REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

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

POSTED BY: 6IXSTRINGJACK
UPDATED: Saturday, September 13, 2025 10:05
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PAGE 66 of 66

Wednesday, September 10, 2025 6:04 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Can a Despised Autocrat Consolidate Power?
Trump is losing the public. Will that matter?

By Paul Krugman | Sep 9



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

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

6ix, for a guy who is struggling with ill health, inherited mental disorders, poverty, and no future, you certainly are sure of yourself.

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

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Wednesday, September 10, 2025 6:05 AM

SECOND

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


24% price increase next year and 35% increase in 2018 because of executive orders

Health insurance companies have requested an average premium increase of 24% for Affordable Care Act plans in Texas in 2026, a significant hike that could lead to destabilization in the marketplace and customers opting for less or no coverage.

Last year, the average rate hike across insurance carriers was 3.8%. Data analysis from KFF found that next year’s rate hikes could be the largest increase since 2018, when average premiums went up by 35% in Texas. In 2018, companies factored in Congress’ attempts to repeal the Affordable Care Act and President Donald Trump signing an executive order ending subsidies to insurers for low-income people. After 2018, average premiums in Texas have never risen by more than 4%.

Nearly 4 million Texans bought health insurance coverage through the ACA marketplace for 2025, a high-water mark in a state that has the highest uninsured rate in the nation. ACA uptake has tripled since 2020, after Congress expanded tax credits to lower ACA users’ monthly premiums.

More at https://www.texastribune.org/2025/08/21/texas-health-insurance-premium
s-aca-tax-credit-expiration
/

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

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Wednesday, September 10, 2025 6:12 AM

SECOND

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


The Fungus Among Us

Posted on Monday, Feb 5, 2024, 2:00AM by Barry Goldman

https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2024/02/the-fungus-among-us.html

Reading about corporate greed and depredation over the past few years, I keep getting stuck on the same question: Don’t these people have grandchildren? How can corporate decision-makers spend their days actively working to destroy the environment, pollute the water, kill off the animals, melt the glaciers, and incinerate the biosphere? Even if what they care about the most is making more money no matter how much money they already have, don’t they care at all about the world they’re leaving for their kids?

I’ve arrived at a theory. But first I need to back up a few steps.

Readers of 3QD may be familiar with the brain fungus that causes “zombie ants” to leave the safety of the forest floor and climb up the stalks of plants to die. Or the parasite that causes mice to lose their fear of cats. In both cases, the parasite has evolved to hijack the brain of the host and cause it to behave in ways that are suicidal to the host but beneficial to the parasite. The behaviors the parasite causes are often exquisitely complex and particular. It seems impossible that something as primitive as a fungus could be the explanation. But evolution has come up with lots of similar strategies. She is very clever. She doesn’t have a sense of fair play or sportsmanship. If a behavior increases the chances of getting the genes of one generation reproduced in the next, it succeeds. Nothing else matters. And she has lots and lots of time to experiment.

So that’s the first idea we need – the fungus that hijacks the brain of one species to improve the reproductive success of another.

Then we need the idea of cultural evolution. Human beings don’t have to wait for genetic evolution. We have evolved the ability to get information from one generation to the next without having to wait for it first to be encoded in the DNA. We don’t have to start from scratch with each generation, and we don’t have to proceed by trial and error. We have culture, language, and traditional practices.

In the modern world, I don’t have to know how anything works. I don’t have to know how cars or computers work, for example, or how to build them. It’s enough for me to know how to drive and how to type. As long as somewhere in my culture there are people who know how cars and computers work and how to build them, I can off-load that responsibility to them and spend my time on other things.

One more idea and we will be ready for my theory. That’s the idea of a meme. A meme is to cultural evolution what a gene is to the biological kind. It’s the unit of transfer, the basic building block. Cooking is a meme. When the idea of cooking enters into a culture, lots of things change. People live longer because cooking releases more nutritional value from food. People get bigger and stronger. Their teeth get smaller. Jaw muscles get weaker and on and on.

The corporation is a meme. It is a legal invention, a legal fiction if you like. Corporations don’t exist in the way that tables and chairs exist. They don’t have weight or take up space. They have no natural lifespan. Some of them are much older and vastly richer than any person. They can own property, enter into contracts, sue, and be sued. And, since the US Supreme Court decision in Citizens United and related cases, they can donate unlimited amounts of money to the political causes of their choice.

I quote here from The Handover: How We Gave Control of Our Lives to Corporations, States and AIs, by David Runciman:

The 18th century jurist Edward Thurlow famously complained: ‘Corporations have neither bodies to be kicked, nor souls to be damned; they therefore do as they like.’ Sentient beings with bodies and souls disappear inside the group once it has acquired its own identity. They can shrug their shoulders as the victims of the group’s decisions come looking for justice. Meanwhile, the group has no shoulders to shrug.

Mitt Romney famously said, “Corporations are people, my friend.” But he was profoundly wrong. They are not people. Corporations are a brain fungus. They act to benefit themselves. And they hijack the brains of the people who work for them and cause them to do things no sane person would do.

That’s the answer to my question. Corporations can act the way they do because they don’t have grandchildren. The people who make corporate decisions to poison the earth do so because their brains have been hijacked by the virus. Partly this is accomplished with simple bribery.
Corporate CEOs are awarded vast salaries and ridiculous compensation packages in order to blind them to their human responsibilities. But that alone is not sufficient. The brain fungus also works at a more subtle level. It convinces the corporate decision maker that he is part of a larger system, and that it is the system that is responsible for ethics. In this view, he (it is almost inevitably a he) doesn’t have to know anything about the ethics and morality of his decisions. He can offload that responsibility. His job is to increase shareholder value. It is the job of the political system, the law, or the market to impose restraints. The mechanism is a little fuzzy, but what’s important is that there is a division of labor. “You just concentrate on producing revenue,” the fungus whispers to the CEO. “Other parts of the system will worry about protecting the biosphere.”

This is a corollary to Upton Sinclair’s famous dictum. It is easy to get a man to believe something when his stock options depend on his believing it.

Lawyers are embedded in a system with a similar architecture. This is the adversarial system I discussed in an earlier 3QD post. Under the adversarial system, a lawyer’s duty is to his client. If the client is a greedhead scumbag, well, he’s a greedhead scumbag. The lawyer’s duty doesn’t change. His job is to provide zealous advocacy. The job of seeing to it that the scumbag gets what’s coming to him is off-loaded to the larger system. I don’t think that’s a good idea in the legal context, and I don’t think it’s a good idea in the context of the corporation.

Quoting from Runciman again:

How, for example, could multinational oil corporations have spent years suppressing and distorting the evidence that fossil fuels were responsible for dangerous levels of climate change? We might choose to believe that the people working for these companies are especially bad, reckless, irresponsible, and selfish. But they are not: they are, on the whole, just people like the rest of us. It is the corporation that chose to pursue this path and the people involved because they are like the rest of us, followed because following a corporate decision is the path of least resistance. It is more than likely that many of the people involved knew that what they were doing was wrong. But the corporation didn’t because the corporation isn’t sentient.

This suggests there may be a sliver of hope. We all have multiple roles. In his corporate role, the CEO of a fracking concern is a zombie host mindlessly obeying the dictates of a parasitic brain fungus. But he has other roles. He is also a human being and, likely, a grandfather. The planet might have a future if something or someone could shake him from his zombie trance and remind him of that. It is not sufficient to leave the future of the world to the workings of the political system, the law or the market. The responsibility to act morally cannot be off-loaded. Wake up and think of your grandchildren!

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

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Wednesday, September 10, 2025 6:39 AM

SECOND

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


Trump made many prophecies about the economic miracles he would achieve as president. “Starting on day one, we will end inflation,” he promised. “We will be slashing energy and electricity prices by half within 12 months, at a maximum 18 months.” He promised to get gasoline below $2 a gallon. And of course he insisted that he would deliver a jobs boom, especially in manufacturing.

None of that is happening. Tomorrow’s report on consumer prices will probably show inflation running at close to 3 percent, with most economists expecting it to rise in the months ahead. Electricity prices are rising rapidly, while gas is solidly above $3 a gallon. And job growth appears to be stalling.

Furthermore, much of the bad news is Trump’s own fault. His tariffs and deportations are both adding to inflation and, by creating uncertainty, slowing the economy.

Trump has already fired the head of the BLS for reporting job numbers he didn’t like, claiming falsely that the bad numbers were rigged to hurt him politically. We can expect further claims of partisan bias as the inflation numbers get worse, and eventually, probably quite soon, an attempt to purge and politicize the agency.

The push to politicize the BLS has been reinforced by yesterday’s report from the agency, which revised downward its estimates of past job growth. The White House claimed that it shows that “the BLS is broken.”

