Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too? by 6ixStringJack

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

A Primer on Trade Wars
Why they happen, and why they’re bad

By Paul Krugman | Apr 06, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/a-primer-on-trade-wars

Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs aren’t just the biggest trade shock in history. They’re also in clear violation of U.S. international agreements, including the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (the GATT), a multinational, reciprocal trade agreement that has governed most nations’ trade policies since 1947. In effect, Trump has set fire to a finely balanced mechanism that has fostered the growth of international trade by constraining how countries can set tariffs. In so doing, Trump has set the stage not just for his own tariffs but for retaliatory tariffs by other countries. That is, he has started a global trade war.

This week’s primer will explain why trade wars are bad, and why they can happen anyway. I’ll address the following:

1. The case for low tariffs even if other countries have high tariffs, and the caveats to that case

2. The monopoly power theory of trade wars, which makes economic sense but probably isn’t what’s going on

3. The interest-group theory of trade wars, which most international trade economists probably subscribe to

4. Do we also need a stupidity theory of tariffs?

Source: USITC and Yale Budget Lab

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

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Sunday, April 6, 2025 12:08 PM

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

Trump voters are pretending like they were duped. Don't believe it.

By John Stoehr | April 06, 2025

https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/trump-voters-are-pretendi
ng-like-they-were-duped-don-t-believe-it/

The Dow dropped 1,700 points on opening this Friday morning. Thursday, it closed after falling to its worst level since the covid era. JP Morgan Chase said it was raising the odds of a recession to 60 percent.

This is all in reaction to the decision this week by the president to put an average 22 percent tax on all imports. He called it “Liberation Day.”

As I’m watching this unfold, I can’t help thinking about something that may seem unrelated to trade, economics and the harms coming our way, but in fact is central to it all. I’m talking about resentment.

Resentment is usually associated with the right. Time and again, over the last ten years, we were told that the people who voted for Donald Trump are deeply resentful about the state of the nation: about immigrants pouring over the border, about men competing in women’s sports, about the “radical woke agenda.” The list goes on and on.

It was on the strength of this resentment that voters in this country chose for president a convicted felon and failed businessman who promised to hurt everyone in the name of making America great again.

And what I want to say this:

If you thought that was resentment, just wait.

Only five months ago, the head economist for Moody’s said the economy under Joe Biden was the best he’d seen. Mark Zandi said “this is among the best performing economies in my 35-plus years as an economist.”

• “Economic growth is rip-roaring, with real GDP up 3 percent over the past year. Unemployment is low, at near 4 percent, consistent with full employment.

• “Inflation is fast closing in on the Fed’s 2 percent target.

• “Grocery prices, rents and gas prices are flat to down over the past more than a year. Households’ financial obligations are light, and set to get lighter with the Fed cutting rates.

• “House prices have never been higher, and most homeowners have more equity in their homes than ever.

• “Corporate profits are robust, and the stock market is hitting a record high on a seemingly daily basis.

And now?

On March 30, before this week’s tariff news, Zandi said:

“I’m raising my odds that a recession will begin sometime this year to 40 percent, up from 15 percent at the start of the year. Last week’s economic data were disconcerting, including the slide in consumer confidence, punk consumer spending, and persistently high inflation. The intensifying trade war and DOGE cuts are behind all this and with last week’s announcement of big tariff increases on vehicle imports and the coming reciprocal tariffs, things are sure to get worse.”

How much worse?

The Financial Times: “one of the greatest acts of self-harm in American economic history. Tariffs’ will wreak untold damage on households, businesses and financial markets around the world, upending a global economic order that America benefited from and helped create.”

The Economist: “The most profound, harmful & unnecessary economic error in the modern era. Almost everything he said — on history, economics and the technicalities of trade — was utterly deluded.”

This is where we are, but never forget: this was a choice.

It was made by people who were so resentful about something-something, for now it doesn’t matter what, that they didn’t notice they’re wages were growing, their expenses were falling and they had more power in the workplace than they’d had in their whole lives.

Everything Trump claims to be doing – bringing jobs back home, supporting domestic industries, revitalizing infrastructure and investing in the future — Biden actually did. Most everyone prospered, including all those resentful people. As the former president was fond of saying, Trump talks a good game, but never built a damn thing.

But that wasn’t enough because seeing other people doing well, that is, Black and brown people doing well, hurt their feelings, like something was being taken away from them, which added to the resentment they felt about a government trying to serve everyone and not just them.

