Trump Is Destroying Everything He Touches by JJ

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

Donald Trump has already spent $70 million of taxpayer money on golfing in less than a year as president. If this pace keeps up, he will spend $300 million playing golf by the time his second term ends.

HuffPost reports that the president on Wednesday made his sixteenth trip this year to his Mar-a-Lago estate and went golfing. Each trip carries a $3.4 million bill in travel and security costs. If Trump decides to go to Mar-a-Lago twice more before the end of the year, he will have spent a total of $75 million on golf, which, repeated each of the following three years, would result in $300 million spent on the trips.

That’s nearly double the $151.5 million in tax dollars Trump spent golfing in his first term as president. Trump spent a third of 2017, his first year as president, hanging out at his private clubs. This time, Trump has also made nine trips to his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, spending $1.1 million on each trip. He also went to Aberdeen, Scotland, in July to promote a new golf course at his resort there, spending close to $10 million on the trip.

The security costs Trump incurs on his Florida trips can get pretty high, with machine gun–mounted patrol boats manning the nearby Intracoastal Waterway and the Coast Guard patrolling in the vicinity in the Atlantic Ocean. Using Air Force One costs $273,063 per hour to fly to Palm Beach International Airport, meaning that one four-hour round trip to Mar-a-Lago costs the taxpayer $1.1 million.

In 2016, before Trump was elected, he mocked President Obama’s work ethic, claiming that he was “worse than Carter” for how often he golfed. In the end, Obama only spent $85 million of taxpayer dollars in his eight years as president on golf.

Meanwhile, Trump has not only eclipsed that in his nearly five years as president, he’s shaped his presidency around golf. He has promoted his golf business on the White House social platform and even decided to deploy the National Guard in Washington, D.C., because he hated seeing homeless people on his way to play golf.

Last month, Trump took dirt from his White House demolition and sent it to a golf course he’s taking over in Washington. It’s a fitting act for his presidency: taking something from the taxpayer and putting it toward playing an expensive game that he appears to cheat at.

https://newrepublic.com/post/203739/trump-golf-tab-taxpayer-money

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

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Thursday, November 27, 2025 1:01 PM

Keep it real please

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Donald Trump has already spent $70 million of taxpayer money on golfing in less than a year as president. If this pace keeps up, he will spend $300 million playing golf by the time his second term ends.

HuffPost reports that the president on Wednesday made his sixteenth trip this year to his Mar-a-Lago estate and went golfing. Each trip carries a $3.4 million bill in travel and security costs. If Trump decides to go to Mar-a-Lago twice more before the end of the year, he will have spent a total of $75 million on golf, which, repeated each of the following three years, would result in $300 million spent on the trips.

That’s nearly double the $151.5 million in tax dollars Trump spent golfing in his first term as president. Trump spent a third of 2017, his first year as president, hanging out at his private clubs. This time, Trump has also made nine trips to his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, spending $1.1 million on each trip. He also went to Aberdeen, Scotland, in July to promote a new golf course at his resort there, spending close to $10 million on the trip.

The security costs Trump incurs on his Florida trips can get pretty high, with machine gun–mounted patrol boats manning the nearby Intracoastal Waterway and the Coast Guard patrolling in the vicinity in the Atlantic Ocean. Using Air Force One costs $273,063 per hour to fly to Palm Beach International Airport, meaning that one four-hour round trip to Mar-a-Lago costs the taxpayer $1.1 million.

In 2016, before Trump was elected, he mocked President Obama’s work ethic, claiming that he was “worse than Carter” for how often he golfed. In the end, Obama only spent $85 million of taxpayer dollars in his eight years as president on golf.

Meanwhile, Trump has not only eclipsed that in his nearly five years as president, he’s shaped his presidency around golf. He has promoted his golf business on the White House social platform and even decided to deploy the National Guard in Washington, D.C., because he hated seeing homeless people on his way to play golf.

Last month, Trump took dirt from his White House demolition and sent it to a golf course he’s taking over in Washington. It’s a fitting act for his presidency: taking something from the taxpayer and putting it toward playing an expensive game that he appears to cheat at.

https://newrepublic.com/post/203739/trump-golf-tab-taxpayer-money

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

Everything Trump does proves MAGA and others who voted for him are complete morons.

T

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Thursday, November 27, 2025 2:36 PM

Keep it real please

PEACE PRIZE

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Thursday, November 27, 2025 8:12 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Everything Trump does proves MAGA and others who voted for him are complete morons.

You keep saying that as if anybody had any alternative to vote for.

There is a reason that Democrats are drowning in low 30% approval, and it's not because Kamala lost.

It's because when Kamala lost, it was the beginning of the end of the Legacy Democrats and Legacy Media working in tandem to literally CONTROL WHAT YOU THINK, which Joe's wife Mika told you flatly was her job.

Was anybody going to vote for 4 more years of 9% inflation? No.

Was anybody going to vote for an additional 10 million illegal invaders let into the country by the mid-terms? No.

Was anybody going to vote for more DEI policy that saw more than 90% of rehires at Fortune 500 companies after the Covid job losses intentionally all being anybody except for white males? No.

Was anybody going to vote for more "defund the police" on top of all the illegals allowed in and the fact that it's pretty much not safe for women and children to walk outside anywhere except for the whitest, richest neighborhoods without a male escort? No.

Your party is incompetent, and out of touch. They've grown even more incompetent and out of touch with every year that passes, and losing that election in November as bad as they did despite throwing a 90-day, $1.4 Billion party has done nothing at all to get them to seriously re-evaluate their strategy and ideological stances going forward.

And, quite frankly, the Democrats and their policies are dangerous. It is why women going on a bus or a subway in 2025 now have to stress over the idea that they might be stabbed or lit on fucking fire if they're not practicing 100% situational awareness every second they're out in public.

The Democratic Party simply does not want to change at all, and they will continue to burn down their own party because they are wrong on nearly every issue that matters to The American People, even as we reach December of 2025.

You want to beat Trump and/or his successor?

Fucking do better then.

If you even can at this point. It may really be over for the Democratic Party for good now. Your only other option to vote for by midterms could very well be actual Socialism via candidates that don't even hide the fact they're Socialists anymore. Many of those candidates coming from foreign countries. You can pretend not wanting this outcome is racist all you want, but nobody with a working brain gives a single shit about your insults anymore. We simply can't afford to anymore even if we could. You've inoculated everyone from that over the years besides, just like I said you were going to do. Congratulations. Another pat on the back for you.