It showed no such thing. As a helpful post from the Economic Policy Institute says,

These BLS data revisions are not corrections of mistakes. Revisions are part of the regular, transparent process to update employment counts with the most comprehensive data possible.

As the EPI explains, monthly job numbers don’t literally track every job in America. They’re estimates based on a partial survey of employers. We only get comprehensive data from unemployment insurance tax records, which become available once a year. Revising the estimates based on that data is normal and in no sense a sign that the BLS is doing anything wrong.

But the administration will try to use the revision to discredit the agency, and in particular its recent reports showing a worsening labor market.

So what you need to know is that the BLS is doing its job the way it should, and that there is plenty of additional evidence confirming that the labor market has gotten worse under Trump.

For example, the widely respected Conference Board survey of consumers shows that between last December and August there was a sharp decline in the number of people saying jobs were “plentiful” and a sharp rise in those saying they were “hard to get.”

The New York Fed reports that the percentage of respondents who believe that they could quickly find a new job if they lost their current one has dropped sharply.

And the Federal Reserve’s Beige Book, a regular informal survey that often serves as a useful check on formal data, gave a clear picture of stalling employment:

Eleven Districts described little or no net change in overall employment levels, while one District described a modest decline. Seven Districts noted that firms were hesitant to hire workers because of weaker demand or uncertainty. Moreover, contacts in two Districts reported an increase in layoffs, while contacts in multiple Districts reported reducing headcounts through attrition …

This is not a booming economy.

It's not really surprising that Trump is failing to deliver on any of his promises, which never made sense in the first place. Nor is it surprising that he and those around him, rather than making a course correction, are trying to shoot the messengers. But it’s a tragedy that the attempt to suppress bad news may well destroy the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a highly competent and professional agency whose services we need more than ever.

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/when-maga-prophecy-fails

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

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Wednesday, September 10, 2025 8:02 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Can a Despised Autocrat Consolidate Power?
Trump is losing the public. Will that matter?

By Paul Krugman | Sep 9



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

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

6ix, for a guy who is struggling with ill health, inherited mental disorders, poverty, and no future, you certainly are sure of yourself.

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



I haven't worked for years and everything is paid for.

My future is whatever I want it to be.

Every single day is the same for you. Crying about Trump. Trump, Trumpy, Trump.

TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP!

You are going to die soon, and everyone you know hates you.



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

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

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Wednesday, September 10, 2025 3:19 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

I haven't worked for years and everything is paid for.

My future is whatever I want it to be.

Every single day is the same for you. Crying about Trump. Trump, Trumpy, Trump.

TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP! TRUMP!

You are going to die soon, and everyone you know hates you.



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

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

What is in the news for these 3 words?

Trump bribery bitcoin

https://news.google.com/search?q=Trump+bribery+bitcoin

The usual stuff:

U.S. House Committee on Financial Services Democrats (.gov)
Day 5: Crypto Has Made Trump $1.2 BILLION Richer – and Counting

Common Cause
Trump’s Crypto Corruption: A New Low in Pay-to-Play Politics

Daily Kos
Crypto is the grift that keeps on giving for the Trump family

Rolling Stone
Trump Crypto Corruption Intensifies as Abu Dhabi Firm Invests $2 Billion

Merkley (.gov)
Trump-Linked Crypto Deal is a ‘Staggering’ Conflict of Interest

The New York Times
Trump’s Finances Were Shaky. Then He Began to Capitalize on His Comeback.

CNN
A crypto mogul who invested millions into Trump coins is getting a reprieve on civil fraud charges

Yahoo Finance
'If You Want To Bribe Trump, Bring Gold—Not Bitcoin'. An Economist Claims Apple Got Tariff Relief On Semiconductors For Cheap

Democracy Now!
“Mt. Everest of Corruption”: Crypto Investors Buy Access to President; Trump Expands Bitcoin Holdings

Alaska Native News
'Greatest Corruption in Presidential History': Trump Family Reaps $5 Billion More in Crypto Profits

messageboxnews.com
Breaking: Trump's Crypto Corruption Scheme Goes into Overdrive

The Guardian
‘Roadmap for corruption’: Trump dive into cryptocurrency raises ethics alarm

The message blowing on the wind? Trump Takes Bribes.

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

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Wednesday, September 10, 2025 3:36 PM

SECOND

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


Trump Is No Nationalist

The president and his followers are forging an international movement devoted to their authoritarian cause.

By David Frum |  September 9, 2025, 9:34 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/09/maga-globalism/68414
3
/

President Donald Trump tells a lot of untruths, but one of the untruthiest is that his movement is “national.” Again and again, in fact, Trump and his core followers seem to care a lot more about what is happening in other countries than about what is happening in the United States.

Last week, for example, Trump hosted the president of Poland at the White House. From the cordial photos, the meeting might seem a welcome change from MAGA’s usual contempt and hostility to U.S. allies. But look again.

Trump’s meeting with President Karol Nawrocki was a carefully staged insult to Poland’s elected government—and the latest move in a campaign to manipulate European political systems in favor of Trump’s ideological allies.

Like many European countries, Poland has both a president and a prime minister. Day-to-day policy, including foreign policy, is set by the government, which is headed by the prime minister, who is answerable to Parliament. The president’s role is mostly negative: He wields a powerful veto, and can use the threat of its exercise to bend the government to his will.

Poland’s prime minister, Donald Tusk, leads a coalition strongly supportive of Ukraine in its fight with Russia. That fight has been costly to Poland. Almost 1 million Ukrainians have been displaced to Poland, where they are allowed to work and receive social benefits such as schooling and health care. Some Poles have begun to resent Ukrainians. Their votes helped elect Nawrocki in two rounds of balloting, on May 18 and June 1.

Nawrocki is an amateur historian whose work seems calibrated to inflame the historic mutual grievances between Poles and Ukrainians. He campaigned on the slogan “Poland First.” Although not as overtly pro-Russian as his political allies in Hungary and Slovakia, Nawrocki has used his powers in ways that put pressure on the Ukrainian side. He is trying to limit benefits to Ukrainians in Poland and end their right to work. He opposes Ukrainian entry into NATO.

The Trump administration blatantly favored Nawrocki during the election campaign. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem traveled to Poland after the first round of voting to endorse Nawrocki by name and insult his principal opponent as one of the “weak” leaders who have allowed in immigrants who “destroyed their civilizations.” Poland is one of the few countries in Europe where views of the United States remain generally favorable, so Noem’s intervention may have made a difference in an election decided by less than a single point of the popular vote.

The Trump administration is exploiting partisan animosities within Poland to advance its own goals of wrecking the European Union and ending the Ukraine war on terms favorable to Russia.

Or take another example: Last month, Vice President J. D. Vance spent his summer holiday in the United Kingdom. He fished with the British foreign minister, visited U.S. service personnel, and made a side visit to Scotland to play golf on a Trump course. The first two of those activities would be normal for any U.S. vice president. The third is the kind of corruption that’s just a normal day’s business under President Trump. But Vance also made time for something out of the ordinary: a personal intervention in Britain’s internal politics.

Unlike in Poland, the Trump administration is highly unpopular in the United Kingdom. Only about one-fifth of Britons have a favorable view of Donald Trump. Vance polls even lower than that. But on the British right, Trump and Vance command attention and support—and Vance’s summer project was to lever that attention to shift British conservatism in a Trump-like direction.

The British right is now contested between two parties: the familiar Conservative Party and a new Reform Party. Reform has pulled ahead in the polls. The situation is volatile. Emotions are running strong. Resolving the impasse might seem a matter best left to the British.

Yet Vance’s itinerary seemed designed to insert and assert himself into the middle of the melee—and to favor the most extreme anti-immigration, pro-Russian factions. Vance deputed as his “British sherpa” a Cambridge academic disdainful of Ukraine and those Conservatives who have supported its cause. Vance met with Nigel Farage, the leader of the anti-immigration Reform Party, and with Robert Jenrick, an anti-immigration activist seeking to topple the faltering Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch.

Vance tried to muscle his way into German politics in the same way earlier in the year. On February 14, scarcely a week before Germany held its federal elections, Vance delivered a speech at the Munich Security Conference that sounded to German ears like an outright administration endorsement of the Alternative for Germany, another anti-immigration, pro-Russian far-right party. Vance scolded Germans for excluding the Alternative for Germany from public forums like the one where he was speaking. And indeed, Germany for obvious historical reasons restricts some forms of expression by the anti-democratic extremes of far right and far left. These German rules differ from American conceptions of free speech. Yet the recent American practice where the president of the United States threatens media corporations with reprisals unless they make multimillion-dollar payoffs to the president and his family must seem equally alien to German ideas of rights and liberties. German politicians don’t come to the United States to criticize the Trump shakedown system on American soil. Vance did not return the courtesy. In this case, at least, his intervention failed. While the AfD gained 20 percent of the popular vote, it did not do well enough to block the traditional parties from forming a center-right coalition committed to European unity and the defense of Ukraine against Russia.

