REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

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

POSTED BY: 6IXSTRINGJACK
UPDATED: Thursday, February 19, 2026 22:07
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Friday, February 13, 2026 5:25 AM

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
In actuality, you are the machine gun, Second.

The Democratic Party, Hollywood and the Legacy Media are the monkey with the gun.

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

Be Evil. Be a dick.
6ix, you cut-and-paste the same comment with zero understanding. Here is another example of Trump randomly firing a machine gun in all directions. If he weren't a monkey, he would have carefully and thoughtfully done this either in January 2025 or 2017, but doing it yesterday shows he doesn't make sensible plans. His aim is chaos:

According to Trump, he is ending the Clean Air Act emissions standards and rules for cars and light trucks, power plants, and oil and gas industry facilities. Trump declared that he knows science better than any human scientist and he will end all those unscientific and unnecessary pollution rules.

“This is about as big as it gets,” President Donald Trump said at the White House with EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin. “Under the process just completed by the EPA, we are officially terminating the so-called endangerment finding.”

Zeldin said all greenhouse gas emissions standards on light, medium and heavy duty vehicles that followed the endangerment finding have been eliminated.

If he were reading this, I say: "Very impressive, Mr. Trump. You are the smartest monkey in the room. You machine-gunned down all kinds of EPA rules yesterday. Next week, will more rules be shot down?"

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/12/trump-epa-endangerment-finding-climate
-change-greenhouse-gas.html

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

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Friday, February 13, 2026 7:13 AM

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


The MAGA Bubble Is Imploding

Americans aren’t buying Trumpist gaslighting about the economy

By Paul Krugman | Feb 13, 2026

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-maga-bubble-is-imploding


Source: Haver Analytics. US is S&P 500, Euro area S&P Euro 350.

Attorney General Pam Bondi’s meltdown on Wednesday while being questioned the House Judiciary Committee was exceptional, even by this administration’s rock-bottom standards. Has any high-level official ever before shrieked at a member of Congress, “You don’t tell me anything, you washed-up, loser lawyer”?

Yet what truly amazed me was her demand that Democrats stop talking about Jeffrey Epstein because the Dow was above 50,000. This plumbed new depths of moral bankruptcy, effectively saying: “How dare you complain about child rape when the stock market is up?”

There was an unmistakable stench of desperation in Bondi’s tantrum. And it fooled no one. The cracks are showing, as some congressional Republicans have now voted against Trump’s tariffs, Justice Department lawyers are quitting en masse or just plain cracking up, and attempts to weaponize prosecutions keep failing.

Now Tom Homan says that the ICE surge in Minnesota will be wound down — an ignominious retreat if true — while Democrats are standing firm on refusing further DHS funding without significant reforms. And Bondi’s yelling isn’t making Epstein go away.

But let’s examine Bondi’s demand that Americans ignore the omni-shambles because stocks are up. It’s morally depraved, but what about the economics?

Yes, stock prices are up. As any economist can tell you, however, the stock market is a poor indicator of the economy’s overall health. Paul Samuelson famously quipped that the market had predicted nine of the last five recessions.

Furthermore, stock prices are up almost everywhere — and up more in other countries than they are in the United States. The chart at the top compares stock prices in the U.S. and in the euro area; since the latter is measured in euros, and the euro has risen against the dollar, Europe has substantially outperformed America.

And if we go beyond the stock market and look at what really matters to most Americans — affordability and jobs — the Trump economy isn’t delivering. Inflation remains stubbornly elevated. Despite one good month, employment growth has shriveled. And it keeps getting more difficult to find a job.

Here’s one measure I find useful, the Conference Board’s “labor market differential” — the difference between the percentage of Americans saying that jobs are plentiful and the percentage saying that jobs are hard to find:

Source: The Conference Board via Haver Analytics

This is certainly not a great economy. It’s not even a healthy economy. And Americans are not buying the administration’s lies.

MAGA types constantly bash Joe Biden while deifying Trump. Yet it took only a year for Americans outside the Republican base to decide that Biden was actually a better president. Here are results from the latest YouGov poll:

Source: YouGov

That was fast. And it belies the conventional wisdom that still sees Trump’s 1.5 percentage point popular vote margin in 2024 — smaller than Hillary Clinton’s margin in 2016! — as marking a fundamental realignment of U.S. politics.

What actually happened in 2024 was that low-knowledge voters believed Trump when he promised to bring prices way down and deliver unprecedented prosperity. “Low-knowledge” isn’t a pejorative: G. Elliott Morris uses it to mean voters who don’t know which party controls the House and Senate. These voters went strongly for Trump in 2024, but their opinion of him has crashed:

So while people inside the MAGA bubble keep insisting that Trump is a great president, the greatest president ever, presidenting like nobody has ever seen before, their cheerleading reeks of desperation. The MAGA implosion is gathering force. Americans are mad as hell, and they won’t be gaslit anymore.

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

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Friday, February 13, 2026 9:44 AM

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


Why MAGA Wants You to Think Slavery Wasn’t That Bad

By Thomas Chatterton Williams | Feb 13, 2026

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/02/slavery-matt-walsh-1619-proj
ect/685982/

Matt Walsh would like you to know you’ve been lied to. Last month, the right-wing provocateur appeared on Megyn Kelly’s show to discuss his new video series, Real History With Matt Walsh. “When you really start getting into it,” Walsh told Kelly, “you realize that, wow, they really lied about everything.”

He begins the series by examining the practice of chattel slavery, he said to Kelly, “because this is, we’re told, the original sin” of the United States. In Walsh’s account, the left believes that “America was built on slavery, and it has no right to exist, and every white American carries, somehow, that legacy, that guilt in their blood”; therefore progressives feel they have the “moral justification to just do whatever they want” to white people. Walsh intends to stop this. So in Real History, he relentlessly downplays the brutality of slavery in the United States.

Sanitizing slavery has become a core objective of the reactionary right under Donald Trump—a malignant response to the progressive left’s oversimplification of American history for their own present-day ends. But the truest understanding of slavery doesn’t serve any political faction. Rather, it acknowledges the horrors of racial oppression while still allowing us to see beyond them.

In 2019, Dean Baquet, then the executive editor of The New York Times, reportedly described “The 1619 Project” to his staff as “the most ambitious examination of the legacy of slavery ever undertaken” by a newspaper. Despite its grand ambition, however, the project arrives at a narrow conclusion: “One of the primary reasons the colonists decided to declare their independence from Britain was because they wanted to protect the institution of slavery.”

This argument, which received ample criticism from historians at the time, seems to have emerged from the authors’ commitment to the ideological mission of the “anti-racist” left. As Baquet himself reportedly said, a major goal of the project was not historical but contemporary: “to try to understand the forces that led to the election of Donald Trump.” In reality, the project and its progressive defenders fed those forces rather than clarified them. Before Walsh could even finish explaining to Kelly why slavery occupies such a privileged place in his series, she cut in to provide an answer: Nikole Hannah-Jones, who led “The 1619 Project,” wants people to believe that slavery is, in Kelly’s words, “the whole reason America was formed.”

At the end of Trump’s first term, the White House released The 1776 Report in response to the Times initiative. As the Princeton historian Matthew Karp noted in Harper’s, the document contains a “range of pseudo-patriotic distortions about slavery and the founding era.” Nonetheless, Karp observed, “the report’s authors celebrated Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, praised Reconstruction, and condemned the postbellum South’s descent into Jim Crow, ‘a system that was hardly better than slavery.’”

Whatever modicum of analytical balance that report exhibits is absent in Trump’s second term. Reinterpreting the history of slavery has given way to suppressing its memorialization entirely.

The Trump administration has viewed Juneteenth with particular disdain. Last year, the president used the occasion not to remember emancipation but to complain that America had too many holidays. In December, he ordered the National Park Service to stop allowing free entry on Juneteenth and Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Trump added Flag Day in their place, which falls on his own birthday.

Back in March, he strong-armed a host of institutions by issuing an executive order called “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” which directs federally funded museums, monuments, and parks to remove materials that promote “corrosive ideology.” Last month, the park service obliged, eliminating an outdoor exhibit at Independence National Historical Park, in Philadelphia, where George Washington’s house once stood. The exhibit honored nine slaves who toiled at the residence—part of an effort to explore “the paradox between slavery and freedom.” Such nuance appears to have violated the more patriotic version of history that the government seeks to instill.

The administration has applied perhaps the most pressure on the Smithsonian Institution. In August, the White House ordered the Smithsonian to implement “corrections” to any public-facing materials whose “tone, historical framing and alignment with American ideals” the administration deemed unacceptable. On Truth Social, Trump made clear what he thought needed fixing: “The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been.” (The Smithsonian has turned over records to federal officials, but late last year, the group’s leader insisted to staffers that it alone was responsible for “all content, programming, and curatorial decisions.”)

In its campaign over the past year, the MAGA movement has squandered what might have been a reasonable position. David Greenberg, a historian at Rutgers University and a biographer of the civil-rights leader John Lewis, told me that the right could have made a persuasive case against the excessive preoccupation with slavery and racial politics that some on the left have shown. Instead, Trump and his allies seem unwilling to tolerate virtually any acknowledgment that America subjugated Black people. Rather than making a dispassionate case against the idea that the country was founded to enslave Africans, MAGA is taking down plaques commemorating basic facts, such as Washington’s slaveholding. “That’s not turning back the last 10 years,” Greenberg said. “That’s turning back historical understanding to the 1960s, if not further.”

In Real History, Walsh turns the clock back further still. One of his principal aims is to show that slavery was the norm across human history, and that American slavery was hardly the most extreme version. (Among other oversights, he fails to acknowledge that the link America forged between bondage and racial identity had little precedent in antiquity.) Walsh appears to think this lets American slaveholders off the hook. When all are guilty, he seems to suggest, no one is. The argument recalls Thomas Jefferson’s infamous defense of slavery in Notes on the State of Virginia. “We know that among the Romans,” Jefferson wrote, “the condition of their slaves was much more deplorable than that of the blacks on the continent of America.”

Walsh also notes that the descendants of Africans trafficked to what became the United States are now in better socioeconomic shape than those whose ancestors remained in the Old World or were transported to Latin America or the Caribbean. He draws an odious conclusion from this—American slavery wasn’t that bad—yet the point is not entirely incorrect. Other far more serious thinkers have made versions of it too.

America’s slaves lived “in the presence of more human freedom and individual opportunity than they or anybody else had ever seen before,” the Black critic Albert Murray wrote in his 1970 essay collection, The Omni-Americans. “The conception of being a free man in America was infinitely richer than any notion of individuality in the Africa of that period.” Many slaves, Murray noted, internalized this ideal of American freedom despite their own subjugation. “The fugitive slave, for instance, was culturally speaking certainly an American, and a magnificent one at that.”

And this points to the crux of the matter. When recounted accurately, from beginning to end, the story of slavery is the most inspirational and unifying narrative that the country has. Today’s multiethnic society is deeply flawed, of course, but the fact that it emerged from such cruel beginnings should be a source of pride for Americans of every background.

“The destruction of slavery is one of the great American achievements,” Sean Wilentz, a historian at Princeton and critic of “The 1619 Project,” told me. “Taking slavery seriously in American history is not anti-American. The story of slavery in the U.S. is about an ancient institution that was planted here, thrived here, and then was confronted and ultimately attacked in the 19th century through enormous sacrifice, including military conflict. That’s an extraordinary American story.”

For MAGA revisionists as well as some progressives, commemorating slavery implies that the U.S. is permanently stained by it. Yet downplaying or exaggerating American slavery threatens something even graver than perpetual guilt: the loss of the country’s shared moral language.

The story of slavery and its abolition is ultimately one of irrepressible human dignity. Properly told, it makes reconciliation possible and future injustice avoidable.

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

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Friday, February 13, 2026 9:56 AM

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


RFK Jr. made promises to get his job as health secretary. He's broken many of them

February 13, 2026 5:00 AM ET

https://www.npr.org/2026/02/13/nx-s1-5712721/rfk-jr-children-vaccines-
cdc-funding-autism-immunizations

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

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Friday, February 13, 2026 11:43 AM

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


Trump’s Washington has become unrecognizable

The nation's capital and America's democracy have become shells of their former selves

By Brian Karem
White House columnist
Published February 13, 2026 9:15AM (EST)

https://www.salon.com/2026/02/13/trumps-washington-has-become-unrecogn
izable/

After several months of being away from Washington, I’d say I was shocked by what I saw upon my return to the White House — but the Trump administration doesn’t want me there and continues to fight my attempts to get into the briefing room. So, no: not shocked.

I’d say I was shocked by what I saw on Capitol Hill, but many of the loathsome legislators there long ago put decency and professionalism in its review mirror. Even young staffers, at least those who understand the concepts of the Constitution, are appalled by what they’ve seen since Donald Trump came back to town.

“It’s like all [members of Congress] want to do is to s**t in each other’s mouth,” I was told. “No one wants to work together to solve problems.”

And after two days of contentious hearings on Capitol Hill, Trump must be jealous. For once, since he returned to office, the president is not the center of attention. His staff, however, is overwhelmingly thankful for the respite. They know the danger of Trump talking. Besides, many members of Congress and Trump appointees are as shallow and demeaning as the president, so their rhetoric sounds the same.

We saw that this week when Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick showed up on Tuesday to testify before House and Senate committees, and when Attorney General Pam Bondi — “the worst attorney general in history,” as a Republican staffer from Texas described her — appeared the following day before the House Judiciary Committee.

For three hours, Lyons had a hard time defending ICE actions in Minneapolis before a House oversight hearing on immigration enforcement. Across Capitol Hill, Lutnick floundered while testifying before a Senate Appropriations subcommittee overseeing broadband funding and budget issues that ended up diving into the cancerous Jeffrey Epstein scandal following detailed revelations about the secretary’s connections to the convicted sex offender. Democrats, and even many Republicans, were left stunned when Lutnick admitted that he took his underage children and his wife to Epstein’s Caribbean island for lunch.

Still, nothing was as odd as Bondi’s performance, which was unprofessional and combative. She lashed out at legislators, telling them they had no right to accuse her of breaking the law, and called Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., a “washed up loser lawyer.” Many Democrats and even some Republicans told me privately that her testimony will probably help the Democrats during the fall midterm elections.

But every one of Trump’s people so far this week have probably helped Democrats. Republicans are wallowing in overconfidence, ignoring reality and are their own worst enemies.

