REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

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

POSTED BY: 6IXSTRINGJACK
UPDATED: Sunday, December 14, 2025 01:19
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Tuesday, December 9, 2025 3:49 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Trump Reversing "Humphrey's Executor" Is NOT Priced In

Tuesday, Dec 09, 2025 - 07:00 AM

By Michael Every of Rabobank

There are key central bank decisions this week, starting with the RBA today. However, the market has already priced in their expected outcomes. What it’s failing to price in, though it’s more important, is the stream of political and geopolitical developments in which it operates...


Rather, the US Supreme Court appears ready to overturn decades of precedent to grant Trump the power to fire a swathe of government officials. Reversing ‘Humphrey’s Executor’ will allow him to overcome legal and bureaucratic resistance to the Gramscian* changes he’s introducing to the political economy. That isn’t priced in. Indeed, despite Justice Kavanaugh’s opposition, it could put the Fed in the firing line too, with Governor Cook’s court case in January and a Fed Chair nominee, likely Hassett, promised within weeks. That isn’t priced in either.

Neither is Friday’s US National Security Strategy (NSS) even if for some countries and many markets it implies staggering changes ahead.

It’s America First, starting with “protecting the country and its way of life” and ending with “restoring US spiritual and cultural health”.

Its working principles are a focused definition of national interests; peace through strength; a predisposition to non-interventionism; flexible realism; the primacy of nations; a balance of power; pro-American worker; fairness; and competence and merit.

MORE AT https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/trump-reversing-humphreys-executor-n
ot-priced

*I had to look this up. Gramsci was an Italian Communist, and neo-Marxist philosopher fiercely opposed to Mussolini and fascism, jailed and died in prison after 11 years.
Unlike Marx, who thought that economies determined society and social relations between the classes, Gramsci thought that the elite maintained social dominance through cultural institutions instead of violence, economic force, and open coercion.
Personally, I don't think this is an either-or question. The ruling class, oligarchs, use all tools at their disposal to maintain their status.



-----------

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

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Tuesday, December 9, 2025 4:40 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


What they really need to figure out is how to destroy idea of the family unit completely and just grow us in farms like in Brave New World.

Then, just like in that story, everybody who's job it is going to be to break rocks down into smaller rocks is given just enough IQ points to wipe their asses without help and eat without choking themselves.

The "elite"'s problem has always been that there are so many poor people that are smarter than they are, and a few billion more who are at least too smart for their station in life, which leads to depression, misery and civil unrest.

Make everybody too stupid to realize how bad they've got it and most of the problems go away overnight.


Taking the Oligarchs down isn't going to accomplish shit. It's been done before. Quite a few times. And at the end of the day the top 1% are always going to own a majority of everything in the end. It's just the way things go.


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

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Wednesday, December 10, 2025 7:33 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Make everybody too stupid to realize how bad they've got it and most of the problems go away overnight.
Everything is perfect. Why aren’t you grateful?

By Paul Krugman | Dec 10, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trump-says-that-you-are-the-problem

Last night Donald Trump gave an important speech on the economy in Pennsylvania — supposedly in a working-class area, although the actual venue was a luxury casino resort. The event was initially touted as the start of an “affordability tour,” the first of a series of speeches intended to reverse Trump’s cratering approval on his handling of inflation and the economy. A number of news analyses suggested that he would use the occasion to blame Democrats for the economy’s troubles.

That was never going to happen. Trump did, of course, take many swipes at Joe Biden, as well as attacking immigrants, women and windmills. But to blame Democrats for the economy’s problems he would have to admit that the Trump economy has problems. And the speech was important because it revealed that he won’t make any such admission, and will continue to gaslight the public.

On Monday Politico interviewed Trump, asking him, among other things, what grade he would give the current economy. His answer: “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus.”

In fact, until very recently Trump wouldn’t even accept the reality that ordinary Americans don’t share his triumphalism. When Fox News’s Laura Ingraham asked him a month ago why people are anxious about the economy, Trump replied

I don’t know they are saying that. The polls are fake. We have the greatest economy we’ve ever had.

Since then Trump and his minions seem to have come around to admitting that Americans are, in fact, unhappy with the state of the economy. But if the economy is A+++++, why don’t people see it? The problem can’t possibly lie with him — so it must lie with you. “The American people don’t know how good they have it.”

I put that line in quotes because it isn’t a caricature or a paraphrase. It is, in fact, literally what Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, said the other day:

We’ve made a lot of gains, but remember, we’ve got this embedded inflation from the Biden years, where mainstream media, whether it’s Greg Ip at the Wall Street Journal, toxic Paul Krugman at New York Times or former Vice Chair, Alan Blinder, all said it was a vibecession. The American people don’t know how good they have it.

Incidentally, I appreciate the personal plug. Trump has already called me a “deranged bum.” Now Bessent says I’m “toxic.” Give me a fake peace prize, and I’ll have all the honors anyone could ask for.

Anyway, I may not be a political strategist, but I don’t think “You’re all a bunch of ingrates” is a winning message. It was, however, really the only message Trump could deliver, given his utter lack of empathy or humility.

At this point I could bombard you with a lot of data showing that the economy is not, in fact, A+++++. But it isn’t a disaster area, at least not yet. So why are Americans feeling so down? The main culprit is Trump himself.

First, during the 2024 campaign Trump repeatedly promised to bring consumer prices way down beginning on “day one.” We’re now 11 months in, prices are still rising, and voters who believed him feel, with reason, that they were lied to. Last night Trump insisted that prices are, in fact, coming way down. Again, “Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?” is a self-destructive political strategy.

Second, Trump would be in much better political shape right now if he had basically continued Biden’s policies, with only a few cosmetic changes. When he took office inflation was on a declining trajectory. Consumer sentiment was relatively favorable at the start of 2025. Americans were still angry about high prices, but the inflation surge of 2021-3 had happened on Biden’s watch and was receding into the past. My guess is that many voters would have accepted Trump’s claims that high prices were Democrats’ fault and given him the benefit of the doubt about the economy’s future if he had simply done nothing drastic and left policies mostly as they were.

Instead, he brought chaos: Massive and massively unpopular tariffs, DOGE disruptions, masked ICE agents grabbing people off the street, saber-rattling and war crimes in the Caribbean. Many swing voters, I believe, supported Trump out of nostalgia for the relative calm that prevailed before Covid struck. They didn’t think they were voting for nonstop political PTSD.

And there’s more to come. Health insurance costs are about to spike, because Republicans refuse to extend Biden-era subsidies. Inflation may pick up in the next few months as retailers, who have so far absorbed much of the cost of Trump’s tariffs, begin passing them on to consumers.

So the “affordability tour” is off to a disastrous start. And it won’t get better, because while Trump insists that the problem is you, it’s actually him. And he isn’t going to change.

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 10, 2025 7:40 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


There hasn't been any cratering on Trump's approval. He's still above where Biden, Obama and GWB were all at during this time in their 2nd term.

Keep dreaming, Paul.



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

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Wednesday, December 10, 2025 10:20 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:
There hasn't been any cratering on Trump's approval.
6ixStringJoker, you are a lying sack of shit, as is Trump.

How popular is Donald Trump?
Silver Bulletin approval ratings for President Trump
https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-approval-ratings-nate-silver-bullet
in

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 10, 2025 10:20 AM

SECOND

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


Just before the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Trump v. Slaughter—a seismic test of presidential power—on Monday morning, Donald Trump himself showed why the case is so dangerous. The president posted a screed about 60 Minutes’ critical coverage of his administration under its new ownership, Paramount, complaining: “Since they bought it, 60 Minutes has actually gotten WORSE!” Anyone familiar with Trump’s playbook would understand the implication of his post. Prior to his rant, news broke that Paramount would try to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery, muscling out Netflix’s megamerger bid. The Federal Trade Commission has the power to block the Netflix deal and hand Warner Bros. to Paramount on a silver platter. The FTC was designed by Congress to be an independent agency, so Trump’s Truth Social posts should be meaningless. If Slaughter goes the way SCOTUS is signaling, though, Trump will be able to strongarm the agency into doing whatever he wants—including by rewarding censorship of a news program like 60 Minutes or punishing media companies whose journalists question his absolute rule.

The choice for Paramount will be simple: Want the FTC to block Netflix’s bid and then pave the way for your takeover? Don’t worry about antitrust compliance. Just bring your journalists to heel.

Slaughter supplies the blueprint for this very kind of corrupt regulatory retaliation. The case asks whether the president has constitutional authority to fire FTC commissioners, and virtually any other agency leader, in pursuit of absolute control over the executive branch. Congress has given agencies significant independence from the president since the earliest days of the republic in an effort to shield them from political pressure. Today, more than two dozen agencies are insulated from direct presidential control by removal protections. For the last 150 years, Congress has built much of the modern government around this principle. Now Trump wants to destabilize this foundational framework by seizing the power to fire anyone he wants and assert direct control over independent agencies. As expected, on Monday, six Republican-appointed justices signaled that they are eager to let him do so.

Here is a sampling of who will be better off following this legal earthquake: Trump, Republicans loyal to Trump, corporations kowtowing to Trump, billionaires ingratiating themselves to Trump, media moguls flattering Trump, and foreign governments courting Trump.

Here is a partial list of the casualties: Congress, the First Amendment, journalists, whistleblowers, the civil service, unions, and everyday investors. In short: everyone and everything that this Supreme Court deems a hindrance to Trump’s monarchical consolidation of power. As Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson put it on Monday: “Under our constitutional design, given the history of the monarchy and the concerns that the Framers had about a president controlling everything,” one might assume that courts should defer to Congress’ decision that the chief executive should not have an iron fist on the administrative state. But the collective will of the people’s representatives is no match for six unelected justices with a trendy political theory they’re itching to superimpose upon the Constitution.

More at https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/12/paramount-netflix-fight-su
preme-court-trump.html

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 10, 2025 11:07 AM

SECOND

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


The Enfeebling of the President

Trump is showing signs that he’s lost the physical stamina to do the job.

By David A. Graham | December 9, 2025, 5:56 PM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/2025/12/trump-lost-physical-st
amina/685203/

The president of the United States can expect to face tough questions, but one that ABC’s Rachel Scott asked Monday wasn’t among them. In fact, it was nothing more than a recitation of his own words. “You said you would have no problem with releasing the full video of that strike on September 2 off the coast of Venezuela,” Scott began. President Donald Trump immediately snapped at Scott: “I didn’t say that. You said that. I didn’t say that. This is ABC fake news.”

In fact, as Scott reminded him, that’s exactly what he said. “I don’t know what they have, but whatever they have, we’d certainly release. No problem,” he said on December 3 in the Oval Office. After Scott pointed that out, Trump shrugged it off, as though he’d simply forgotten. Perhaps this was willful obfuscation. But moments of apparent forgetfulness—whether one calls them senior moments, wandering attention, or spacing out—have been happening a lot recently.

In late October, Trump said he received an MRI. For valid reasons, this has raised questions: MRIs aren’t a routine part of annual physicals, and the president’s most recent physical was way back in April; his doctors’ public disclosures about his medical exams have often been vague but full of puffery; he’s been seen with bruises, makeup, and bandages on his hands, which the White House has attributed to frequent hand shaking and his use of aspirin. Voter concerns about the health and vigor of his predecessor, Joe Biden, were one reason that Biden was forced into a late withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race.