In Canada in April and in Australia in May, anti-Trump sentiment defeated mainstream conservative parties that were tainted and discredited by Trump’s attacks on Australian and Canadian sovereignty and trade.

Proper conservatism has always been rooted in the local. But as conservatism has transmuted into Trumpism, that sense of the local has been lost. MAGA has developed into a truly global political movement, as ready to be franchised across national lines as a fast-food chain.

Far-right parties copy Trump’s slogans and Vance’s sarcastic, trollish rhetorical style. The message is everywhere the same, regardless of local conditions: blame immigrants for crime, disorder, housing prices, and anything else voters might be discontented about; reject vaccinations and promote quack remedies; back Russia and vilify Ukraine. The globalist quality of MAGA authoritarianism is powerfully symbolized by the willingness of the American Conservative Political Action Conference to lease its brand to far-right movements across Europe and Asia who want to host their own events in Budapest, Tokyo, or Warsaw. And everywhere, the message is amplified by social-media channels that seem to regard extremism as the pathway to engagement—and fear retaliation from Donald Trump if they ever try to diminish the volume of anger and disinformation.

Americans often try to seek the origins of Trumpism in their unique national past: episodes like McCarthyism in the 1950s or the overthrow of Reconstruction after the Civil War. It’s at least equally important to recognize what is not unique about Trumpism. The United States is not the only society confronting reactionary authoritarian grabs for power. The Trump movement, as the biggest and richest, acts as a kind of patron to all the others. But the smaller movements contribute to the common project. So much of what Trump and Vance say, so much content from their mass-media and social-media allies, originates not in the United States, but from their Hungarian, British, and German movement affiliates.

Those movements appreciate that they have a lot in common. They are learning to cooperate against their common adversaries. Those adversaries need to develop at least equal awareness, before it’s too late.

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

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Thursday, September 11, 2025 6:06 AM

SECOND

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


RFK Jr.'s Brain Worm presents The History of Medical Science

By Ruben Bolling | 6:30 am Wed Sep 10, 2025

https://boingboing.net/2025/09/10/tom-the-dancing-bug-rfk-jr-s-brain-w
orm-presents-the-history-of-medical-science.html


There are some maladies that still elude the boundaries of known medical therapies. Clearly it is time to chuck this whole science thing!

We now must entrust the entire direction of health and medicine to the whim of a wholly untrained conspiracy theorist and former heroin dealer!

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

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Thursday, September 11, 2025 6:28 AM

SECOND

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


Amazon, General Motors and Microsoft told Congress they contributed significantly more money to Trump’s 2025 inaugural committee than the inaugural committee itself publicly reported to the Federal Election Commission.

Sloppy bookkeeping by Donald Trump’s 2024 inaugural committee earned a terse dismissal from a spokesperson who didn’t want to address the possibility of stolen cash.

An estimated $250 million needs to be accurately accounted for.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-official-complains-missi
ng-money-questions-are-wasting-everyone-s-time-report/ar-AA1Mi7wn


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

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Thursday, September 11, 2025 6:53 AM

SECOND

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


Paula White, the White House Faith Advisor (60 seconds, turn sound on)

https://imgur.com/gallery/maga-has-always-been-delusional-Eeck6Nb

More at https://www.google.com/search?q=paula+white+white+house+faith+office

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

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Thursday, September 11, 2025 8:59 AM

SECOND

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


The message is everywhere the same, regardless of local conditions: blame immigrants for crime, disorder, housing prices, and anything else voters might be discontented about; reject vaccinations and promote quack remedies; back Russia and vilify Ukraine.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/09/maga-globalism/68414
3
/

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

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Thursday, September 11, 2025 5:03 PM

SECOND

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


Bolsonaro found guilty in attempted coup, assassination plot

Bolsonaro and Trump have called it a witch hunt orchestrated by political rivals to keep him out of next year’s presidential election because when you're a crook why would you admit to being guilty?

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/bolsonaro-found-guilty-in-attempt
ed-coup-assassination-plot/ar-AA1Mn6Vz


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

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Thursday, September 11, 2025 10:56 PM

SECOND

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


The former president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, has been sentenced to 27 years and three months in prison just hours after being found guilty of plotting a military coup.

Reacting to the guilty verdict, Trump compared it to his own experience: "That's very much like they tried to do with me. But they didn't get away with it at all."

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Brazil's Supreme Court had "unjustly ruled to imprison former President Jair Bolsonaro" and threatened to "respond accordingly to this witch hunt".

Trump imposed 50% tariffs on Brazilian goods, framing them as retaliation for Bolsonaro's prosecution.

What next, after sentencing? Does Trump declare war on Brazil to free its jailed President?

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8xrqxk9p4xo

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

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Thursday, September 11, 2025 11:27 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Shut the fuck up, Second.

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

The Democrats are the party of Murder.

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Friday, September 12, 2025 12:42 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:

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

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

The Democrats are the party of Murder.

Obviously you don't see how evil Trump is because you are more defective than he is. Trump and your life have been one after another
Cataclysm: A destructive event.
Calamity: An event causing great and often sudden damage or distress.
Disaster: A sudden event, such as an accident or natural catastrophe, that causes damage or loss of life.
Tragedy: An event causing great suffering, destruction, and distress.
Misfortune: Bad luck or an unfortunate incident.
Affliction: A cause of great pain or harm.
Tribulation: A cause of great trouble or suffering.

But neither Trump nor you will learn how to avoid more of the same in the future until it kills you.

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

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Friday, September 12, 2025 2:07 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


We've got a very long archived history of your evil here, and despite all warnings against it, we get additional entries to that every single day of the week without fail.

We refuse any judgment of anyone else's character from the likes of you after seeing your behavior.

Say hi to Kevin Drum for me.

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

The Democrats are the party of Murder.

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Friday, September 12, 2025 7:45 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:

The Democrats are the party of Murder.

Trump is using the killing of Charlie Kirk to incite violence against anyone who stands in his way.

Trump has repeatedly incited mob violence since his first campaign.

The Kirk killing is an excuse for more violence and intimidation. “We have radical left lunatics out there,” declared Trump, “and we just have to beat the hell out of them.” An utterly malign appeal to mob violence from a sitting president.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Domestic+Extremist-Related+killings+by
+perpetrator+affiliation


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

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Friday, September 12, 2025 8:08 AM

SECOND

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


During his remarks at a press briefing in July, President Trump scrambled to justify his destruction of climate regulations by attempting to explain rain to reporters. Trump stated, "You know it comes down from heaven, right?" Inane is the word to describe him.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/you-know-it-comes-down-from-he
aven-right-trump-scrambles-to-justify-his-destruction-of-climate-regulations-attempts-to-explain-rain-to-reporters/vi-AA1MoJJj


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

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Friday, September 12, 2025 10:13 AM

SECOND

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


6ixStringJack will tell you that his bad behavior is not his fault. Then whose?

http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=62462&mid=12280
57#1228057


Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Been thinking more about this...

I hate to say it, Sigs, because I know it's a real sensitive issue to you. And I don't mean you personally because you and your husband both did what was expected of you and from what I know of you, you did it well enough to exceed most in your generation. And I know you have DD to worry about with all that work you're always doing tending to the house. So this isn't an attack on YOU, okay?



I think a real big part of the current seismic shift we're going through is because the oldest of the Boomer generation is starting to die off and/or go senile, and now it's Gen X rather unwillingly and/or uncaringly becoming the senior generation.

I think we're all just kind of sitting here like "oh... for fuck's sake. What are we going to do now? Our grandparents all died and things got way worse because our parents all kind of sucked and were huge disappointments. And now our parents are all dying off too... and we just sat back and let these dipshit Millennials get in line to take it all over 2 decades ago... And then we watched them speedrun everything from comics and movies to the economy and society in general into the fucking ground while the Boomer Politicians and Senior Management were too busy to babysit them, what with having their schedules full of stacking that cash with all that insider trading, selling the rest of us out and drooling on themselves.

And the Millennials weren't even our fucking kids man... They're our step/half brothers and sisters from our Boomer parents' second failed marriages.

It's like they raised two pretty awful generations of kids overall, but the 2nd experiment was just WAY worse than the first one was...