When a dog gets busy chasing a moving tire, it’s easy to miss the car attached to it until it is too late. That’s what the Republicans look like to me. And in the process, they’ve made the very city of Washington unrecognizable. At least that’s the thought that occurred to me as I walked in the snow to the White House, and then from Union Station to the Capitol and Supreme Court.

Trump has told us on numerous occasions how safe the District of Columbia is these days due to the presence of the National Guard and how he’s “cleaned up” the city. He’s told us it is safe to go to restaurants — “like never before” — and how people can walk the streets safely now.

Having lived in the area for the last 30 years, I can tell you that Washington has always been safe to travel through — especially near the White House, the Capitol, the Supreme Court and most dining establishments. Where there are pockets of poverty there is crime, but that’s not unlike any other large city.

When I returned this week to a slate full of hearings in Congress and a Tuesday presidential press briefing, I didn’t think D.C. looked like a peaceful, safe city. I saw tall fences going up once again — this time for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit. I saw federal troops stationed at several Metro stations and on many street corners. I talked with Uber and taxi drivers who are suffering because of all the Department of Government Efficiency firings. I spoke with restaurant workers who said business has been unusually light. I saw a city without its energy. A city hollowed out. A city under siege.

When Trump says you can find a table at a restaurant, he’s not kidding. Less business. Fewer people. Less energy. As a city, Washington seems to have grown tired of Trump. Certainly the senators and House members have.

And while the District seems tired, Trump seems more so. It doesn’t even seem like the president is trying his hardest to lie to us anymore. He just repeats the same lies with less energy, as if he too has grown weary of his own rhetoric. He’s telling us to turn the page on the Epstein scandal. But he’s on that next page too.

After meeting in private with Netanyahu on Wednesday, Trump didn’t even bother to compete with Congress for attention. He didn’t do a bilateral press conference. He didn’t come out in public and speak at all. He was content with a post on Truth Social. “There was nothing definitive reached other than I insisted that negotiations with Iran continue to see whether or not a Deal can be consummated,” he said of his meeting with Netanyahu. “If it can, I let the Prime Minister know that will be a preference. If it cannot, we will just have to see what the outcome will be. Last time Iran decided that they were better off not making a Deal, and they were hit with Midnight Hammer — That did not work well for them.”

It was a low-energy Trump who showed up on Thursday in the Roosevelt Room with Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin to announce he was repealing the federal government’s authority to regulate climate change. The landmark shift, Zeldin said, marked “the single largest deregulatory action in U.S. history.” He added that “the price of a newer, safer vehicle was too high.” Cheap, unsafe vehicles for everyone?

Well, billionaires will be fine. A lethargic Trump prattled on, saying he was proud of himself for supposedly reducing prices: “And now they’re coming down by — depending on, you could say, 500, 600, 700% — depending on the way you want to — or you could say 80%, it doesn’t matter.”

Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., coming out of a vote on Department of Homeland Security funding, told me Thursday that nothing will change “as long as Trump is president,” and that Trump is a mountain of contradictions — saying what he wants, when he wants, with little care for reality.

He’s for the Second Amendment. But he’s going to get the guns. He’s for the First Amendment, but he doesn’t want to hear anything he doesn’t like.

“I think he’s running out of steam,” a few of my D.C. happy hour comrades confessed Wednesday after the hearings, “Or he’s really sicker than he lets on.”

Since the National Rifle Association rebuked his statement about confiscating guns following the killing of Alex Pretti by federal officers in Minneapolis, Trump has been seen very little. Maybe it’s just the politics.

By Wednesday afternoon, the president had apparently decided to try to bring some of his verve and bombast to the White House’s East Room. He showed up to get a trophy for being “The Undisputed Champion of Coal” from the Washington Coal Club, an industry lobbying group. It means about as much as his FIFA Peace Prize, but Trump loves getting trophies, so he thanked everyone and said, “We love clean, beautiful coal.” He bragged about his “nice easy life” and told audience members that America is still the “hottest country.”

He sounded flat. Even when his administration announced good job numbers Wednesday, it sounded flat. “Who can believe them?” SiriusXM radio host Dean Obeidallah asked on his show Wednesday. “He fired the people who produced numbers he didn’t like, so I don’t know whether to believe him or not. He lies about everything.”

This was a theme the congressional staffers I spent time with Wednesday also pounded home. “It’s hard to believe him, and I voted for him,” a late-30s mid-level staffer explained. “We’re seriously f****d.”

Bernie Sanders echoed that sentiment as he left the floor of the Senate on Thursday after casting his vote against funding DHS. When I asked the Vermont Independent what could be done to return to some semblance of normalcy, he seemed testy, waved his hands and said, “We’re doing the best we can.”

Members of the United Auto Workers, in town this week from Detroit, shared their frustration with Trump as well and were unmoved by the latest jobs report. “He says he’s America First, but we’re not feeling it,” a UAW officer I ran into explained.

On Thursday, Trump claimed union workers loved him. He said the same thing to coal workers the previous day. “Those other presidents didn’t take good care of you,” Trump said. But clearly, many are no longer buying what he is selling.

As I visited congressional offices this week, meeting with sources and watching members of Congress interact with their constituents, it felt perfunctory — and, in some cases, sad. Trump’s fans have placed posters proclaiming his greatness on the walls outside their offices. It looked like high school.

The most enjoyable people I’ve interacted with since I’ve been back aren’t my colleagues, who — if they aren’t burned out — have become mindless automatons and propagandists who can’t think for themselves. The National Guard members, however, are different. Many of those I met are from Florida and are serving to pay for college. Bright and eager to talk, they told me that most people have been nice to them. “But there’s nothing much to do here,” one guardsman said. “We’re only for show.”

That show is growing duller, and more lethargic and repetitive, by the day, like watching reruns of a canceled sitcom.

I’ve seen a lot of change in the last year. It isn’t as good as Trump says. People are struggling to make ends meet and gas still isn’t $1.99 a gallon as he continues to claim. But the biggest takeaway after leaving the District for several months and now returning is that it has become painfully apparent that this is no longer the land of the free and home of the brave. That’s the dream, but the harsh reality is that we live in an authoritarian regime ruled by a man who cares only for himself, and the capital is now looking more like those of many authoritarian countries I’ve visited in my life. And Donald Trump did it all in just one short year.

CORRECTION: This article has been updated to identify the party affiliation of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

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

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Friday, February 13, 2026 3:08 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


In actuality, you are the machine gun, Second.

The Democratic Party, Hollywood and the Legacy Media are the monkey with the gun.


Look at you proudly showing off that article last night all over the boards about some white college "educated" lesbian liberal showing off her guns and telling everyone else to get armed. (She's actually not special. There are dozens if not hundreds of her on Tik Tok making those very same videos as we speak).

A lifetime of screaming for gun control and taking away people's guns just cast right off to the side without thought because this is what you want now. This makes you extremely happy. You want more of this. You want to see more of this every single day because you feed off of it and use it to continue justifying the dark path you went down and will likely never be able to find your way back out of.

But you are too much of a coward to do anything about it. Most of the time that is displayed in your own writing. Rarely have you ever gotten angry enough to say that you, specifically, were going to do something. You speak your assassination threats in hypotheticals, or you insist that other people should carry them out and even get angry when they don't do it for you. I've got about half a dozen archives of you being actively hostile to Joe Biden* and members of your party for being cowards and not executing our President for you.

All you want to do is be angry and miserable every single day for the rest of your life, and it has become your life's mission to make sure you can pull others down with you and be just as miserable and awful as you are.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Saturday, February 14, 2026 8:14 AM

SECOND

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


Book Review: Trump's Ten Commandments, Strategic Lessons from the Trump Leadership Toolbox

The Method Behind Trump’s Madness | Opinion

By Tom Rogers | Feb 13, 2026

https://www.newsweek.com/the-method-behind-trumps-madness-opinion-1149
2150

Every day seems to bring a new story epitomizing Donald Trump's norm-breaking behaviors, his narcissism, his tendency to make outrageous demands and his idea that all issues are about what personal gain he can wrestle from the situation.

The latest such news is that the president rescinded federal funding for a major tunnel infrastructure project that would vastly improve train commuting connections between New York and New Jersey. Trump has stated he would reinstate the funding if Penn Station, where the trains come into, was renamed for him. Oh, and by the way, Dulles Airport outside of Washington D.C. must be named for him as well. Clearly this demand reflects a super-sized egotism, but it is not all that surprising after Trump unilaterally put his name on the most significant national site honoring President John F. Kennedy.

To help make sense of stories like these, I want to focus this column on a soon-to-be published book about Donald Trump: Trump's Ten Commandments, which points out that in Trump's universe everything is about him and revolves around him—a god complex, thus the Biblically inspired title.
https://www.amazon.com/Trumps-Ten-Commandments-Strategic-Leadership-eb
ook/dp/B0G3DZ9TMQ
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Trumps-Ten-Commandments/Jeffrey
-Sonnenfeld/9781637635568

What makes the book such a fascinating read is not only its distillation of the Trump playbook down to ten clearly delineated and oft-repeated Trump behaviors, but the unique relationship of the writer to the president, which drives a lot of its insight and authoritativeness.

The author is Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, professor at the Yale School of Management and head of the Yale Chief Executive Leadership Institute, and the book is co-written by his associate Steven Tian. Having been a participant in a number of the institute's gatherings, I can attest first hand to the fact that Sonnenfeld is a completely unique figure in the business world—combining top academic expertise in leadership management with personal relationships with a vast array of CEOs and government leaders around the world - further combined with a highly refined understanding of politics, all packaged together with very substantial media savvy. Professor Sonnenfeld has also had many personal interactions with Trump over the course of Trump's business and political career, giving him a vantage point on the president's style no one else can occupy.

Sonnenfeld entered Trump's orbit as a media sparring partner when the TV show The Apprentice began. He believed the show was giving young viewers a horrendously inaccurate view of what real leadership is about. But Trump warmed to Sonnenfeld to the point that he offered him the presidency of Trump University. Very wisely, Sonnenfeld declined the offer. While Sonnenfeld admits to being charmed by Trump personally, he has become a significant organizer of business opposition to Trump's policy initiatives. Yet the book reads very objectively about how Trump returns to certain stratagems over and over again regardless of context, and by no means a set of policy rebuttals.

A recent column in the Daily Beast labeled Trump "a dangerous lunatic moron," devoid of any attributes that would indicate a rational thought process behind his actions. This is not an uncommon way of viewing the president. But as Sonnenfeld argues, dismissing Trump's strategic acumen is a serious mistake.

As the title indicates, Sonnenfeld and Tian's book identifies ten "commandments"—strategies to which Trump returns over and over again regardless of context. Three are worth highlighting here.

First, the real art of Trump's deal is to always start with a punch in the face, where other leaders would build trust. Trump always stakes out an outlandish position to disorient his opponent right from the start. His approach to Europe on Greenland was a good example of that tactic. Ultimately, he arrives at a deal that gives him a big win, just because it is significantly less draconian than what he originally staked out.

Second is what Sonnenfeld and Tian call "the sleeper effect": repeating any assertion endlessly, regardless of whether it is true—and with Trump statements are more likely false than not—and with such confidence and certainty that over time it is taken as truth. Administration-friendly media sources often aid and abet Trump's efforts in this regard by repeatedly echoing those same assertions, which is all part of the Trump strategy.

Third is Trump's "I alone can fix it" syndrome. Constantly speaking of himself and all his accomplishments in grandiose terms, giving all things Trump some heroic validation, requires a constant flow of superlatives for all that he stands for. And, of course, he feels he must literally coat in gold every space he inhabits.

Sonnenfeld and Tian make clear that the ten-part playbook is one that Trump constantly returns to. Yet, so much of the body politic is either surprised by Trump's lying outrageousness, as if each new instance is unexpected in some way, or just shrugs. The president has worn down all sensibilities that might generate more reaction to his repetitive behaviors.

No one but Trump could embody the entirety of this playbook; it requires a very unique combination of character attributes and flaws that add up to a very disturbed mental state, one which evidences the psychological profile of a complete sociopathic egomaniac. However, that is ground to be covered by a psychiatry professor, not the nation's leading academic on leadership.

The next time Trump makes a seemingly erratic, random demand—like the conquest of Greenland or the renaming of Penn Station—to decode what lies behind the seeming madness, this book is a must-read.

Download Jeffrey Sonnenfeld’s books from https://annas-archive.li/search?index=&page=1&sort=&displa
y=&q=Jeffrey+Sonnenfeld

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

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Saturday, February 14, 2026 8:17 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


In actuality, you are the machine gun, Second.

The Democratic Party, Hollywood and the Legacy Media are the monkey with the gun.


Look at you proudly showing off that article last night all over the boards about some white college "educated" lesbian liberal showing off her guns and telling everyone else to get armed. (She's actually not special. There are dozens if not hundreds of her on Tik Tok making those very same videos as we speak).

A lifetime of screaming for gun control and taking away people's guns just cast right off to the side without thought because this is what you want now. This makes you extremely happy. You want more of this. You want to see more of this every single day because you feed off of it and use it to continue justifying the dark path you went down and will likely never be able to find your way back out of.

But you are too much of a coward to do anything about it. Most of the time that is displayed in your own writing. Rarely have you ever gotten angry enough to say that you, specifically, were going to do something. You speak your assassination threats in hypotheticals, or you insist that other people should carry them out and even get angry when they don't do it for you. I've got about half a dozen archives of you being actively hostile to Joe Biden* and members of your party for being cowards and not executing our President for you.

All you want to do is be angry and miserable every single day for the rest of your life, and it has become your life's mission to make sure you can pull others down with you and be just as miserable and awful as you are.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Saturday, February 14, 2026 11:06 AM

SECOND

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


6ixStringJoker, Russell Vought personally killed over 500,000 children, so it isn’t surprising that he is worried about his own safety.
https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+children+died+when+usaid+clos
ed

Funds appropriated to feed starving children now being spent on Russell Vought’s security detail

The White House budget office is using millions of dollars from the former U.S. foreign aid agency to pay for the security detail of Russell Vought, President Donald Trump’s budget chief and an architect of the government overhaul that has cut thousands of federal jobs, according to three documents seen by Reuters.

The White House Office of Management and Budget, which Vought leads, is allocating $15 million of what remains of USAID operating expenses to cover the costs of his protection by the U.S. Marshals Service through the end of 2026, the documents showed.

A person familiar with the matter said that Vought’s security detail comprises more than one dozen U.S. Marshals. OMB did not make Vought available for interview.

The Marshals Service did not comment on Vought specifically, saying it does not identify people under protection but it “typically seeks reimbursement by the supported agency.”