With where Trump is at right now, Democrats should be up on Republicans by 20 points. That's where they would be at if we were still living in the world that hasn't existed for more than a year and the world which will never come back.

If you want people to vote for your Party, give them a reason to even consider it for 5 seconds.

You don't have a single issue that the Democratic Party is in line with the desires of the people. Not a single one.

It's why you're seeing both Trump and the Republican Party losing support on one side, but nobody is seeing the Democrats get a bump from this on the other side. They're all fence sitting. And shit is bad enough for them to be doing that after the last 5 years and it's why they haven't immediately gone and defected for the Democrat hills like you would expect in a usual election cycle.

All you're doing is making more Independents at a time when Republican support for Trump is still at 87% like it was on day one. He's still got his 42%-43% approval rating that he floated with for most of his entire first run as President. He hasn't lost any of his core following. And if Democrats have no meaningful platform by election day that doesn't at all involve "we're not Trump", you're finished. They will still hold their nose and come back to Vance and you lose again. Things are bad enough now that people will be paying a lot of attention to the economy. And they won't forget that it was Joe Biden* specifically who got us where we're at today.

You've got one year before midterms to even attempt to turn that ship around.

I would suggest you give up on the Trump angle. Outside of an intentionally released plandemic and the chaos that caused leading right up to the election, it has never worked for you before and it will never work again for you period.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Friday, November 28, 2025 7:48 AM

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

Getting Ready to Party Like It’s 2008

Trump’s cronies are undermining financial stability

By Paul Krugman | Nov 28, 2025 at 5:39 AM

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/getting-ready-to-party-like-its-200
8

Ten years on, the Fed's failings on Lehman Brothers are all too clear,

On Sept. 15, 2008 Lehman Brothers failed. Within weeks the whole U.S. financial system was caught in the downward spiral of a massive bank run, on a scale not seen since the 1930s. Yet there was an important difference from the 1930s bank runs: in 2008, the panic mainly resulted in flight from “shadow banks,” nonbank institutions that performed bank-like functions. Conventional banks were largely immune from the 2008 panic because deposit insurance and federal regulations – a consequence of the 1930s bank runs – protected them.

While the U.S. economy was already in recession when Lehman fell, the financial crisis pushed it off a cliff into a deep recession. Despite frantic efforts to stabilize the financial markets, including large bailouts and huge lending by the Federal Reserve, America lost 6 million jobs in the year following Lehman’s fall. Total employment didn’t return to pre-recession levels until 2014. The share of prime-working-age adults with jobs remained depressed until the late 2010s:

.

The clear lesson of 2008 is that effective financial regulation is essential. For three generations after the great bank runs of 1930-31, America avoided “systemic” banking crises — crises that threaten the whole financial system, as opposed to individual institutions. This era, which Yale’s Gary Gorton calls the Quiet Period, was the result of New-Deal-era protections — especially deposit insurance — and regulations that limited banks’ risk-taking.

But post 1980, finance was increasingly deregulated. In particular, the government failed to extend bank-type regulation to shadow banks that posed systemic bank-type risks. And the crisis came.

In a way, the laxity that made the 2008 crisis possible was understandable. By the 2000s nobody in government or the financial markets remembered what a real financial crisis was like. And no, watching “It’s a Wonderful Life” on Christmas Day doesn’t count.

But here we are in 2025, and 2008 wasn’t that long ago. Many of us still have vivid memories of the gut-wrenching panic that gripped the world when Lehman fell. Yet Donald Trump’s allies and cronies are now moving rapidly to dismantle the precautionary regulations introduced after 2008 to reduce the risk of future financial crises. I say “allies and cronies” advisedly. There’s no indication that Trump himself has any idea what’s happening on his watch. But key players in Congress, within the administration, and, alas, at the Federal Reserve, are apparently determined to make a 2008 rerun possible.

The MAGA war on financial stability is being waged largely on two fronts. First, there’s an ongoing effort within some parts of the Federal Reserve to drastically weaken bank supervision — oversight of banks to prevent them from taking risks that could threaten the financial system.

The Fed has multiple roles: in addition to setting interest rates, it also has primary responsibility for bank supervision.

The Fed is supposed to be quasi-independent, and so far it has preserved its interest-rate-setting independence in the face of intense pressure by Trump to cut rates. Yet a Trumpian agenda is attempting to overtake the Fed’s bank supervision operations. In June, Michelle Bowman, a Trump appointee, became the Fed’s vice-chair of supervision. She is in the process of reducing staffing at the Fed’s supervisory and regulatory unit by 30 percent, while hiring new staffers drawn from the banking industry.

Bowman is expected to substantially loosen capital requirements. Capital requirements – requirements that a bank’s shareholders put a significant amount of their own money at risk to fund loans, and not just depositors’ money – are a critical component of reducing risk throughout the banking sector. Bowman has also sent out a memo sharply curtailing the ability of Fed staff to issue warnings about what they consider risky bank practices.

While it’s impossible to predict the precise effect of any of these moves, Bowman’s actions will clearly increase the banking industry’s profits in the short run while increasing the risk of another financial crisis – a risk that will inevitably fall on taxpayers’ shoulders, as they did in 2008.

The second front of MAGA’s war on financial stability is on behalf of the crypto industry. The Trump administration and its allies in Congress — including, I’m sorry to say, a number of Democrats in this case — are moving to promote wider use of crypto. In particular, the GENIUS Act (gag me with an acronym), passed in July, aims to promote stablecoins. And the fact is that stablecoins are effectively an alternative, weakly regulated and poorly supervised form of banking.

What are stablecoins? They’re privately issued tokens supposedly fixed in value at one dollar. They are, in effect, sort of a digital version of the bank notes that circulated during America’s private banking era in the 19thcentury — an era in which gold coins were the only official U.S. currency, with paper money consisting of notes issued by private banks that promised to redeem these notes for gold or silver on demand. The most famous of these bank notes was the $10 “Dix” note issued by the Citizens’ Bank of Louisiana, which may have given the South its nickname.

Private banking had many serious problems: private banks frequently collapsed, thereby losing depositors’ money. Without effective government supervision, private banks could issue notes without the resources to honor their promise to redeem those notes on demand. Indeed, there was a proliferation of “wildcat banking” — establishing banks in remote locations “where the wildcats roamed,” thus making it difficult for noteholders to present their notes for redemption.