Rather than quiet these concerns with transparency, however, the Trump administration played coy for weeks. When Trump was asked about the MRI on November 14, he insisted both that he didn’t know what it was about and that it had a great result: “I have no idea what they analyzed,” he told reporters. “But whatever they analyzed, they analyzed it well, and they said that I had as good a result as they’ve ever seen.” When pressed more recently, he continued to brag that he had “aced” a test designed to assess baseline cognitive function, as though it was an IQ test—a boast that raises more questions than it answers. When the president’s physician eventually released a letter about the procedure, which referred to his October scan only as “advanced imaging,” it was similarly heavy on superlatives and light on detail. (That’s a contrast with the practice prior to Trump’s first term, when administrations publicly shared more medical information. When George W. Bush went through MRI machines during his presidency, for instance, the White House explained that they were intended to understand the reasons for a sore shoulder in one case and assess possible damage to his knees in another.)

Trump has always seemed more interested in the pomp of his office than in doing the actual work, but he’s begun expressing lack of interest more physically in this term. Last week, Trump appeared to doze off repeatedly during a Cabinet meeting at the White House. To be fair, these are boring events: I am also not interested in sitting through several hours’ worth of secretaries and aides delivering obsequious praise, but they’re doing it for his benefit. If he wants more efficient meetings, he has the power to make it so. During one moment, Secretary of State Marco Rubio prattled on about how only Trump could achieve a cease-fire in Gaza. Trump himself slumped slowly forward with his eyes closed, then sat up before his eyelids fluttered again. The president did rouse himself at the end of the meeting, finding the energy for a racist rant about Somalis.

This is not the first instance of Trump appearing to nap during public meetings, as The Washington Post reported last month. When he repeatedly snoozed during his Manhattan trial, last spring, it was a curiosity—especially for someone who had previously seemed so high-energy. But as I wrote at the time, it was also a warning: Was a man who couldn’t stay awake for his own felony trial, during the middle of the day, prepared for the rigors of the presidency? We now have some sense of the answer (and we might also wonder whether he’s even worse at staying awake during meetings that aren’t public).

As my colleague Jonathan Lemire reported recently, Trump has also pulled back on his once-impressive schedule of campaign-style rallies. His daily schedule of events has become narrower. He’s becoming isolated and cloistered; his late-night social-media sprees are not new, but they’ve become a larger part of his public communication. As with Biden, this withdrawal has led Trump to make political arguments that, as David Axelrod writes, are disconnected from reality.

The stranglehold that the elderly have on American politics makes assessing Trump’s struggles without referring to his age impossible. That’s especially true after the Biden debacle. Trump invited the comparison by referring to Biden as “Sleepy Joe,” an epithet he might regret if he continues to drift off in Oval Office meetings. Trump is 79, making him the oldest American president at the time of inauguration. Although polling in 2024 showed that large majorities of Americans believed that Biden was too old to be president, significant numbers believed that Trump was too. In February of last year, for example, an ABC News / Ipsos poll found that six in 10 Americans felt that both men were too superannuated to serve.

What was most troubling about Biden, however, was not his age per se, but its symptoms: the stiffness, the apparent fatigue, and especially the meandering answers he delivered during his debate with Trump in June 2024. The same is true of Trump now. If another president were in his 50s or 60s and seemed unable to remember the details of such an important story as the boat strikes, didn’t know why he’d had a lengthy medical examination, and appeared to routinely doze off during high-profile meetings, the public would have understandable questions about his capacity to do the job. Trump has never displayed the temperament to serve as president, and now he is showing signs that he’s lost the physical stamina too.

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 10, 2025 11:16 AM

SECOND

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


Trump calls media reports on his health 'seditious'

Danny KEMP | Wed, December 10, 2025 at 9:27 AM CST

US President Donald Trump has been seen closing his eyes periodically at a number of events

US President Donald Trump has blasted media reports questioning his state of health as "seditious, perhaps even treasonous," sparking pushback Wednesday by one of the major outlets behind the stories.

In a long, late-night social media post, the oldest elected president in US history raged about stories in The New York Times and elsewhere suggesting that at the age of 79 he is slowing down.

"There has never been a President that has worked as hard as me! My hours are the longest, and my results are among the best," Trump said in the nearly 500-word screed on his Truth Social network.

"I actually believe it’s seditious, perhaps even treasonous, for The New York Times, and others, to consistently do FAKE reports in order to libel and demean 'THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.'"

The Republican added that he had been through "long, thorough, and very boring" medical examinations and had been able to "ace" cognitive tests that he claimed other presidents had not taken.

Trump added that the "best thing that could happen to this Country would be if The New York Times would cease publication because they are a horrible, biased, and untruthful 'source' of information."

The outburst comes despite the fact that Trump regularly accuses the media of having failed to cover the health of his predecessor Joe Biden, who dropped out of the 2024 election after a shambolic debate performance raised concerns about the Democrat's age.

He has also long contrasted his vigor with that of Biden -- whom he dubs "Sleepy Joe" and described at the rally in Pennsylvania on Tuesday as a "sleepy son of a bitch."

Discover more than you want to know about Trump's hemorrhoids at https://www.aol.com/articles/trump-calls-media-reports-health-15274084
8.html

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 10, 2025 1:21 PM

THG

Keep it real please


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Instrad of reading . . .

SECOND:
Instrad?

GOP says it'll take a lot more than eyewitness testimony, photos, DNA, toxicology reports, victim statements, wire transfers, emails, flight manifests, phone records, surveillance logs, bank records, audio, video, & total confessions for them to believe Trump's Epstein ties were more than coincidental.


Yes, Trump's Epstein ties were "more than coincidental“. But were they CRIMINAL? So far, there's no evidence that Trump was anything more than a creepy peeping Tom with young teens.

This is you just posting bullcrap. TRUMP! RUSSIA! COLLUSION! all over again.

There most be something probative in that pile of info, right?
So if you've got it, post it.
If not STFU.




Trump was convicted of sexual assault which the judge during sentencing told Trump, under our current system of laws what you did was rape.

During the Hollowood tapes he said he, repeatedly grabbed women by the pussy. That is him confessing to many sexual assaults upon women. And then there is this Epstein affair.

Comrade, first you’re disgusting. Second, when you post of any form of corruption, it is not because you are outraged, but instead to fulfill your Russia commie agenda.

It’s gross how you think finding someone doing something wrong somewhere, always lets Trump off the hook. And yes, Putin as well. Where I come from, people like you are considered trash.

T

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Wednesday, December 10, 2025 1:29 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
There hasn't been any cratering on Trump's approval. He's still above where Biden, Obama and GWB were all at during this time in their 2nd term.

Keep dreaming, Paul.


6ixStringJoker, you are a lying sack of shit, as is Trump.


No. I'm not.



You should probably ask yourself how many other times you've allowed them to lie to you today and how many more of their lies you've helped them spread.



*NOTE: I guess my "lie" here was mistakenly putting Joe Auto-Pen Biden* on that list. He was a one term loser and didn't make the graph.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Wednesday, December 10, 2025 1:34 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Trump was convicted of sexual assault


This never happened. Stop saying stupid shit.

It was a civil court and that's not what was voted on.

It was also held in Deep, Deep Blue with a judge and jury with a TDS hate boner as big as yours. That extortion will not stand and will be thrown out on appeal, just like ALL of the other court cases in your dumb court thread, and just as I've always told you.

Lying slut E. Jean Carroll will not see a dime of that money. And hopefully, if there's any justice in the world, she'll be forced to pay Trump's legal fees after the appeal takes place.

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

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Wednesday, December 10, 2025 2:27 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:
There hasn't been any cratering on Trump's approval. He's still above where Biden, Obama and GWB were all at during this time in their 2nd term.

Keep dreaming, Paul.


6ixStringJoker, you are a lying sack of shit, as is Trump.


No. I'm not.


You should probably ask yourself how many other times you've allowed them to lie to you today and how many more of their lies you've helped them spread.



*NOTE: I guess my "lie" here was mistakenly putting Joe Auto-Pen Biden* on that list. He was a one term loser and didn't make the graph.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.
If Trump were the President of a corporation, he would be fired when less than 50% of the board of directors approve of his performance. That's why some corporations are extremely efficient compared to the government and why Republicans want the government to run like a business. Except that Trump is the Trumptards' president for life, as Hitler was the Nazis' Führer for life, and can't be terminated.

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 10, 2025 3:14 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
There hasn't been any cratering on Trump's approval. He's still above where Biden, Obama and GWB were all at during this time in their 2nd term.

Keep dreaming, Paul.


6ixStringJoker, you are a lying sack of shit, as is Trump.


No. I'm not.



You should probably ask yourself how many other times you've allowed them to lie to you today and how many more of their lies you've helped them spread.



*NOTE: I guess my "lie" here was mistakenly putting Joe Auto-Pen Biden* on that list. He was a one term loser and didn't make the graph.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.
If Trump were the President of a corporation, he would be fired when less than 50% of the board of directors approve of his performance. That's why some corporations are extremely efficient compared to the government and why Republicans want the government to run like a business. Except that Trump is the Trumptards' president for life, as Hitler was the Nazis' Führer for life, and can't be terminated.

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



If you're going to reply to me and my FACTUAL graph, I don't want to hear anything out of you
other than "Sorry. I was mistaken."

Otherwise, shut the fuck up.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Wednesday, December 10, 2025 5:19 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:

If you're going to reply to me and my FACTUAL graph, I don't want to hear anything out of you
other than "Sorry. I was mistaken."

Otherwise, shut the fuck up.
Drop dead, you goddamn Nazi.

Trump’s reality TV tricks can’t hide the affordability crisis

The president's policies cost families $2,250 in 2025 — and the economy is only getting worse

By Amanda Marcotte | December 10, 2025 6:45AM (EST)

https://www.salon.com/2025/12/10/trumps-reality-tv-tricks-cant-hide-th
e-affordability-crisis/

Donald Trump made his money through fraud. So it makes sense, then, that he thinks the quickest way out of the affordability crisis is to rely on the same carnival barker tactics he used for decades to trick banks and investors into giving him money.

The billionaire president was born into wealth and has coasted on his family’s name. But there can be no doubt of his talent as a con artist.

Despite being so good at talking people out of their money, he still managed to go bankrupt multiple times. The scheme that saved his empire was a different flavor of fraud: Being falsely portrayed as a successful businessman on a reality show, NBC’s “The Apprentice.” This fakery netted him nearly a half-billion dollars, but because Trump is as bad at finances as he is at everything else but lying, he lost all that money too. https://www.salon.com/2020/09/28/forget-the-apprentice-trumps-taxes-sh
ow-he-was-really-the-biggest-loser/

He craves a quick fix to this whole economic dilemma — the same disaster he created through chaotic policies that have raised costs on everything from housing to health care to groceries…

Still, Trump’s skill at bamboozling people helped him win not just in 2016, but again in 2024, when he managed to convince swing voters he could somehow lower costs after a few years of pandemic-driven inflation. Instead, he has done the opposite, and now he is clearly annoyed at aides and reporters who insist that the cost of living is a real issue that voters care about. Trump is notoriously lazy, even on issues he cares about, so caring about the concerns of people who weren’t born rich taxes his extremely limited patience. He craves a quick fix to this whole economic dilemma — the same disaster he created through chaotic policies that have raised costs on everything from housing to health care to groceries, often for no other reason than a narcissistic insistence that he knows economics better than economists.