I would venture a guess that the Baby Boomer Generation in America held more power for longer than any other in the country ever has before them. That's one-third because of how fucking greedy and full of ambition Baby Boomers are, As A Group. It's one-third how self-centered and full of ambition Millennials are, as a group. And it's one-third because of how fucking lazy and/or disaffected and/or uninterested Generation X is in politics or saving the world, as a group. Nihilism was kind of our thing. I have half of a decent friend roster who never made it out of their 20's to back that up. I'd blame TV for it, but that would make me sound like a fucking Boomer.



I think Gen X is like "Fuck This". I was fine with not having to take any responsibility as long as the people who really wanted it were more or less doing right by us, even if they were fucking us over. Boomers fucked everybody, but they just had a gentler touch, and only pushed that envelope a little bit at a time, so subtle that most people didn't even really notice the glacial shift until it was way too late.

The Millennials got in there and said "LET'S BURN THIS MOTHERFUCKER DOWN AND REBUILD IT THE WAY WE WANT IT!"

But their only two problems were that none of them were in agreement about what the way they wanted it would look like, and even if they were, not a single one of them ever built anything beyond LEGO sets and haven't held a fucking hammer in their hands since their Boomer parents gave their Builder Bob plastic tool belt to Goodwill.




To this day, nobody ever talks about Gen X.

I've only rarely even heard murmurings from only a handful of sources even mentioning Gen X, and that didn't start until right after the election results were finally in.



Yanno... They raised us to not really bother going for a degree unless we were top of the class and gung-ho for going there. But they didn't bother teaching us any skills either. We were just kind of left on our own, to our own devices. Then what was left of the non-union, non-nepobaby jobs and Government jobs were either shipped overseas or gated behind a Degree Requirement post-9/11 and we all started working retail and basically the same shit jobs we were working when we were 16.

But we know a lot of shit. We've had to learn a lot of stuff on our own. Things like YouTube was one of the greatest that ever happened to us. The idea that you need to go to college to do 90% of the stupid shit that people do at jobs today is just nuts to us.

For instance, I just found out last night that I don't qualify for applying to ICE. Not for Ted's asinine reason that there's a height requirement and that I wouldn't fit it when I'm average sized. And not even for my only concern about rejection, which would be my Diabetes diagnosis. Nope...

It's because I don't have a fucking bachelor's degree... Can you believe that? The requirements were either prior military service and/or some amount of time in Law Enforcement yada, yada, yada, OR some heavy amount of volunteer work in your history, OR a bachelor's degree. IN ANYTHING. No requirements at all for that degree. Just that you have that piece of paper.

Not that they would ever hire one, but that means that even in Trump's America, a pink haired Millennial Barrista at Starbucks who celebrated Charlie Kirk's death last night with a degree in Gender Studies would fulfill the minimum requirements to put in an application to be an ICE agent, but I wouldn't.



And so, we're the No Step on Snek generation of Meh...

But we're also the generation who learned to bend all the rules without breaking them to get what we want, which mostly meant just being left the fuck alone. Those of us still hanging around have a lot of reading and self-learning under our belts. Street smart and book smart, but without most of that college debt we always hear everyone under a certain age bitching and whining about all the time.

If there's one thing we don't like, it's being fucked with.

And I think we've all pretty much decided that all this Millennial Fuckery that the Boomers still in power just abetted and forced everyone else to endure for 20 years has gone on for just about long enough.


I think I know why you Boomers fucked up two generations so bad. You spanked your GenX babies and yelled at them way too much, and then you never laid a hand on your Millennial babies from the guilt and let them walk all over you and in the process they never learned to grow up. They're like the Peter Pan generation of fucking morons who don't know how anything works but believe they're all geniuses because they all went to college.

In any event, we're fucking done with 'em.

You might not have spanked them, but we possess no such moral quandary.

We'll be sure give them an extra spanking for ya.

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

The Democrats are the party of Murder.



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

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Friday, September 12, 2025 11:41 AM

SECOND

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


Sep. 12 2025 4:34AM EDT

In March, Commerce Secretary Lutnick told Fox Business that Trump’s leadership would soon be reflected in the economy.

In July, after the Commerce Department reported that the GDP grew 3 percent, Lutnick announced in an X post that “the Trump Economy has officially arrived.”

Lutnick also told CBS News that month that the “next two weeks are going to be weeks for the record books.”

The administration quietly changed its tune in September, when President Donald Trump said ahead of the release of the latest jobs report that “the real numbers” will come out “in a year from now.”

The Commerce Secretary expressed confidence that the economy will start booming in 2026 and reach “full fire” in 2027 after the Labor Department reported Thursday that consumer prices rose for the fourth month in a row to 2.9 percent, and the number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits hit 263,000 last week, the highest in almost four years.

Trump made the comment during a private dinner with high-flying tech executives, including Tim Cook of Apple, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, and Sam Altman of OpenAI.

“When these monstrous, huge, beautiful places — they’re palaces of genius — when they start opening up, I think you’ll see job numbers that are going to be absolutely incredible,” Trump said. “Right now, it’s a lot of construction numbers, but you’re going to see job numbers like our country has never seen before.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/lutnick-moves-goalpost-after-poor-inflat
ion-jobless-claims-reports
/

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

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Friday, September 12, 2025 1:51 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by SECOND:
6ixStringJack will tell you that his bad behavior is not his fault. Then whose?

http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=62462&mid=12280
57#1228057


Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Been thinking more about this...

I hate to say it, Sigs, because I know it's a real sensitive issue to you. And I don't mean you personally because you and your husband both did what was expected of you and from what I know of you, you did it well enough to exceed most in your generation. And I know you have DD to worry about with all that work you're always doing tending to the house. So this isn't an attack on YOU, okay?



I think a real big part of the current seismic shift we're going through is because the oldest of the Boomer generation is starting to die off and/or go senile, and now it's Gen X rather unwillingly and/or uncaringly becoming the senior generation.

I think we're all just kind of sitting here like "oh... for fuck's sake. What are we going to do now? Our grandparents all died and things got way worse because our parents all kind of sucked and were huge disappointments. And now our parents are all dying off too... and we just sat back and let these dipshit Millennials get in line to take it all over 2 decades ago... And then we watched them speedrun everything from comics and movies to the economy and society in general into the fucking ground while the Boomer Politicians and Senior Management were too busy to babysit them, what with having their schedules full of stacking that cash with all that insider trading, selling the rest of us out and drooling on themselves.

And the Millennials weren't even our fucking kids man... They're our step/half brothers and sisters from our Boomer parents' second failed marriages.

It's like they raised two pretty awful generations of kids overall, but the 2nd experiment was just WAY worse than the first one was...

I would venture a guess that the Baby Boomer Generation in America held more power for longer than any other in the country ever has before them. That's one-third because of how fucking greedy and full of ambition Baby Boomers are, As A Group. It's one-third how self-centered and full of ambition Millennials are, as a group. And it's one-third because of how fucking lazy and/or disaffected and/or uninterested Generation X is in politics or saving the world, as a group. Nihilism was kind of our thing. I have half of a decent friend roster who never made it out of their 20's to back that up. I'd blame TV for it, but that would make me sound like a fucking Boomer.



I think Gen X is like "Fuck This". I was fine with not having to take any responsibility as long as the people who really wanted it were more or less doing right by us, even if they were fucking us over. Boomers fucked everybody, but they just had a gentler touch, and only pushed that envelope a little bit at a time, so subtle that most people didn't even really notice the glacial shift until it was way too late.

The Millennials got in there and said "LET'S BURN THIS MOTHERFUCKER DOWN AND REBUILD IT THE WAY WE WANT IT!"

But their only two problems were that none of them were in agreement about what the way they wanted it would look like, and even if they were, not a single one of them ever built anything beyond LEGO sets and haven't held a fucking hammer in their hands since their Boomer parents gave their Builder Bob plastic tool belt to Goodwill.




To this day, nobody ever talks about Gen X.

I've only rarely even heard murmurings from only a handful of sources even mentioning Gen X, and that didn't start until right after the election results were finally in.



Yanno... They raised us to not really bother going for a degree unless we were top of the class and gung-ho for going there. But they didn't bother teaching us any skills either. We were just kind of left on our own, to our own devices. Then what was left of the non-union, non-nepobaby jobs and Government jobs were either shipped overseas or gated behind a Degree Requirement post-9/11 and we all started working retail and basically the same shit jobs we were working when we were 16.

But we know a lot of shit. We've had to learn a lot of stuff on our own. Things like YouTube was one of the greatest that ever happened to us. The idea that you need to go to college to do 90% of the stupid shit that people do at jobs today is just nuts to us.

For instance, I just found out last night that I don't qualify for applying to ICE. Not for Ted's asinine reason that there's a height requirement and that I wouldn't fit it when I'm average sized. And not even for my only concern about rejection, which would be my Diabetes diagnosis. Nope...