How do stablecoins compare with 19th century private banking? One fact rarely mentioned about the stablecoin industry is that it’s dominated by two big issuers, Tether and USDC, with the rest consisting of a grab-bag of minor coins that collectively are much smaller than either:

https://coinmarketcap.com/view/stablecoin/

Tether has attracted the most scrutiny, in large part because it has, as The Economist puts it, become “money launderers’ dream currency.”

Leaving aside its role in facilitating global crime and viewing it as in effect a bank, how sound is Tether? On Wednesday S&P Global Ratings issued a scathing report, questioning the quality of Tether’s assets and noting that the company is highly secretive, giving outsiders no good way to assess its claims to be financially stable.

But aren’t government regulators keeping an eye on Tether? Um, no. Tether isn’t a U.S. company. It’s headquartered in and overseen by El Salvador, whose authoritarian ruler Nayib Bukele is best known in financial circles for his expensive, failing attempt to force Salvadorans to use Bitcoin as currency. El Salvador’s prudential guidelines for Tether are very lax, and how much faith do we have that even these weak rules are being enforced?

How did Tether respond to S&P’s assessment? With conspiracy theories, accusing S&P of being a tool of the “traditional finance propaganda machine.”

In short, as far as I can tell, Tether is a 21st century version of a wildcat bank, issuing tokens while deliberately making it hard for anyone to know whether it has the resources to honor them. And it’s not an outlier — it’s most of the industry.

Does Tether satisfy the rules of the GENIUS Act? No. This means that in principle, once the act is fully implemented, Tether won’t be able to issue its coins in the United States. The company has floated the idea of issuing a separate coin that does obey GENIUS rules, but that hasn’t happened yet.

Maybe other stablecoins will emerge that do honor U.S. rules. But there are worrisome loopholes in those rules that are likely to make stablecoins risky. And anyway, with resources and staff for financial supervision being slashed, how will these rules be enforced? A special source of concern is the worry that stablecoins will draw money out of conventional bank deposits into institutions that will, at best, be less well regulated.

Why are Trump and his allies undermining financial stability? There may be an element of free-market dogma. But as always with this administration, you shouldn’t underestimate the importance of simple corruption. Tether is closely connected with the financial firm Cantor Fitzgerald, formerly run by Howard Lutnick, Trump’s secretary of commerce. On joining the government, Lutnick left his role at Cantor Fitzgerald — and handed it over to his sons.

This post is already long, so I’ll stop with a warning: Along with its many other sins, the Trump administration is doing its best to make a future financial crisis more likely. I hope the Democrats are paying attention and won’t let themselves be seduced by Wall Street and, worse, the blandishments of the crypto bros. Because if they don’t, they could set themselves for a 2008-type crash during a Democratic administration. And we can guess who will get the blame.

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

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Friday, November 28, 2025 8:10 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

If you want people to vote for your Party, give them a reason to even consider it for 5 seconds.

You don't have a single issue that the Democratic Party is in line with the desires of the people. Not a single one.

It's why you're seeing both Trump and the Republican Party losing support on one side, but nobody is seeing the Democrats get a bump from this on the other side.

Except for a few outliers like Marjorie Taylor Greene, every lunatic who voted several times for Trump is NOT pushing back against Trump. Once Trump is dead, those tens of millions of lunatics will find another Trump to screwup America in exactly the way they screwup their own lives.

6ixStringJoker, I am not kidding when I call you are a lunatic. Read your words: http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=67234&mid=12346
29#1234629

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

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Sunday, November 30, 2025 6:01 AM

Keep it real please

Navigating Reindustrialization in a Deglobalized World

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Sunday, November 30, 2025 11:44 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Everything Trump does proves MAGA and others who voted for him are complete morons.

You keep saying that as if anybody had any alternative to vote for.

Trump Is In FAR Deeper Trouble Than I Anticipated | Paul Krugman

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

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Sunday, November 30, 2025 2:57 PM

According to ALWAYS WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING Paul Krugman.

OH NOEZ!!!! THE WALLS ARE CLOSING IN ON TRUMP AGAIN!!!!

Loser. You're a loser.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Monday, December 1, 2025 9:48 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
According to ALWAYS WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING Paul Krugman.

OH NOEZ!!!! THE WALLS ARE CLOSING IN ON TRUMP AGAIN!!!!

Loser. You're a loser.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

Krugman did NOT say the walls are closing in. He did say that Trump is crooked. That would NOT be obvious to Trumptards, especially 6ixStringJoker, who starts and ends his day watching porn and smoking. Depraved 6ix will not recognize Trump as morally corrupt. Instead, he sees Trump as someone to vote for because they both share experiences.

Trump: Pro-crypto or Pro-crime?

Or are they the same thing?

By Paul Krugman | Dec 01, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trump-pro-crypto-or-pro-crime

On one side, the Trump administration is sinking small boats that it claims, without evidence, are smuggling drugs — and according to the Washington Post, Pete Hegseth, the self-styled Secretary of War, has personally ordered at least one follow-up strike to kill the survivors. A working group of former JAGs, that is, members of the military’s legal branch, issued a statement declaring that it unanimously considers both the giving and the execution of these orders, if true, to constitute war crimes, murder, or both.

On the other side, Donald Trump has declared his intention to grant “a Full and Complete Pardon” to Juan Orlando Hernández, a former president of Honduras who has been convicted of conspiring to import cocaine into the United States. In fact, Hernandez was part of a cartel, including his brother, that smuggled hundreds of tons of cocaine into this country.

At first glance, the juxtaposition seems bizarre – Trump is either murdering or committing war crimes against people who are at worst small-time drug smugglers, and may be innocent fishermen, while pardoning a drug lord who was responsible for thousands of American deaths while savaging his own country, Honduras. But there is a pattern to this murderous madness, once one connects the dots between Trump’s mob-boss persona and the billionaire crypto/tech broligarchy.

First, understand that Trump’s vendetta against purported penny-ante drug smugglers is all about dominance display, an exhibition of his ability to order violence. The real object may be to set the stage for invading Venezuela.

Second, while Trump is clearly willing to inflict gratuitous suffering on the little people, he positively revels in his association with big-time criminals, whether it’s Putin; or Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who had a critical journalist dismembered with a bone saw; or Ross Ulbricht, creator of Silk Road, an underground e-marketplace known for drug trafficking, whom Trump pardoned immediately after assuming office; or Larry Hoover, a Chicago crime boss, who was sentenced to several lifetimes in prison for leading the Gangster Disciples, also pardoned by Trump. Yes, Trump really and truly cares about crime in Chicago.