There are the tariffs, which Trump levies chaotically, as an expression of his ego, even as his propagandists pretend there’s some grand economic theory behind his impulsive and constantly changing orders.

As Thomas Edsall of the New York Times demonstrated this week, the self-inflicted inflationary pressure is hurting ordinary people. By combining all these factors, he calculated “an estimated net loss of $2,250 in 2025 spending power” for the median American household — and that’s before the health care premium rise that’s coming.

Trump’s first move was to simply deny that it’s happening by flinging the word “hoax” around. Last week, he declared that affordability concerns are not just a “hoax” but a “con job” and a “scam.” (One of his go-to hustler tactics is to accuse everyone else of his own sins.)

But that’s not working, so Trump moved on to his reality TV tactic of using tricks and empty gambits to create the illusion of doing something, while actually doing nothing. He tried co-opting the message by giving himself a nickname, declaring on Truth Social that he’s “THE AFFORDABILITY PRESIDENT” and whining that people won’t just take his word for it. During an interview with Politico Monday, he returned to the “fake it and and hope they buy it” strategy he used to sell himself on “The Apprentice.”

“Prices are coming down substantially,” he lied. “Prices are all coming down,” he lied again. “Now everything is coming down,” he said again, clearly hoping repetition will erase people’s direct experience with their own checking accounts. He also continued to whine that “Democrats love to say affordability,” spitting out the word as if his political opponents had just made it up.

He floated the idea of sending Americans a $2,000 “tariff check,” which would actually be paid by borrowing money, as the tariffs haven’t brought in even a fraction of the funds he promised they would. He announced a $12 billion bailout for farmers, once again falsely claiming it’s paid for by tariffs, when it’s actually coming from normal tax revenue. (This will only cover about a third of farmers’ losses and is also dwarfed by the $40 billion Trump gave to Argentina, mostly because he likes the country’s far-right president.)

The president is now hoping he can drown out the bad economic news with a torrent of lies and distractions. On Tuesday, he held a rally in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, to sell his administration’s supposed policies on affordability. But he couldn’t conceal his aggravation at having to talk about money with the proletariat, even a red-hatted audience that loves him.

Sure enough, Trump immediately declared that people’s economic concerns are “a hoax,” falsely asserting that “prices are coming down.”

For those unwilling to pretend that the economy is doing well, Trump is turning to another favorite gambit: scapegoating. Of course, he constantly blames the Democrats, even though the party doesn’t control either the White House or Congress. But he’s also looking for foreigners to accuse. The White House ordered an “investigation” into whether foreign businesses are engaged in price-fixing, which will undoubtably amount to nothing besides giving his propagandists a talking point. Trump has also been yelling at Mexico over a water dispute, while his Cabinet goons go on Fox News and pretend that immigrants are the reason for high housing costs and soaring grocery prices. It’s all lies, but Trump’s faith that people will swallow anything he says, no matter how preposterous, is unyielding.

Lots more at https://www.salon.com/2025/12/10/trumps-reality-tv-tricks-cant-hide-th
e-affordability-crisis/

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 10, 2025 6:13 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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

If you're going to reply to me and my FACTUAL graph, I don't want to hear anything out of you
other than "Sorry. I was mistaken."

Otherwise, shut the fuck up.
Drop dead, you goddamn Nazi.


OH NOEZ! DON'T CALL ME A NAZI IN 2025!!!!!

Fuck off, retard.

That word holds no meaning anymore. Pat yourself on the back. You did that.



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

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Wednesday, December 10, 2025 6:32 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:

OH NOEZ! DON'T CALL ME A NAZI IN 2025!!!!!

Fuck off, retard.

That word holds no meaning anymore. Pat yourself on the back. You did that.
You are a complete asshole, 6ixStringJoker. It is no surprise that you support Trump:

Denmark lists America as a security threat after Trump suggested doing what Russia did to Crimea

By Olena Mukhina | Dec 10, 2025

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/12/10/for-first-time-nato-ally-lists-
america-as-security-threat-after-trump-suggested-doing-what-russia-did-to-crimea/

Danish intelligence has identified the US as a potential security threat to the country under the Trump administration, amid ongoing geopolitical disputes over Greenland.

In the forecast for 2025, published on Wednesday, the Danish Defense Intelligence Service (DDIS) stated that the US is increasingly prioritizing its own interests and “currently uses its economic and technological power as a tool of influence over allies.”

“The United States uses economic power, including threats of high tariffs, to enforce its will, and no longer rules out the use of military force, even against allies,” the report said.

The annual threat assessment by DDIS comes after repeated statements by Trump expressing a desire to take control of Greenland, which strained diplomatic relations between Copenhagen and Washington. The US president did not rule out seizing the Arctic island by force.

6ixStringJoker, in case you are too stupid to see the Nazi connection, long before invading, Hitler was publicly demanding that other countries give him parts of their land, which is what Trump is doing.

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

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Thursday, December 11, 2025 6:03 AM

SECOND

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


"While I expected a crowd of a few thousand with the nostalgic sound of MAGA chants echoing off metal bleachers, I tuned into Fox News Tuesday evening to find the president in a conference center ballroom inside a local casino that appeared to hold, generously, 200 people. And even that small crowd seemed hesitant, almost resigned, as Trump ranted for nearly an hour."

Tesfaye adds, "Fox News, of course, dutifully avoided any wide shots. But the truth was clear on screen: The MAGA magic had vanished."

According to Tesfaye, Trump's "gaslighting" on the economy during his Pennsylvania rally did nothing to persuade swing voters.

"The Trump of 2026 is not the Trump of 2024," Tesfaye observes. "The president is clearly tired, angry, confused and incapable of adjusting to a country in economic crisis. Even Fox News can’t spin this."

https://www.salon.com/2025/12/10/trumps-return-to-maga-rallies-is-a-fl
op/



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

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Thursday, December 11, 2025 7:18 AM

JAYNEZTOWN


he was ass kissing the socialist islamic NYC guy

Honeymoon is truly over

Democrats Win Miami Mayorship for First Time in 30 Years
https://www.novinky.cz/clanek/zahranicni-amerika-demokrate-ziskali-pos
t-starosty-miami-poprve-po-triceti-letech-40552848


‘Trump wreaking havoc on everyday people,’ Virginia Governor-Elect Abigail Spanberger says




Trump says meeting with NYC mayor-elect Mamdani “surprised” him



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Thursday, December 11, 2025 12:10 PM

SECOND

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


Visitors to the U.S. — including those from visa-free countries such as France, Germany and Britain — would have to submit five years of social media activity before being allowed through the border, according to a proposal by the Trump administration published Wednesday:
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2025/12/10/2025-22461/agency
-information-collection-activities-revision-arrival-and-departure-record-form-i-94-and

The new rules, which would also require travelers to provide emails, phone numbers and addresses used in the last five years, would come into effect early next year — shortly before hundreds of thousands of football fans are expected to travel to the U.S. to watch their teams compete in the World Cup, which begins in June. The U.S. is co-hosting the tournament with Mexico and Canada.

“President Trump’s plan to screen visitors to the U.S. based on their past five-year social media history is outrageous,” Irish Member of the European Parliament Barry Andrews of the centrist Renew group said in a statement.

“Even the worst authoritarian states in the world do not have such an official policy,” he added. “The plans would of course seriously damage the U.S. tourist industry as millions of Europeans would no longer feel safe … including football fans due to attend next year’s World Cup.”

https://www.politico.eu/article/donald-trump-fifa-world-cup-social-med
ia-technology-politics-europe/

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

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Thursday, December 11, 2025 12:36 PM

SECOND

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


Trump plans to break up the EU by ‘pulling four MAGA allies’ out of the bloc, report claims

By James C. Reynolds | Thursday 11 December 2025 11:41 EST

https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/europe/trump-eu-break-up-it
aly-hungary-bloc-b2882684.html

The Trump administration made plans to pull four friendly countries out of the European Union and into America’s orbit in an effort to “Make Europe Great Again”, according to a report.

The 29-page US National Security Strategy (NSS) sent shockwaves around Europe when it was unveiled last week, condemning Washington’s European allies as “weak” and offering support to far-right political parties.

According to Defense One, a longer and unpublished version of the document suggested taking Austria, Hungary, Italy and Poland out of the EU and into greater alignment with the US, while backing movements supportive of “traditional European ways of life”.

The four nations were cited as countries the US should “work with more ... with the goal of pulling them away” from the EU, according to US-based news channel Defense One, which claimed to have reviewed the document.

Defense One claims that it elaborated on how Trump would like to build Washington’s relationship with ideologically-aligned administrations, as the US focuses on domestic priorities.

“We should support parties, movements, and intellectual and cultural figures who seek sovereignty and preservation/restoration of traditional European ways of life…while remaining pro-American,” it said, according to Defense One.

The alleged document is likely to spark further alarm in Europe, just days after the NSS claimed countries such as France and Germany were “decaying” due to migration and stifled economic growth.

[The White House denies it, but the cat is out of the bag.]

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

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Thursday, December 11, 2025 12:47 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Visitors to the U.S. — including those from visa-free countries such as France, Germany and Britain — would have to submit five years of social media activity before being allowed through the border, according to a proposal by the Trump administration published Wednesday:


Good.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Thursday, December 11, 2025 12:47 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Trump plans to break up the EU by ‘pulling four MAGA allies’ out of the bloc, report claims


Even better, if true.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Thursday, December 11, 2025 1:30 PM

SECOND

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


What will America look like after 3 more years of Trump?

By Ed Kilgore | Dec 11, 2025

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/what-will-america-look-like-aft
er-3-more-years-of-trump/ar-AA1SaanA

America could get the full MAGA makeover

Let’s say Trump has the power to do what he wants between now and the end of his second term. What might America look like if he fully succeeds, particularly if his policies are either emulated by state and local Republicans or imposed nationally by Washington?

Some of these likely effects from Trump 2.0 are reversible, but only after much time and effort, and against resistance from the MAGA movement he will leave as his most enduring legacy.

And if Trump bequeaths the presidency to a successor (either a political heir like J.D. Vance or a biological heir like Don Jr.), then what American could look like by 2032 or 2036 is beyond my powers of imagination.

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

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Thursday, December 11, 2025 1:39 PM

SECOND

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


What will America look like after 3 more years of Trump?

By Ed Kilgore | Dec 11, 2025

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/what-will-america-look-like-af
ter-3-more-years-of-trump.html

America could get the full MAGA makeover

• A country of millions fewer immigrants, with immigrant-sensitive industries like agriculture, health care, and other services struggling.

• A more regressive system of revenues for financing steadily shrinking public services.

• A fully shredded social-safety net feeding steadily increasing disparities in income and wealth between rich and poor, and old and young, Americans.

• Cities where armed military presence has become routine, particularly during anti-administration protests or prior to key elections.

• Elections conducted solely on Election Day in person, with strict ID requirements and armed election monitors, likely on the scene during vote counting as well.

• A new “deep state" of MAGA-vetted federal employees devoted to carrying out the 47th president’s policies even after he’s long gone.

• A world beset by accelerated climate-change symptoms, particularly violent weather and widespread natural disasters, and a country with no national infrastructure for preventing or mitigating the damage.

• An economy where Al is constantly promoted as a solution to the very problems it creates.

• A scientific and health-care research apparatus driven by conspiracy theories and cultural fads.

• A public-education system hollowed out by private-school subsidies and ideological curriculum mandates.

• And most of all: a debased level of political discourse resembling MMA trash talk more than anything the country has experienced before.