The harms coming won’t be an accident. Their cause will be easy to understand. Vice President Kamala Harris saw them. She tried to warn us. Most people didn’t listen. And because these harms were a choice, it’s entirely reasonable for those who didn’t make that choice, but who are now living with the consequences, to be resentful of those who did, especially if they didn’t understand the choice they were making.

They believed an ignorant and stupid story about ignorant and stupid Americans who were resentful of being looked down on for the fact of their ignorance and stupidity. And I’m telling you, if they keep talking about that, they’re going to learn the real meaning of resentment.

Perhaps fear of being held accountable explains why we are now seeing a slew of Trump voters who are whipping up stories about how they had absolutely no idea what he was going to do, they are victims of circumstance, totally innocent, and how they are so disappointed, not so much for themselves but for the country they claim to love.

An anonymous writer at www.betrayedbytrump.com is a case in point. “I didn’t sign up for this. I wanted reform, not cruelty. Strength, not delusion. I’ve been a lifelong Republican, and I know I’m not the only one starting to feel this way. We need to seriously ask ourselves: is this what we voted for, or just what we’ve been sold? It is hard to not feel conned. And I’m angrier than I’ve been in as long as I can remember.”

Oh, you're angry, huh?

Imagine the anger of those who didn’t choose this but are now living with it – the jobs gone, the savings gone, the future prospects gone.

Imagine the anger of those who voted in your interest in the hope of saving democracy, and protecting you from your worst self, and then hearing you moan and groan about how you’ve been done wrong.

Imagine the anger of those who tried to tell you, to reason with you, as if you were a child who doesn’t understand a goddamn thing but who might snap out of it and finally act like a responsible grown up.

Just imagine.

The worst part is there are still some Democrats who are willing to tell the rest of us that we shouldn’t look down on the ignorant and stupid, because looking down on them only makes them feel more resentful, which pushes them further and further into the arms of Trump.

Worst of all is hearing some Democrats choosing not to hold them accountable for their terrible choices in the hope they might one day vote for a Democrat, so that there’s never any downside to being ignorant and stupid, and there’s never any upside to growing up.

Resentment is usually associated with the right. If there were any justice, that would change. Trump voters would be ashamed and take responsibility for their actions. They never will, of course, meaning no one will ever take seriously the lasting resentment the rest of us feel.

NOW READ: Trump voters got exactly what they wanted — so why are people complaining?
https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/trump-voters-tariffs/

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

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Sunday, April 6, 2025 2:39 PM

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

“He tried to kill his own Vice President, do you think he cares about you?”

The post misquotes Obama, who said if Trump "does not care that a mob might attack his own vice president, do you think he cares about you?" Obama did not say Trump "tried to kill" former Vice President Mike Pence.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2024/10/23/obama-misquot
ed-trump-jan-6-fact-check/75678173007/

“Stupid is thinking a guy who stiffs all of his friends and business partners is going to come through for you.”

Obama did not say that about Trump, either. But another lawyer did say Trump is "mercurial" in 2017.

https://www.lawfaremedia.org/article/mercurial-presidency-trump-and-go
verning-crisis

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

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Sunday, April 6, 2025 3:16 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

WTF is THIS about??
Seems Trump is more pro Israel than pro America.

Quote:
Pentagon's Yemen Operations Nearing $1 Billion Price Tag

Fresh analysis in both the NY Times and CNN have estimated that America's Yemen operations will soon hit the $1 billion mark. Still, war-planners are admitting only 'limited success' in degrading and dismantling the Houthis sophisticated weapons network.

'Operation Rough Rider' has seen warplanes and warships in the Red Sea go through at least $200 million in launched munitions alone since March 15, the Times report says. An in total, CNN says the overall operation is "nearing $1 billion in just under three weeks, even as the attacks have had limited impact on destroying the terror group’s capabilities," according to several US defense officials.
Lockheed-made JASSM long-range cruise missile, via Wiki Commons

US military assets in the region have utilized JASSM long-range cruise missiles, JSOWs (GPS-guided glide bombs), and Tomahawk missiles - all of which are very costly, advanced munitions.

Pricey air operations are also being run out of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean:

US defense officials announced earlier this week that B-2 bombers out of Diego Garcia — a British-administered atoll — are also being used against the Yemeni military, and an additional aircraft carrier as well as several fighter squadrons and air defense systems will soon be moved into the Central Command region.