Still, why would Trump, whose poll numbers are cratering, generate even more negative headlines by pardoning Hernández, who was duly convicted of conspiring to send more than 400 tons (!) of cocaine to America?

The answer is the influence of the crypto/tech broligarchy. In fact, many of Trump’s pardons of the most egregious criminals are closely linked to their influence.

A case in point is Ulbricht, whose Silk Road was an early example of what is still the main non-speculative use of Bitcoin: facilitating criminal activity. Ross Ulbricht was a darling of the tech-libertarian crowd, which includes Peter Thiel, arguably the godfather of Silicon Valley and whose financial backing was critical to JD Vance’s senate win. Trump first promised to pardon Ulbricht in 2024, as part of a pitch to win the votes of libertarians:

Speaking at the Libertarian Party convention in 2024, President Donald Trump promised to free Ross Ulbricht, a former tech entrepreneur who created a dark web site called Silk Road that was used by drug traffickers.

Photo of Trump at the Libertarian Party national conference in 2024, where he promised to pardon Ulbricht.
A close-up of a sign. A closeup: This is an anarchist symbol

Whatever libertarians were in the past, they are now an extremist party, opposed to laws against drug smuggling, money laundering, any type of prudential government regulation, and – in the case of Thiel – opposed to democracy itself. It should not go unnoticed that Trump saluted a party that proclaims “Become Ungovernable” as its guiding principle, written with the anarchy a-symbol.

Next, Trump’s pardon of Changpeng Zhao, aka CZ, the former CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, fits the same pattern. CZ plead guilty to charges of violating U.S. laws against money-laundering and was fined $50 million, in addition to a fine of $4.3 billion against Binance. Under CZ, Binance was a major channel of worldwide money laundering. As one report put it, prosecutors charged that Binance intentionally and purposefully ignored the transfer of money from countries and areas that are subject to sanctions -- including Syria, Iran, Cuba, Russia-occupied Crimea and the Donbas region in Ukraine. There was also trading that involved the criminal dark-web market Hydra.

And the story continues. Last week The families of 300 U.S. citizens hurt or killed in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel sued Binance, claiming the cryptocurrency exchange aided Hamas and other terrorist groups by transferring more than $1 billion among accounts they controlled.

However, in the world of radical libertarians, of the crypto/tech broligarchy, CZ’s crimes weren’t real crimes because crypto is designed to “free” us from the pernicious oversight of government. Yes, Trump really cares about stopping terrorism.

Finally, why pardon Hernández? What’s the connection to the crypto/tech broligarchy? It’s called Próspera.

Próspera is a for-profit city being built off Honduras’s coast. Its charter largely exempts the island from Honduran law. Instead, the city is run by a governing structure that for the most part gives control to a corporation, Honduras Próspera Inc., which is in turn funded by a familiar list of Silicon Valley billionaires including Thiel, Sam Altman and Marc Andreesen.

So while the city is being marketed as a libertarian paradise, it’s best seen as an autonomous oligarchy, government of, by and for billionaires. And you won’t be surprised to learn that within Próspera, Bitcoin is legal tender.

The 2013 Honduran law that made the creation of Próspera possible was initially ruled unconstitutional by the Honduran Supreme Court. But that ruling was reversed after Juan Orlando Hernández’s predecessor, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, managed to dismiss 4 of the court’s justices. Like Hernández, Sosa was a right-winger, who became president after a populist president, Manuel Zelaya, was overthrown by a military coup. Under both Hernández and Sosa, chaos reigned – corruption, criminal gangs, and drugs overran the country. The current president, Zelaya’s wife, has tried to claw back some sovereignty over Próspera, which has struck back with a mammoth lawsuit that could bankrupt the country.

Yesterday Honduras held an election in which Trump backed Nasry Asfura, a member of the same right-wing party as Hernández. Early results show the governing left-wing party well behind, but Asfura in a virtual tie with another right-wing candidate.

In any case, the point is that while Trump threatens and fulminates against Maduro in Venezuela, he is openly backing the Honduran political party that has allowed massive drug smuggling into the U.S. Why? The only logical answer is because of the influence of the crypto/tech broligarchy and their interests in Próspera.

So the announced pardon of Hernández for drug smuggling isn’t really a departure from the pardons of Binance’s Changpeng Zhao for money laundering or Silk Road’s Ross Ulbricht for facilitating illicit drug sales. In each case what’s being upheld is the principle that lawlessness in the pursuit of tech billionaires’ interests is no vice. In fact, it’s to be encouraged.

And Trump, whose only principles appear to be self-enrichment and vindictiveness, is happy to go along.

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

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Monday, December 1, 2025 10:19 AM

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

Journalists say they know why Trump pardoned Honduran drug trafficker

“Let’s be very clear: the narco dictator Trump is pardoning was beloved by the crypto world for creating lawless, sovereign zones for tech utopias organized around crypto,” wrote journalist Ryan Grim in a social media post on X. “The current [government] moved to shut them down. The crypto class fought back and Trump is now doing their bidding.”

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/journalists-say-they-know-why-tru
mp-pardoned-honduran-drug-trafficker/ar-AA1RrlMv

---------

Trump Gives Bonkers Excuse for Pardoning Drug-Runner President

President Donald Trump thinks a former Central American leader was simply set up by the Biden administration.

By Julia Ornedo | Dec. 1 2025 6:30AM EST

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-bonkers-excuse-for-pardoning-scan
dalous-honduran-ex-president/

President Donald Trump defended his pardon of a former Honduran president who once bragged that he would “stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses.”

Trump, 79, stood by his announcement on Friday that he would grant “a full and complete pardon” of Juan Orlando Hernandez, the 57-year-old former Honduran leader who was sentenced to 45 years in prison last year after he was convicted of drug trafficking and firearms offenses.

“Well, I was told—I was asked by Honduras, many of the people of Honduras, they said it was a Biden setup,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday. “He was the president of the country. And they basically said he was a drug dealer because he was the president of the country.”

The Justice Department, under former President Joe Biden, had said Hernandez “abused his power to support one of the largest and most violent drug trafficking conspiracies in the world,” helping heavily armed traffickers smuggle as much as 400 tons of cocaine into the U.S.—all while publicly promoting anti-narcotics policies in the Central American nation.