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

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Thursday, December 11, 2025 2:18 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
What will America look like after 3 more years of Trump?

By Ed Kilgore | Dec 11, 2025

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/what-will-america-look-like-aft
er-3-more-years-of-trump/ar-AA1SaanA

America could get the full MAGA makeover


Good. Fuck you, Ed. Move out of my country.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Thursday, December 11, 2025 2:33 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:
What will America look like after 3 more years of Trump?

By Ed Kilgore | Dec 11, 2025

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/what-will-america-look-like-aft
er-3-more-years-of-trump/ar-AA1SaanA

America could get the full MAGA makeover


Good. Fuck you, Ed. Move out of my country.
Tough talk from a Joker who spends his day smoking, watching porn, unemployed, and aware that he will die because Medicaid will end for the unemployed, thanks to Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 (OBBBA), which became law on July 4, 2025, requires states to implement Medicaid work requirements for many able-bodied adults, including those who are unemployed, starting in January 2027. This change, along with other cuts, is projected to result in a significant number of people nationwide losing coverage, potentially impacting tens of thousands in Indiana.

Specific Impacts on Indiana

• Work Requirements: Starting January 2027 (or potentially earlier if the state receives a federal waiver), most Medicaid expansion enrollees in Indiana ages 19-64 who are not exempt must work, volunteer, or participate in work-related activities for at least 80 hours per month.

• Potential Coverage Loss: While many current Medicaid enrollees already work, individuals who are unemployed and do not meet the work requirements or qualify for an exemption (e.g., parents of a child under 14, medically frail individuals, pregnant women) could lose their coverage.

• State Funding Challenges: The OBBBA caps or limits the use of certain state funding mechanisms, such as provider taxes, which Indiana uses to fund its share of the Medicaid program (Healthy Indiana Plan, or HIP). This could force the state to make further eligibility rollbacks or service cuts to balance its budget.

• Increased Administrative Burden: The law also increases paperwork and eligibility verification requirements, such as requiring redeterminations every six months for expansion populations (instead of annually), which can lead to eligible individuals losing coverage due to administrative errors or missed notifications.

• State Efforts: Indiana lawmakers had already passed state-level legislation earlier in 2025 seeking to impose work requirements, but federal law has set the effective date for these specific federal mandates for 2027.

The law does not automatically "end" Medicaid for all unemployed individuals in Indiana, as certain exemptions and waiver possibilities exist, but it does establish stricter rules and financial pressures that make it more difficult for unemployed Hoosiers to maintain coverage.

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

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Thursday, December 11, 2025 2:35 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
What will America look like after 3 more years of Trump?

By Ed Kilgore | Dec 11, 2025

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/what-will-america-look-like-aft
er-3-more-years-of-trump/ar-AA1SaanA

America could get the full MAGA makeover


Good. Fuck you, Ed. Move out of my country.

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

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Thursday, December 11, 2025 2:35 PM

SECOND

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


The US Is Looking More Like Putin’s Russia Every Day

We may already be on a superhighway to the sort of class- and race-stratified autocracy that it took Russia so many years to become after the Soviet Union collapsed.

By Andrea Mazzarino | Dec 11, 2025

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/putin-russia-trump-autocracy/

It’s strange so many years later, in the United States of America, to feel as if I’m living in a country threatening to become like the Russia of Vladimir Putin that I spent years experiencing earlier in this century. To start, let me tell you a little something about that.

For decades as a young adult, I lived and traveled in Russia. I was an anthropology doctoral student and human rights worker, studying the effects of President Vladimir Putin’s centralizing policies and that country’s Christian nationalist media on the everyday lives of Russians. In one of my last projects, I investigated the government’s practice of separating kids with disabilities (and poorer kids generally) from their parents and detaining them in closed institutions. My report detailed how much changes in society when the government excludes swaths of the population from basic services like healthcare, education, and even just access to city streets. The answer? Everything.

That marginalization was part of a governing process aimed at further enriching the wealthiest few and those in power. It reflected the leadership of figures lacking a basic understanding of what all people need and deserve. I consider that a hallmark of a fascist regime.

One of my last evenings in Russia was a chilly November night in 2014 in the northern city of St. Petersburg. Mothers and children, grandparents and teenagers alike stepped with care to avoid slipping on black ice and bumping into (and possibly falling thanks to) large plastic advertisements for fast food, clothing, cosmetic dentistry, plastic surgery, and even IVF treatments sticking up like weeds on the cobblestoned sidewalks of the city’s center.

Those glowing placards seemed to replace what had once been a slew of different kinds of people when I first traveled to Russia as a college student in the late 1990s. In the same central train stations of that city, old women then sold carrots and beets from cardboard boxes they had lugged from their country homes. Young women could sometimes be seen in bikinis and stiletto heels (even in that weather!) with beer advertisements scrawled across their chests. Uzbek and Tajik men scrambled to finish construction on new stores, restaurants, and apartment buildings before winter set in. Roma mothers, their babies strapped to their backs in jewel-toned scarves, begged for money for food and housing.

Sometimes, when traffic grew too congested for their liking, Russia’s newly rich—aptly dubbed “New Russians” in the country’s popular press—drove their luxury Mercedes and BMWs onto the sidewalks, forcing pedestrians like me, along with mothers pushing strollers and a few wind-worn men and women hurrying to work, to scatter in panic. Despite the chaos and a significant amount of deprivation (more on that later), for many I met then, much seemed possible, including working for ever larger companies, migration, and new luxuries. Electronic remixes of Western songs like “If I Were a Rich Girl” and Cher’s “Believe” blasted from vendors’ tinny sounding boom boxes on repeat.


By the time of my last trip to Russia in 2014, however, shiny buildings had been built, older ones renovated, and developers with close ties to Russia’s political elite were even richer, thanks to the country’s growing oil wealth. Roma (or gypsy) families were no longer anywhere to be seen, as St. Petersburg’s government had conducted “purges” of the city’s informal Roma settlements. Nor were old women selling their wares on the streets, while Central Asian migrants from poorer countries to Russia’s south seemed ever fewer and less visible during the busiest times. Indeed, local authorities were rounding them up and detaining them without warrants, based on appearance and language alone. (Sound familiar?)

Having spent years interviewing families who could no longer access this new cityscape with their kids who used wheelchairs or were blind or deaf, all I could think was: I’m lucky to be able to go home to the United States.

That last night in 2014, I was also nearing the end of the first trimester of my first pregnancy. I rubbed my still barely visible baby bump as I spotted an old friend from St. Petersburg who was waiting to meet me for dinner at a nearby cafe. As I sat down with her, a waitress approached our table. She noted my American accent and told me with gentle, motherly scorn that I shouldn’t be traveling while pregnant. As if on cue, stomach cramps made me double up. After a trip to the restroom revealed that I was bleeding, I started to wonder if the waitress had been right. Was it possible that my relentless travel had caused me to miscarry—and in a country where I knew women sometimes faced withering criticism and blame for poor pregnancy outcomes? Just stay with me until I go home, I implored the baby I carried.

At least, my friend understood. Before she gave birth to her healthy son in the 1990s, when Russia’s newly privatized healthcare system included few viable options for working-class women, it took exhausted, overworked doctors weeks after she started feeling sick during her first pregnancy to determine that the baby inside her had actually died. She had an abortion without anesthesia and returned to her teaching job right away to make ends meet. And stories like hers were anything but unique then.

Politicized Reproductive Health

By 2014, urgent-care clinics and hospitals were plentiful enough in large cities like St. Petersburg and Moscow, but many were exorbitantly expensive even for young Americans like me. Worse yet, the attitudes of medical workers toward women who couldn’t or wouldn’t have babies had not exactly softened under a president—Vladimir Putin, of course—known for describing women as “guardians of the hearth and linchpins of large families with many children.”

Fearing the worst, my friend snapped into action, calling around to several acquaintances until one located an obstetrician she trusted who traveled from her home on the outskirts of the city to a clinic downtown.

In the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet empire, the International Monetary Fund and other international lenders pushed Russia to slash public spending and rapidly privatize state functions as part of the deal for their crucial loans to a society then in trouble. In the end, such changes dismantled the Soviet Union’s social safety net, including universal healthcare.

Well-connected elites carved up many of the remaining state assets and used them for their own private gain. Included in Russia’s newly privatized healthcare system were private clinics for the ultra-wealthy offering hotel-like amenities, including private rooms, hot tea, and soft background music. Ordinary Russians who couldn’t afford such ritzy private services used the remaining state clinics, though they were often overcrowded, undersupplied, and understaffed in the austere new world so many Russians had no choice but to navigate, especially outside the big cities. What’s more, as anthropologist Michele Rivkin-Fish has pointed out, private healthcare facilities didn’t mean better quality care, as medical workers and all kinds of public figures tended to encourage married, racially White (Slavic) Russian women to have more children, no matter the dignity and long-term health of women in Russia more broadly.

It would be an understatement to say that, by the time I left there in 2014, politics infused every aspect of Russian life. I’ll never forget, for instance, that a colleague of mine, who researched military abuses against ethnic minorities in Russia’s southernmost republics, had to leave the country to give birth after she received threatening anonymous text messages claiming that she and her unborn child were linked to Islamic insurgents in that part of the country.

While I had some reason to be afraid myself in that context, I wasn’t nearly high profile enough to truly worry and I was lucky as well. After all, my friend had a friend who indeed had a doctor she trusted. So, in the end, I was able to get an ultrasound, which showed that I still had a healthy pregnancy.

I traveled back to the United States and gave birth to my son the very same day that Donald Trump descended that golden escalator to announce his candidacy for president (claiming that thousands of people were awaiting him below when only a few score were there) and launched his bid on the claim that Mexico was sending “rapists” into the country.

Nah, I thought, as I watched the cooing baby in my arms. Probably won’t happen. I took my boy home and, being a military spouse, struggled with the military health insurance system, Tricare (aka Try-For-Care), to get coverage for basic costs like a breast pump. (No such luck, because, as an insurance rep told me, I was supposed to stay home and breastfeed him directly.) As for medicine for a common mouth infection in newborns, I got it but only after multiple appeals. I was then in an America plagued by privatization, ongoing foreign wars, and a lack of corporate accountability, but at least, my family would be okay—for now.

Back in the USA1

And here we all are.

I wish I could say that my family—and yours—live in a reality that’s different from the one I left in Russia when I took my pregnant self home in 2014. I look around at what’s happening in our country and worry that we may already be on a superhighway to the sort of class- and race-stratified autocracy that it took Russia so many years to become after the Soviet Union collapsed.

In particular, in the years since the Supreme Court overturned the right of American women to have abortions in 2022, 41 states have put abortion restrictions into effect, including 14 with outright bans. Some 40 percent of women now live in states with such bans or significant restrictions. In a handful of states like Idaho and Texas, women and expectant parents have had to cross state lines to get routine miscarriage- or pregnancy-related healthcare because doctors can face criminal or civil liabilities for providing it. (It may not be coincidental that in states with severe abortion restrictions, infant mortality has gone up significantly, particularly among people of color.) I could go on about the ways this administration and its allies on the Supreme Court and elsewhere are denying poor and middle-class women basic healthcare, but I’m sure you already get the picture.

Maybe since most Americans haven’t lived under an actual dictatorship the way many Russians have, state capture here is faster and easier, especially in a country with a resurgent Evangelical right (After all, didn’t Jesus say, “Suffer little children…”?)

New Americans?