Asked about the use of USAID funds, OMB spokesperson Rachel Cauley said in an email: “We are going to continue to use available funds at the three agencies overseen by the director to protect him.”

She apparently was referring to OMB, USAID and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, of which Vought is the acting director.

Vought served as acting USAID director for nearly 90 days last year before his deputy assumed the post in November. He remains a senior adviser to the nearly defunct agency, according to one of the documents, which have not been previously reported.

Cauley did not give further details about Vought’s security costs but she did not dispute that USAID funds are being used to underwrite the costs of his U.S. Marshals detail.

More at https://www.reuters.com/world/us/white-house-uses-usaid-funds-budget-d
irector-voughts-security-documents-show-2026-02-13/

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

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Saturday, February 14, 2026 11:45 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


In actuality, you are the machine gun, Second.

The Democratic Party, Hollywood and the Legacy Media are the monkey with the gun.


Look at you proudly showing off that article last night all over the boards about some white college "educated" lesbian liberal showing off her guns and telling everyone else to get armed. (She's actually not special. There are dozens if not hundreds of her on Tik Tok making those very same videos as we speak).

A lifetime of screaming for gun control and taking away people's guns just cast right off to the side without thought because this is what you want now. This makes you extremely happy. You want more of this. You want to see more of this every single day because you feed off of it and use it to continue justifying the dark path you went down and will likely never be able to find your way back out of.

But you are too much of a coward to do anything about it. Most of the time that is displayed in your own writing. Rarely have you ever gotten angry enough to say that you, specifically, were going to do something. You speak your assassination threats in hypotheticals, or you insist that other people should carry them out and even get angry when they don't do it for you. I've got about half a dozen archives of you being actively hostile to Joe Biden* and members of your party for being cowards and not executing our President for you.

All you want to do is be angry and miserable every single day for the rest of your life, and it has become your life's mission to make sure you can pull others down with you and be just as miserable and awful as you are.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Sunday, February 15, 2026 11:41 AM

SECOND

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


Who Is Paying the Trump Tariffs?

Feb 15, 2026

Until recently the question of who pays tariffs wasn’t controversial among economists. The overwhelming consensus was that under normal circumstances tariffs — taxes on imported goods — are passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. There are caveats and exceptions to this consensus, but these caveats are well understood and for the most part don’t apply to the tariffs imposed by the Trump 47 administration.

Once tariffs became a centerpiece of Trump’s economic policy, however, views about their impact became politicized, and Trump supporters were obliged to echo his claim that foreigners, not U.S. consumers, bear the tariff burden. There was a slightly comical demonstration of this politicization during a recent House Financial Services Committee hearing, when Scott Bessent was asked whether, before joining the Trump administration, he had sent a letter to hedge fund investors declaring that “tariffs are inflationary.” At first, Bessent denied having written that. Confronted with proof that he had, he declared that he had been mistaken.

But who is, in fact, paying the Trump tariffs? Two reports released last week — the Congressional Budget Office’s latest report on the budget and economic outlook, and a study released by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — both concluded that the tariffs are overwhelmingly being borne by U.S. households and firms. But Friday’s report on consumer prices showed fairly low inflation, rather than a big price spike from tariffs.

So are Trump officials right? Are studies concluding that Americans, not foreigners, are paying the tariffs wrong?

No and no. The evidence that foreigners aren’t paying the tariffs, which means that Americans are, is rock-solid. And the seemingly mild impact on measured inflation (the qualifier “measured” is important) isn’t a mystery once you do the math. Conventional economic analysis says that the tariffs should have pushed consumer prices around 1 percent higher than they would otherwise have been. Parsing the data to isolate the tariffs’ effect suggests that they have in fact raised prices by something close to that amount.

More at https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/who-is-paying-the-trump-tariffs

Did Trump tariffs increase manufacturing jobs or move manufacturing back to the US?
No, and no, so you know.
https://www.google.com/search?q=did+trump+tariffs+increase+manufacturi
ng+jobs+or+move+manufacturing+back+to+the+US

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

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Sunday, February 15, 2026 12:17 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK




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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Sunday, February 15, 2026 12:27 PM

SECOND

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


1) How much did Trump tariffs cost families?

Trump's tariffs are estimated to cost the average U.S. household approximately $1,300 in 2026, rising from an estimated $1,000 in 2025. These tariffs function as a regressive tax, placing a higher relative burden on lower and middle-income families. Other estimates, depending on the scope of the tariffs, have suggested higher costs ranging up to $3,800 to $4,600.

Key details on the impact of these tariffs include:

• Projected 2026 Costs: The Tax Foundation estimates that if current policies continue, the average household will pay $1,300 in 2026.

• Impact on Goods: Tariffs are driving up costs on everyday items, including electronics (up 11%), clothing (up 7.5%), and vehicles (up >6%).

• Consumer Burden: Studies indicate that U.S. consumers and importers bear 96% of the cost of these tariffs, rather than foreign exporters.

https://www.google.com/search?q=How+much+did+Trump+tariffs+cost+famili
es

2) Did Trump tariffs increase manufacturing jobs or move manufacturing back to the US?

No, and no.

https://www.google.com/search?q=did+trump+tariffs+increase+manufacturi
ng+jobs+or+move+manufacturing+back+to+the+US

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

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Sunday, February 15, 2026 5:43 PM

SECOND

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


(Why would Trumptards hate the Pope? Trumptards are Unchristians masquerading as Christians.)

Steve Bannon courted Epstein in his efforts to ‘take down’ Pope Francis

By Christopher Lamb | Feb 14, 2026

Steve Bannon, a former White House adviser to US President Donald Trump, discussed opposition strategies with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein against Pope Francis, with Bannon saying he hoped to “take down” the pontiff, according to newly released files from the US Department of Justice.

Messages sent between the pair in 2019, released in the massive document dump last month, reveal Bannon courted the late financier in his attempts to undermine the former pontiff after leaving the first Trump administration.

Bannon had been highly critical of Francis whom he saw as an opponent to his “sovereigntist” vision, a brand of nationalist populism which swept through Europe in 2018 and 2019. The released documents from the DOJ appear to show that Epstein had been helping Bannon to build his movement.

“Will take down (Pope) Francis,” Bannon wrote to Epstein in June 2019. “The Clintons, Xi, Francis, EU – come on brother.”

Pope Francis was a significant obstacle to Bannon’s brand of nationalist populism. In 2018, the former Trump aide described Francis to The Spectator as “beneath contempt,” accusing him of siding with “globalist elites” and, according to “SourceMaterial,” urged Matteo Salvini, now Italy’s deputy prime minister, to “attack” the pontiff. For his part, Salvini has used Christian iconography and language when pursuing his anti-immigrant agenda.

Rome and the Vatican have been important for Bannon. He set up a Rome bureau when he ran Breitbart News and has been involved in trying to establish a political training “gladiator school” to defend Judaeo-Christian values not far from the Eternal City.

Francis, meanwhile, was a counterweight to the Trumpian worldview, strongly critiquing nationalism and making advocacy for migrants a hallmark of his pontificate.

The recently released DOJ files reveal Bannon messaged Epstein on several occasions in his efforts to undermine the late pope. . . .

Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a Vatican official who collaborated closely with Pope Francis, told CNN Bannon’s messages show a desire to fuse “spiritual authority with political power for strategic ends.”

The late pope, Spadaro explains, resisted such a link: “What those messages reveal is not merely hostility toward a pontiff, but a deeper attempt to instrumentalize faith as a weapon – precisely the temptation he sought to disarm.”

More at https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/14/world/bannon-epstein-take-down-pope-fra
ncis-latam-intl

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

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Sunday, February 15, 2026 7:22 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


In actuality, you are the machine gun, Second.

The Democratic Party, Hollywood and the Legacy Media are the monkey with the gun.


Look at you proudly showing off that article last night all over the boards about some white college "educated" lesbian liberal showing off her guns and telling everyone else to get armed. (She's actually not special. There are dozens if not hundreds of her on Tik Tok making those very same videos as we speak).

A lifetime of screaming for gun control and taking away people's guns just cast right off to the side without thought because this is what you want now. This makes you extremely happy. You want more of this. You want to see more of this every single day because you feed off of it and use it to continue justifying the dark path you went down and will likely never be able to find your way back out of.

But you are too much of a coward to do anything about it. Most of the time that is displayed in your own writing. Rarely have you ever gotten angry enough to say that you, specifically, were going to do something. You speak your assassination threats in hypotheticals, or you insist that other people should carry them out and even get angry when they don't do it for you. I've got about half a dozen archives of you being actively hostile to Joe Biden* and members of your party for being cowards and not executing our President for you.

All you want to do is be angry and miserable every single day for the rest of your life, and it has become your life's mission to make sure you can pull others down with you and be just as miserable and awful as you are.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Monday, February 16, 2026 9:39 AM

SECOND

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


Presidential democracy was a mistake
President’s Day is a bad holiday — and a symptom of a bad system.
Matthew Yglesias
Feb 16, 2026

https://www.slowboring.com/p/presidential-democracy-was-a-mistake

Today is Presidents Day, almost certainly America’s fakest holiday, and yet a bona fide day off, which means today’s post will be a bit shorter than usual.

Not only is Presidents Day dumb, the reason for its existence — a disagreement about whether we should observe Washington’s birthday or Lincoln’s birthday or both — is dumb.

But to go even bigger and bolder, the entire presidential system of government that’s in use in the United States is, unfortunately, a pretty bad idea.

I was reminded of this most recently when writing about the Olympics and the political wrangling surrounding it. Some of this wrangling stems from progressives being fussy and irrational, and some of it stems from Trump and his allies being assholes.

But part of the problem is that the American constitutional system fuses the concept of a head of state who symbolizes the nation and the concept of a head of government who leads a political party and engages in partisan political disputes.

In a parliamentary system, the job of representing the country at an opening ceremony would be done by a monarch or a disempowered president. Italy is a republic, but it’s a parliamentary republic, and the Olympic Games are hosted not by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni (a partisan figure who wields massive power in Italian politics) but by President Sergio Mattarella (a largely symbolic elder statesman whose job is mostly to do this kind of ceremonial stuff).

The fusion of these roles has been in the spotlight during both Donald Trump presidencies because he is so bad at performing the dignified non-partisan aspects of the job.

But it’s a perennial tension in American politics.

We lack someone who plays a national role rather than a partisan one. Presidents are always trying to leverage their head of state status to advance partisan agendas, and rank-and-file supporters of the opposition party are always feeling marginalized or disrespected. The separation of the symbolic and practical roles is a better arrangement.

A much less fake holiday, Independence Day, is coming up this summer, and it’s not just any Independence Day — it’s the 250th anniversary of the country.

I’m a patriotic American. I love July 4 observances, and it’s fun to make a big deal of the 250th. But having all the festivities and pageantry led by Trump stinks. And while of course I personally would be happier with a Kamala Harris semiquincentennial, she would be embroiled in her own set of contentious policy arguments and a whole different set of people would be annoyed by that.

Anti-monarchism is as American as apple pie and there’s a reason that, in the context of American political culture, “No Kings” was a good slogan for making a point about the lawless and capricious and arbitrary way that Trump has wielded power.

But many other countries addressed the capriciousness of royal power by sharply limiting those powers, while retaining the pomp and circumstance. The solution we hit upon was visionary and world-changing, but in many respects less satisfactory than either constitutional monarchy or the modern European vision of a parliamentary republic with a disempowered president.

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

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Monday, February 16, 2026 10:16 AM

SECOND

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


Donald Trump and George Washington Have Some Surprising Traits in Common. There’s One Gigantic Difference.

Washington desperately wanted to be a great man, and to be remembered as such.

George Washington Had One Key Presidential Trait, Selflessness. Guess Who’s Missing It?

Washington and Donald Trump share an obsession with legacy. They’ve expressed it … differently.

By Joel Achenbach | Feb 16, 2026

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/02/donald-trump-george-washin
gton-presidents-day-history.html

We’re coming up on a big national anniversary, the (defiantly unspellable) semiquincentennial. To get in the spirit of things, I’ve been curled up with books about the founders, particularly George Washington, someone I became acquainted with when I wrote a book about him many years ago. But meanwhile, our current president has been honking away in the distance—a man difficult to abide and impossible to ignore.

Despite the glaring differences between Washington and Donald Trump in character, judgment, and historical significance, there are some interesting similarities. Born rich. Aggressive acquirers of real estate. Big-house guys. Thin-skinned, image-conscious. Extremely nationalistic: Trump’s message is Make America Great Again. Washington’s was … Make America.

So why will history judge them as polar opposites? In part because Washington readily and repeatedly gave up power. He did so conspicuously at the end of the War of Independence, then again after eight years as president. He lived in an era in which selflessness was considered one of the core virtues of a great leader, and at crucial moments in our history, he behaved accordingly.

Whereas Trump … well, he’s no George Washington. And he tells us so! He is instinctively royalist and brazenly self-aggrandizing. He repeatedly claims powers he does not legally have. He promiscuously puts his name on everything this side of the moon, and I probably shouldn’t even mention that particular satellite, lest he get ideas.

His decision to appoint himself as chair of the Kennedy Center was outrageous enough, but then he put his name on the place. He also put his name on the United States Institute of Peace, just a few blocks away. His face is all over D.C. now, on huge banners hanging from government buildings. He wants Dulles International Airport named for him, and also Penn Station. His open campaigning for the Nobel Peace Prize was plenty dismaying, but then he threw one of his tantrums when he didn’t get laureated and, in an official letter to the leader of Norway, demanded Greenland in compensation. At this point, we know that Trump is going to be Trump, and if anything, he leans into the narcissism, becoming Trumpier by the day. Trump has learned that his most flamboyantly selfish behavior will likely be ignored or forgiven by his base and political allies. There is no one willing to tell him that You Can’t Do This.

Our nation was founded upon the principle that power derives from the people. We don’t like despots and dictators and monarchs or anything smacking of royalty. That was why the founders were very careful when they crafted the Constitution: The president is just one branch of government, is constrained by checks and balances, and can always be given the heave-ho.

Which takes us back to George Washington. Everyone knew he was going to be the first president—he was right there in the room, presiding, when the founders drew up the Constitution. But they were taking a chance, because no one really knew what a president was. Such a thing didn’t exist anywhere in the world. George Washington had to define the role through his actions.

What modern historians know is that selflessness didn’t come effortlessly to Washington. He had to will it, in tension with his natural, human desires. This is a subtlety of Washington that Americans weren’t taught in elementary school, and I don’t think the A.I. bots have quite figured it out.