The prosecution of Hernandez began in Trump’s first term and concluded under Biden. Hernandez was extradited to the U.S. in 2022 and sentenced in a New York federal courtroom two years later for taking bribes from drug traffickers to move “well over approximately 4.5 billion individual doses of cocaine.”

In 2021, a witness recalled Hernandez as saying, “We are going to stuff the drugs up the gringos’ noses, and they’re never even going to know it.”

But Trump insisted Sunday that “the people of Honduras really thought he was set up, and it was a terrible thing.”

“He was the president of the country, and they basically said he was a drug dealer because he was the president of the country, and they said it was a Biden administration setup. And I looked at the facts, and I agreed with that,” he claimed.

When a reporter asked him to share any evidence showing that Hernandez was set up, Trump replied: “They could say that you take any country you want, if somebody sells drugs in that country, that doesn’t mean you arrest the president and put him in jail for the rest of his life. That includes this country.”

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

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Monday, December 1, 2025 10:22 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
According to ALWAYS WRONG ABOUT EVERYTHING Paul Krugman.

OH NOEZ!!!! THE WALLS ARE CLOSING IN ON TRUMP AGAIN!!!!

Loser. You're a loser.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.
Krugman did NOT say the walls are closing in.

I don't give a fuck what Paul said, retard. You couldn't pay me to read one of his articles in 2025.

You want me to go dig up how many times he's lied and said that to you in the past, stupid? Huh?

Seriously. Shut the fuck up.

You lost. Everything. FOREVER.

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

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Tuesday, December 2, 2025 8:52 AM

Keep it real please

Trump turned the department of defense into an organization headed by a NAZI.

T

Trump 'can fire Hegseth but a lot needs to change in the WH': House member on boat strikes

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Tuesday, December 2, 2025 9:30 AM

Keep it real please

Costco sues Trump admin seeking tariff refunds before Supreme Court rules if they’re illegal

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/01/costco-sues-trump-tariffs-trade-suprem
e-court.html?msockid=1f76560bc8e56b9718ad40bdc98a6a53

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Tuesday, December 2, 2025 10:09 AM

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

Trump has argued with architect James McCrery II over the size of the ballroom for the White House, which has increased since it was first announced in July.

The ballroom’s initial design had a seating capacity of 650.
But the project grew to 999 seats.
And now it could hold up to 1,350 guests.
(What's next for Trump? 2,000? 3,000?)

The latest ballroom plan is much larger than the West Wing and the Executive Mansion. The tensions over its size have left McCrery to take a step back as Trump manages the project.

https://www.nj.com/politics/2025/12/will-the-white-house-ballroom-be-t
oo-large-trump-breaks-silence-amid-pushback.html

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

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Tuesday, December 2, 2025 11:27 AM

Keep it real please

Trump's tariffs caused a HUGE increase in prices and inflation this Black Friday

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Tuesday, December 2, 2025 1:09 PM

Keep posting your clickbait bullshit, morons.

Just more posts to add to your eternal embarrassment of always being wrong and always being on the wrong side of every issue.

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

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Tuesday, December 2, 2025 1:29 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Keep posting your clickbait bullshit, morons.

Just more posts to add to your eternal embarrassment of always being wrong and always being on the wrong side of every issue.

6ixStringJoker, why don't you kill yourself? That would help the environment and fff.net.

‘Renewable’ No More: The Trump Administration Renames the National Renewable Energy Laboratory

A key driver of U.S. renewable energy research is now called the National Laboratory of the Rockies.

By Dan Gearino | December 2, 2025

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/02122025/renewable-no-more-the-trum
p-administration-renames-the-national-renewable-energy-laboratory/

The Trump administration has renamed the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, now calling it the National Laboratory of the Rockies, marking an identity shift for the Colorado institution that has been a global leader in wind, solar and other renewable energy research.

“The new name reflects the Trump administration’s broader vision for the lab’s applied energy research, which historically emphasized alternative and renewable sources of generation, and honors the natural splendor of the lab’s surroundings in Golden, Colorado,” said Jud Virden, laboratory director, in a statement.

He did not specify what this “broader vision” would mean for the lab’s programs or its staff of about 4,000.

The renaming is the latest in a series of actions by the Trump administration to deemphasize or cut the parts of the federal government that support renewable energy, while also expanding federal support for fossil fuels.

Asked for details, the Department of Energy said in an email that the renaming “reflects the Department’s renewed focus on ‘energy addition,’ rather than the prioritization of specific energy resources.”

A lab spokesman had no additional information about whether there will be changes to programs or headcount at the lab.

Bill Ritter, a Democrat who was governor of Colorado from 2007 to 2011, said it’s reasonable to assume that the name change signals that the federal government is abandoning the lab’s status as a world leader in energy research.

“It’s an iconic research facility,” he said.

Underscoring this point, he recalled a trip to Israel while he was governor.

“The head of their renewable energy laboratory said, ‘I have nothing to tell you, because you come from the place that has the best renewable energy laboratory in the world,’” Ritter said.

After leaving office, he founded the Center for the New Energy Economy at Colorado State University, which specializes in energy policy research, and is now a consultant on energy business and policy.

Based on this experience, he thinks that anything the Trump administration does to divert from the lab’s mission is harmful to the United States’ ability to remain a major player in the energy economy of the near future.

“We’ll no longer be competitive in renewables research with China or India or other countries that are still heading toward the renewable energy transition at a very fast pace,” he said.

People with close ties to the lab were not surprised by the name change, given the administration’s broader goals.

“In the early days of DOGE people there were whispering about a name change to avoid the ire of MAGAs,” said Matt Henry, a Montana-based social scientist who worked at the lab from February 2024 to August 2025, in a post on Bluesky. “It pissed me off—prioritizing the preservation of the institution at the expense of its [stated] mission? So disappointing.”

He was referring to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, which sought to cut federal spending in the early months of the Trump administration. The term MAGA refers to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan and movement.

Dustin Mulvaney, a San Jose State University environmental studies professor, said if the name change is a sign of a significant change in the lab’s work, it would be “like losing several major land grant research universities all at once.”

Mulvaney has done projects in partnership with people at the lab. An important part of the institution’s work, he said, is that its research is free and accessible to the public, helping businesses and universities that may not be able to afford the work of private research firms.

The lab’s mission has included consulting to help communities benefit from new energy technologies, and ensure smooth transitions away from fossil fuels.

This work meant that the lab was out of step with an administration that has said it disagrees with the idea of a transition away from fossil fuels and has sought to impede funding and development of renewable energy.