These days, many people in my community and in my day job as a psychotherapist have lost hope that Donald Trump’s government could change things for the better. Many now tell me that they might not even vote in an upcoming election because government can’t be trusted to tell the truth and act on behalf of ordinary people. I’ve heard folks say that they can rely only on themselves (and maybe loved ones) to help them in crises like driving across state lines for healthcare. Among some of the highly educated parents I know in my DOGE-stricken DC suburb, I see not mass outrage or the urge to mobilize as much as a desire to homestead and foster a post-apocalyptic self-reliance, much in the style of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

Well, good luck, and thanks for helping Trump consolidate power.

But for now, the one thing I think we still do have that Russia doesn’t is mass demonstrations like the recent No Kings Day ones where a record 7 million Americans turned out nationally and a (relatively) free press, which is not to be taken for granted or let go easily. To show up in public as fully human and speak out for others is itself a sign of hope and possibility. Rage-filled political leaders and their minions would not invest so much time in intimidating those who speak out if free speech didn’t matter so much. (Think of that Trump-ordered military flyover while Epstein abuse survivors held a press conference in Washington recently.)

In days marked by so much uncompromising confrontation, I’m reminded of anthropology’s insight that, during a period of upheaval and movement, the people going through it can change significantly, though usually with some risk and pain. Migrations, mass demonstrations, even pregnancy—all of them hold the potential for self-transformation, particularly when people accompany one another on their journeys. The reason we should show up at demonstrations, write op-eds, and protest in any way we can imagine is to stand in solidarity with one another, even if we don’t change the minds of the people watching us. (We might, though!) In other words, collective action is its own form of social transformation. It is a way to forge, if not a new America, then new Americans who will not let democracy die without a struggle. Without it, I fear we’re likely to end up with Donald Trump’s version of Vladimir Putin’s Russia—at least, the one I left in 2014.

That’s why what we all do next matters so much. Remember that, in a democracy, we the people are the government. Whether we’re finding a service for someone who needs it, offering a friend in need a ride, warning of federal police or National Guard in the neighborhood, speaking out against abuse, or just meeting friends for dinner, the exercise of our civil rights is a thread from which our democracy hangs. Such actions also alter the landscapes we hold in our imaginations, whether we like it or not. Simply put, as long as there are more people than military in the streets, the message to those who are scared is simple: this might feel like a foreign land, but you’re not alone.

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

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Thursday, December 11, 2025 5:37 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The US Is Looking More Like Putin’s Russia Every Day


You did that. Pat yourself on the back.

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

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Friday, December 12, 2025 7:48 AM

SECOND

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


October 15, 1948

10 Nazis Executed For Murdering U.S. Fliers During War

By United Press

LANDSBERG, Germany, Oct. 15. — Ten German war criminals were hanged here today, seven for the murder of American fliers who were shot down over Germany during the war and three for atrocities at the Flossenburg Concentration Camp.

The executions were carried out in the Landsberg Prison courtyard where Adolf Hitler wrote Mein Kampf after the Munich Putsch.

Clemencies Denied

All were convicted in United States Army trials at Dachua. Their appeals for clemency were denied.
The executions took an hour and 40 minutes, with all the Nazis protesting their innocence.

They brought to 52 the number of lesser Nazis executed here.

One Nazi, a former Gestapo chief, screamed, “You murderers,” to the Americans.

An ironic note was added when American jet-propelled planes from nearby American bases screamed overhead as the men went to their deaths.

Shouts From Gallows

He shouted from the gallows platform, as the noose was adjusted, that his final petition for clemency had not been acted upon.

“I did my duty as a German soldier when I killed American terror fliers who murdered German women and children,” he cried.

His shouts were cut off as the trap was sprung.

Jan Akkerman, former Mayor of Borkum Island off the north coast of Germany, who was executed for inciting his townspeople to attack seven American fliers, died shouting that his execution was an act of revenge by the victorious Americans.

https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/the-borkum-island-massacre-a
nd-trial/

https://newspaperarchive.com/the-lima-news-oct-15-1948-p-1/

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

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Friday, December 12, 2025 10:30 AM

SECOND

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


A Secret Service Agent Explains What Trump Is Like Behind The Scenes

Nov 17, 2025

https://thehalfwaycafe.substack.com/p/a-secret-service-agent-explains-
what

A Secret Service agent who has served seven presidents says Donald Trump is weirder than all of them put together. The following are details the agent has compiled based on reports of Trump’s behavior:

• Trump has never once ridden in a car with Melania or Barron because Melania forbids it.

• Trump is a big fan of the Swedish pop group ABBA, and on motorcade rides liked to blast “Dancing Queen,” and when he hears the lyrics, “You are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen,” he tells the driver, “Epstein used to love this song.”

• The floor mats in the back seats of the presidential limousine had to be replaced monthly because of how much fried chicken Trump eats messily on his way to rallies that coats the fabric with grease.

• Once a month Trump likes to go on a long drive with a Republican member of Congress he’s upset with into the middle of nowhere in Virginia farm country, and leave him or her there to walk back to D.C.

• The Secret Service had to start offering bonuses to drivers of the presidential limousine because Trump smelled so bad. The agents quietly went on strike in January at the start of his second term, and refused to drive him without extra “stench pay.” It made Trump furious because the strike made him miss a few days of golf.

• Trump often farts, and then accuses the driver of the flatulence.

• The seats of the vehicles Trump rides in are regularly stained with orange foundation makeup. On long drives, Trump sleeps and always leaves orange stains on the seat belt strap.

• He regularly tries to convince agents to invest in his crypto currency by promising it’s not a pump and dump scheme, but, also, if he does decide to do a rug pull on all his investors, he’ll let them know when it’s coming ahead of time.

• Sometimes Trump throws Big Macs he brings for snacks against the windshield when he hears bad news. The Secret Service thinks of this as an incredibly reckless, potentially catastrophic security threat given that each time they have to stop the vehicle and wipe off the smeared ketchup.

• Following every meeting with an Asian diplomat or leader, Trump talks with an exaggerated Asian accent for fifteen minutes.

• Every Secret Service agent has heard Trump recommend they spend their next vacation in Moscow because “Russian girls are into some crazy stuff.”

• During international events and global summits, Trump tries to “accidentally” walk into the women’s bathrooms, which is always really awkward for Secret Service agents to have to witness.

• Trump occasionally asks his Secret Service drivers to run over people just to see how they react and test how loyal they are.

• Trump tries to get perimeter defense Secret Service agents to help him cheat when golfing. He hands them several balls and tells them that if they see him hit a ball into water or sand, to throw the balls somewhere on the green.

• After every motorcade ride, Trump tells his drivers, “I’d tip you but I don’t have any cash, so I promise I’ll tip you big on the next one.” The Secret Service also heard him say that to every Mar-a-Lago employee who served him, his golf caddies, and various hotel staff members when staying in foreign countries.

• The Secret Service had to triple its golf cart fleet and pay for storage space in foreign countries to store them because Trump refuses to walk anywhere, even when attending ceremonial events outside with other leaders, including female leaders wearing heels.

• Trump sometimes makes long phone calls where he listens a lot, and says things like, “NATO is ripping us off, you’re right,” “Ukraine is ripping us off, you’re right,” and “the US should tell Poland, the Baltic states, South Korea, Japan, and the European Union to fuck off, you’re right,” and then announce after he hung up, “That wasn’t Putin I was talking to by the way, it was—uh—Barron, yeah, Barron was asking me questions about his college homework.”

• The Secret Service has to regularly invent excuses for why women Trump invites to ride alone in a car with him can’t in order to save the government millions in under-the-table hush money payouts.

• Trump occasionally makes suggestive comments to agents like, “You know, in Russia and North Korea, their security agencies will push the leader’s political enemies out of windows...”

• Trump has asked the Secret Service agents to “pull a Princess Diana” on Mike Pence, Kevin McCarthy, Eric Trump, and JD Vance.

The Halfway Cafe - Dadaist graffiti news. Halfway true comedy and satire by Dash MacIntyre. I don't report the facts, I improve them.

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

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Friday, December 12, 2025 1:14 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
October 15, 1948

10 Nazis Executed For Murdering U.S. Fliers During War


You Nazis had better watch your backs today.



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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Friday, December 12, 2025 4:28 PM

SECOND

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


We Investigated the 5 Most Corrupt Presidential Pardons



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

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Friday, December 12, 2025 4:32 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
We Investigated the 5 Most Corrupt Presidential Pardons


Great. Now do Joe Biden*'s Autopen.

I'll wait.

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

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Friday, December 12, 2025 6:25 PM

SECOND

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


How are Trumptards stopped in a way that neither Trump nor the Trumptards on the Supreme Court can undo? See how Ashli Babbitt was stopped, permanently, upsetting Trump to this day. Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned the shooting of Babbitt, describing it as an "assassination".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Ashli_Babbitt

The Last MAGA Prisoner

Trump desperately wants Tina Peters released but can’t make it happen without help.

By Yvonne Wingett Sanchez | December 12, 2025, 5:27 PM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/2025/12/tina-peters-maga-colorado
-trump-pardon/685240/

Tina Peters is supposed to spend the next eight years of her life in prison. The former Colorado county clerk was convicted last year of charges tied to tampering with voting equipment under her control in 2020. President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for Peters’s release, warning of “harsh measures” if she remains incarcerated. But even a president obsessed with retribution, who granted blanket clemency to people convicted of federal offenses connected to the January 6, 2021, attacks on the Capitol, can’t erase Peters’s sentence. Her state-level conviction is beyond the reach of his federal pardon power. And so she sits in a Colorado prison, the most prominent MAGA prisoner still behind bars.

The sprawling campaign to “Free Tina Peters” is testing Colorado’s authority to enforce its own laws without interference from a federal government that wants to undo a conviction handed down by a jury. Trump—aided by the Justice Department, the Bureau of Prisons, White House counsel, and MAGA activists—is seeking to unravel her punishment in multiple ways, with the hope that one might work: a transfer into federal custody, a full pardon, or a release before the end of her sentence. (Her attorney and the Trump ally Steve Bannon recently floated on a podcast the idea of having Trump call in the 101st Airborne Division to set her free. The attorney said he’d “love to see that happen.”)

Trump’s embrace of Peters’s cause threatens to erode the public’s trust in the validity of electoral outcomes and the independence of state criminal-justice systems, constitutional experts told me. Election officials from around the country who have faced years of violent threats and harassment for defending the 2020 presidential vote—and each election since—told me the clamor around Peters signals to those who may seek to interfere in the 2026 midterm elections that they can flout the law with support from the White House.

Trump posted on Truth Social yesterday that he is granting Peters a “full Pardon,” but legal experts said his power doesn’t extend to state charges. The one person who could free Peters—Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat who has issued tepid public statements on the case, seems disinclined to offer Peters, a 70-year-old lung-cancer survivor, any leniency.

“I, like the president, have the values of compassion and mercy, and there’s been times when people are ill and we’ve let them out,” he told me in an interview this month. So far, he said, “the indications I’ve seen are that she’s healthy.” If circumstances change, he added, “I’ve told people publicly, as well as the White House,” that “we would consider doing something.”

In Mesa County, along the state’s snowy western slopes, where Peters once served as the chief election official, most people I spoke with seem to think that she is exactly where she belongs. “There’s not an uprising in Colorado to free Tina Peters,” Scott McInnis, a Republican who served as a congressman and county commissioner, told me.