A schoolkid asking an A.I. program for help with an essay about Washington will probably get highlights of the man’s consequential life, the first-in-war, first-in-peace stuff, and perhaps learn that he was an enslaver who, like the other founders, failed to end the vile institution of human bondage. But the child is unlikely to find out what Washington was really like. Here’s what ChatGPT produced when I asked it to “write an essay on George Washington’s personality”:

George Washington was a man of great integrity, character, and leadership. His personality was marked by a strong sense of duty, humility, and selflessness. … Despite his many accomplishments and successes, he remained humble and never sought accolades or praise for himself.

Oh, balderdash. Yes, Washington was indeed a man of integrity, character, and leadership. That led him to behave selflessly at critical moments during the founding of our country. But Washington desperately wanted to be a great man, and wanted to be remembered as such. He craved the approbation (one of his favorite words) of his peers and guarded his image as though it were the front line of a war. He sought, as multiple biographers have put it, “secular immortality.”

He didn’t wander into greatness: he pursued it, willed it, achieved it. He had a “monumental ego,” in the words of historian Joseph Ellis. Peter Henriques, an admirer of Washington who has recently published two insightful books on his character, writes that Washington “was not a ‘selfless’ man or one who was simply engaging in disinterested service. Rather, a pattern emerges of a man who was deeply ambitious, massively concerned with his reputation, and in regular search of the public approbation, even as he denied such desires.” This is not revisionist history. This is the man as he really was. Washington is so tied up with the narrative of American greatness and exceptionalism that some people may think it’s wrong to probe him too deeply. Why not just salute and move on? As Alexis Coe put it in her recent biography, “We haven’t been taught to think critically about Washington.”

His avaricious acquisitions of western lands is well known and not incidental to his desire to break from Great Britain, which had tried to limit western migration. When I wrote my book The Grand Idea, about Washington and his Potomac River schemes (he thought it would surely be the great commercial highway to the West), I was a bit shocked at his imperious behavior when he traveled across the mountains into what is now western Pennsylvania and confronted poor farmers who (he alleged) were squatting on his land. He sued them. He forced them to pull up stakes. He could be pretty high-and-mighty, and certainly not exactly a small-d democrat.

And yet his drive, his ambition, his hunger for glory were essential to the enterprise of wresting the colonies from the grip of distant overlords. And his desire for secular immortality didn’t mean he was pretending to have lofty republican sensibilities. He was anti-monarchical to the core.

Washington curated his reputation and polished it for the eyes of future generations. Shortly before his death, he wrote a will that broke apart his vast estate, including more than 50,000 acres of land, and set in motion the freeing of the enslaved people under his legal control (delaying manumission until the death of his wife). These were actions very consciously taken with the eyes of history upon him. He knew that slavery would be a permanent stain on his reputation. And he was right.

Early biographers helped advance the image of a godlike Washington. Most famously, Parson Weems invented from whole cloth the story about young Washington taking a hatchet to his father’s cherry tree, then confessing to it. The early chroniclers, including John Marshall (who fought under Washington’s command and later served as chief justice of the United States), delivered to the public the kind of man that the fragile young nation desired: an unblemished father figure, preposterously virtuous.

Go the Capitol rotunda and look up at the dome, where Constantino Brumidi’s fresco The Apotheosis of Washington, painted during the Civil War, shows Washington in heaven, flanked by goddesses. You have to strain to see him, way up there, high above this mortal coil. He’s a remote figure, unapproachable. Not like us.

Washington cared a lot about appearances and made sure that he presented himself as a formidable, dignified figure, not someone you’d slap on the back on a whim. He liked a bit of pomp and pizzazz as president. He was meticulous in ordering well-made clothes, and a “chariot” with some gilding wouldn’t be too excessive, he thought. But he had to be careful. If he acted too much like royalty, he’d get spanked by his peers and excoriated by anti-Federalist newspapers. “No Kings” was not just a protest sign in those days.

Human nature has not changed. There have always been people who desire wealth and power. They are never infallible or immune to misjudgment. What changes and evolves are the political ecosystems. Laws change, as do values, societal expectations, the means of communication, the technologies of political life. The norms. Norms can erode.

Trump, the opposite of an enigma, constantly tells us exactly who he is. He reveals this in late-night social media rants (“SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”) and unguarded conversations caught on tape (“When you’re a star, they let you do it” and “I just want to find 11,780 votes”).

He is at least consistent in his message. He tells us, over and over, This is all about me. So of course when Rob Reiner and his wife were murdered, Trump immediately said the killings were linked to Reiner’s political opposition to him. His solipsism is nonnegotiable.

Historians will have an overwhelming job of compiling and organizing the confetti of royalist declarations from this president, but let’s simplify their work a bit. The most important moment, the defining one, is obvious: Trump refused to accept that he lost the 2020 election and—another example of action defining character—urged the vice president and an unruly mob to halt the peaceful transfer of power. That’s as un–George Washington as it gets. Washington knew he was part of something bigger than himself. He had helped create a nation, but it didn’t belong to him. So after eight years fashioning the office of the presidency, he did something simple and exemplary: He went home.

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

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Monday, February 16, 2026 3:37 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


In actuality, you are the machine gun, Second.

The Democratic Party, Hollywood and the Legacy Media are the monkey with the gun.


Look at you proudly showing off that article last night all over the boards about some white college "educated" lesbian liberal showing off her guns and telling everyone else to get armed. (She's actually not special. There are dozens if not hundreds of her on Tik Tok making those very same videos as we speak).

A lifetime of screaming for gun control and taking away people's guns just cast right off to the side without thought because this is what you want now. This makes you extremely happy. You want more of this. You want to see more of this every single day because you feed off of it and use it to continue justifying the dark path you went down and will likely never be able to find your way back out of.

But you are too much of a coward to do anything about it. Most of the time that is displayed in your own writing. Rarely have you ever gotten angry enough to say that you, specifically, were going to do something. You speak your assassination threats in hypotheticals, or you insist that other people should carry them out and even get angry when they don't do it for you. I've got about half a dozen archives of you being actively hostile to Joe Biden* and members of your party for being cowards and not executing our President for you.

All you want to do is be angry and miserable every single day for the rest of your life, and it has become your life's mission to make sure you can pull others down with you and be just as miserable and awful as you are.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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

Monday, February 16, 2026 5:47 PM

SECOND

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


‘South Texas will never be red again’: Home builders warn GOP over Trump’s immigration raids

Politico reports:

Home builders are warning President Donald Trump that his aggressive immigration enforcement efforts are hurting their industry. They’re cautioning that Republican candidates could soon be hurt, too.

Construction executives have held multiple meetings over the last month with the White House and Congress to discuss how immigration busts on job sites and in communities are scaring away employees, making it more expensive to build homes in a market desperate for new supply. Beyond the affordability issue, the executives made an electability argument, raising concerns to GOP leaders that support among Hispanic voters is eroding, particularly in regions that swung to Trump in 2024.

Hill Republicans have held separate meetings with White House officials to share their own electoral concerns.

This story is based on eight interviews with home builders, lawmakers and others familiar with the meetings.

“I told lawmakers straight up: South Texas will never be red again,” said Mario Guerrero, the CEO of the South Texas Builders Association, a Trump voter who traveled to Washington last week.

He urged the administration and lawmakers to ease up on enforcement at construction sites, warning that employees are afraid to go to work.

The construction industry is one of the latest and clearest examples of how the president’s mass deportation agenda continues to clash with his economic goals of bringing down prices and political aims of keeping control of Congress. Even the president’s allies fear disruptions to labor-heavy industries will undermine the gains with Latino voters Republicans have made in recent years, in large part because of Trump’s economic agenda.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/14/south-texas-will-never-be-red
-again-builders-warn-gop-over-trumps-immigration-raids-00781374

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

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Monday, February 16, 2026 6:19 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


In actuality, you are the machine gun, Second.

The Democratic Party, Hollywood and the Legacy Media are the monkey with the gun.


Look at you proudly showing off that article last night all over the boards about some white college "educated" lesbian liberal showing off her guns and telling everyone else to get armed. (She's actually not special. There are dozens if not hundreds of her on Tik Tok making those very same videos as we speak).

A lifetime of screaming for gun control and taking away people's guns just cast right off to the side without thought because this is what you want now. This makes you extremely happy. You want more of this. You want to see more of this every single day because you feed off of it and use it to continue justifying the dark path you went down and will likely never be able to find your way back out of.

But you are too much of a coward to do anything about it. Most of the time that is displayed in your own writing. Rarely have you ever gotten angry enough to say that you, specifically, were going to do something. You speak your assassination threats in hypotheticals, or you insist that other people should carry them out and even get angry when they don't do it for you. I've got about half a dozen archives of you being actively hostile to Joe Biden* and members of your party for being cowards and not executing our President for you.

All you want to do is be angry and miserable every single day for the rest of your life, and it has become your life's mission to make sure you can pull others down with you and be just as miserable and awful as you are.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Tuesday, February 17, 2026 7:37 AM

SECOND

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


Trump is proof Founding Fathers were 'tragically wrong' about demagogues: conservative

Matthew Rozsa | February 16, 2026 | 05:32PM ET

https://www.alternet.org/trump-founding-fathers-demagogues/

Conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin wrote on her Substack on Monday that the Founding Fathers were “laughably, tragically wrong” in trusting voters to not fall for a demagogue. Because President Donald Trump was reelected despite his first term and the January 6th insurrection, Rubin argued modern Americans will need to add legal reforms to rectify their errors.

"'Right-sizing' the presidency and putting in additional guardrails therefore should be top priorities,” Rubin wrote. “No single solution is going to stop malicious figures from an autocratic putsch, but we can make it much harder for such a figure to do real damage to our democracy."

Arguing existing constitutional safeguards — like the Electoral College, impeachment and the 25th Amendment — are ineffective because of partisanship in Congress, on the Supreme Court and throughout the presidential primaries, Rubin proposed a series of alternative reforms. These include making it a crime “to give or receive a foreign emolument of more than $25 in value (or a domestic emolument of any value),” requiring presidents “to sell or put all business operations and investments in a blind trust before taking office — and, no, letting your sons run your company is not a blind trust,” banning major White House renovations without congressional authorization, banning renaming any federal or quasi-federal organization or structure for a sitting president and banning book/movie/rights deals for any incumbent president or spouse.

“There are many legislative fixes to curtail presidential unilateral power (e.g., war powers, emergency powers, rescission),” Rubin wrote. “But allocating the right for lawmakers or others to bring enforcement actions is essential. Likewise, reviving the Bivens Act to allow civil actions for individuals to recoup damages against any executive branch official could put teeth into presidential restraints.”

Rubin also said that the media and political parties “need to rethink the way we evaluate presidential candidates,” asking foundational questions about democracy and values “(e.g., Do immigrants have rights? Are treaties the law of the land?)” along with specific policy questions.

“We still may not get candid answers, but the responses to those sorts of questions (or hypotheticals about pardons, donors, and financial impropriety) would be a whole lot more revealing than asking about a 24-point plan for legislation that is unlikely to pass,” Rubin wrote. “It is frankly harder to disguise one’s deeply held beliefs (or lack thereof) than to toss out unrealistic political promises.”

Rubin has previously drawn attention to the right-wing revolt against Trump. Speaking with fellow columnist Greg Sargent in January, the two pundits pointed out that Republican officials like Oklahoma City Mayor David Holt, New Jersey Republican Jose Arango Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.) and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott have criticized Trump’s immigration policies.

In September, Rubin also criticized the reports of tantrums emanating from the White House on the ground that “at a moment when Americans who are already financially squeezed face huge cost increases in healthcare, housing and energy, the bratty children at Mar-a-Lago North exist in a world of their own.”

In August, Rubin argued that Trump’s tendency to hire sycophants imperils America’s national security.

"When you have yes-men and yes-women who are completely incompetent in positions of high authority, that leaves us vulnerable,” Rubin said on MSNBC. “You couldn't have done more to destroy our national security infrastructure…. (Trump) is leaving us a sitting duck because he doesn't care about America."

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

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Tuesday, February 17, 2026 8:16 AM

SECOND

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


Corruption is a germ’s best friend
Paul Krugman
Feb 17, 2026

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/how-the-kakistocracy-became-a-quack
istocracy

Childhood vaccination is one of public policy’s greatest success stories. Infectious diseases have now been almost eliminated — or had been almost eliminated, until today’s right-wing anti-vaccine agitators set the stage for their comeback.

In many ways the Trump administration’s hostility to vaccines is similar to its hostility to clean energy, which I wrote about yesterday. https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/turning-our-back-on-clean-energy Both policy swerves will kill Americans. If Trumpists succeed in forcing the U.S. to burn more coal, thousands will die from air pollution. Only a year into the Trump 47 administration, there is already a resurgence in almost conquered diseases due to the anti-vax MAGA crusade. Both these sudden policy serves are economically destructive: A 2024 report from the Centers for Disease Control estimated that each dollar spent on childhood vaccination has saved around $11 in societal costs.

Moreover, the Trumpists aren’t content with just cutting off federal funding — they’re determined to stop anyone else from doing the right thing. The Trump administration has imposed a blockade on privately funded wind and solar projects, while RFK Jr.’s allies are pushing to prevent states from implementing childhood vaccine mandates.

And the damage from the assault on vaccines continues to widen. Last week the Food and Drug Administration refused to review Moderna’s new mRNA-based flu vaccine. They didn’t reject it based on evidence; they wouldn’t even look at it, in line with RFK Jr.’s evidence-free, dogmatic assertion that mRNA technology, which gave us Covid vaccines, is useless and harmful. Pharmaceutical companies, understandably, are retreating from vaccine development.

The motivations behind the crusade against clean energy and the crusade against vaccines are also similar. The conspiracy-theorizing hostility to science and expertise in general that underpins both movements also predisposes people to become right-wing extremists, which means that their movements are now in power. The headline on a 2023 article in The Guardian captured this perfectly: “ ‘Everything you’ve been told is a lie’: Inside the wellness-to-fascism pipeline.”

Last but by no means least, in both cases it’s crucial to follow the money.

It may seem strange to think of the wellness industry as a corrupt and corrupting force comparable to the fossil-fuel sector. But wellness is big business. McKinsey estimates that U.S. spending on wellness is running at around $500 billion a year, while spending on nutritional supplements alone was close to $70 billion last year.