It's because I don't have a fucking bachelor's degree... Can you believe that? The requirements were either prior military service and/or some amount of time in Law Enforcement yada, yada, yada, OR some heavy amount of volunteer work in your history, OR a bachelor's degree. IN ANYTHING. No requirements at all for that degree. Just that you have that piece of paper.

Not that they would ever hire one, but that means that even in Trump's America, a pink haired Millennial Barrista at Starbucks who celebrated Charlie Kirk's death last night with a degree in Gender Studies would fulfill the minimum requirements to put in an application to be an ICE agent, but I wouldn't.



And so, we're the No Step on Snek generation of Meh...

But we're also the generation who learned to bend all the rules without breaking them to get what we want, which mostly meant just being left the fuck alone. Those of us still hanging around have a lot of reading and self-learning under our belts. Street smart and book smart, but without most of that college debt we always hear everyone under a certain age bitching and whining about all the time.

If there's one thing we don't like, it's being fucked with.

And I think we've all pretty much decided that all this Millennial Fuckery that the Boomers still in power just abetted and forced everyone else to endure for 20 years has gone on for just about long enough.


I think I know why you Boomers fucked up two generations so bad. You spanked your GenX babies and yelled at them way too much, and then you never laid a hand on your Millennial babies from the guilt and let them walk all over you and in the process they never learned to grow up. They're like the Peter Pan generation of fucking morons who don't know how anything works but believe they're all geniuses because they all went to college.

In any event, we're fucking done with 'em.

You might not have spanked them, but we possess no such moral quandary.

We'll be sure give them an extra spanking for ya.

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

The Democrats are the party of Murder.



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




Why do you keep reposting this as if I should feel shame for it.

I stand by it 100%.

And GenX's awakening is one of the reasons that you and your party are so thoroughly fucked right now.



You've reposted it at least twice now. Might I suggest you try actually reading it now.



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

The Democrats are the party of Murder.

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Friday, September 12, 2025 2:05 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by SECOND:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

The Democrats are the party of Murder.

Trump is using the killing of Charlie Kirk to incite violence against anyone who stands in his way.

Trump has repeatedly incited mob violence since his first campaign.

The Kirk killing is an excuse for more violence and intimidation. “We have radical left lunatics out there,” declared Trump, “and we just have to beat the hell out of them.” An utterly malign appeal to mob violence from a sitting president.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Domestic+Extremist-Related+killings+by
+perpetrator+affiliation


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



Democrats are the party of Murder.

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

The Democrats are the party of Murder.

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Friday, September 12, 2025 2:08 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:
6ixStringJack will tell you that his bad behavior is not his fault. Then whose?

http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=62462&mid=12280
57#1228057



Why do you keep reposting this as if I should feel shame for it.

I stand by it 100%.

And GenX's awakening is one of the reasons that you and your party are so thoroughly fucked right now.



You've reposted it at least twice now. Might I suggest you try actually reading it now.



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

The Democrats are the party of Murder.

Middle-age Trumptards believe they are not to blame for what they do and what they became. Blaming the Democrats is standard behavior, along with blaming wives for divorces, banks and credit cards for bankruptcy, fast food for obesity, and their children for lacking gratitude after the little that Trumptard parents did in raising their kids.

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

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Friday, September 12, 2025 2:12 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by SECOND:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:

Originally posted by SECOND:
6ixStringJack will tell you that his bad behavior is not his fault. Then whose?

http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=62462&mid=12280
57#1228057



Why do you keep reposting this as if I should feel shame for it.

I stand by it 100%.

And GenX's awakening is one of the reasons that you and your party are so thoroughly fucked right now.



You've reposted it at least twice now. Might I suggest you try actually reading it now.



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

The Democrats are the party of Murder.

Middle-age Trumptards believe they are not to blame for what they do and what they became. Blaming the Democrats is standard behavior, along with blaming wives for divorces, banks and credit cards for bankruptcy, fast food for obesity, and their children for lacking gratitude after the little that Trumptard parents did in raising their kids.

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





That wasn't the point of the post.

Here it is, and I've posted this on the other dozen threads where you boosted my signal:

Quote:

You keep saying that I'm claiming nothing is my fault as you reposted this to dozens of threads today.

I don't believe that was the message. It's really just a valid explanation for why most people in my generation didn't get into politics, and didn't even really vote up until last November. I've obviously been an exception to that rule up until recently, but you've fucked up by making the rest of 'em finally care.

Read it again, dummy.





And think about it.... How many GenXers got into politics? Can you even name any without Googling it?

Ron Desantis is a Millennial.

GenX is taking over as the senior generation on the planet very soon, and we largely stayed out of politics up until now.

But you done fucked up and put them out for too long. Now we're coming for you.


Your party is already dead. What should we do next?

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

The Democrats are the party of Murder.

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Friday, September 12, 2025 2:13 PM

SECOND

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


Tariff-fueled price hikes have arrived — and hitting these items first

September 12, 2025 / 12:01 PM EDT

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-tariffs-consumer-price-hikes-inflat
ion-coffee-autos-apparel-cpi
/

Products from Brazil that are shipped to the U.S. now face a 50% tariff, according to the White House. Once those import taxes kicked in, U.S. consumers in August shelled out 21% more for beans than a year earlier, according to CPI data.

Clara Moore, 44, told CBS MoneyWatch she is seeing prices "rising all over the place." Her grocery bill has risen to about $250 per haul, from roughly $175 one year ago, she said.

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, September 12, 2025 2:18 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:
Quote:

Originally posted by SECOND:
6ixStringJack will tell you that his bad behavior is not his fault. Then whose?

http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=62462&mid=12280
57#1228057



Why do you keep reposting this as if I should feel shame for it.

I stand by it 100%.

And GenX's awakening is one of the reasons that you and your party are so thoroughly fucked right now.



You've reposted it at least twice now. Might I suggest you try actually reading it now.



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

The Democrats are the party of Murder.

Middle-age Trumptards believe they are not to blame for what they do and what they became. Blaming the Democrats is standard behavior, along with blaming wives for divorces, banks and credit cards for bankruptcy, fast food for obesity, and their children for lacking gratitude after the little that Trumptard parents did in raising their kids.

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





That wasn't the point of the post.

Here it is, and I've posted this on the other dozen threads where you boosted my signal:

Quote:

You keep saying that I'm claiming nothing is my fault as you reposted this to dozens of threads today.

I don't believe that was the message. It's really just a valid explanation for why most people in my generation didn't get into politics, and didn't even really vote up until last November. I've obviously been an exception to that rule up until recently, but you've fucked up by making the rest of 'em finally care.

Read it again, dummy.





And think about it.... How many GenXers got into politics? Can you even name any without Googling it?

Ron Desantis is a Millennial.

GenX is taking over as the senior generation on the planet very soon, and we largely stayed out of politics up until now.

But you done fucked up and put them out for too long. Now we're coming for you.


Your party is already dead. What should we do next?

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

The Democrats are the party of Murder.

All Trumptards evade responsibility for their fucked up lives. You are children who Father Trump promised to fix things for you because you are too weak and diffident.

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, September 12, 2025 2:23 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by SECOND:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:

Originally posted by SECOND:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:

Originally posted by SECOND:
6ixStringJack will tell you that his bad behavior is not his fault. Then whose?

http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=62462&mid=12280
57#1228057



Why do you keep reposting this as if I should feel shame for it.

I stand by it 100%.

And GenX's awakening is one of the reasons that you and your party are so thoroughly fucked right now.



You've reposted it at least twice now. Might I suggest you try actually reading it now.



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

The Democrats are the party of Murder.

Middle-age Trumptards believe they are not to blame for what they do and what they became. Blaming the Democrats is standard behavior, along with blaming wives for divorces, banks and credit cards for bankruptcy, fast food for obesity, and their children for lacking gratitude after the little that Trumptard parents did in raising their kids.

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





That wasn't the point of the post.

Here it is, and I've posted this on the other dozen threads where you boosted my signal:

Quote:

You keep saying that I'm claiming nothing is my fault as you reposted this to dozens of threads today.

I don't believe that was the message. It's really just a valid explanation for why most people in my generation didn't get into politics, and didn't even really vote up until last November. I've obviously been an exception to that rule up until recently, but you've fucked up by making the rest of 'em finally care.

Read it again, dummy.





And think about it.... How many GenXers got into politics? Can you even name any without Googling it?

Ron Desantis is a Millennial.

GenX is taking over as the senior generation on the planet very soon, and we largely stayed out of politics up until now.

But you done fucked up and put them out for too long. Now we're coming for you.


Your party is already dead. What should we do next?

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

The Democrats are the party of Murder.