The lab was established in 1974 as the Solar Energy Research Institute, part of a law signed by President Gerald Ford to facilitate alternatives to importing oil from the Middle East, according to a history on the lab’s website. The U.S. was suffering through high gasoline prices amid tensions with oil-producing nations such as Saudi Arabia.

“The energy crisis we face today is unlike the crisis that gave rise to NREL,” said Audrey Robertson, assistant secretary of energy, in a statement. “We are no longer picking and choosing energy sources. Our highest priority is to invest in the scientific capabilities that will restore American manufacturing, drive down costs, and help this country meet its soaring energy demand.”

In 1977, the federal government selected Golden, Colorado, as the location for the lab. In 1991, the Solar Energy Research Institute became the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, part of a change by the administration of President George H. W. Bush that also elevated the institution to become part of the country’s national lab system.

But the lab’s history has also included budget cuts and periods when its work fell out of favor with presidential administrations, including layoffs and funding cuts under President Ronald Reagan. President Donald Trump proposed substantial cuts during his first term, but Congress retained much of the funding.

The Trump administration’s budget proposal, issued in May, calls for cuts across non-defense discretionary spending, including on energy research, but the budget process is still underway.

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

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Tuesday, December 2, 2025 1:32 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Keep posting your clickbait bullshit, morons.

Just more posts to add to your eternal embarrassment of always being wrong and always being on the wrong side of every issue.
6ixStringJoker, why don't you kill yourself? That would help the environment and fff.net.

Archived.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Wednesday, December 3, 2025 6:46 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Keep posting your clickbait bullshit, morons.

Just more posts to add to your eternal embarrassment of always being wrong and always being on the wrong side of every issue.
6ixStringJoker, why don't you kill yourself? That would help the environment and fff.net.

Archived.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

6ixStringJoke, the idea behind that archive is as silly as the rest of your life.

The Federal Reserve Delivers Bad News About President Trump's Tariffs

Research from the Federal Reserve says tariffs will increase unemployment and slow economic growth

By Trevor Jennewine | Dec 3, 2025

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/savingandinvesting/the-stock-market-so
unds-an-alarm-and-the-federal-reserve-delivers-bad-news-about-president-trump-s-tariffs/ar-AA1RCqyw

Earlier this year, President Trump said, "From 1789 to 1913, we were a tariff-backed nation, and the United States was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been."

That statement is patently false. Real GDP per person has increased tenfold since 1900, which means Americans generally have a much higher living standard today.

Trump has made similar claims on other occasions. "Tariff power will bring America national security and wealth the likes of which has never been seen before," he wrote on social media in November. Trump has even proposed using tariffs to eliminate individual income tax, or else to pay Americans (excluding high earners) a $2,000 dividend check.

Unfortunately, those plans are disconnected from reality. The new tariffs are projected to bring in $210 billion in 2026. That sum is nowhere near enough to offset individual income tax, which totaled $2.6 trillion last year. Nor is it enough to cover $2,000 dividend checks, which would cost more than $600 billion, depending on who actually gets the payments, according to the Tax Foundation.

However, there is a more fundamental problem with Trump's tariffs: Historical information suggests they will not make America wealthier. A recent study from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco examines 150 years' worth of data and arrives at this conclusion: Tariffs will lead to higher unemployment and slower economic growth.

The study attributes those outcomes to economic uncertainty. Consumer sentiment tends to worsen during periods of uncertainty, which reduces economic growth by suppressing demand and prompting companies to hire fewer people. Indeed, those circumstances are already coming to fruition: Consumer sentiment fell to the second-lowest reading in history in November after the unemployment rate increased to 4.4% in October, the highest level in four years.

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

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Wednesday, December 3, 2025 6:49 AM

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

Lying And Unwell
December 3, 2025

THE PRESIDENT IS LYING

Constantly. Though maybe it’s not lying in the traditional sense if you’re unhinged from reality, living 24/7 in your own reality.

Whatever it is, it’s disheartening that 36% of our fellow citizens, give or take, are okay with a lying or delusional president.

Case in point from his latest Cabinet meeting: “I inherited the worst inflation in history.”

No, he inherited 3% inflation. Which is about where it remains today.

(Inflation peaked at 23.7% in 1920 . . . nearly 14% in 1947 and again in 1980 . . . and 9.1% during the worst of the COVID supply chain disruptions in the middle of Biden’s presidency . . . but had dropped to 3% by the time he left, leaving Trump an economy The Economist called “the envy of the world.”)

___________

THE PRESIDENT IS UNWELL

Dr. Gupta: Trump’s MRI Excuse Raises More Questions Than Answers.

(And if you missed Monday: ‘Trump will not make it to the end of this term compos mentis’ | Psychologist analyses Trump.)

https://andrewtobias.com/lying-and-unwell/

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

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Wednesday, December 3, 2025 7:04 AM

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

Trump to Disaster Victims: Drop Dead

Sorry, but we don’t help the little people

By Paul Krugman | Dec 03, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trump-to-disaster-victims-drop-dead

The Mississippi flood of 1927 was one of America’s greatest natural disasters. Some 27,000 square miles were inundated, in some cases by 30 feet of water. Hundreds, maybe thousands, died — many of the victims were poor and Black, and their deaths went unrecorded. Around 700,000 people were displaced — equivalent to about 2 million people today, adjusting for population growth.

How did America respond? Initially, President Calvin Coolidge was adamantly opposed to any federal role in disaster relief, declaring that “The Government is not an insurer of its citizens against the hazard of the elements.” His refusal to provide aid was, however, deeply unpopular, and he eventually gave in to demands from Congress to deliver government aid.

Ever since that catastrophic flood, providing government aid to the victims of natural disasters has been an integral part of the American Way: federal aid to disaster victims became the norm after the Mississippi flood. Yet it was often a haphazard, uncoordinated process until 1979, when the federal response to natural disasters was consolidated under the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

Since then FEMA has become a well-established part of the American social safety net, especially in the face of worsening climate catastrophes. Americans have come to rely on FEMA as a first line of support after disasters. And when FEMA was seen to be falling down on the job, as it did after Hurricane Katrina virtually destroyed New Orleans in 2005, Americans were angry. The fact is, they want FEMA to be better, not smaller. In a July poll, only 9 percent of Americans wanted to see FEMA eliminated, and only another 10 percent wanted to see its budget cut.