And sellers of nutritional supplements, unlike companies selling pharmaceuticals, are effectively allowed to make false, outlandish claims about what their products do. Here’s how the National Institutes of Health summarized the law:

Dietary supplement labels may include certain types of health-related claims. Manufacturers are permitted to say, for example, that a supplement promotes health or supports a body part or function (like heart health or the immune system). These claims must be followed by the words, “This statement has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.”

In other words, it’s OK to peddle snake oil with false medical claims as long as you mumble some content-free boilerplate.

And where do the snake-oil salesmen peddle their wares? Largely on right-wing media. After all, that’s where they can find customers who have the right mix of anti-intellectualism and disdain for experts. And the snake-oil purveyors are, in turn, a key part of the extreme right’s financial ecosystem.

I wrote about this almost five years ago. The relationship between quack medicine and right-wing extremism has a long history. As the historian Rick Perlstein has documented, extremists have been marketing medical snake oil, and snake oil purveyors have been financially supporting extremism, since the days when misinformation had to be disseminated through paper newsletters. This mutually beneficial relationship continued through the eras of talk radio, cable TV, and now podcasts.

But now we have entered a new era. As many observers have noted, the Trump administration is a kakistocracy: rule by the worst. A history of personal corruption is no longer a bar to high office — it’s practically a requirement.

Under Trump 47, people who have enriched themselves by peddling medical misinformation are no longer just influencing policymakers. They have become policymakers. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., appears to have made millions in salary and book royalties thanks to his anti-vaccine screeds. https://nypost.com/2022/02/02/robert-f-kennedy-jr-anti-vax-crusade-is-
making-him-millions/ Kennedy is now the secretary of health and human services. Dr. Oz is running Medicare and Medicaid. Oz made tens of millions as a TV quack.

In short, the kakistocracy is also a quackistocracy.

And the reign of the quacks will condemn thousands, perhaps millions of Americans — many of them children — to gratuitous illness and in some cases death.

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

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Tuesday, February 17, 2026 11:00 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


In actuality, you are the machine gun, Second.

The Democratic Party, Hollywood and the Legacy Media are the monkey with the gun.


Look at you proudly showing off that article last night all over the boards about some white college "educated" lesbian liberal showing off her guns and telling everyone else to get armed. (She's actually not special. There are dozens if not hundreds of her on Tik Tok making those very same videos as we speak).

A lifetime of screaming for gun control and taking away people's guns just cast right off to the side without thought because this is what you want now. This makes you extremely happy. You want more of this. You want to see more of this every single day because you feed off of it and use it to continue justifying the dark path you went down and will likely never be able to find your way back out of.

But you are too much of a coward to do anything about it. Most of the time that is displayed in your own writing. Rarely have you ever gotten angry enough to say that you, specifically, were going to do something. You speak your assassination threats in hypotheticals, or you insist that other people should carry them out and even get angry when they don't do it for you. I've got about half a dozen archives of you being actively hostile to Joe Biden* and members of your party for being cowards and not executing our President for you.

All you want to do is be angry and miserable every single day for the rest of your life, and it has become your life's mission to make sure you can pull others down with you and be just as miserable and awful as you are.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Tuesday, February 17, 2026 2:14 PM

SECOND

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


Americans under 30 swung to the right in 2024, but they’re not getting what they voted for.

By Sarah Longwell | February 16, 2026

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/02/gen-z-trump-red-wave/686006/

I run focus groups with voters every week, and what I’ve heard from this age group is simple: Trump is not doing the things that he told Americans he would do to fix prices and the economy. In the focus groups, young people who voted for Trump have said that they believed him during the campaign when he promised to “build the greatest economy in the history of the world.” Now they say they feel duped and let down.

“?There are things that are very disappointing and very rough right now,” Kim, a Generation Z Trump voter from Virginia, said during a focus group last month.

“Overall, I think the job market is really hard right now,” Allison, from New York, said.

“I think things are pretty chaotic lately, honestly,” said Lizabel, from Florida. “You just see all this stuff on the news, and you see a lot of people are struggling to find jobs. A lot of people are feeling kind of pessimistic about what things are going on.”

For these young people to have placed their faith in a con man like Trump might seem naive. But most members of Generation Z were still children when Trump came down the escalator. They don’t remember a lot of the chaos and dysfunction of Trump’s first run for president, or even his first term. They don’t view Trump as sui generis or beyond the pale, because he’s been the dominant force in our politics for as long as they’ve been politically aware.

Now, though, they’re young adults entering the workforce. Many of them have student loans, and they’re at a particularly cost-sensitive point in their lives. They notice when a politician like Trump promises to lower prices, and then doesn’t deliver.

In 2024, Trump overperformed with young voters to a historic degree. Harris beat him by 19 points among 18-to-29-year-olds—which sounds good until you realize that, in 2016, Hillary Clinton won the same cohort by 30 points. And in 2020, Joe Biden won them by 26 points.

Compared with 2020, in 2024 young voters swung to Trump in every key battleground state except Georgia. That includes a 24-point swing in Michigan, an 18-point swing in Pennsylvania, and a 15-point swing in Wisconsin. About 56 percent of young men voted for Trump in 2024, the same share that voted for Biden in 2020. Trump’s overall youth support jumped 10 points relative to his performance in 2020.

That shift was observable in real time over the course of the campaign, particularly in red-pilled corners of the internet, the right-leaning spaces where young people get more and more of their political news. Trump popped up on bro podcasts with Joe Rogan, Theo Von, Adin Ross, and Lex Fridman, as well as on shows such as Full Send and All-In. He threw an unhinged Madison Square Garden rally just days before his election, in which one of his supporters called Puerto Rico a “floating island of garbage.” The red-Solo-cup energy that sustains MAGA was in full effect, and America’s youngest voters—especially young men—were drawn in.

“For our generation right now, it’s a lot more acceptable for a guy to just be outright Republican and love Trump,” Gabrielle, in Florida, said in a recent focus group. “When you went on social media the day after the election, every single guy was able to just put on their story pictures of Trump winning the election, and like excitement, and all this stuff.”

During the Biden years, young people felt burned by the administration’s messaging on the economy. Ethan, from North Carolina, said in a February 2025 focus group that there was a constant stream of “Oh, the economy is getting better” sentiment from the Biden administration. “Meanwhile everyone knows that McDonald’s now costs $20 for a meal,” he said.

Young people like these were receptive when Trump said he would bring down prices and tame inflation, fix America’s broken health-care system, make housing affordable, create millions of new jobs, and do away with other economic woes that were plaguing many Americans, but that felt especially acute for young voters just entering the job market. The young people in my focus groups talk about how their student-loan debt is rising, housing is out of reach, and looming AI-powered disruption makes many jobs feel precarious. They’re clear-eyed that they might not be as well off as their parents’ generation.

Over the past 13 months, though, America’s young people have watched as Trump did a whole lot of things that weren’t what they elected him to do. Relative to when Trump took office, housing prices are up, job growth is stagnant, inflation has been persistent, college is less affordable, and people are more likely to be uninsured. That, more than anything else, is why young people in the focus groups say they’re disappointed.

“They could definitely be going better,” Alexandre, from Maryland, said last month, when we asked him how he thought things were going in the country—the “main cause being inflation and economic reasons,” he said.

“?I do not think we’re going super strongly, domestically. My biggest concerns are affordability,” said Sam, from Minnesota. “I have a job, but the unemployment rate for youth, and a lot of my friends getting jobs, is really hard.”

“?From an economics factor, so many of the things that I would say are not wants, but instead needs, have just absolutely skyrocketed,” Joseph, from Michigan, said in September. “And basic families are spending so much on just the cost of living that they don’t have a cost to save, or anything like that. There’s just no financial way out.”

All of this suggests that Trump didn’t own the votes of young people who supported him in 2024; he rented them. And many of them are now getting tired of antics that, in their minds, take the focus away from the economy. When we asked a recent group about Trump’s threats against Greenland, Mukesh, a Trump voter from California, said: “I think we should just respect it, and leave it, and just focus on what’s actually happening inside the nation.”

What happens to these young voters now? That’s up to Democrats. I’m no policy hand, but I do know something about communications. Based on what I’ve heard in the focus groups, Democrats have a big opportunity with young people, because they’re some of the latest arrivals to Trump’s coalition. Democrats need to offer these voters a platform that addresses their concerns, while hammering Trump for his failure to do so.

In a recent focus group, the moderator asked Ruben, a Trump voter in Georgia, what advice he would give Democrats. He said: “?I’d say put a larger focus on the economic development. A lot of people these days are really coming of age, like being able to vote. And the younger Generation Z, we care about our finances, being able to pay rent, being able to afford food.”

These young people want someone who sees the economic pain they’re going through, and promises to actually do something about it. They don’t want policy papers. They want hope, good vibes, the red-Solo-cup energy—but directed toward what actually matters to them.

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

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Tuesday, February 17, 2026 2:35 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


In actuality, you are the machine gun, Second.

The Democratic Party, Hollywood and the Legacy Media are the monkey with the gun.


Look at you proudly showing off that article last night all over the boards about some white college "educated" lesbian liberal showing off her guns and telling everyone else to get armed. (She's actually not special. There are dozens if not hundreds of her on Tik Tok making those very same videos as we speak).

A lifetime of screaming for gun control and taking away people's guns just cast right off to the side without thought because this is what you want now. This makes you extremely happy. You want more of this. You want to see more of this every single day because you feed off of it and use it to continue justifying the dark path you went down and will likely never be able to find your way back out of.

But you are too much of a coward to do anything about it. Most of the time that is displayed in your own writing. Rarely have you ever gotten angry enough to say that you, specifically, were going to do something. You speak your assassination threats in hypotheticals, or you insist that other people should carry them out and even get angry when they don't do it for you. I've got about half a dozen archives of you being actively hostile to Joe Biden* and members of your party for being cowards and not executing our President for you.

All you want to do is be angry and miserable every single day for the rest of your life, and it has become your life's mission to make sure you can pull others down with you and be just as miserable and awful as you are.


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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Tuesday, February 17, 2026 9:02 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


I've been posting this one for years... long before I quit drinking even...

And boy... Is it glorious to finally be able to watch it play out in everything, everywhere all at once.




LYRICS:

[Verse 1]
After that confrontation,
You left me wringing my cold hands.
We shared some information
We might not recover from.
And I watch your convictions
Melt like ice cubes in an ocean...
You were so poorly cast as a malcontent.

[Chorus]
You've got 'em all on your side.
That just makes more for doubt to slaughter.
"I never knew he thought that",
Heard you say, falling out of the van.
"Don't ask for his opinion.
They ought to drown him in holy water."
Will you remember my reply,
When your high horse dies?

[Verse 2]
We'd like to go the distance,
But not a one of us is gonna.
You see nobody's wise enough
To turn this ancient boat around.
These are the muddy waters
I'm swimming in to make a living.
That I might drown in them
Should come as no surprise.

[Chorus]
You want 'em all on your side.
That just makes more for doubt to slaughter.
"I never knew he thought that",
Heard you say, falling out of the van.
"Don't ask for his opinion.
They ought to drown him in holy water".
Will you remember my reply,
When your high horse died?

[Chorus]
You've got 'em all on your side.
That just leaves more for doubt to slaughter.
"I never knew he thought that",
Heard you say, falling out of the van.
"Don't ask for his opinion.
They ought to drown him in holy water."

Will you remember my reply?

.... One finger parallel to the sky.

La da da da...





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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Wednesday, February 18, 2026 5:58 AM

SECOND

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


Republican Congressmen and Presidents have not funded the IRS with sufficient money to collect all the taxes owed, but only Trump doesn't even pay his personal taxes, and signs unsustainable tax cuts (The One Big Beautiful Bill of 2025).

$56 trillion national debt leading to a spiraling crisis: Budget watchdog warns the U.S. is walking a crumbling path

By Nick Lichtenberg

February 17, 2026, 12:24 PM ET

https://fortune.com/2026/02/17/national-debt-spiral-fiscal-crisis-unsu
stainable-path-trump-sugar-high-economy/

The United States is rapidly accelerating toward a definitive tipping point in its financial history, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) wrote in response to the latest 10-year outlook from the Congressional Budget Office. The nonpartisan budget watchdog issued a stark assessment: The current trajectory of borrowing, which is running at double the 50-year historical average, is simply mathematically unsustainable. https://www.crfb.org/papers/cbos-february-2026-budget-and-economic-out
look

The CRFB cautioned that without immediate legislative intervention, the federal government faces a future defined by exploding interest costs, insolvent trust funds, and a national debt burden that will shatter post–World War II records within four years.

It amounts to a report card for the Trump administration’s first year back in office—potentially its last truly impactful year of President Donald Trump’s term, if midterm elections swing either or both of the House and Senate to Democrats. The CBO updated its projections to account for the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), Trump’s tariff regime, changes in immigration, and other factors. “With debt approaching record levels, interest costs exploding, trust funds approaching insolvency, and deficits expected to remain more than twice as large as the oft-discussed 3% of GDP target,” the CRFB argued, “lawmakers should come together to enact significant deficit reduction.”

The numbers: breaking records and breaking the bank

According to the new CBO projections, the federal debt held by the public is on track to reach a record 120% of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2036. In sheer dollar terms, the pile of money owed by the government is projected under the CBO’s baseline scenario to balloon from nearly $31 trillion today to a staggering $56 trillion over the next decade.

The speed of this accumulation is unprecedented in peacetime. The CRFB notes that debt held by the public currently hovers around 100% of GDP, which is already roughly double the 50-year historical average. Under the current baseline, federal debt is set to surpass the all-time record of 106% of GDP—set in the aftermath of World War II—by fiscal year 2030.

The driving force behind this surge is a structural mismatch between what the government spends and what it collects. Spending is projected to grow from 23.1% of GDP in 2025 to 24.4% by 2036. In contrast, revenue is trailing significantly, rising only marginally from 17.2% of GDP to 17.8% over the same period.

Consequently, the U.S. is facing a decade of massive deficits. The CBO projects annual budget deficits will total $24.4 trillion over the coming decade, exceeding $3 trillion annually by 2036. As a share of the economy, these deficits are expected to average 6.1% of GDP—more than twice the 3% target that economists and the CRFB suggest is necessary to place the national debt on a sustainable path.

It could easily get worse, too. If the Supreme Court strikes down much of Trump’s tariff regime, as expected, and if lawmakers make temporary previsions in the OBBBA permanent while reviving the Affordable Care Act health insurance subsidies, a core Democratic promise, the CRFB estimates debt spiking to 131% of GDP by 2036, rather than 120%. Under these conditions, the deficit would reach $3.8 trillion in 2036, and the risk of a full-blown fiscal crisis would grow exponentially.