But far from the state correctional facility where she finds herself, the effort to release Peters continues. Her attorney pursued Trump’s pardon for his client, who once regaled crowds with elaborate election-cheating theories. Peters is deteriorating in prison, even struggling to finish her own sentences, according to friends and attorneys who have seen her.

“Where is everybody,” read part of an “UPDATE FROM TINA PETERS: 364 Days of Injustice” posted on X in October. “The President has demanded my release four times … Why is the DOJ defying Trump’s demands? Get off your asses and get me out!”

Before she was celebrated as a martyr to the MAGA cause, Peters, with a white bob and red lipstick, was seen among supporters as a whistleblower who revealed irregularities in her county’s voting systems. Although Trump overwhelmingly won Mesa County in the 2020 election, he lost Colorado and its nine electoral votes.

In 2021, Peters believed she was in a position to help prove his stolen-election claims. Prosecutors said she deceived colleagues to obtain credentials that allowed an unauthorized person to access the county’s election equipment. Last year, a jury found her guilty of seven counts, including attempting to influence a public servant and conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation. Before sentencing her to almost nine years in prison, the judge said he was convinced that she would commit her crimes again, if she could.

“You are no hero, you abused your position, and you’re a charlatan who used and is still using your prior position in office to peddle a snake oil that’s been proven to be junk time and time again,” Judge Matthew Barrett told her. Her constant undermining of election systems presented an immeasurable danger to democracy, he said.

Peters’s X account has continued to offer dubious election claims. (No one in her circle would say whether Peters, who is being held at a women’s prison in Pueblo, is actually posting the missives or whether someone else is.) She is appealing her conviction. Her legal team, political allies, and grassroots supporters have also spent much of the past year working to get Trump’s attention.

Shortly before the president’s inauguration, Peters’s X account noted that Polis was the only person who could pardon her, and tagged Trump. Soon after, her case was discussed with Trump as he hosted members of Congress at Mar-a-Lago, a person briefed on the discussion told me. Representative Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican who once represented Mesa County, spoke about the need to keep the U.S. Space Command’s headquarters in Colorado. Someone else brought up Peters’s case, the person said, and the president made clear he didn’t think the state should have put her in prison.

Soon after, amid a years-long battle over the future of the command, which is responsible for military operations in space, Boebert spoke with Polis and said that a Peters pardon could help prevent the president from relocating the headquarters, the person said. Polis told me that he talks regularly with Boebert but doesn’t remember “a particular discussion” where Peters “was discussed in the same breath” as the Space Command. (The congresswoman and her team didn’t answer my questions.)

The Justice Department lent its support to a federal habeas corpus petition that Peters brought earlier this year, a move described to me by former federal and state prosecutors as extraordinary. Citing a Trump executive order to address what the president described as the misuse of the government against political foes during the Biden administration, Justice Department lawyers said they were reviewing Peters’s prosecution to determine if it was “oriented more toward inflicting political pain” than pursuing justice. Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, a Democrat, said in a court filing that the DOJ’s intervention in the case was “unprecedented, highly problematic, and a threat to the rule of law.” A federal judge rejected the petition this week, saying that state court proceedings needed to play out. But the judge wrote that Peters raised “important constitutional questions concerning whether the trial court improperly punished her more severely because of her protected First Amendment speech.”

Trump has taken to Truth Social to argue that Peters was wrongly convicted and to threaten unspecified “harsh measures” if she remained incarcerated. He called her an “innocent Political Prisoner” and directed the DOJ to “take all necessary action” to secure her release. “FREE TINA PETERS, NOW!” he wrote in May.

Beyond Peters, Trump had a long list of complaints about Colorado, including efforts to keep him off the 2024 ballot, his subsequent 11-point election loss, and a portrait in the state capitol he denounced as “purposefully distorted” before its removal. In September, Trump announced he was moving the Space Command’s headquarters to Alabama, which the Department of the Air Force years ago identified as its preferred location. The president said Colorado’s “crooked” vote-by-mail system was a “big factor” in his decision. A White House official noted that Trump had chosen to house the headquarters in Alabama during his first term, before Joe Biden relocated it to Colorado. “POTUS was simply restoring his first term decision,” the official wrote in a statement.

Sitting inside the lobby of a Phoenix hotel during the Democratic Governors Association retreat this month, Polis would not say whether he had talked privately with the president about Peters. “I would just say any conversations have just been consistent,” he told me. When I asked Polis if Peters was a factor in any negotiations over the Space Command, the governor replied, “She committed a crime and she was prosecuted by a Republican D.A. in a Republican county, convicted by a jury of her peers in a very Republican area in our state.”

In early November, the president and his aides started searching for information about Dan Rubinstein, the Mesa County district attorney whose office had brought the case against Peters. Jeff Hurd, the Republican who represents the county in Congress, told the president that Rubinstein was a conservative and a principled lawman, two people familiar with their discussion told me.

On November 7, David Warrington, the top lawyer in the White House, sought to speak to Rubinstein, leaving a voicemail I obtained in response to a request for public records. “President Trump asked me to give you a call about a matter,” Warrington said. Rubinstein confirmed to me that he spoke with Warrington about Peters but would not divulge any details. A White House spokesperson did not comment on the call.

Days later, the Federal Bureau of Prisons asked state correctional officials to transfer Peters into its custody. The motivation for the request is unknown, but it coincided with an amplified social-media campaign mounted by MAGA influencers to get Peters released, along with claims from her attorneys and allies that she was “witness” to election crimes perpetrated by Democrats. Her lawyers and friends also said she had a worrisome persistent cough.

The Colorado Department of Corrections has not granted the request. Polis told me that Peters does not meet the criteria that would lead to a federal transfer—she’s not in danger, he said, and she doesn’t present a danger to others: “Neither one seems to be the case with this inmate, so our Department of Corrections has not requested a transfer.” Peters’s former colleagues have been more vocal. Giving Peters special treatment, they said, would undermine the entire judicial system. “It would imply that accountability for violations of Colorado law can be negotiated or avoided, while those who acted honorably were left to face the consequences alone,” the Colorado County Clerks Association wrote in a letter to the governor.

In a separate letter, Rubinstein and Weiser, the attorney general, described the transfer request to Polis as an attempt to bypass the state’s judicial system—“all to offer a politically connected inmate the comforts of an easier sentence.” At worst, they wrote, moving her to federal custody “could aid the unauthorized or illegal release of a convicted felon.”

Sitting behind his desk, near a giant portrait of Lady Justice, Rubinstein told me the federal government’s role in his business is limited. “This is a crime of local interest,” he said, adding, “We should be able to charge, try, and punish someone who commits crimes against our local people without interference.”

From Washington, Trump continued his pressure campaign, posting on his Truth Social that Peters was sitting in prison, “DYING & OLD.”

If Peters does not win her appeal, her attorney Peter Ticktin told me, she hopes to serve the remainder of her sentence at a federal women’s prison—preferably the Federal Prison Camp in Alderson, West Virginia (where Martha Stewart served five months and learned how to crochet). Ticktin, a longtime friend of Trump, said it’s a better fit for the Gold Star mom, who he doesn’t think should be living with so many violent criminals. (She has been threatened and attacked, he wrote in a letter this month to Trump and his pardon office.) Plus, he said, she’d be close enough to Washington, D.C., that it would be easy for federal authorities to question her about the alleged election-related crimes she claims to have witnessed in Colorado.

Ticktin insists the transfer idea isn’t a backdoor way to win her release. “She’s not getting freed if that process takes place,” he said. If the U.S. were to take custody of her under false pretenses and then free her, he said, “that would destroy the whole system.”

Ticktin, who helped secure pardons for some of the January 6 rioters, said he is in touch with Ed Martin, Trump’s pardon attorney. Martin has indicated on social media and Bannon’s show that he is working to help Peters. In September, Martin said on his personal X account that Peters had just talked to him from prison. “Tina,” he wrote, “we are coming for you, M’am.” The Justice Department declined to comment.

Ticktin aggressively sought a presidential pardon for Peters, and he described to me at length a novel legal theory that would allow Trump’s decision to apply to state crimes. “I know that this may not seem like something that makes sense, because everybody knows that a president can only pardon for federal crimes,” Ticktin told me. “But that’s not actually true.” He rooted around for a copy of the Constitution and directed me to Article II, Section 2, which says: “The President … shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” Ticktin argues that at the time that it was written, “United States” referred to the individual states, not to a federal entity as it does today.

“It does not make sense that they intended to give individual states the power to circumvent the President’s power to pardon,” he wrote in a letter to Trump and the pardon office after we spoke. “The matter of Tina Peters is a perfect example of how the power of the President is being circumvented.”

Ticktin told me he thinks his argument “will pass muster before the Supreme Court.”

Despite the president’s attention and the clamor online within MAGA, there’s little uproar over Peters’s sentence in Grand Junction, Colorado, where she worked as the county clerk. “I’ve just sort of stopped paying attention,” one woman told me outside of the bagel shop where, police said, Peters resisted arrest. Half a dozen people at a restaurant said they had little sympathy for Peters. Others said they were horrified at the prospect that a jury verdict could be overridden by the federal government. A few Republicans told me they thought that Peters broke the law but that her sentence was excessive. Peters’s successor at the clerk’s office, Bobbie Gross, a Republican, prefers not to talk about the office’s prior occupant. But it’s becoming impossible not to. Polis, she said, “is going to pick a path, whatever that might be.” Hours after I met with her, Trump had more to say on Truth Social. He called Polis a “SLEAZEBAG” and “lightweight” who let his state “go to hell.” The president signed off: “FREE TINA!”

This week, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said it opened a civil investigation into conditions at Colorado correctional facilities and residential youth centers. The probe, viewed by some as retribution for Peters’s incarceration, will examine among other things whether the state provides adequate medical care and safe and sanitary conditions at its prisons. The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment. Harmeet Dhillon, the division head, noted on X that her office is also investigating prisons in other states. The Justice Department, she wrote, “has a duty to protect all Americans.”

Trump’s pardon announcement came in a Truth Social post “granting Tina a full Pardon for her attempts to expose Voter Fraud in the Rigged 2020 Presidential Election!” The idea that a president could pardon someone tried and convicted in state court, Weiser said in response to the post, “has no precedent in American law, would be an outrageous departure from what our constitution requires, and will not hold up.”

Other legal experts tell me that Trump and Peters’s lawyers will have a difficult task convincing the Supreme Court that presidential pardons extend to state crimes. Instead, Peters’s best chance of relief lies in Polis or the state’s parole board (she is eligible to appear before it in January 2029). The date falls after the presidential election, the lead-up to which will surely bring more of the conspiracy theories and misinformation that led Peters to prison. Election clerks nationwide take pride in the work they have done to ensure their voting systems are safe and secure. They frequently invoke her crimes and conviction as the price to be paid for breaking the law. And the question posed by the county clerks’ letter hovers over Peters’s case: What message would it send to the thousands of people who diligently carry out the democratic process if someone who continues to undermine it from a prison cell is rewarded by the hand of a president?

Michael Scherer and Sarah Fitzpatrick contributed reporting.

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

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Friday, December 12, 2025 7:23 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
How are Trumptards stopped in a way that neither Trump nor the Trumptards on the Supreme Court can undo? See how Ashli Babbitt was stopped, permanently, upsetting Trump to this day. Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned the shooting of Babbitt, describing it as an "assassination".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Ashli_Babbitt


Yeah. We know you fantasize about killing Trump voters.

