “to ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism.”

Trump’s Truth Social comment on slavery was unsettling for me not only because I am the descendant of enslaved people, and not only because I was born and raised in New Orleans, which was once the center of the domestic slave trade, but also because I am an American who believes that the only way to understand this country—the only way to love this country—is to tell the truth about it. Part of that truth is that chattel slavery, which lasted in the British American colonies and then the American nation for nearly 250 years, was indeed quite bad.

In 2021, I published a book about how we remember slavery. I have spent years reading the first-person accounts of formerly enslaved people discussing the myriad horrors they endured—the journey across the Middle Passage, the abuse, the sexual violence, the psychological terror, the family separations. It is worth taking the time, in light of the president’s recent words, to revisit some of these accounts.


In 1789, Olaudah Equiano published The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African. His book was one of the first autobiographies ever published by a formerly enslaved person, and it laid the groundwork for a new genre of literature that would transform what people around the world understood about slavery. Equiano had been kidnapped from what is now Nigeria and marched for several months to the coast of West Africa. One of the most devastating scenes in his book describes the sadism of the Middle Passage:

The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died … The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable.

The conditions were so bad, he writes, that some of the captives flung themselves overboard:

One day, when we had a smooth sea, and a moderate wind, two of my wearied countrymen, who were chained together (I was near them at the time), preferring death to such a life of misery, somehow made through the nettings, and jumped into the sea: immediately another quite dejected fellow, who, on account of his illness, was suffered to be out of irons, also followed their example; and I believe many more would soon have done the same, if they had not been prevented by the ship’s crew.

Once they arrived on American shores, men, women, and children were forced onto auction blocks where families were broken apart. Once separated, most would never see one another again.

Henry Bibb, born enslaved in Kentucky, writes in his 1849 memoir:

After the men were all sold they then sold the women and children. They ordered the first woman to lay down her child and mount the auction block; she refused to give up her little one and clung to it as long as she could, while the cruel lash was applied to her back for disobedience. She pleaded for mercy in the name of God. But the child was torn from the arms of its mother amid the most heart rending-shrieks from the mother and child on the one hand, and bitter oaths and cruel lashes from the tyrants on the other. Finally the poor little child was torn from the mother while she was sacrificed to the highest bidder.

When the captives arrived at the home or plantation of their enslaver, many of them were forced to work in sweltering fields with hardly any respite. Their days began early. Austin Steward, born enslaved in Virginia, writes in his 1857 book:

It was the rule for the slaves to rise and be ready for their task by sun-rise, on the blowing of a horn or conch-shell; and woe be to the unfortunate, who was not in the field at the time appointed, which was in thirty minutes from the first sounding of the horn. I have heard the poor creatures beg as for their lives, of the inhuman overseer, to desist from his cruel punishment.

On the plantation, enslaved people were denied any physical autonomy, and were subjected to torturous, and often arbitrary, violence at the hands of overseers and enslavers. As William Coleman, born in Tennessee around 1853, recalled as part of an interview for the Federal Writers’ Project in the 1930s:

I’se seen the slaves whipped for nothing, but then if they did do something to be whipped for they were almost killed before Maser would quit working on them … One time one of the slaves was helping Mistress there in the yard and he passed too close to her as he was hurrying fast as he could, and sort of bumped into her. She never paid him no attention, but Maser saw him and he let him go on ahead and finish what he was doing then he called that poor negro to him and took him out in the pasture, tied his hands together, throwed the other end of the rope over a limb on a tree and pulled that negro’s hands up in the air to where that negro had to stand on his tiptoes, and Maser he took all that negro’s clothes off and whipped him with that rawhide whip until that negro was plum bloody all over. Then he left that poor negro tied there all the rest of the day and night.

Enslaved Black women were particularly vulnerable to insidious and unrelenting sexual violence at the hands of their enslavers. In his 1857 book, William Anderson, born enslaved in Virginia, describes this:

My master often went to the house, got drunk, and then came out to the field to whip, cut, slash, curse, swear, beat and knock down several, for the smallest offense, or nothing at all.

He divested a poor female slave of all wearing apparel, tied her down to stakes, and whipped her with a handsaw until he broke it over her naked body. In process of time he ravished her person and became the father of a child by her.

The constant threat of such violence took an immense psychological toll on those who were subjected to it. Harriet Jacobs, born enslaved in North Carolina, writes in her 1861 book, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl:

He told me I was his property; that I must be subject to his will in all things … The degradation, the wrongs, the vices, that grow out of slavery, are more than I can describe. They are greater than you would willingly believe … My master met me at every turn, reminding me that I belonged to him, and swearing by heaven and earth that he would compel me to submit to him. If I went out for a breath of fresh air after a day of unwearied toil, his footsteps dogged me. If I knelt by my mother’s grave, his dark shadow fell on me even there. The light heart which nature had given me became heavy with sad forebodings.