Donald Trump, however, believes that he knows better than the majority of Americans. In June he announced his intention to dismantle FEMA and force the states to assume responsibility for disaster relief. While Trump publicly backed down after an intense public backlash, in practice he is gutting FEMA nonetheless. He is drastically scaling back federal emergency aid, even for communities in which the need for federal assistance is overwhelming.

The latest example of Trump’s stiffing those in need is in rural northern Michigan, where the power grid suffered severe damage from an ice storm last March. Rebuilding the power lines will cost thousands of dollars for each household served by the region’s power cooperatives. Without outside help, that cost will have to be paid by the cooperatives’ customers, a huge burden on a relatively poor part of the state. Yet FEMA has turned down the state’s request for aid, in an unprecedented break with past policies.

Adding further injury to Michiganders, who – by the way – voted to deliver the presidency to Donald Trump in 2024, the Trump administration has ordered another Michigan utility to keep an aging, unneeded, highly polluting coal-fired power plant operating, at a cost to ratepayers of $113 million so far, and ongoing at $615,000 per day.

Trump tried, unsuccessfully, to withhold wildfire aid from California unless it adopted voter ID. He has also tried to divert aid away from states that, in his view, aren’t cooperating with his immigration policies, although the courts stopped him. But the storm-hit areas that he is currently refusing to help are, or plausibly “were”, Trump country. The map on the left shows the areas covered by different Michigan electricity utilities; #3 and #7 are the utilities seeking FEMA aid. The map on the right shows the 2024 presidential vote by county, with deeper red corresponding to a higher Trump share:

Since this is not another case of Trump’s political retribution, what lies behind the denial of aid? I believe that it is a knee-jerk dominance display on Trump’s part. Whenever someone comes to him in need, whether its Volodomyr Zelensky, helpless African children dependent on USAID, or rural Michiganers, his cruelty is activated. And he likes surrounding himself with those of the same ilk: Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth, and Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, who impeded and slow-walked the emergency response to deadly Texas flooding back in July.

But that’s not all: there’s also an ideological component. The pre-Trump typical conservative argument against government aid restricted itself to programs like food stamps. The usual suspects fulminate against those who need help putting food on the table, asserting that it’s because they have chosen to be poor. In the conservative ideology of Ronald Reagan, helping the poor relieves them of individual responsibility and only makes them lazy.

But those old-time conservatives also recognized a difference between being the victim of a natural disaster and being impoverished. In their view, nobody chooses to have an ice storm or a hurricane. And helping to re-build entire communities didn’t, in their view, encourage sloth.

But that was conservatism then and this is Trumpism now. The fact is that disaster relief runs counter to the libertarian ideology embraced by tech bros like Peter Thiel. In the world of the libertarian tech broligarchy, who believe that they should be running things rather than be constrained by democracy, selfishness is a virtue. Hence they don’t believe that their tax dollars should be used to help others, even when those others are victims of circumstances beyond their control. Oh, that is, unless you are a wealthy Silicon Valley type with deposits at the failed Silicon Valley Bank. They apparently had no problem with a federal bailout of SVB.

In fact, the libertarian tech broligarchy is opposed to the very impulse to care about other people. “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization,” declared Elon Musk last March, “is empathy.”

And let’s not forget — because conservatives never do — that there’s a deeper strategy at play: if you want people to despise and hate government, you don’t want them to see the government doing anything that clearly helps people.

So American victims of natural disasters are being abandoned by Trump. That abandonment reflects his personal cruelty and that of those around him, as well as the ideological allegiance to cruelty among the libertarian tech broligarchy. And the resulting message is clear. Trump to disaster victims, wherever they live and whoever they voted for: Drop dead.

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

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Wednesday, December 3, 2025 10:34 AM

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

A sickening moral slum of an administration

Regarding Venezuela, Ukraine and much more, Trump and his acolytes are worse than simply incompetent.

By George F. Will | December 2, 2025 at 1:47 p.m.

www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/12/02/trump-hegseth-rubio-ukraine
-venezuela-boats/

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth seems to be a war criminal. Without a war. An interesting achievement.

In 1967, novelist Gwyn Griffin published a World War II novel, “An Operational Necessity,” that 58 years later is again pertinent. According to the laws of war, survivors of a sunken ship cannot be attacked. But a German submarine captain, after sinking a French ship, orders the machine-gunning of the ship’s crew, lest their survival endanger his men by revealing where his boat is operating. In the book’s dramatic climax, a postwar tribunal examines the German commander’s moral calculus.

No operational necessity justified Hegseth’s de facto order to kill two survivors clinging to the wreckage of one of the supposed drug boats obliterated by U.S. forces near Venezuela. His order was reported by The Post from two sources (“The order was to kill everybody,” one said) and has not been explicitly denied by Hegseth. President Donald Trump says Hegseth told him that he (Hegseth) “said he did not say that.” If Trump is telling the truth about Hegseth, and Hegseth is telling the truth to Trump, it is strange that (per the Post report) the commander of the boat-destroying operation said he ordered the attack on the survivors to comply with Hegseth’s order.

Forty-four days after the survivors were killed, the four-star admiral who headed the U.S. Southern Command announced he would be leaving that position just a year into what is usually a three-year stint. He did not say why. Inferences are, however, permitted.

The killing of the survivors by this moral slum of an administration should nauseate Americans. A nation incapable of shame is dangerous, not least to itself. As the recent “peace plan” for Ukraine demonstrated.

Marco Rubio, who is secretary of state and Trump’s national security adviser, seemed to be neither when the president released his 28-point plan for Ukraine’s dismemberment. The plan was cobbled together by Trump administration and Russian officials, with no Ukrainians participating. It reads like a wish-list letter from Vladimir Putin to Santa Claus: Ukraine to cede land that Russia has failed to capture in almost four years of aggression; Russia to have a veto over NATO’s composition, peacekeeping forces in Ukraine and the size of Ukraine’s armed forces. And more.

Rubio, whose well-known versatility of convictions is perhaps not infinite, told some of his alarmed former Senate colleagues that the plan was just an opening gambit from Russia — although Trump demanded that Ukraine accept it within days. South Dakota Republican Sen. Mike Rounds, a precise and measured speaker, reported that, in a conference call with a bipartisan group of senators, Rubio said the plan was a Russian proposal: “He made it very clear to us that we are the recipients of a proposal that was delivered to one of our representatives. It is not our recommendation. It is not our peace plan.” Hours later, however, Rubio reversed himself, saying on social media that the United States “authored” the plan.