The looming debt spiral

The most alarming aspect of the new outlook is the compounding danger of high interest rates interacting with high debt—the mechanics of what the CRFB calls a “debt spiral.” The CRFB warns that later in the decade, the average interest rate on all federal debt is projected to exceed the rate of nominal economic growth. Economists refer to this dynamic as “R>G” (rate > growth). When the cost of servicing past debt grows faster than the economy that supports it, debt accumulation becomes self-perpetuating, making a fiscal crisis increasingly likely.

Interest costs are already set to “explode” under current law. Nominal interest payments on the debt will more than double, jumping from $970 billion in 2025 to $2.1 trillion by 2036. As a share of the total economy, interest costs will rise from a record 3.2% of GDP in 2025 to 4.6% by 2036. This diversion of resources means that nearly $1 out of every $5 of federal revenue will eventually be consumed just to service the debt, crowding out investment in other national priorities.

Policy choices and the ‘sugar high’

The deterioration of the fiscal outlook is partially the result of recent aggressive policy changes. The CRFB analysis points specifically to OBBBA, which the CBO estimates will add $4.7 trillion to the debt through 2035 when accounting for interest and economic effects. While the CBO projects that new tariffs will subtract $3 trillion from the deficit, the net result of recent legislative, administrative, and economic changes has been to add roughly $1.4 trillion to borrowing projections between 2026 and 2035 compared to estimates made just a year prior.

These policies are expected to produce a temporary economic “sugar high.” The CBO projects real GDP will surge by 2.2% in 2026, driven by stimulus from the OBBBA, before slowing to a sustained rate of 1.8% per year thereafter. Inflation is expected to follow a similar trajectory, with the personal consumption expenditure (PCE) price index rising to 2.7% in 2026 before settling back toward the Federal Reserve’s 2.0% target by 2030.

However, the stimulus comes at the cost of higher interest rates. The CBO expects the 10-year Treasury yield to climb from 4.1% in 2026 to 4.4% by 2031, driven in large part by the federal government’s insatiable need to borrow capital.

Trust funds on the brink

Beyond the headline debt numbers, the report highlights an imminent liquidity crisis for the safety net programs relied upon by millions of Americans. Several major government trust funds are approaching insolvency, meaning they will soon lack the reserves to pay full benefits.

The Highway Trust Fund is projected to deplete its reserves by fiscal year 2028, followed closely by the Social Security retirement trust fund in 2032. Upon insolvency, federal law mandates that spending be cut to match incoming revenue. The CRFB estimates this would result in an immediate 40% cut to highway spending and a devastating 28% across-the-board cut to Social Security retirement and survivor benefits.

To visualize the impact, the watchdog group calculates that a typical couple age 60 today, who retire at the moment of insolvency, would face an $18,400 annual cut in benefits.

The path forward

In their concluding assessment, the CRFB urged lawmakers to abandon the recent trend of adding to the debt and instead work to stabilize the nation’s finances. With debt approaching record levels and deficits remaining more than twice the size of the “oft-discussed 3% of GDP target,” the group argues that significant deficit reduction is no longer optional.

The group suggests the necessary adjustments to spending and revenue could be achieved through regular legislative order or a bipartisan fiscal commission. However, the window for gradual adjustment is closing. As the CBO data indicates, with the arrival of “R>G” and the looming exhaustion of trust funds, the U.S. is running out of time to avert a fiscal collision that has been decades in the making.

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

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Wednesday, February 18, 2026 6:07 AM

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I've been posting this one for years... long before I quit drinking even...

And boy... Is it glorious to finally be able to watch it play out in everything, everywhere all at once.

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

Be Evil. Be a dick.
Making this short because 6ix understands little, but slavery ended only after the North killed slave-owners. Didn't have to kill too many, but enough to change the survivors' way of thinking and reacting. Americans don't seem to understand that most of the toughest problems, such as whether or not your labor force will be paid or be slaves, can only be solved by murdering your opposition rather than appealing to their humanity, their rationality, and their spirit of compromise. (By the way, 6ix, violence happens frequently on successful construction projects, but doesn't go immediately to murder. Instead, termination of employment, cancellation of contracts, or refusing delivery of goods or calling in the lawyers seems like the End of the World to the bad guys. They don't have to be shot in the back of the head to get the message. Projects that fail fail because the boss won't stop the people who are making it fail.)

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

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Wednesday, February 18, 2026 7:19 AM

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


Billionaires Gone Wild

Understanding the oligarchs’ power grab and the dire threat to American democracy

By Paul Krugman | Feb 18, 2026

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/billionaires-gone-wild

A few stories about centibillionaires — men whose net worth exceeds $100 billion — and their role in our society:

· In 2022 Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, purchased Twitter. Since then he has turned the platform into a racist cesspool, overrun by literal Nazis.

· Last year Skydance Media, run by David Ellison — the son of Larry Ellison, the world’s 6th richest man — acquired Paramount, which includes CBS. The new management put Bari Weiss, a conservative pundit with no relevant experience, in charge of CBS News. The network that once featured Edward R. Murrow has been going downhill ever since. On Tuesday night CBS management, responding to an obviously partisan demand from the Trump-appointed head of the FCC, prevented Stephen Colbert from running an interview with Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico.

· Paramount is now trying to acquire Warner Brothers, which would give the Ellisons control of CNN.

· Jeff Bezos, the world’s 5th richest man, bought the Washington Post in 2013. He followed a hands-off approach for a decade, but in 2024 he began heavily intervening, preventing an endorsement of Kamala Harris, then requiring that the opinion section focus on “personal liberties and free markets.” He has now gutted the newsroom, leaving the paper that brought down Richard Nixon a shell of its former self.

Furthermore, standard measures of political spending show an explosion of billionaire money seeking to influence American elections. Since the Roberts Supreme Court’s “Citizens United” ruling the percentage of total contributions accounted for by billionaire money has skyrocketed:

Source: Americans for Tax Fairness

For those who need a refresher, Citizens United was a 2010 ruling by a narrow majority on the Supreme Court that effectively removed all restrictions on political spending by wealthy individuals and corporations. Such spending must be undertaken by nominally independent organizations, but in practice so-called Super PACs (political action committees) coordinate closely with candidates and parties. The result of the ruling, which you can see in the chart, was an explosion of political spending by billionaires as well as industry lobbying groups. Citizens United is what enabled both Elon Musk and the crypto industry to play huge roles in the 2024 election.

Some of the rise in billionaire spending can be explained by growth in the number of billionaires — but not much. The number of U.S. billionaires rose 85 percent between 2010 and 2023, from 404 to 748. But billionaires’ share of political contributions rose by 1700 percent.

In short, we are in the midst of an unprecedented power grab by America’s oligarchs. This power grab is arguably the most important fact about contemporary U.S. politics. In many ways MAGA is just a symptom.

What lies behind this power grab? An extraordinary concentration of wealth at the very top.

Last month I interviewed Gabriel Zucman, one of the world’s leading experts on wealth inequality (among other things.) Zucman has been producing charts on wealth at the very top — the 0.00001 percent, which currently means 19 people. He shared his latest data with me; it looks like this:


Source: Gabriel Zucman

Wealth in America is now more concentrated in a few hands than it was during the Gilded Age of the late 19th and early 20th century. Money has always been a potent source of political influence, so this vast increase in concentrated wealth at the top inevitably translates into increased power.

However, after Citizens United America experienced an increase in oligarchic power far surpassing even what one might have expected given soaring wealth at the top. At this point it’s clear that we have experienced a fundamental change in the way our society works. Everything that is downstream of the American political system – federal and state governments, the courts, regulatory power, economic policy, health policy, media independence – and of course democracy itself – is under extreme threat from the tidal wave of billionaire influence.

Let me offer three reasons surging wealth at the top has caused a lurch away from democracy.

The first reason is a bit wonkish, but here goes: Political scientists and economists have long argued that highly concentrated interest groups are more politically effective than diffuse groups, an argument that goes back to Mancur Olson’s classic 1965 book The Logic of Collective Action.

Here’s a hypothetical example: Suppose that spending $1 billion on political influence would enrich a plutocrat by 1 percent of their wealth. Someone with “only” $30 billion in assets wouldn’t find this spending worth it: $1 billion in outlays produces only $300 million in capital gains – a loss of 70%. But someone with $300 billion in assets would gain $3 billion by spending $1 billion on political influence – a profit of 200%. In other words, because buying political influence is expensive, we would expect that the growing concentration of wealth within the plutocrat class will increase that class’s political spending and, therefore, its power.

Second, some forms of de facto political action – such as buying your own global media platform — can only be undertaken by men of truly immense personal wealth. Musk spent $44 billion to buy Twitter; 20 years earlier there were no individuals with that much money.

Finally, and crucially, billionaires haven’t just spent money to influence policy. They have also spent money to change the rules in ways that make money more powerful. Years of plutocratic investment in institutions from the Heritage Foundation to the Federalist Society prepared the ground for the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which then opened the floodgates for vastly increased plutocratic influence.

Something comparably transformative has happened in the past year. Billionaires didn’t just help Donald Trump regain the White House, they helped create new de facto ground rules under which he can use his office for personal enrichment — which hugely expands the influence of those with the means to make him richer.

What are the ultra-wealthy doing with their vastly increased power? They are, of course, twisting policy in ways that will make them even richer, at the expense of everyone else. Anyone who imagines that the unthinkably rich aren’t greedy, because they can already afford to buy whatever they want, doesn’t understand human nature.

That said, even billionaires care about more than their own personal wealth. Unfortunately, their non-monetary goals are often worse than their greed.

Put it this way: Elon Musk hasn’t turned X, the former Twitter, into a platform promoting white supremacy and a safe space for Nazis as part of a strategy to enlarge his fortune. He has done it because it serves his personal agenda and reflects his values.

Today’s post is more about understanding where we are than about a call to action. Still, the obvious question is what can be done in the face of billionaires gone wild. The answer, clearly, is that any project to save American democracy must include a push to reduce the extreme concentration of wealth at the top.

We know that this can be done, because it has been done. In his famous Madison Garden speech of 1936 FDR declared war on “Government by organized money,” and he won that war. Progressive taxation and mass unionization drastically reduced the wealth and even more drastically diminished the power of big money. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-madison-square-garde
n-new-york-city-1

To say that a comparable project is impossible today is to say that democracy can’t be saved. And I’m not willing to accept that. Are you?

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

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Wednesday, February 18, 2026 9:15 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I've been posting this one for years... long before I quit drinking even...

And boy... Is it glorious to finally be able to watch it play out in everything, everywhere all at once.

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

Be Evil. Be a dick.
Making


Nobody gives a shit, cunt.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Wednesday, February 18, 2026 2:16 PM

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Nobody gives a shit, cunt.

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

Be Evil. Be a dick.
Trump is practically daring Libtards to wake to how evil he is. He doesn't pay income tax, and the Libtards shrug as if it is nothing for the guy ultimately in charge of balancing the budget to sign laws that allow him to cheat even more. The Libtards shrug when Trump's net worth increases by $billions. When Trump rapes children, more talk, nothing but running their mouths about it. When Trump actually killed children with The Rescissions Act of 2025 formally retracted $billions in funding to USAID, more talk and no action from the Libtards. What does Trump have to do before Libtards end him? Does he have to throw babies off the roof of the White House? When babies splatter on concrete next to the White House, maybe that would move the Libtards from talking to doing? But I have my doubts. They will wait until 25 Trumptard Senators agree that Trump is evil. But there aren't more than 7 GOP Senators who would vote to convict Trump, just like the last time he was impeached.

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

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Wednesday, February 18, 2026 4:32 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah



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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Wednesday, February 18, 2026 10:09 PM

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


Bad News: Donald Trump’s Most Vile Spokesperson Is Gone

President Donald Trump has praised her tactics, but McLaughlin consistently undermined the administration’s legal arguments, sabotaging lawyers’ efforts to cover up unlawful conduct by boasting about it on social media. Judges then cited these posts to refute the administration’s claims and rule against it. She has done more to kneecap her own agency in court than even Trump. McLaughlin’s X account has, in fact, routinely corroborated plaintiffs’ claims that DHS is violating the Constitution.

McLaughlin’s departure may therefore be bittersweet news to the many lawyers now litigating against DHS. Sure, she vilified immigrants, smeared protesters, and attacked judges. She also told the truth, in ways that were inadvertently beneficial to the targets of her ire. If she is replaced by a more disciplined spokesperson, the courts may have a more difficult time smoking out the real, lawless policies driving Trump’s mass deportation machine. McLaughlin’s comments were reliably abhorrent. But they were, with remarkable frequency, also a smoking gun.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/02/democrats-donald-trump-tri
cia-mclaughlin-fail.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, February 18, 2026 10:32 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Bad News: Donald Trump’s Most Vile Spokesperson Is Gone

President Donald Trump has praised her tactics, but McLaughlin consistently undermined the administration’s legal arguments, sabotaging lawyers’ efforts to cover up unlawful conduct by boasting about it on social media. Judges then cited these posts to refute the administration’s claims and rule against it. She has done more to kneecap her own agency in court than even Trump. McLaughlin’s X account has, in fact, routinely corroborated plaintiffs’ claims that DHS is violating the Constitution.

McLaughlin’s departure may therefore be bittersweet news to the many lawyers now litigating against DHS. Sure, she vilified immigrants, smeared protesters, and attacked judges. She also told the truth, in ways that were inadvertently beneficial to the targets of her ire. If she is replaced by a more disciplined spokesperson, the courts may have a more difficult time smoking out the real, lawless policies driving Trump’s mass deportation machine. McLaughlin’s comments were reliably abhorrent. But they were, with remarkable frequency, also a smoking gun.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/02/democrats-donald-trump-tri
cia-mclaughlin-fail.html

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



Complete non-issue.

All illegals will be removed by 2028, including the kids.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Thursday, February 19, 2026 6:28 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:

Complete non-issue.

All illegals will be removed by 2028, including the kids.

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

Be Evil. Be a dick.
You are a complete idiot. Did you know that the former South Korean president was found guilty today? If he does not receive the death penalty, the minimum sentence is life in prison. His political allies are facing prison. Korea knows how to keep fascists from taking control. Too bad the USA doesn’t execute Trump and his high-level followers.

https://www.nbcnews.com/world/asia/south-korea-president-yoon-suk-yeol
-insurrection-verdict-martial-law-rcna259493

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/germany-parade-floats-trump/



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

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Thursday, February 19, 2026 6:32 AM

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


Trump’s Sons Say Their Open Corruption Is Our Fault

Instead of denying the corruption accusations, Donald Jr. and Eric tried to shift the blame.