The consequences of being caught in an attempted escape were so severe that most enslaved people never dared try. In Solomon Northup’s 1853 memoir, Twelve Years a Slave, he describes watching what happened to an enslaved man who ran away and then was captured several weeks later:

Wiley was stripped, and compelled to endure one of those inhuman floggings to which the poor slave is so often subjected. It was the first and last attempt of Wiley to run away. The long scars upon his back, which he will carry with him to the grave, perpetually remind him of the dangers of such a step.

Even after slavery was formally abolished by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, the pain the institution wrought on the country’s 4 million freedmen and freedwomen continued to reverberate. Throughout the late 19th century, newly emancipated Black people used newspapers to try to locate family members they had been separated from many years before. The Christian Recorder published this ad following the war in 1865:

INFORMATION WANTED

Of my mother and father, Caroline and Issac Denna; also, my sisters, Fanny, Jane and Betsy Denna, and my brothers, Robert R., Hugh Henry, and Philander Denna. We were born in Fauquier Co, Va. In 1849 they were taken from the plantation of Josiah Lidbaugh, in said county, and carried to Winchester to be sold. About the same time I left my home in Clark Co, and have not heard from them since. The different ministers of Christian churches will do a favor by announcing the above, and any information will be gladly received by GEO. HENRY DENNA, Galva, Henry Co.

For many, the search meant trying to find someone they hadn’t seen for decades. Nancy Jones published this ad in 1886, more than 30 years after she had last seen her son:

INFORMATION WANTED of my son, Allen Jones. He left me before the war, in Mississippi. He wrote me a letter in 1853 in which letter he said that he was sold to the highest bidder, a gentleman in Charleston, S.C. Nancy Jones, his mother, would like to know the whereabouts of the above named person.

Whether mother and son were ever reunited is unknown.

None of us can imagine what it is like to be subjected to the unremitting physical, psychological, and social violence of chattel slavery. But museums such as the National Museum of African American History and Culture bring us closer to being able to do so by sharing first-person accounts of those who lived through that terrible violence. At these museums, we see the garments enslaved people wore, the tools they used, the structures in which they lived. We see their faces; we hear their voices.

The NMAAHC, in particular, is unflinching in its characterization of slavery as an unequivocally evil system, one whose impact continues to be felt across our society. In 1860, the 4 million enslaved Black people were worth more than every bank, factory, and railroad combined. Today, although they make up 14 percent of the population, Black people own less than 4 percent of the nation’s wealth.

Still, the museum also makes clear that the Black American experience is not singularly defined by slavery, but also by the art, literature, and cultural traditions that have emerged from, and in spite of, centuries of interpersonal and structural violence. These are not mutually exclusive, and the NMAAHC understands that Americans should learn about both.

And yet the MAGA movement wants to tell a story about America that is disproportionately focused on what its proponents perceive to be the exceptionalism of this country. They are invested in this story because having to look too closely at the disturbing parts of American history would mean having to look closely at the disturbing parts of themselves. But instead of ignoring the shameful parts of our past, shouldn’t we—as individuals and as a country—want to learn from aspects of our history that we are not proud of? What other way is there to become the version of ourselves that we aspire to be?

The Trump administration is, in both public discourse and public policy, arguably the most racist presidential administration in modern American history. Each week seems to bring a new example of its bigotry. I am sometimes tempted, upon encountering yet another instance of this omnipresent racial antagonism, to let it be. How many ways can you say the same thing over and over again? And yet, we must write it down, if for nothing else, then for the sake of those who will come after us. I think of Frederick Douglass, who wrote about the monstrousness of slavery even when the idea of abolition seemed preposterous to most Americans. W. E. B. Du Bois wrote about how the nation must hold on to the values of Reconstruction long after federal soldiers marched out of the former Confederacy and abandoned Black southerners. Ida B. Wells wrote about the lynchings taking place throughout the South even as fresh bodies were still swinging from the trees. Their words were essential because they remind us that some Americans did bear witness to, and stand against, these atrocities.

This is part of the reality of Black life in this country: We must make a record of those forces that seek to erase us and erase our histories so that future generations know we did not simply accept it. Our ancestors’ words remind us that we never have.

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

Saturday, August 23, 2025 9:30 AM

SECOND

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


Trump's pay-me capitalism puts the squeeze on corporate America

By Ben Berkowitz | August 22, 2025

https://www.axios.com/2025/08/22/trump-apple-nvidia-amd-intel-corporat
ions

The era of pay-me capitalism has arrived, and companies are quickly learning lessons about what happens if they don't comply.

Why it matters: Just seven months into his second presidency, Trump has broken with more than a century of conservative orthodoxy and taken a maximalist view of presidential intervention in the economy.