“They’ve taken out some sites, but that hasn’t affected the Houthis’ ability to continue shooting at ships in the Red Sea or shooting down US drones,” said one of the sources, referring to Yemen’s Ansarullah resistance movement.

“Meanwhile, we are burning through readiness—munitions, fuel, deployment time.”

American taxpayers, who are ultimately the ones footing the bill, are unable to have a say in any of this given the Trump-ordered military action has not been brought before Congress.

Washington has actually been bombing Yemen off-and-on for years, spanning back to the Obama administration, without so much as a single vote in Congress. Past efforts by Libertarian-leaning Republicans to reign in the Executive's war powers have failed.

However, CNN notes that as Pentagon resources become more and more strained, also amid the Ukraine war, this could force Congress to take up the question of funding down the line:

One of the sources said the Pentagon will likely need to request supplemental funding from Congress to continue the operation, but may not receive it — the offensive has already been criticized on both sides of the aisle, and even Vice President JD Vance said he thought the operation was “a mistake” in a Signal chat published by The Atlantic last week.

Some analysts have pointed out that the major anti-Houthi operations actually mainly benefit Israel, while others have said that Europe should shoulder more of the burden in protecting Red Sea shipping lanes, however the consensus is that European navies are relatively weak, and don't have advanced enough technology to properly defend against Houthi missiles and drones.

There are also fears this could turn into another US quagmire in the Middle East with little to show for in terms of strategic gains or positive results. The White House is characterizing this as a blow to Iran, given the Houthis have long been Tehran's proxies, but it's also clear the Yemeni group acts independently.

https://www.zerohedge.com/military/pentagons-yemen-operations-nearing-
1-billion-price-tag

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Sunday, April 6, 2025 3:19 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Meanwhile...

Quote:
Vietnam, Taiwan Capitulate: Offer To Remove All US Tariffs, Boost Investment

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Sunday, April 6, 2025 3:51 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Meanwhile...

Quote:
Vietnam, Taiwan Capitulate: Offer To Remove All US Tariffs, Boost Investment

Meanwhile, Vietnam and Taiwan were already charging close to 0% tariffs. But Trump used fake numbers to justify charging high tariffs:

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
China: 34% (charges U.S. 67%)—though Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the 34% will be in addition to tariffs China already faces, bringing its tariff rate to 54%.
European Union: 20% (charges U.S. 39%)
Vietnam: 46% (charges U.S 90%)
Taiwan: 32% (charges U.S. 64%)

http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=66397&mid=12157
01#1215701

Basically, Trump’s claiming that the rest of the world is placing very high tariffs on U.S. products, and that he’s imposing “reciprocal” tariffs that are only half what they impose on us.
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trump-goes-crazy-on-trade

Here’s the chart he showed:

The left column show the tariffs others are supposedly charging on US products — and it’s completely crazy. Focus on the European Union. The EU, like the United States, has generally low tariffs; the average tariff it charges on US goods is less than 3 percent.

So where does this 39 percent number come from? I have no idea. Many people speculated that Trump would count value-added taxes as tariffs, even though they aren’t — European producers selling to the EU market pay the same VAT as US producers, so it doesn’t discriminate and therefore isn’t protectionist. But even if you get that wrong, EU VAT rates are in the vicinity of 20 percent, so you still can’t get anywhere close to 39 percent.

You have to wonder whether Elon Musk’s Dunning-Kruger kids are now producing tariff numbers.

But you know that having once claimed that Europe charges tariffs more than 10 times as high as reality, Trump will never drop that claim. I don’t know how many people noticed, but he’s still claiming that we’re subsidizing Canada by $200 billion a year. Aside from the basic mistake of claiming that a Canadian trade surplus means that we’re somehow subsidizing Canada, he’s inflating the actual trade surplus by a factor of three. Many, many people have pointed out the error, but Trump is sticking with it, the same way Musk is sticking with the millions of dead Social Security beneficiaries thing.

If you had any hopes that Trump would step back from the brink, this announcement, between the very high tariff rates and the complete falsehoods about what other countries do, should kill them.

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

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Sunday, April 6, 2025 4:10 PM

Paul Krugman is setting himself up for his final fall.

But I'm sure idiot assholes like Second will keep listening to him after everyone else has finally turned their back on him and his bogus predictions once and for all.