By Edith Olmsted / February 18, 2026 / 3:08 p.m. ET

https://newrepublic.com/post/206737/donald-trump-sons-corruption-crypt
ocurrency

President Donald Trump’s sons are so far past trying to dispel accusations of corruption that they’re actually blaming everyone else for making them so crooked.

Speaking to CNBC Wednesday from a gilded ballroom at their father’s Mar-a-Lago resort, Don Jr. and Eric Trump, co-founders of World Liberty Financial, didn’t bother to push back on claims that the rich and powerful had swarmed their family business in order to “curry favor” with the president.

“The great irony here is they didn’t give us much of a choice,” Eric said.

“They created this monster,” Don Jr. interjected.

Skipping past ethics concerns, Eric claimed that the brothers had been forced to turn to decentralized finance after they were “canceled” by every major bank in the world, simply by virtue of wearing their “Make America Great Again” hats.

Members of the Trump family were denied some financial services after the deadly riot at the U.S. Capitol in 2021. Both Deutsche Bank and Signature Bank reportedly refused to continue working with the Trump Organization, while Capital One and JPMorgan shuttered many of his personal and business accounts.

“They were pulling these accounts from us like we were absolute dogs,” Eric said. So, essentially, their blatant corruption was a kind of revenge on those who’d wronged them.

CNBC also asked the Trump brothers to explain what was likely the most blatant instance of corruption since their father reentered office: the president’s sudden reversal to permit the United Arab Emirates to import 500,000 of Nvidia’s most advanced AI chips every year, after World Liberty Financial pocketed $2 billion from an investment firm with ties to an Emirati family member.

The duo acted like everything was business as usual.

“(a) My father has nothing to do with, (b) It has nothing to do with AI chips, and (c) We met in the Middle East the first time,” Don Jr. claimed. “There’s not a person in that room, there’s not a banker, there’s not a fund manager that doesn’t go to the Middle East.

“We’ve been dealing with the conflict of interest stuff for years,” he continued. “They tried all this nonsense the first time around, frankly it’s gotten old. They were the ones who put us in the position by creating legislation to try to put us out of business. We just fought back.”

Eric claimed that it was simply the “law of unintended consequences.” When the big banks had canceled them, that forced the Trump family to embrace decentralized finance. As consumers worldwide adopted cryptocurrency, those very executives were forced to come crawling back to the Trump family, he said.

The Trump brothers’ answers conveniently ignored the simple truth that those executives had come calling not only because daddy had been reinstalled in the White House, but because he’d already shown that he’d be more than willing to pull favors for anyone who wrote him a check.

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

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Thursday, February 19, 2026 6:33 AM

SECOND

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


Top Trump advisor furious about true cost of tariffs being revealed, vows to punish New York Fed for 'worst paper' ever in history

Trump's economic adviser says authors of tariff study should be "disciplined"

Feb 18, 2026

https://www.axios.com/2026/02/18/hassett-trump-tariffs-ny-fed

White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett said the authors of a New York Fed study that found that Americans pay for tariffs should be disciplined, in an interview with CNBC Wednesday morning.

Why it matters: The findings of the paper run counter to what President Trump has claimed about his tariffs, and the attention the research has received has created a political problem for the White House.

• Trump wrote in the WSJ that the burden of tariffs "has fallen overwhelmingly on foreign producers and middlemen, including large corporations that are not from the U.S."

Zoom in: That is not what the NY Fed study, out last week, concluded.
https://libertystreeteconomics.newyorkfed.org/2026/02/who-is-paying-fo
r-the-2025-u-s-tariffs/

• Using government data, the authors found that U.S. importers of foreign goods paid 90% of the higher tariffs last year.

• They did this by looking at whether exporters lowered the prices of their goods, eating the costs of the tariffs, or if importers were paying more.

Zoom out: "I mean, the paper is an embarrassment," Hassett said on CNBC. "It's, I think, the worst paper I've ever seen in the history of the Federal Reserve system."

• "The people associated with this paper should presumably be disciplined."

• Hassett argued that prices have gone down, wages are up, and "consumers were made better off by the tariffs."

• The most recent CPI report found that inflation slowed in January, but prices did rise 2.4% from last year.

Reality check: "I think the findings of the paper are consistent with what standard economic analysis would suggest," Michael Strain, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, tells Axios.

• "The findings of the paper are also consistent with the empirical estimates of related papers," he says. The problem is its conclusions run counter to the White House narrative.

• "When things of the world happen that President Trump doesn’t like, or when things in the world happen that run counter to his political interest, or to a narrative he's trying to push, he attacks them," Strain says.

Between the lines: It's not clear what Hassett meant by "disciplined."

• The New York Fed is not under the control of the White House, and its economists often pursue research that's independent of the Federal Reserve.

• Like the other regional Fed banks, the New York Fed has its own board of directors that appoints its president, subject to the Fed board of governors' approval.

• And there's a disclaimer on the paper that reads: 'The views expressed are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the position of the New York Fed or the Federal Reserve System."

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

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Thursday, February 19, 2026 6:36 AM

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


February 18, 2026

Of all the ways President Trump has pushed the boundaries of executive power, one stands out to lawyers and watchdogs.

The president wants the government he leads to pay him billions of dollars.

Trump has filed multiple claims arguing he's been hurt by Justice Department investigations and the leak of his tax returns years ago. Now it's up to his own political appointees to determine whether to settle with their boss — and for how much taxpayer money.

"There is a glaring conflict of interest with Trump being on both sides of the claim," said Edward Whelan, a former lawyer at the Justice Department and a political conservative who once clerked for the late Justice Antonin Scalia. "It is outrageous that he and those answering to him would be deciding how the government responds to these extravagant claims."

https://www.npr.org/2026/02/18/nx-s1-5702503/trump-government-lawsuits
-pay-himself-billions

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

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Thursday, February 19, 2026 8:11 AM

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


South Korea’s former president jailed for life for leading insurrection

Ex-leader sentenced to life imprisonment with hard labour over failed martial law declaration in 2024.

The charges stem from events on the night of 3 December 2024, when prosecutors said Yoon attempted to use military force to paralyse the legislature, arrest political opponents and seize control of the national election commission. Yoon claimed he was rooting out “anti-state forces” and alleged election fraud without providing evidence.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/feb/19/yoon-suk-yeol-sentenced-
to-life-in-prison-for-leading-insurrection-in-south-korea

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

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Thursday, February 19, 2026 9:42 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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

Complete non-issue.

All illegals will be removed by 2028, including the kids.

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

Be Evil. Be a dick.
You are a complete idiot. Did you know that the former South Korean president was found guilty today? If he does not receive the death penalty, the minimum sentence is life in prison. His political allies are facing prison. Korea knows how to keep fascists from taking control. Too bad the USA doesn’t execute Trump and his high-level followers.

https://www.nbcnews.com/world/asia/south-korea-president-yoon-suk-yeol
-insurrection-verdict-martial-law-rcna259493

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/germany-parade-floats-trump/



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


Pathetic. Loserspeak. You are a loser.

Archived.

https://archive.ph/XEbwM

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Thursday, February 19, 2026 11:55 AM

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Pathetic. Loserspeak. You are a loser.

Archived.

https://archive.ph/XEbwM

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

Be Evil. Be a dick.
6ix, take a break from smoking and watching porn. Archive this, you goddamn Nazi:

Not just Trump is attracted by Greenland and tariffs. Trump is setting up his own demise much like Hitler’s. Surrounded by Russians, Hitler could either be a prisoner in Russia or kill himself. Which will Trump choose? Because I am doubting that Trump will be able to retire to Florida. Russia seems more likely.

Hitler’s Greenland Obsession

After creating an economic mess with ill-advised tariffs, Hitler looked north in pursuit of resources and national security.

By Timothy W. Ryback | February 19, 2026

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/02/hitler-greenland/685984/

Greenland appears to have been a lifelong preoccupation of Adolf Hitler’s. According to stenographic notes from a lunchtime conversation dated May 21, 1942, Hitler recalled that hardly anyone “interested him more in his youth” than Fridtjof Nansen, the Norwegian explorer who in 1888 led the first team to cross Greenland’s interior. A surviving volume from Hitler’s private book collection contains firsthand accounts of the geologic and Arctic explorer Alfred Wegener’s Grönland Expedition, which left Wegener dead in 1930 and inspired the 1933 adventure film S.O.S. Eisberg, starring the actor and eventual filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl.

Hitler’s personal copy of History of the Expedition, the narrative of the tragic Wegener venture, can be perused in the rare-book collection at the Library of Congress among the 1,200 or so remnant volumes from Hitler’s private library. The 198-page monograph bears his personal bookplate—ex libris, eagle, swastika—like many of the others, but is notable because unlike most, it does not include a handwritten inscription by an author, a close associate, or a distant admirer. This suggests that the volume was a personal acquisition rather than a gift, a fact made all the more interesting by the 1933 publication date, the first year of the Hitler chancellorship, when the Nazi leader’s interest in Greenland transitioned from personal to strategic.

By April 1934, Hitler’s government had inventoried Greenland: 13,500 Eskimo, 3,500 Danes, and 8,000 sheep, as well as the world’s largest deposit of a strategic natural resource—cryolite, a mineral essential to American aluminum production. In 1938, Hermann Göring dispatched an expedition to Greenland, ostensibly to explore the island’s flora and fauna. However, Hitler’s true intent may have been not scientific, but economic—the expedition was headed by a mining engineer, Kurt Herdemerten, who had been a member of the ill-fated Wegener expedition. Hitler had inflicted countless economic wounds on his country over his five years as chancellor, and this foray into the Arctic was part of a broader effort to remedy one of them.

?In a drive to move Germany toward economic self-sufficiency, Hitler had imposed draconian tariffs, refused to honor foreign-debt obligations, and sought to wean the nation off Norwegian whale-oil consumption. The problem was that Germany used whale oil not only for margarine, a staple of the German diet, but also in the production of nitroglycerin, a key component for the munitions industry. Whale-oil imports ranged from 165,000 to 220,000 tons annually, representing the country’s single largest foreign-currency expenditure. To replace Norwegian whale oil, it was proposed that “German ships with German fishermen using German equipment” could harvest “the riches of the sea”—or Fischreichtum—“without giving a single penny to foreign countries.” So Hitler mobilized a German whaling fleet that gradually depleted whale populations in the North. By 1938, the Germans also had 31 whale-oil-processing ships in the frozen South, off the coast of Antarctica, along with two processing stations on land supplied by 257 “catcher boats.” Plans were made to declare the “whaling enterprises” German colonial possessions.

In mid-January 1939, two twin-engine Dornier “flying boats”—model Do 18-D—coursed along the coast of Antarctica, dropping weighted steel rods stamped with swastikas and bearing Nazi flags every 15 miles or so. The secret expedition, overseen by Göring and led by Alfred Ritscher, one of Germany’s top Arctic explorers, was intended to stake a territorial claim “corresponding to the expansion of the economic interests of greater Germany,” as Ritscher later put it.

The Antarctic demarcation project undertaken by Ritscher in January 1939 was part of Hitler’s aggressive peacetime land grab in the name of ethnic unification and national security, beginning with the annexation of Austria in March 1938 and continuing with the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia in September of that year.

Hitler dismissed those who opposed the acquisition of land on the grounds of human rights as “scribblers.” No divine authority dictated how much land a people possessed or occupied, Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf: “National borders are made by men, and they are changed by men.” A country’s claim to territory was based on its ability to impose brute force over another, a principle that dated back, Hitler continued, to days of the “might of a victorious sword,” when Germanic tribes asserted themselves with blood and iron. “Und nur in dieser Kraft allein liegt dann das Recht,” Hitler wrote, a maxim that, distilled into English, translates as “Might makes right.”

Following the invasion of Poland, in 1939, Hitler’s interests in the Far North expanded from economic to military. On April 8, 1940, Hitler briefed his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, on an imminent military operation in Denmark and Norway. The preemptive strike, Hitler explained, was a defensive measure against an anticipated attack by Britain and France that he believed might come via Scandinavia. (Sweden had already declared its neutrality.) “Approximately 250,000 men will carry out the operation,” Goebbels wrote in his diary. “Most of the artillery and ammunition have already been transported across, hidden in coal steamers.” The next morning, six infantry divisions, two motorized brigades, a paratrooper unit, and hundreds of aircraft, including 186 Heinkel bombers, launched Operation Weser Maneuver. Denmark capitulated. Norway resisted and was crushed. “Once we have the two countries,” Goebbels recorded, “England will be flattened” because Germany could use Scandinavia as “a base of attack.” As for the United States? That country “is of no interest to us,” Goebbels wrote, because by the time the Americans could deliver any material assistance (eight months, in Goebbels’s reckoning) or put boots on the ground in Europe (18 months), the war would be over.

But unbeknownst to Goebbels, U.S. Coast Guard cruisers were already on their way to Greenland. A strategic analysis had determined that a well-directed shot from a German U-boat or an act of sabotage could cripple the cryolite-mining operations at Ivittuut, in the Arsuk Fjord in South Greenland, which America was determined to safeguard to protect its aluminum production.

Henrik Kauffmann, the Danish ambassador in Washington, D.C., distanced himself from the government in German-occupied Copenhagen and declared himself the representative of “the interests of the free Denmark,” a status the United States readily recognized. The American Greenland Commission was formed, and an American consulate was opened in Godthaab, the island’s capital city (today known as Nuuk), with the consent of Eske Brun, Greenland’s colonial administrator, who was an ally of Kauffmann’s. “Adaptability of areas for installation of airfields was the first consideration governing location of forces,” Kaufmann later recalled. “Since these areas were of the same value to Germany as to the United States, these, in addition to the cryolite mine, were the localities actively defended.”

“The Eskimos in Greenland will be astonished to see how the Americans are staffing their newly established consulate,” the German newspaper Schwäbischer Merkur reported on June 9, 1940, questioning the purpose of the “ten officers and 167 men” that the Americans had dispatched to “peaceful” Greenland. “Under international law,” the newspaper observed, “Greenland belongs to Denmark.”

Another Nazi-aligned newspaper, Stuttgarter NS-Kurier, reminded its readers of Greenland’s status under international law, noting that the American presence was causing “serious disquiet” in Denmark: “It goes without saying that there cannot be any talk of a change in the Danish position toward an apparent American interference in the administration of Greenland, Denmark’s last colonial holding.”