Do it. See what happens to you.

We're sick of hearing your bitch ass talk about it.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Saturday, December 13, 2025 7:43 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:
How are Trumptards stopped in a way that neither Trump nor the Trumptards on the Supreme Court can undo? See how Ashli Babbitt was stopped, permanently, upsetting Trump to this day. Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned the shooting of Babbitt, describing it as an "assassination".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Ashli_Babbitt


Yeah. We know you fantasize about killing Trump voters.

Do it. See what happens to you.

We're sick of hearing your bitch ass talk about it.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.
Constantly, Trump fantasizes about murdering his enemies, and he has done it, repeatedly:


White House Refuses to Rule Out Summary Executions of People on Its Secret Domestic Terrorist List

The Trump administration ignored questions about whether it would orderthe killings of those on its NSPM-7 list — even while answering our other queries.

By Nick Turse | Dec 12, 2025 at 1:08 PM

https://theintercept.com/2025/12/12/trump-nspm-7-domestic-terrorist-ex
ecutions-antifa-boat-strikes/

President Donald Trump has shattered the limits of executive authority by ordering the summary executions of individuals he deems members of designated terrorist organizations. He has also tested the bounds of his presidential powers by creating a secret list of domestic terrorist organizations, established under National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, or NSPM-7.

Are Americans that the federal government deems to be members of domestic terrorist organizations subject to extrajudicial killings like those it claims are members of designated terrorist organizations? The White House, Justice Department, and Department of War have, for more than a month, failed to answer this question.

Lawmakers and other government officials tell The Intercept that the pregnant silence by the Trump administration has become especially worrisome as the death toll mounts from attacks on alleged members of “designated terrorist organizations” in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean, and as Trump himself makes ever more unhinged threats to imprison or execute his political adversaries.

In early September, The Intercept revealed that elite Special Operators killed the shipwrecked victims of a September 2 attack on a suspected drug smuggling boat. They have since struck more than 20 other vessels. The administration insists the attacks are permitted because the U.S. is engaged in “non-international armed conflict” with “designated terrorist organizations” it refuses to name. Experts and lawmakers say these killings are outright murders — and that Trump could conceivably use similar lethal force inside the United States.

“The Trump Administration is trying to justify blowing small boats out of the water by arbitrarily calling them ‘designated terrorist organizations’ — a label not grounded in U.S. statute nor international law, but in solely what Trump says,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., told The Intercept. “If Trump is using this justification to use military force on any individuals he chooses — without verified evidence or legal authorization — what’s stopping him from designating anyone within our own borders in a similar fashion and conducting lethal, militarized attacks against them? This illegal and dangerous misuse of lethal force should worry all Americans, and it can’t be accepted as normal.”

For almost a quarter century, the United States has been killing people — including American citizens, on occasion — around the world with drone strikes. Beginning as post-9/11 counterterrorism operations, these targeted killings in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Yemen, and other nations relied on a flimsy legal rationale that consistently eroded respect for international law. Details of these operations were kept secret from the American people, and civilian casualties were ignored, denied, and covered up. The recent attacks on alleged drug boats lack even the rickety legal rationale of the drone wars, sparking fear that there is little to stop the U.S. government from taking the unprecedented step of military action against those it deems terrorists within the nation’s borders.

The military has carried out 22 known attacks in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean since September, killing at least 87 civilians. Last week, footage of the September 2 double-tap strike shown to select members of Congress ignited a firestorm. Trump announced, on camera, that he had “no problem” with releasing the video of the attack. This week, he denied ever saying it, in another example of his increasingly unbalanced behavior.

“The public deserves to know how our government is justifying the cold-blooded murder of civilians as lawful and why it believes it can hand out get-out-of-jail-free cards to people committing these crimes,” said Jeffrey Stein, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, on Tuesday, as the ACLU, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the New York Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit for the immediate release of a classified Justice Department’s opinion and other documents related to the attacks on boats. “The Trump administration must stop these illegal and immoral strikes, and officials who have carried them out must be held accountable.”

Since October, The Intercept has been asking if the White House would rule out conducting summary executions of members of the list “of any such groups or entities” designated as “domestic terrorist organization[s]” under NSPM-7, without a response. Similar questions posed to the Justice and War departments have also been repeatedly ignored, despite both departments offering replies to myriad other queries. The Justice Department responded with a statement that did not answer the question. “Political violence has no place in this country, and this Department of Justice will investigate, identify, and root out any individual or violent extremist group attempting to commit or promote this heinous activity,” a spokesperson told The Intercept.

“The Trump administration should answer all questions about the terrorist lists,” Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., told The Intercept. “The American people have a right to answers about who is on them and what that means for all of us.”

Rebecca Ingber, a former State Department lawyer, notes that while the designated terrorist organization label as a targeting authority is “entirely manufactured,” the administration is relying on it to summarily execute people in the boat strikes, making their application of the terrorist label on the domestic front especially concerning. “Many of us have warned that there seems to be no legal limiting principle to the Administration’s claims of authority to use force and to kill people,” Ingber, now a law professor at Cardozo Law School in New York, told The Intercept. “This is one of the many reasons it is so important that Congress push back on the President’s claim that he can simply label transporting drugs an armed attack on the United States and then claim the authority to summarily execute people on that basis.”

Last month, members of Congress spoke up against Trump’s increasingly authoritarian measures when a group of Democratic lawmakers posted a video on social media in which they reminded military personnel that they are required to disobey illegal orders. This led to a Trump tirade that made the White House’s failure to dismiss the possibility of summary executions of Americans even more worrisome.

“This is really bad,” the president wrote on Truth Social, “and Dangerous to our Country. Their words cannot be allowed to stand. SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR FROM TRAITORS!!! LOCK THEM UP???” A follow-up post read: “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” Trump also reposted a comment that said: “HANG THEM GEORGE WASHINGTON WOULD !!”

“What’s most telling is that the President considers it punishable by death for us to restate the law,” the six lawmakers — Sens. Elissa Slotkin, Mark Kelly, and Reps. Jason Crow, Chris Deluzio, Maggie Goodlander, and Chrissy Houlahan — all of them former members of the armed forces or the intelligence community — replied in a joint statement. “Every American must unite and condemn the President’s calls for our murder and political violence.” Trump later claimed he did not call for the lawmakers’ executions.

For decades, Trump has called for violence against — including executions of — those he dislikes, including a group of Black and Latino boys were wrongly accused of raping a white woman jogger in New York’s Central Park in 1989; immigrants at the southern border, those who carry out hate crimes and mass shootings; demonstrators protesting the death of George Floyd; the chief suspect in the fatal shooting of a Trump supporter in Portland, Oregon; former chair of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley; and former Rep. Liz Cheney. In August, Trump also called for “Capital capital punishment,” explaining: “If somebody kills somebody in the capital, Washington, we’re going to be seeking the death penalty.”

In January, immediately after being sworn in, Trump also signed an order to expand the death penalty, and Attorney General Pam Bondi has spent the year carrying out orders to put more Americans to death. Eleven states have executed 44 people since January, according to the Death Penalty Information Center — the highest annual total in more than a decade.

White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers failed to answer questions about Trump’s history of threatening to kill people and his recent unhinged behavior.

As Trump lobs threats at political foes and his administration seeks to put convicted and supposed criminals to death at home and abroad, NSPM-7 directs hundreds of thousands of federal officials to target U.S. progressive groups and their donors as well as political activists who profess undefined anti-American, antifascist, or anti-Christian sentiments. The memorandum harkens back to past government enemies lists and efforts that led to massive overreach and illegal acts of repression to stifle dissent. That includes the House Un-American Activities Committee, which began in the 1940s, the FBI’s secret Counter Intelligence Program, or COINTELPRO, which began in the 1950s, and the Patriot Act, enacted in the wake of 9/11, which led to abuses of Black, brown, and Muslim communities, along with racial, social, environmental, animal rights, and other social justice activists and groups.

“NSPM-7 is a greater infringement on freedoms than the Patriot Act.”

“Trump’s NSPM-7 represses freedom of speech and association. Investigating any organization with anti-capitalism or anti-American views is anti-American. NSPM-7 is a greater infringement on freedoms than the Patriot Act,” said Khanna. “We’re seeing the greatest erosion of civil liberties and human rights in our modern history.”

NSPM-7 directs Bondi to compile a list “of any such groups or entities” to be designated as “domestic terrorist organization[s]” and Bondi has ordered the FBI to “compile a list of groups or entities engaging in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism,” according to a Justice Department memo disclosed by reporter Ken Klippenstein on Saturday. The department also shared the December 4 memo, “Implementing National Security Presidential Memorandum-7: Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,” with The Intercept.

The Justice Department memo notes that under Section 3 of NSPM-7, “the FBI, in coordination with its partners on the [Joint Terrorism Task Forces], and consistent with applicable law, shall compile a list of groups or entities engaged in acts that may constitute domestic terrorism” and “provide that list to the Deputy Attorney General.” (The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces are located in each of the FBI’s 56 field offices and specifically “support President Trump’s executive orders,” according to a top FBI official.)

The Justice Department memorandum offers a fictitious apocalyptic vision of urban America which the Trump administration has previously employed to justify its military occupations, including “mass rioting and destruction in our cities, violent efforts to shut down immigration enforcement, [and] targeting of public officials or other political actors.” While Trump has even falsely claimed, for example, that members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua have engaged in hand-to-hand combat with U.S. troops on the streets of Washington, D.C., state attorneys general have repeatedly and successfully argued that troop deployments in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Portland, Oregon, were illegal because Trump administration claims of rampant civil unrest were found to be overblown or fictional.

The December 4 Justice Department memo also claims that “certain Antifa-aligned extremists” profess “extreme viewpoints on immigration, radical gender ideology, and anti-American sentiment” and “a willingness to use violence against law-abiding citizenry to serve those beliefs.” Over the last decade, Republicans have frequently blamed antifa for violence and used it as an omnibus term for left-wing activists, as if it were an organization with members and a command structure.

In September, Trump signed an executive order designating antifa as a “domestic terror organization,” despite the fact that it is essentially a decentralized, leftist ideology — a collection of related ideas and political concepts much like feminism or environmentalism.

Last month, the State Department designated four European groups — Antifa Ost, based in Germany; Informal Anarchist Federation/International Revolutionary Front, a mostly Italian group; and Armed Proletarian Justice and Revolutionary Class Self-Defense, both Greek organizations — as “foreign terrorist organizations” because of their alleged threats and attacks against political and economic institutions in Europe. The State Department announced that the FTO designation specifically supports NSPM-7. The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control also designated the groups as “specially designated nationals.”

Michael Glasheen, a longtime FBI agent serving as operations director of the bureau’s national security branch, was flummoxed by questions about antifa while testifying on Thursday before the House Committee on Homeland Security. He said antifa was the “most immediate violent threat” facing the United States, but could not answer basic details about the movement, including its size or where it is headquartered. The FBI, Glasheen said, has conducted more than 1,700 domestic terrorism investigations this year, including “approximately 70 antifa investigations,” and logged a 171 percent increase in arrests. He also drew attention to a “concerning uptick in the radicalization of our nation’s young people,” specifically “those who may be motivated to commit violence and other criminal acts to further social or political objectives stemming from domestic influences.”