The administration’s floundering might reflect more than its characteristic incompetence. In a darkening world, systemic weaknesses of prosperous democracies are becoming clearer.

Harvard sociologist Daniel Bell’s 1976 book, “The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism,” argued that capitalism’s success undermines capitalism’s moral and behavioral prerequisites. Affluence produces a culture of present-mindedness and laxity; this undermines thrift, industriousness, discipline and the deferral of gratification.

Today’s cultural contradictions of democracy are: Majorities vote themselves government benefits funded by deficits, which conscript the wealth of future generations who will inherit the national debt. Entitlements crowd out provisions for national security. And an anesthetizing dependency on government produces an inward-turning obliviousness to external dangers, and a flinching from hard truths.

Two weeks ago, the chief of staff of the French army said: “We have the know-how, and we have the economic and demographic strength to dissuade the regime in Moscow. What we are lacking … is the spirit which accepts that we will have to suffer if we are to protect what we are. If our country wavers because it is not ready to lose its children … or to suffer economically because the priority has to be military production, then we are indeed at risk.”

Putin has surely savored the French recoil from these words. And he has noticed that, concerning Ukraine and the attacks on boats near Venezuela, the Trump administration cannot keep its stories straight. This probably is for reasons Sir Walter Scott understood: “Oh, what a tangled web we weave,/ when first we practise to deceive!” Americans are the deceived.

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

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Wednesday, December 3, 2025 11:52 AM

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

The Last Big Case Against Trump Has Been Dropped

The U.S. justice and political systems have shown that they can’t hold the president and his allies to account for trying to steal the 2020 election.

By David A. Graham | December 2, 2025, 6:33 PM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/2025/12/trump-georgia-case-dro
pped-election-subversion/685119/

Even today, nearly five years later, listening to Donald Trump’s call is shocking.

“So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes,” he told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and a few aides on January 2, 2021. Trump warned Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, that if he didn’t act, he would face prosecution: “That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer.” And to underscore that he was asking Raffensperger to subvert the election results, he added, “So what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.”

The Washington Post obtained the call and published it on January 3. Three days later, a crowd of Trump supporters, whipped into a frenzy by the president, marched on the Capitol, attacked police, and sacked the building in an attempt to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s victory. In the days, weeks, and years to follow, much more would be revealed: a long-running campaign, as dedicated as it was sloppy, to steal the 2020 election.

Trump and several associates were charged for their roles in the scheme in a splashy Georgia indictment, but the case’s dismissal last week, on the eve of the Thanksgiving holiday, received less attention. A judge acted at the request of Peter Skandalakis, the prosecutor appointed to handle the case after Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who obtained the indictment, was disqualified from overseeing it. Skandalakis made both legal and practical arguments against the racketeering case, deeming the charges against some of the defendants weak. (The racketeering law allowed Willis to charge many people at once but created a sprawling case.) As for Trump, Skandalakis wrote, “There is no realistic prospect that a sitting President will be compelled to appear in Georgia to stand trial on the allegations in this indictment.” By the time he leaves office, “eight years will have elapsed since the phone call at issue.”

The Georgia case was the last remaining criminal case against Trump, and the last legal or political avenue to hold him accountable for the 2020-election plot. (It was also important because Trump cannot pardon himself or others if convicted in state court.) A federal election-subversion case against him was dismissed after he won reelection last November. State prosecutions against fake electors have not made much headway. And last month, Trump issued pardons to dozens of people implicated in the attempted subversion. In short, Trump has gotten away with his attempt to subvert the election: If the criminal-justice system is incapable of prosecuting attempts to steal an election, then stealing an election is de facto legal.

Each of these cases had its own wrinkles and reasons for failing. In the Georgia case, for example, Willis made grievous errors in judgment, intertwining her personal life and work by hiring a dubiously qualified special prosecutor with whom she was in a romantic relationship. Her racketeering charge was also ambitious but risky, as Skandalakis argued; the collapse of her case against the rapper Young Thug’s YSL group shows how such cases can go wrong.

The federal prosecution was set up for failure by Attorney General Merrick Garland’s decision to slow-walk prosecuting Trump to appear nonpartisan; the result was that by the time Special Counsel Jack Smith took over, he had little time to work. The Supreme Court used much of that time deliberating a challenge from Trump before issuing a startling opinion that gives presidents immunity for a huge range of “official” acts.

Political remedies haven’t worked either. The House voted to impeach Trump for his actions, but the Senate, under the influence of the GOP leader Mitch McConnell, failed to convict him. Republicans fell back on both legalistic claims—they argued that they couldn’t convict Trump once he was no longer president—and a misplaced belief that Trump would never be able to mount a political comeback. And when states tried to disqualify Trump from appearing on the 2024 ballot under the Fourteenth Amendment (a legally questionable approach), the Supreme Court blocked them.

All that remains are a few cases against the fake electors who allegedly formed alternative pro-Trump slates. A case in Michigan was dismissed. Wisconsin’s case is creeping forward. A case in Nevada was quashed by a trial judge on procedural grounds but resuscitated by the state supreme court; something similar happened in Arizona, where the attorney general has asked the state supreme court to revive a case. (That one also involves a few Trump allies.) Even if some of these cases succeed, though, they will punish the lowest-level participants while allowing the big fish—Trump chief among them—to swim free.

Trump’s pardon order guarantees that some of the high-profile figures will never face federal charges related to the 2020 election, including the lawyers Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, Boris Epshteyn, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark, and Jenna Ellis, as well as former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. (Trump’s order explicitly ruled himself out; he has previously said that he has the power to self-pardon, but many legal scholars disagree.) Giuliani and Eastman have lost their law license, and Clark may as well, but that’s hardly proportional punishment.

Notwithstanding the various prosecutors’ miscalculations that led to this point, it is possible that no effective legal path existed to hold Trump and his minions accountable. Despite their bumbling, their scheme was vague and diffuse enough that prosecuting them was tricky. This does not make election-subversion attempts acceptable, though; it means that lawmakers should write laws that would allow authorities to punish the kind of behavior that occurred after the 2020 election. Unfortunately, there is little prospect of that at the federal level or in potential key states. And as I wrote in The Atlantic’s December cover story, the president and his allies are already working to interfere in the 2026 election.

When moving to dismiss the Georgia charges, Skandalakis lamented the sordid aftermath of the election: “Never before, and hopefully never again, will our country face circumstances such as these.” The failure to punish the major figures, however, all but guarantees a repeat.

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

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Wednesday, December 3, 2025 11:53 AM