The big picture: In Trump’s America, everything has a cost.

• Businesses wanted a pro-management, low-regulation, bigger-is-better administration. They, by and large, are getting that.

• The price? Adhering to Trump's priorities, paying whatever tariffs and cuts off the top he dictates, moving their operations where he wants them to, and toeing the line on his social priorities.

• Trump himself has leaned into this frame, repeatedly likening the U.S. to a department store, and describing himself as the store manager, setting the prices to do business there.

The list of examples grows by the day. Most recently, it was the administration seeking to convert CHIPS Act grants to Intel and other chipmakers into partial government ownership. But beyond that:

• Companies are being scored on their loyalty to Trump’s platform.

• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says it's appropriate for corporate margins to come down (in other words, they should absorb more costs and pay more tariffs, even if that means making less money).

• The government is taking a cut of Nvidia's and AMD's foreign sales, with purposes yet to be determined.

• It’s not just tech, either — for example, the demands to drugmakers to change the way they sell products, and to automakers to move their plants back to America.

• The foreign investment components of the recent trade deals also contemplate the government owning major projects, hand-picked by Trump, and then leasing them to the private sector.

Between the lines: These moves are creating a lack of certainty for businesses — not only about the rules, but how legally sound they are and how long they'll last.

• To the extent that we now have relationships with the private sector and the government occurring beyond those legislatively prescribed rules of the road, it creates a lot of uncertainty what future administrations might do and what their guardrails are going forward,” Neil Bradley, chief policy officer and head of strategic advocacy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, tells Axios.

• “Business leaders are trying to understand how this works both in the very near term, but also over the long term, thinking about how commitments made today may play out in future administrations from both parties.”

Zoom out: Any company that doesn't want to play ball can look at Apple for an example of the consequences.

• The company pledged $500 billion in U.S. manufacturing. Not good enough, once it became clear the iPhone maker was also working on expanding manufacturing in India to keep costs down.

• Pretty soon Trump was threatening huge tariffs on phones, none of which went away until Apple CEO Tim Cook went to the White House with another $100 billion pledge and a 24k gold present.

What they’re saying: Wall Street is, to put it mildly, skeptical of the administration’s approach.

• “I've been around this business for a long time, and I’ve never seen the government make a savvy investment when they get involved in the private sector,” Laffer Tengler Investments CEO Nancy Tengler said in a note this week.

• “I don't care how good a businessman you are, give it to the private sector and let people like me be the critic and let the government get to the business of government.”

For the record: The White House defended Trump's track record and said it was what voters wanted him to do.

• “President Trump's hands-on leadership has already delivered trillions in investment commitments in key sectors, billions in tariff revenue, a swift end to Joe Biden's inflation crisis and unprecedented trade deals that finally level the playing field for Americans,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement.

• “The administration's pro-growth policy mix of tax cuts, deregulation and tariffs ushered in historic job, wage, and economic growth in President Trump’s first term, and they’re set to do so again in President Trump's second term.”

The bottom line: The “cost of doing business” is going up, and so are the risks of not paying.

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

NOTIFY: Y   |  REPLY  |  REPLY WITH QUOTE  |  TOP  |  HOME  

YOUR OPTIONS

NEW POSTS TODAY

USERPOST DATE

OTHER TOPICS

DISCUSSIONS
Up to 1,700 National Guard soldiers set to mobilize in NINETEEN states as Trump cracks down on illegal immigration and crime
Sun, August 24, 2025 03:31 - 2 posts
What Is the Democratic Alternative to Trump?
Sun, August 24, 2025 03:26 - 2 posts
End of the Democratic Party (not kidding)
Sat, August 23, 2025 20:44 - 89 posts
Your Degree is Worthless and Your Job is Fake (Oh... And there are currently 55 Million Visas issued in America on top of the 20-30 Million Illegal Alien Invaders).
Sat, August 23, 2025 20:18 - 2 posts
Trunp loses again in Court
Sat, August 23, 2025 19:49 - 776 posts
Maher: Democrats Offer Up High-Minded Intangibles While Trump Talks About Tips, Low-Flow Toilets, Shoes At Airport
Sat, August 23, 2025 18:24 - 1 posts
In the garden, and RAIN!!! (2)
Sat, August 23, 2025 17:40 - 5817 posts
Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
Sat, August 23, 2025 15:53 - 8799 posts
Did James Comey just order a hit on Trump?
Sat, August 23, 2025 10:55 - 21 posts
Bolton is out, finally!
Sat, August 23, 2025 10:51 - 36 posts
Dutch right film maker banned from LONDONISTAN
Sat, August 23, 2025 10:50 - 110 posts
A.I Artificial Intelligence AI
Sat, August 23, 2025 10:40 - 341 posts
 VIEW MORE TOPICS 

FFF.NET SOCIAL