All Trumptards evade responsibility for their fucked up lives. You are children who Father Trump promised to fix things for you because you are too weak and diffident.

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



You've said as much no less than 20 times now regarding this post today, all across the RWED.

But you've yet to prove that is what I was doing.

I was quite hard on and fair with Generation X in that post as well as the Boomers and Millenials.

There's a reason why we were the forgotten generation. A lot of that IS the Boomer's fault, but everyone has their own agency. We largely chose to stay out of all of it.

You pulled us right into it though.

And look around you now.

Can you say you're happy with the results so far?


SPOILER ALERT: It only gets worse for you from here on out. It will never get better for you. The world you thought you were living in died 8 months ago and will never return.

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

The Democrats are the party of Murder.

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Friday, September 12, 2025 2:36 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've said as much no less than 20 times now regarding this post today, all across the RWED.

But you've yet to prove that is what I was doing.

I was quite hard on and fair with Generation X in that post as well as the Boomers and Millenials.

There's a reason why we were the forgotten generation. A lot of that IS the Boomer's fault, but everyone has their own agency. We largely chose to stay out of all of it.

You pulled us right into it though.

And look around you now.

Can you say you're happy with the results so far?


SPOILER ALERT: It only gets worse for you from here on out. It will never get better for you. The world you thought you were living in died 8 months ago and will never return.

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

The Democrats are the party of Murder.

Your fucked up life is the proof that you failed, not America, at life. You keep thinking you don't have to try if you don't want to. That America should give you the dream life with no effort on your part.

None of the obvious lessons of Star Trek were learned by Trumptards: failure will cause your death; fear must be overcome or else you die; a half-ass understanding of a problem will mean you die. In other words, it you fail the challenge, you die. America is not as unforgiving as outer space. When you fail in America, you don't immediately die like in outer space. Instead, you Trumptards can bitch that life is too hard for you and the safety net isn't soft enough and doesn't provide all your needs, but Trump will provide. He promised in exchange for your votes.

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

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Friday, September 12, 2025 2:48 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by SECOND:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

You've said as much no less than 20 times now regarding this post today, all across the RWED.

But you've yet to prove that is what I was doing.

I was quite hard on and fair with Generation X in that post as well as the Boomers and Millenials.

There's a reason why we were the forgotten generation. A lot of that IS the Boomer's fault, but everyone has their own agency. We largely chose to stay out of all of it.

You pulled us right into it though.

And look around you now.

Can you say you're happy with the results so far?


SPOILER ALERT: It only gets worse for you from here on out. It will never get better for you. The world you thought you were living in died 8 months ago and will never return.

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

The Democrats are the party of Murder.

Your fucked up life is the proof that you failed, not America, at life.



You've been saying that for years now and it's not even true. And you know it's not even true.

I've made plenty of mistakes for sure. More than my share of them, for sure. I have a very, very long post history here which (unlike you) I have never once gone back and deleted. Years of those posts were me hitting rock bottom with my drinking. And now I have health issues which although very likely have a hereditary element to them, could most likely have been easily avoided had I not become an alcoholic.

But I'm still in great shape for my age, especially when compared to most of my peers. I know how to do almost anything when it comes to fixing houses and repairing cars, and I learned most of that out of necessity. There is practically nothing I can't learn how to do outside of curing my diabetes just by watching YouTube videos.

I bought a house with cash at 32 years old for only $67,000. The previous owners had paid $160k for the house. Today, before I fought the property taxes, they were saying that my house is now valued at over $300k.

I have no debt. I have not held any debt since August of 2005. I haven't had a car note since July of 2001. I've gone 5 years without working a job because I don't need to.

I do what I want to, when I want to. Even if that's nothing.

You're just a little drone. An ant marching like all of the rest of them.

It is I who pity you.

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

The Democrats are the party of Murder.

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Friday, September 12, 2025 3:57 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

I have no debt.

The Democrats are the party of Murder.

Trump will owe trillions. It is 6ix's debt.

'I don't want to talk about it': Trump warns US to pay trillions if he doesn't get his way

By Alexander Willis | September 12, 2025 9:39AM ET

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-2673988949/

“Well, I don't want to talk about it,” Trump told Fox and Friends host Lawrence Jones, when asked what his administration would do if the Supreme Court ultimately upholds a lower court’s ruling that the tariffs are illegal. “I guess we'll find something, but it would be a very tough thing to lose that case.”

“That Supreme Court case is so important,” Trump said. “We should [win the tariff case] on the legal merits – [if we don’t], we would have to give back trillions of dollars! That case is one of the most important cases in the history of our country.”

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

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Friday, September 12, 2025 5:54 PM

SECOND

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


Sept 11, 2025

Don't worry about planet-warming emissions, the US Energy Secretary has told the BBC, because within five years AI will have enabled the harnessing of nuclear fusion – the energy that powers the sun and stars.

More self-serving lies:

During the BBC interview the US Energy Secretary said fracking – releasing oil and gas trapped rock formations underground - could have a "tremendous" impact on the UK economy.

Mr Wright, who has founded and run fracking companies in the US, suggested the oil and gas the process would produce could "bring back manufacturing and blue-collar jobs and drive down not just electricity prices, but home-heating prices and industrial energy prices".

The Energy Secretary also stood by the report issued by the Department of Energy in July which said the threat of climate change has been exaggerated.

He denied that the cuts the Trump Administration is making to climate science would damage US research into weather and climate.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqlz5p314z0o

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

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Friday, September 12, 2025 9:16 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by SECOND:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

I have no debt.

The Democrats are the party of Murder.

Trump will owe trillions. It is 6ix's debt.



National debt is $37 Trillion. Your party and the NeoCons did that. I don't owe shit to anyone.

Go fuck yourself and your sad little life, wanker.

America is through with the likes of you.

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

The Democrats are the party of Murder.

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Saturday, September 13, 2025 7:44 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:

Originally posted by SECOND:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

I have no debt.

The Democrats are the party of Murder.

Trump will owe trillions. It is 6ix's debt.



National debt is $37 Trillion. Your party and the NeoCons did that. I don't owe shit to anyone.

Go fuck yourself and your sad little life, wanker.

America is through with the likes of you.

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

The Democrats are the party of Murder.

Congress passed a bill recently that cut taxes and increased the debt by $trillions. It didn't get any Democratic votes. And DOGE didn't find $2 trillion in expenses to cut, but it did fire the IRS auditors who handle tax returns for people such as Trump.

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

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Saturday, September 13, 2025 7:47 AM

SECOND

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


How to Build a Post-American Liberal Order

The World’s Democracies Must Work Together—and Constrain Washington

By Phillips P. O’Brien | September 12, 2025

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/war-is-in-the-eye-of-the-behold
er


The United States used to be known as the “leader of the free world”—a mostly self-proclaimed but still widely resonant title that revealed how Americans viewed themselves and how allies judged their country. Although major democracies in Europe and East Asia at times chafed under U.S. dominance, they accepted Washington’s strategic supremacy. Starting in 1945, the United States’ allies adjusted to living in a U.S.-dominated world and believed that the country would protect them in the event of war.

Those days might be over. In the first seven months of U.S. President Donald Trump’s second administration, Washington has weakened its defense commitments around the world. It has, for example, questioned NATO’s Article 5 (which requires NATO members to assist others under attack), launched a tariff war with practically every country, and repeatedly threatened to cut off support for Ukraine. Before, U.S. allies tailored their defense plans and many of their international policy positions to curry favor with American officials. Today, Washington’s allies are contemplating a world where the United States can no longer be trusted to provide for their security or to uphold the rules-based order it spent almost a century constructing.

The risks emanating from Washington go beyond abandonment. Trump is not only pulling away from the United States’ traditional partners; he is flirting with working directly against them. Trump has made it known for years that he often prefers engaging with dictators—including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping—to engaging with democracies. Since returning to office, for instance, he has routinely spoken with Putin and discussed carving up Ukraine. The summit in August in Anchorage, at which Trump welcomed Putin on a red carpet and with warm remarks, is only the most recent example. Other major voices in the Republican Party are making it clear that, at a minimum, they no longer feel bound to defend democracy around the world. U.S. Vice President JD Vance has said the United States is “done with the funding of the Ukraine war business” and openly called for Europeans to support far-right forces across their continent. Republicans are also weakening the foundations of democratic rule in the United States. Trump and his allies are redrawing the boundaries of House seats to protect their congressional majorities, firing government employees because they do not like the results of nonpartisan research, constantly issuing unlawful executive orders, and bullying the media and universities. This, too, can hardly be comforting for the democratic allies that believed Washington led the “free world.”