Read: The intellectual rationalization for annexing Greenland

On April 9, 1941, exactly one year after the German occupation of Denmark, U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Kauffmann, with the assent of the Greenland colonial administrator, signed the Agreement Between the United States of America and Denmark Respecting the Defense of Greenland. The preamble of the agreement highlighted the imminent danger that Greenland “may be converted into a point of aggression against nations of the American continent.” The subsequent articles allowed the United States to “improve and deepen” harbors and to “construct, maintain and operate such landing fields, seaplane facilities and radio and meteorological installations as necessary” for the protection of the North American continent against foreign aggression.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt publicly hailed the agreement the next day. In America, Ambassador Kauffmann, as the defender of “free Denmark,” was proclaimed “king of Greenland”; in Nazi-occupied Copenhagen, he was charged with treason.

On April 27, Danish Foreign Minister Erik Scavenius, claiming to act on instructions from the Danish king, issued a formal note to Hull protesting Kauffmann’s actions. By signing the bilateral agreement, Scavenius wrote, Kauffmann had acted “against the will and knowledge of His Majesty,” as well as against the “Cabinet and the Danish Rigsdag,” the equivalent of the U.S. Congress. “From real as well as from formal points of view,” Scavenius wrote, “the Danish Government has therefore been obliged to consider the agreement as invalid in point of Danish constitutional as well as international law.” For the United States to have entered into an agreement with “a person who has no country and no head of state behind him” was, Scavenius wrote, “a fiction.”

If so, this fiction was similar to the one the British government had endorsed a year earlier, after Germany had invaded France and installed the collaborationist Vichy regime. In June 1940, a 49-year-old colonel who had led the French army’s 4th Armored Division in counterattacks against the Germans at Abbeville retreated to London after France surrendered. The British recognized the colonel, Charles de Gaulle, as the self-declared representative of the “free French”; the Vichy government denounced de Gaulle as a traitor and deserter, stripping him of his military rank, convicting him of treason, and sentencing him to death in absentia.

The Americans, like the British, recognized the distinction between a fascist takeover by force and the prerogatives of a democratically elected government. So just as de Gaulle was recognized as the legitimate representative of France, Kauffman was recognized as the legitimate representative of Denmark and Greenland. Over the next four years, Greenland became a vital transit point for the Allies—it had as many as 17 military facilities, including airfields and naval installations that protected the cryolite-mining operation at Ivittuut—and assisted in the liberation of hundreds of millions of Europeans across the continent. When the war was over and the democratically elected government in Denmark was restored, it willingly reaffirmed this American protection in the 1951 Defense of Greenland agreement, which remains in effect today.

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

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Thursday, February 19, 2026 12:08 PM

SECOND

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


The arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor on his 66th birthday is the latest development in the years-long controversy over his ties to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Trump's arrest would prove that the US is on the right track.

https://www.cnn.com/2026/02/19/world/timeline-andrew-arrest-jeffrey-ep
stein-intl

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

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Thursday, February 19, 2026 12:55 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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

Pathetic. Loserspeak. You are a loser.

Archived.

https://archive.ph/XEbwM

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

Be Evil. Be a dick.
6ix, take a break from smoking and watching porn. Archive this, you goddamn Nazi:


No reason to archive this, cunt.

This is just a bunch of loser speak from a fucking loser that used the word Nazi so much that people wear it as a fucking badge of honor and laugh in the faces of you fucking retards on the alt-Left.

Everybody hates you. Even what's left of your own dead Party.

I can't wait until the mid-terms when you finally realize that you've lost everything.

And it was people just like you that were the core reason for it.



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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Thursday, February 19, 2026 4:39 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 reason to archive this, cunt.

This is just a bunch of loser speak from a fucking loser that used the word Nazi so much that people wear it as a fucking badge of honor and laugh in the faces of you fucking retards on the alt-Left.

Everybody hates you. Even what's left of your own dead Party.

I can't wait until the mid-terms when you finally realize that you've lost everything.

And it was people just like you that were the core reason for it.



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

Be Evil. Be a dick.
Trump Wants Veterans to Lose Benefits As Soon As Their PTSD Symptoms Are Treated. There’s One Problem With That.

The consequences of this shift are not abstract.

By Steve Kennedy

Feb 19, 2026 2:12 PM

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2026/02/trump-veterans-affairs-pts
d-benefits-medicine-fail.html

During the troop surge in Iraq, I learned to constantly scan for threats, how to distinguish the sharp crack of a gunshot pointed in my direction from one outgoing toward an enemy, and the myriad ways that explosives can be hidden on a roadside. I learned that hypervigilance can be the difference between life and death. What I didn’t learn was how to turn it off.

Now, I take three psychiatric medications every day, and I go to therapy every week. It’s taken a lot of work over the course of 15 years, but now I’m mostly functional. I raise my kids, go to work, and am part of my community. And I am among the nearly 5 million U.S. veterans who receive service-connected disability compensation, of whom roughly a quarter have a mental health condition such as post-traumatic stress disorder as their primary disability. That compensation is not charity, but compensation for harm incurred in service and a recognition that the government has a debt when the service it demands breaks bodies and minds.

But now, under a new interim rule issued by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the fact that medication helps me may also be used to reduce my disability compensation. The rule directs the VA to evaluate disabilities based on how veterans function with medication and treatment, rather than the underlying severity of their conditions. Essentially, if the pills work, good job staying alive; now move on without compensation for the inherent disability.
https://www.stripes.com/veterans/2026-02-17/new-va-rule-disability-rat
ings-20780685.html

This issue was actually very recently litigated. Last year, the Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims decided Ingram v. Collins, a case that reaffirmed a rule first articulated in Jones v. Shinseki. The court was clear: When VA criteria for treatment do not explicitly mention medication-based improvements as a reason to discontinue disability benefits, the VA must discount the effects of medication and evaluate the disability as it would exist without treatment. That was not a radical interpretation but a straightforward application of the law. Treatment can mask symptoms, but it does not erase the harm. In response, the VA’s new rule asserts a blanket policy of considering the condition only as it presents under treatment, basically penalizing veterans like me for doing the work of staying alive.
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cavc/23-1798/23-
1798-2025-03-12.html
https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cavc/11-2704/11-
2704-2012-10-26.html

The consequences of this shift are not abstract. Peer-reviewed research and VA data show that disability compensation is directly linked to real-life stability for veterans with mental health conditions. A long-term study following veterans who applied for PTSD disability benefits found that those who received benefits experienced meaningful reductions in PTSD symptoms over a decade, compared with veterans who were denied. Those who received compensation were far less likely to experience poverty, with rates around 15 percent, compared to 45 percent among those denied benefits, and their risk of homelessness was nearly half that of denied veterans. Even years later, these differences in socioeconomic stability persisted, despite ongoing impairment. Compensation does not erase the injury, but it gives veterans the resources to manage it and live with it.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapsychiatry/fullarticle/1107426?ut
m_source=chatgpt.com

I know the stakes personally. The medication I take does not erase the injury. When I have stopped my medication, the symptoms have surged back. I have found myself back in the dark place where I think that I would have been better off if the IED with my name on it that I had always been scanning for had actually gone off and killed me. I have buried too many friends whose treatment worked until it didn’t. Their medications stabilized them, and their therapy helped them, but the underlying injury remained. Now they are dead by suicide.

This is why Ingram v. Collins mattered. It recognized that improvement through treatment should not cancel out evidence of injury. Symptoms managed by medication are still symptoms, and the underlying disability remains. The VA’s interim rule rejects this principle, allowing improved function to justify rejection of disability status.

The moral and legal logic of compensation is clear: It is not just about whether a veteran can work. It is about acknowledging permanent loss of quality of life that came as a result of their injuries. For example, in the civilian context, when construction workers fall off scaffolds and can’t walk until receiving surgery and physical therapy, their employers have to provide them workers’ compensation. It doesn’t matter if treatment can return them to full function and they can eventually return to work. The injuries occurred on the job, and the company has to provide compensation. “You break it, you buy it.” But for the Trump administration, despite its lavish spending on tax breaks for billionaires, military contracts, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement surges that are tearing the country apart, properly compensating veterans for sacrificing their well-being at the direction of the government is a waste of money that we don’t deserve.
https://www.military.com/feature/2025/12/27/why-vas-disability-system-
really-workers-compensation.html

The Trump administration’s interim rule fundamentally misunderstands both the law and the human cost of combat. Improvement does not equal cure, and functioning does not erase harm. VA disability compensation is not a paycheck. It is a recognition of veterans’ lives that will never be the same and a resource to help them pick up the pieces. The fact that symptoms can be controlled through daily maintenance medications is proof the injury is permanent and severe, not that medication can just make it go away. The law once recognized that distinction, and basic decency still should.

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

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Thursday, February 19, 2026 4:44 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


I've been posting this one for years... long before I quit drinking even...

And boy... Is it glorious to finally be able to watch it play out in everything, everywhere all at once.




LYRICS:

[Verse 1]
After that confrontation,
You left me wringing my cold hands.
We shared some information
We might not recover from.
And I watch your convictions
Melt like ice cubes in an ocean...
You were so poorly cast as a malcontent.

[Chorus]
You've got 'em all on your side.
That just makes more for doubt to slaughter.
"I never knew he thought that",
Heard you say, falling out of the van.
"Don't ask for his opinion.
They ought to drown him in holy water."
Will you remember my reply,
When your high horse dies?

[Verse 2]
We'd like to go the distance,
But not a one of us is gonna.
You see nobody's wise enough
To turn this ancient boat around.
These are the muddy waters
I'm swimming in to make a living.
That I might drown in them
Should come as no surprise.

[Chorus]
You want 'em all on your side.
That just makes more for doubt to slaughter.
"I never knew he thought that",
Heard you say, falling out of the van.
"Don't ask for his opinion.
They ought to drown him in holy water".
Will you remember my reply,
When your high horse died?

[Chorus]
You've got 'em all on your side.
That just leaves more for doubt to slaughter.
"I never knew he thought that",
Heard you say, falling out of the van.
"Don't ask for his opinion.
They ought to drown him in holy water."

Will you remember my reply?

.... One finger parallel to the sky.

La da da da...



Ya done, Second. Ya done.






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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Thursday, February 19, 2026 5:13 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I've been posting this one for years... long before I quit drinking even...

And boy... Is it glorious to finally be able to watch it play out in everything, everywhere all at once.

Ya done, Second. Ya done.

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

Be Evil. Be a dick.
Trump’s Trade Deficit Lie Gets Exposed Within a Day

By Klaus Marre | Feb 19, 2026

https://whowhatwhy.org/economy/business/trumps-trade-deficit-lie-gets-
exposed-within-a-day/

Apart from his 2020 election loss, there are few things that Donald Trump likes to lie about as much as his tariffs. He lies about who pays for them, the trillions of dollars they supposedly generate, the jobs they are creating, and their effect on the trade deficit.

On Wednesday, for example, the president touted a massive reduction in the trade deficit.

“THE UNITED STATES TRADE DEFICIT HAS BEEN REDUCED BY 78% BECAUSE OF THE TARIFFS BEING CHARGED TO OTHER COMPANIES AND COUNTRIES,” he wrote in a social media post.

Absolutely nothing in that sentence is true.

First of all, multiple independent experts, including those from the Federal Reserve Bank in New York, have concluded that American consumers and businesses are bearing the tariff burden… and we assume those US corporations are not what Trump means by “other businesses.”

Furthermore, foreign countries pay precisely nothing.

Then there is that 78-percent figure, which the president likely got from comparing the largest monthly trade deficit of 2025 to the lowest. But that’s not how this works.

And it didn’t take long for his own government to correct him.

Not even 24 hours after Trump posted his message, the Census Bureau announced that the US trade deficit for goods and services was $901.5 billion in 2025, which was down a mere $2.1 billion from 2024.

That’s not 78 percent, it’s only about 0.2 percent.

In addition, the import of goods, i.e., the products subject to Trump’s tariffs, actually increased to a record of $1.24 trillion. The reduction of the trade deficit is solely the result of foreign countries spending more on services that US companies provide.

What the Census Bureau data did show, however, is that the trade deficit with China and the EU shrank while the imbalance between imports and exports from the rest of the world increased.

Did that hurt China? Not at all.

Last month, Beijing announced that its trade surplus grew to a record of almost $1.2 trillion on the strength of goods China sold to its trading partners other than the US. This is just one indication that the world is finding workarounds to deal with Trump’s tariffs.

As for what the future holds, the president had a prediction for that as well.

“[The trade deficit] WILL GO INTO POSITIVE TERRITORY DURING THIS YEAR, FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MANY DECADES,” he wrote.

That seems unlikely. At a clip of a $2.1-billion reduction, the US trade deficit won’t reach positive territory until 2454.

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

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Thursday, February 19, 2026 8:03 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I've been posting this one for years... long before I quit drinking even...

And boy... Is it glorious to finally be able to watch it play out in everything, everywhere all at once.

Ya done, Second. Ya done.

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

Be Evil. Be a dick.
Trump’s Trade Deficit Lie Gets Exposed Within a Day

By Klaus Marre | Feb 19, 2026

https://whowhatwhy.org/economy/business/trumps-trade-deficit-lie-gets-
exposed-within-a-day/




Uh huh...

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/who-what-why/






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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Thursday, February 19, 2026 10:07 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:

Uh huh...

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/who-what-why/

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

Be Evil. Be a dick.
Ask Google if this is true: “THE UNITED STATES TRADE DEFICIT HAS BEEN REDUCED BY 78% BECAUSE OF THE TARIFFS BEING CHARGED TO OTHER COMPANIES AND COUNTRIES,” Trump wrote in a social media post.

Google's answer:

Based on 2025 data, that statement is false. The U.S. trade deficit for goods and services in 2025 dropped by only about 0.2% ($2.1 billion), not 78%, according to Census Bureau data released on February 19, 2026. The claim likely used a selective, short-term, or volatile monthly figure rather than the total annual reduction.

Key Details:

• The 78% Figure: This likely refers to a volatile monthly, short-term reduction between a peak in March and a low in October 2025, rather than a sustained annual decrease.

• Actual 2025 Data: The total annual trade deficit only decreased by $2.1 billion (0.2%), a "meager decrease" compared to the high percentage claimed.

• Tariff Impact: While tariffs were intended to reduce the deficit, imports of goods actually increased to a record $1.24 trillion, indicating the trade gap did not shrink as claimed.

• Costs: Research indicates that U.S. businesses and consumers, rather than foreign countries, paid for the bulk of these tariffs.

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

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