Last month, a federal grand jury in Fort Worth, Texas, indicted nine alleged “North Texas Antifa Cell operatives” — one of them a former Marine Corps reservist — on multiple charges, including attempted murder, stemming from a shooting during a July 4 protest at the ICE Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado in which a local police officer was injured. The Justice Department claims that the North Texas Antifa Cell is “part of a larger militant enterprise made up of networks of individuals and small groups primarily ascribing to an ideology that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and the system of law.”

The December 4 Justice Department memo states that within 60 days, the FBI “shall disseminate an intelligence bulletin on Antifa and Antifa-aligned anarchist violent extremist groups,” including their “organizations’ structures, funding sources, and tactics so that law enforcement partners can effectively investigate and policy makers can effectively understand the nature and gravity of the threat posed by these extremist groups.”

The memo calls for bounties and a network of informants.

The memo also calls for bounties and a network of informants. The “FBI shall establish a cash reward system for information that leads to the successful identification and arrest of individuals in the leadership of domestic terrorist organizations,” reads the document, noting that the bureau also aims to “establish cooperators to provide information and eventually testify against other members and leadership of domestic terrorist organizations.”

Neither NSPM-7 nor the December 4 memo mentions summary executions, and both speak explicitly in terms of “prosecution” and “arrest” of members of domestic terrorist organizations. Attacks on members of designated terrorist organizations are justified by another document — a classified opinion from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel — that claims that narcotics on supposed drug boats are lawful military targets because their cargo generates revenue for cartels whom the Trump administration claims are in armed conflict with the United States. Attached to that secret memo is a similarly secret list of designated terrorist organizations.

The December 4 memorandum directs Justice Department prosecutors to focus on specific federal crimes highlighted in NSPM-7 and flags more than 25 federal charges including crimes that may be capital offenses under specific, aggravating circumstances, such as killing or attempting to kill a federal officer and murder for hire.

It’s notable that the alleged members of designated terrorist organizations summarily killed in boat strikes would never, if tried in court, receive the death penalty.

“The administration is creating new categories of organizations outside of the law, creating immense uncertainty about who and what they intend to target and how,” Faiza Patel, the senior director of the Brennan Center for Justice’s Liberty and National Security Program, told The Intercept, drawing attention to the administration’s invented term: designated terrorist organizations. “But drug trafficking is not war, and these actions are patently illegal in the absence of Congressional authorization,” she added. “At the same time, National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 is aimed at ‘domestic terrorist organizations’ — another term that has no basis in U.S. law. It is designed to ramp up law enforcement scrutiny of groups espousing a broad swath of First Amendment-protected beliefs from anti-Christianity to anti-Americanism. NSPM-7 does not in any way, shape, or form authorize military strikes and using it for that would be plainly unlawful.”

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

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Saturday, December 13, 2025 9:27 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
How are Trumptards stopped in a way that neither Trump nor the Trumptards on the Supreme Court can undo? See how Ashli Babbitt was stopped, permanently, upsetting Trump to this day. Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned the shooting of Babbitt, describing it as an "assassination".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Ashli_Babbitt


Yeah. We know you fantasize about killing Trump voters.

Do it. See what happens to you.

We're sick of hearing your bitch ass talk about it.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.
Constantly, Trump fantasizes about murdering his enemies, and he has done it, repeatedly:


Not even close to the amount of people Obama killed with drones.

Shut the fuck up, dude.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Saturday, December 13, 2025 10:27 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:

Not even close to the amount of people Obama killed with drones.

Shut the fuck up, dude.
Mar 7, 2019 — There have been 2,243 drone strikes in the first two years of the Trump presidency, compared with 1,878 in Mr Obama's eight years in office.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47480207

Estimating the exact number of people killed in U.S. drone strikes under President Trump's first term (Jan 2017-Jan 2021) is difficult due to varying reporting and classification, but data from monitoring groups suggests thousands were killed, with a significant rise in civilian casualties in countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen, as the U.S. relaxed rules of engagement, especially in Afghanistan and against ISIS, leading to more frequent and less precise strikes.
https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+people+were+killed+in+drone+s
trikes+during+Trump's+first+term

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

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Saturday, December 13, 2025 1:12 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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

Not even close to the amount of people Obama killed with drones.

Shut the fuck up, dude.
Mar 7, 2019 — There have been 2,243 drone strikes in the first two years of the Trump presidency, compared with 1,878 in Mr Obama's eight years in office.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-47480207


Okay. Let me put it another way.

Nobody gives a fuck.

Nobody gave a fuck back then. Nobody gives a fuck now.

Shut the fuck up.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Saturday, December 13, 2025 1:51 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:

Okay. Let me put it another way.

Nobody gives a fuck.

Nobody gave a fuck back then. Nobody gives a fuck now.

Shut the fuck up.
Let me put it another way: the Obama administration continued with the War on Terrorism, except methodically with far more care to prevent collateral damage than George Bush had shown, while Trump was whimsically killing, trying to impress his guest, Chinese President Xi Jinping:

Donald Trump ordered 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles to strike a Syrian air base in April 2017 and informed Chinese President Xi Jinping about it during dessert at his Mar-a-Lago estate. In a later interview with Fox Business, Trump famously recounted telling Xi about the military action over "the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you've ever seen".

In 2017, killing people was a piece of cake for Trump. Trump has gotten worse since then.

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

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Saturday, December 13, 2025 3:37 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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

Okay. Let me put it another way.

Nobody gives a fuck.

Nobody gave a fuck back then. Nobody gives a fuck now.

Shut the fuck up.
Let me put it another way


Don't bother.

Unread.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Saturday, December 13, 2025 6:05 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:

Don't bother.

Unread.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.
Trump murdered millions of children.
https://www.google.com/search?q=death+caused+by+end+of+USAID+program

The end of specific USAID programs has reportedly caused hundreds of thousands of deaths already, with studies projecting millions more in the coming years due to a lack of healthcare, nutrition, and humanitarian aid.
A study published in The Lancet estimated that USAID programs prevented over 91 million deaths globally between 2001 and 2021. Projections based on the severe funding cuts and the dismantling of the agency indicate that by 2030:

More than 14 million additional, preventable deaths could occur.
Over 4.5 million of these deaths would be among children under the age of five.

Reports and firsthand accounts from various countries have documented the immediate consequences:

Malnutrition: The World Food Programme (WFP) has reduced food aid in places like a refugee camp in Kenya, where an aid worker's child died after the program that provided therapeutic food was terminated. Globally, 50% of the therapeutic foods for treating malnutrition in children were funded by USAID.
Disease: Funding cuts have halted the delivery of malaria tests and drugs in Myanmar, where cases have increased tenfold, and have caused shortages of HIV medication and the closure of clinics in Lesotho.
Health Systems: Cuts in Kenya resulted in the termination of nearly 2,000 doctors and over 1,200 nurses. In Afghanistan, rural clinics closed due to a lack of U.S. funding.

These outcomes are described by some as "public man-made death," a result of conscious policy choices to abruptly halt funding without warning or transition plans for the partner countries that relied on the support. The Trump administration officials overseeing the cuts, including then-Secretary of State Marco Rubio, have denied that anyone has died as a result.

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

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Saturday, December 13, 2025 6:08 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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

Don't bother.

Unread.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.
Trump murdered millions of children.


No. He didn't.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Saturday, December 13, 2025 7:56 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:

No. He didn't.
While you are in denial mode, why not deny that smoking causes cancer?

Why NOT deny that Trump halting medicine and food kills children?

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

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Saturday, December 13, 2025 11:42 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


MERITOCRACY, AGAIN

Quote:
It's Official: Ditching The SATs Was A Big Mistake

Saturday, Dec 13, 2025 - 07:10 PM

Authored by Jonathan Miltimore via The Washington Examiner,

In early 2020, the University of California set the tone for the rest of the country when its regents voted to drop SAT and ACT admissions requirements through 2024. That decision, initially framed as a pandemic necessity, quickly reshaped admissions nationwide. By late 2022, roughly 1,750 schools, or about 80 percent of U.S. universities, had adopted test-optional policies, according to Forbes.

“It’s a sea change in terms of how admissions decisions are being made,” Robert Schaeffer, of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, told NBC News.

“The pandemic created a natural experiment.”

Five years later, the results of this “natural experiment” are in. A report released by UC San Diego in November tells the story.

“Over the past five years, UC San Diego has experienced a steep decline in the academic preparation of its entering first-year students—particularly in mathematics, but also in writing and language skills,” a new university report reads.

“This trend poses serious challenges both to student success and to the university’s instructional mission.”

Those words might sound ominous, but they don’t do justice to just how bad the slide has been.

Roughly 1 in 8 UCSD freshmen are working with math skills that don’t clear the high school bar - a 30-fold jump since 2020.

It gets worse, however.

The report concluded that 70 percent of those students [roughly 9% of total first year students] fall below middle school levels.

To give you an idea of what we’re talking about, a full quarter of students failed to solve the following equation: 7 + 2 = [ ] + 6.

. . .

So, why did universities engage in this “natural experiment”?

There is no single answer, but politics, ideology, and crass incentives all played a role.

Let’s start with politics.

As David Leonhardt pointed out in the New York Times, universities are run by progressives, and “standardized tests have become especially unpopular among political progressives.”

Some progressives say standardized tests cause too much stress.

Others say they’re biased to explain why men score higher, on average, than women and why some racial groups perform better than others.

Ideology, a kissing cousin of politics, also plays a role. The fact that universities ditched standardized testing during the peak of the DEI craze is not a coincidence. As Leonhardt noted in the New York Times, the hostility to standardized tests is based largely “on the theory that they hurt diversity.”


MORE AT https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/equality-not-elit
ism/3907689/ditching-standardized-testing-colleges-big-mistake/

SAT scores by tace, gender, language etc

https://archive.ph/TUkPR


-----------

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

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Sunday, December 14, 2025 12:22 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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

No. He didn't.
While you are in denial mode, why not deny that smoking causes cancer?



Smoking does cause cancer. Trump hasn't murdered anybody.

Your pathetic attempts at emotional blackmail through hyperbole are as paper thin as your personality.

I know you think you're special, but you don't sound any different than anybody else saying all the things you say every day. Outside of anger and insults, you don't even have the capability to think for yourself anymore. None of your thoughts remain your own.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Sunday, December 14, 2025 1:19 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Regenerative Farming Just Went Mainstream; Here's Why It Matters

Saturday, Dec 13, 2025 - 06:00 PM

Authored by Mollie Englehart via The Epoch Times,

My phone started dinging almost all at once.

Text messages, links, alerts—people were telling me that Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins was about to make a major announcement on Dec. 10 related to regenerative agriculture. A YouTube link was circulating. The livestream was about to begin. There was a sense of anticipation in the air.

When the video came on, Rollins stood alongside Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others. What stood out immediately was not the funding amount, but the language: soil health, human health, nutrient density, the microbiome, and microbiology. The living systems beneath our feet and within our bodies were finally being discussed as part of one connected reality.

That language matters.

Then the announcement itself came: $700 million allocated toward regenerative agriculture.

On paper, that sounds significant. In reality, when spread across acreage that is already regenerative, it comes out to roughly $16 per acre. My phone began lighting up again—this time with frustration and disappointment. Farmers were doing the math. Many compared it to the $12 billion recently allocated to soybean farmers to ease losses from China no longer buying at previous levels. The imbalance felt familiar.

I felt that disappointment myself. But I stopped.

Because the truth is, the government is not going to save us. It never was.

. . .

Incremental wins are still wins. And the direction of the wind has finally changed.


-----------

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

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