Many of these states have tried to pretend that this problem will go away. They have worked to ingratiate themselves with the Trump administration, lavishly praising the president. But Trump has continued to threaten them and weaken their bonds with Washington. The strategy of appeasing Trump, in other words, could well fail. Instead, it might make sense for states committed to democracy and what is left of the old rules-based order to reimagine their international relations, insulate themselves from the United States’ whims, and try to generally protect their own freedoms in this deeply unstable time. Such an effort would require that they build far stronger economic and defense ties with each other than they have now and make a much greater (and more expensive) commitment to their own security. It will be a tough endeavor. But it could be the only way for these countries to save democracy at home—and perhaps help it spread again.

AUTHORITARIAN TURN

In both his terms in office, Trump has been enthusiastic about authoritarian leaders. He has repeatedly praised North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. He has cheered on Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. All the while, he has blasted democratic heads of state. He repeatedly denigrated former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, for example, whom he labeled “governor” of the United States’ “fifty-first state.” And he appears to see authoritarian governance as the model he wants to emulate. In August, Trump went so far as to say that he believes many Americans would prefer to have a dictator in charge of their country.

The biggest beneficiaries of Trump’s decision to reorient the United States away from its historic allies are China and Russia. Although one of the justifications for his desire to improve relations with Putin is that he might drive China and Russia apart, Trump seems more keen to work with the two autocracies than to try to split them. Recently, Trump has signaled this to Beijing in several ways. He has said, for example, that he expects China and the United States will develop a “great relationship.” He frequently praises Xi. And although Trump was happy to heap tariffs on India for buying too much discounted Russian oil, he has not used this reasoning to impose similarly sizable tariffs on China, which buys even more.

There is a seeming logic behind Trump’s decision to turn away from democratic states and toward dictatorial ones: a desire to establish three spheres of influence that encompass most of the world. The first is the Americas, where Trump has been avowedly expansionist. (Democratic Denmark accused him of trying to destabilize Danish rule in Greenland earlier this year.) The second is China and the eastern Pacific. And the third is Russia and Europe.

The risks emanating from Washington go beyond abandonment.

The result would be a new Dreikaiserbund, or Three Emperors League—the pact between Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Germany in the 1870s and 1880s. It presents perhaps the greatest change to the global balance of power since World War II. Washington’s democratic allies in Asia, Europe, and North America would no longer be protected by the United States. As a result, they would have to remake everything about their foreign policies (and probably their economic and political systems) to survive, especially as Washington becomes an active agent in attempts to destroy their democratic independence. Between China and the United States, liberal states would have to protect themselves against the two largest economies in the world and the two most powerful militaries. Add Russia to the mix, and democracies would be confronting three powers with many more nuclear weapons than the rest of the world combined.

Moreover, the surviving democratic states would in no way be a coherent bloc. The Pacific democracies—Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines, South Korea, and Taiwan—often collaborate but also experience bouts of tension. Canada stands alone. The democracies of the developing world, such as Brazil, frequently disagree with all the wealthy ones. The only truly organized bloc is what might best be termed European NATO.

The rich and technologically advanced democracies of Europe, North America, and the Pacific have a history of cooperation. But that is to a large degree because of their common links to the United States. It is hard to imagine them acting as an alliance. European states, for example, would find it all but impossible to deploy adequate military forces to the Pacific to help defend Taiwan. It is also hard to see the Pacific democracies fighting to defend Canada, even though that country is geographically much closer to many of them than is Europe. In fact, the different groupings all have more economic ties with illiberal states than they do with each other. Japan, South Korea, and even Taiwan trade much more with China than with any other country.
SAME BOAT

But even if the wealthy democratic states do not act as members of one alliance, they can better coordinate their actions to provide each other with both immediate and longer-term support. They can, for instance, help each other construct the kinds of armed forces required to deter antidemocratic forces. They can begin by addressing one enormous weakness—their deficit of nuclear weapons. Without Washington’s arsenal, the only nuclear weapons liberal democracies possess are in the hands of the British and the French. And both these arsenals are very small and very much based on U.S. technology.

Other liberal states will need to construct nuclear deterrents of their own. To do so, they will have to cooperate. Consider Europe. The continent will be able to build nuclear warheads quite easily. But it will struggle to build delivery systems without outside help. The Pacific democracies, however, have been working on different conventional missile systems that could easily be repurposed for nuclear weapons. Japan, for instance, is constructing a long-range conventional strike capacity. By quietly working together, the Pacific democracies could help the European ones construct an effective nuclear deterrent. In exchange, the European democracies could help the Asia-Pacific states develop nuclear warheads and nuclear weapons maintenance programs, as well as share best practices on how to keep such weapons secure.

Nuclear cooperation could then expand into cooperation on conventional military systems, which would exponentially increase the value of the massive investments in defense that all the democratic states will have to make. (Right now, these countries are dangerously reliant on the United States for advanced weaponry.) In certain areas, such as shipbuilding, both the European and the Pacific democracies are superior to the United States, and they could help each other keep pace with the shifting nature of war. Right now, the shape of militaries seems to be changing from a reliance on expensive legacy systems, such as tanks and big warships, toward smaller, cheaper ones. Warships, accordingly, may need to be reduced in size and become platforms for launching large numbers of smaller, autonomous weapons. In that case, European and Pacific democracies can use their expertise to develop new ships in tandem.

Other liberal states will need to construct nuclear deterrents.

Democracies could also help each other secure more of the raw materials essential for building strong armed forces. Illiberal leaders are fond of cutting off raw materials to bend states to their will; China, for example, dominates the supply chains for rare-earth minerals and has repeatedly threatened to stop sending them to states that undermine its interests. The only way democratic states can contest such power is to make their resources available to each other. Fortunately, three geographically big democracies—Australia, Canada, and Ukraine—are well endowed with raw materials, including rare-earth minerals. These countries could strike trade deals with other liberal states that help everyone involved build up their militaries and grow richer.

When it comes to economic cooperation, democracies should not limit themselves to raw materials. Trade helps economies grow, and trade between liberal democracies can prove especially valuable because these states have something illiberal ones don’t: the rule of law. Democratic states have contracts enforced by their judiciaries, relatively reliable patent systems, and other checks to provide for a more trustworthy business environment. As a result, they will have an easier time attracting investment. If liberal states invest more in each other and less in autocracies, the rule of law could give them an even greater material advantage, as corruption in other authoritarian countries slows growth. That is most apparent in China and Russia, where graft is already routine and thus already suppresses economic activity. But even the United States has recently been weakening its anticorruption laws, and top American officials are becoming easier to pay. Trump, for instance, has created a cryptocurrency that people hoping for presidential favors can purchase. As such dealings become regularized in Washington, democratic states that support legal standards will become better options for commerce.

Not all democracies will benefit equally from this new economic geography—or be equally resilient to authoritarian attacks. The Canadian economy, for instance, is enmeshed with that of the United States: Canada does about two-thirds of all its international trade with its southern neighbor. Ottawa is also extremely vulnerable to U.S. pressure, given that Canada’s long land border is impossible to defend with conventional forces. Canada should thus try to avoid provoking the United States, such as by developing nuclear weapons. (If Washington continues down its current dark path, however, Ottawa will have to consider the nuclear option.) But although Canadians should probably not go out of their way to antagonize Trump, they must keep strongly rebuffing his attempts to annex their country and must strengthen relations with democratic Asian and European states. Most notably, Canadians have discussed boosting direct defense ties with Europe—bypassing the United States.
DEFENSE TO OFFENSE

Clearly, democratic states have many ways they can cooperate to protect themselves. But in the long term, they should aim beyond simple self-preservation. They should also look for ways to put autocratic states on the back foot. Doing so will not be easy, especially if Washington becomes a real foe. Yet with luck, the United States will eventually emerge from its flirtation with authoritarianism, and they can position themselves well for when that moment occurs.

To succeed, however, the democratic world will have to pick its battles. In practice, that means the most coherent bloc of democracies—Europe—should focus on the weakest of the three main autocratic powers—Russia. Even without the assistance of Asian democracies, Europe has a major economic and technological advantage over Moscow, which is a sclerotic and overrated power. If Europe sensibly and effectively rearms and invests in strategic industries, it can create military forces far superior to those of the Kremlin.

It would therefore behoove this new Europe to do to Russia exactly what Russia has been trying to do to other states (with significant success) over the last few years: destabilize its society and weaken the political legitimacy of its rulers. European states should fund Russian opposition groups and individuals willing to stand up to Putin’s dictatorship. They should also consider seizing Russia’s shadow fleet of uninsured tankers, which often sail in European waters, and shooting down Russian drones when they encroach on democratic Europe’s airspace, as regularly occurs. Most of all, European states need to redouble their efforts to help Ukraine emerge from its war in the best shape possible.

In this way, European states could transform what seems like a weak position into a stronger one. And a vibrant, free, and technologically advanced Europe that can stand on its own two feet will be infinitely more attractive, especially to young Russians, than Putin’s corrupt regime. Europe must present itself as being in opposition to everything Putin stands for. If it can do that, the continent might persuade younger Russians to opt for a European future, which could, in time, lead to the fall of the country’s current system. And if Europe can break Russia’s dictatorship and consolidate democratic rule across the whole continent, it would gain the power to support democracies in other places where it is now in retreat. A strategy of democratic survival, in other words, will eventually be transformed into one of democratic expansion.

If the United States does eventually return to its senses, it can help these states build on the progress they’ve made by institutionalizing their cooperation. Washington will still be best positioned to bring Asian and European democracies together and turn their loose association into a more formal alliance, given its historical connections to each. But the United States will never again, and should never again, be trusted to lead the free world. It could convene this grouping, but it could not helm it. After all, the world’s other democratic countries will not only have saved freedom without the United States. They will have saved democracy from it.


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

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Saturday, September 13, 2025 8:00 AM

SECOND

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


Talking With Erica Groshen, Former Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner

When labor data become a political issue

Paul Krugman

Sep 13, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/talking-with-erica-groshen-former

Not long ago Donald Trump fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because he didn’t like the jobs numbers. There’s clearly a push on to place the BLS, one of the crown jewels of U.S. statistical agencies, under political control. So I managed to arrange a chat with Erica Groshen, who headed the BLS from 2013 to 2017 — and who warned in advanced about political interference — about what the agency does, how it does it, and what’s at risk. Transcript follows.

Paul Krugman: Hi everyone, Paul Krugman again. This week I'm talking with Erica Groshen, former commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Someone who was actually warning in advance that there might be an assault on the statistical agencies, the BLS in particular, and so it has come to pass, with probably a lot more still ahead of us.

Erica Groshen: That's right.

Krugman: I thought we'd talk about some current events, but also some background on what the BLS and other agencies do and why it matters. So, hi Erica.

Groshen: Hi Paul, glad to be here.

Krugman: Among the things I didn't think would become exciting and controversial would be data collection by the federal statistical agencies, but everything is now controversial and political. Tell me a bit about why the BLS exists and why we need it?

Groshen: What does the BLS do? It collects information, it produces statistics and it disseminates them, all to inform the decision makers in the country. The areas in which it does this are employment issues, wages, inflation, productivity, working conditions, et cetera. It was formed in 1884. It's the first independent statistical agency formed in the federal government, and that was at a time of industrial unrest when we had a lot of concerns about tariffs and trade and immigration—that's surprising, topics still in the news today. Nascent unions and employers were killing each other in the streets and the policymakers thought we'd be one step closer to peace if they were working from a common set of trustworthy information.

Much more at https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/talking-with-erica-groshen-former

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

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Saturday, September 13, 2025 9:08 AM

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


Pentagon plan prioritizes homeland over China threat

This marks a major departure from the first Trump administration, which emphasized deterring Beijing.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/09/05/pentagon-national-defense-str
ategy-china-homeland-western-hemisphere-00546310


Pentagon officials are proposing the department prioritize protecting the homeland and Western Hemisphere, a striking reversal from the military’s years-long mandate to focus on the threat from China.

A draft of the newest National Defense Strategy, which landed on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s desk last week, places domestic and regional missions above countering adversaries such as Beijing and Moscow, according to three people briefed on early versions of the report.

The move would mark a major shift from President Donald Trump’s first term in office, when he referred to Beijing as America’s greatest rival.

(What next? Trump goes to war with Brazil to free President Bolsonaro, convicted and sentenced for treason? "He has a long history of homophobic, misogynistic and racist comments delivered in a belligerent, everyman style which endeared him to many." Sounds like Trump, which would explain Trump's concern for Bolsonaro's wellbeing.
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/us-backed-brazil-ex-president-jair-bol
sonaro-sentenced-to-27-years-in-jail-in-coup-case-9261949
)

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

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Saturday, September 13, 2025 10:05 AM

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


The US Continues To Move Away From Its Democratic Allies

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/a-strategy-for-democratic-survi
val


When I first started writing this piece more than 6 months ago, some people were extremely skeptical. Yes, I was told, the US will now be unreliable and mercurial under Trump, but it would never be a real threat to its long-standing democratic allies in Europe and the Pacific. Sadly, this optimism has been shown to be wishful thinking of a dangerous kind (as optimism about Trump always is). In fact, events of the last few days show more and more that the US is breaking with its democratic allies in both regions.

In Europe, we saw a Russian planned drone attack on Poland, one of the bedrocks of the NATO alliance. The US response was not that of an ally—but more of a bystander that is looking to excuse the Russian attack. In the first place, the US took no active role in defending Poland, even though the US was informed as soon as possible by the Polish states. While some democratic European states stepped up to the plate, such as Holland and Italy, the US, seemingly, did not lift a finger.

And since that attack everything we have seen indicates that this passive reaction, which protects Russia, is now hard-wired into the US government. Yesterday, NATO states announced that they would help front line states such as Poland by beefing up and supporting their air defenses. There were commitments from Germany, France, and Denmark—with the UK saying it will announced a greater commitment soon.

You know who committed nothing—the USA. Even though NATO was attacked, the USA announced no increased commitment to help European NATO states defend themselves. Indeed, the opposite occurred and Trump went out of his way to excuse the Russian attack, saying that it “could’ve been a mistake”.

This US behavior should send chills down democratic Europe’s spine. Since the Anchorage summit (ostensibly organized so the US could pressure Putin to make peace and, if not, hammer Russia with additional sanctions), Russia has greatly increased its attacks on Ukraine and has now attacked Poland. In other words, since the red-carpet greeting Trump laid on for Putin, the Russians have felt empowered to increase their use of military force.

The US is now protecting Putin’s war machine, not curbing it.

The signs of US alienation from its democratic partners extended far outside of Europe, sadly. Eight days ago, Politico reported, based on three different sources, that the US DOD was rewriting US defense strategy to de-emphasize deterring China and Russia. The US in this strategy will de-emphasize the western Pacific and Europe and concentrate on extending its own power in the Americas. Here is an excerpt from that article.

A draft of the newest National Defense Strategy, which landed on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s desk last week, places domestic and regional missions above countering adversaries such as Beijing and Moscow, according to three people briefed on early versions of the report.

The move would mark a major shift from recent Democrat and Republican administrations, including President Donald Trump’s first term in office, when he referred to Beijing as America’s greatest rival. And it would likely inflame China hawks in both parties who view the country’s leadership as a danger to U.S. security.

“This is going to be a major shift for the U.S. and its allies on multiple continents,” said one of the people briefed on the draft document. “The old, trusted U.S. promises are being questioned.”

It is actually a good thing that the US is being so open about this. Trump actually wants to work with China, he likes dictators like President Xi and is willing to throw over traditional allies to make the US-Chinese relationship better. Indeed, the actual impact of his policies since becoming president have been to strengthen China a great deal while weakening US allies—as I wrote in this Atlantic piece in April.

So if the US is now going out of its way to strengthen Russia and China—the countries it is really threatening are democracies. Just two weeks ago, it came out that Trump’s threats about taking over Greenland were anything but bluff, and that US intelligence was active on the island, trying to support his plans to seize the island from democratic Denmark.
https://www.politico.eu/article/covert-operations-greenland-prompt-den
mark-summon-top-us-envoy-donald-trump
/

So the idea that the US is now keen on working with China and Russia to divide the world up into spheres of interest has received a good deal of support in the last few weeks.

Signs Of A Fightback

It is often said that the first step on the road to recovery is to admit you have a problem. If so, that is a first step that has been extremely hard for the democratic allies of the US to take. Too often they have gone in the other direction, and acted like they have no problem at all (the US will stand with us!) or indeed that they can make the problem better by giving in to it (lavishing Trump with praise and calling him “daddy”).

This earlier behavior has made things worse, as it has delayed changes in these countries and led to no changes in the direction of US-travel. For months it has been apparent that by far the best way to stand up to Trump is to challenge him on his lies and refuse to stroke his ego.

Trump’s lie that that Russian attack might have been a “mistake”, which was clearly designed to protect Putin, shows how weak the strategy of praising him has been. And, European leaders seem to have noticed. A few hours after Trump spoke, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk stood up and, gently but firmly, called his claim a lie.

And the fact that this kind of public stance was supported by a NATO European-only effort to bolster their air defense gives hope. These two steps, in quick succession, confirm that the reality that not only does the US wants Putin to do well, but is completely unreliable as a NATO ally, is sinking in.

May there be more.

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

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