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

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

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Sunday, April 6, 2025 4:24 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Paul Krugman is setting himself up for his final fall.

But I'm sure idiot assholes like Second will keep listening to him after everyone else has finally turned their back on him and his bogus predictions once and for all.

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

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

Trump said the EU is charging 39% tariffs. Krugman, the EU, and the entire world says the EU charges less than 3% tariffs. So how could Trump be correct? Just asking.

Are Donald Trump's tariffs on the EU really reciprocal? NO!

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/04/03/fact-check-are-donald-tr
umps-tariffs-on-the-eu-really-reciprocal

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

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Sunday, April 6, 2025 5:08 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Paul Krugman is setting himself up for his final fall.

But I'm sure idiot assholes like Second will keep listening to him after everyone else has finally turned their back on him and his bogus predictions once and for all.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Trump said the EU is charging 39% tariffs. Krugman, the EU, and the entire world says the EU charges less than 3% tariffs. So how could Trump be correct? Just asking.

The people you're quoting are all known liars who have everything to lose, and listening to them is how our country has fallen so far in the first place. And people like Paul Krugman have been telling everyone the economy is doing fine while the country was burning down all around us. Your last joke of a President added 1/4 of our current $37 Trillion debt in only 4 years, and there was midget Krugman, kneeling on a milk crate with Sleepy Joe*'s baby dick in his mouth the whole time he did it.

You have no credibility and your opinion holds no currency.

You refuse to adapt to the new normal, so we're leaving you in the rear-view mirror.

I'd love to say it was nice knowing you, buddy. But it really wasn't.

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

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

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Sunday, April 6, 2025 5:55 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

The people you're quoting are all known liars who have everything to lose, and listening to them is how our country has fallen so far in the first place. And people like Paul Krugman have been telling everyone the economy is doing fine while the country was burning down all around us. Your last joke of a President added 1/4 of our current $37 Trillion debt in only 4 years, and there was midget Krugman, kneeling on a milk crate with Sleepy Joe*'s baby dick in his mouth the whole time he did it.

You have no credibility and your opinion holds no currency.

You refuse to adapt to the new normal, so we're leaving you in the rear-view mirror.

I'd love to say it was nice knowing you, buddy. But it really wasn't.

It was easy to reverse engineer where Trump got his number of 39% tariff collected by the EU when the real number is less than 3%. Spoiler: Trump's 39% number wasn't for tariffs but for something else, and yet Trump labeled the false number as "tariffs."

How has the Trump administration arrived at these numbers?

In fact, there's a simple formula to Trump's giant cardboard table.

The first column — the tariff rate imposed by the US' partners — seems to have been calculated by taking Washington's trade deficit with that partner and dividing it by its exports to the US.

The second column — the Trump administration's so-called reciprocal rate — is around half of that rate.

In the EU's case, taking 2024 figures provided by the European Commission, that would mean a trade deficit of €198.2 billion, divided by the EU's total exports to the US of €531.6 billion, resulting in a tariff rate of 37.2% - close to the 39% defined by Trump.

The New York Times carried out the same exercise using figures defined by the US Trade Representative and found the result lands exactly on the 39% mark.

Andrew Kenningham told Euronews this "odd" formula, which is solely based on the US' trade deficit with its partners, is "a completely new departure" that has taken "everybody by surprise."

"It's not at all a measure of tariff level or of any of the other things which we were told might be taken into account in the reciprocal tariffs," Kenningham added.

https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/04/03/fact-check-are-donald-tr
umps-tariffs-on-the-eu-really-reciprocal

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

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Sunday, April 6, 2025 6:51 PM

I read the full article, and it sounds to me like they agree with Trump, extremely reluctantly.

They've answered for you where the 39% came from, so you can stop asking the question now.

Whether or not you agree with Trump or side with the so-called "experts" that have been leading us off a cliff for 50 years is irrelevant.

Paul Krugman's opinion means nothing today. What do you think that says about yours?

Side Note: Two prominent "experts" cited in this article called Trump's math "Odd", so I fully predict this to become the next word that we can make a highlight reel of every Lefty talking head saying over the next week or two.

Isn't that "Weird"?

Put that in the predictions thread, Jaynez

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

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

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Sunday, April 6, 2025 7:04 PM

As for this bit right here...

Quote:
Andrew Kenningham told Euronews this "odd" formula, which is solely based on the US' trade deficit with its partners, is "a completely new departure" that has taken "everybody by surprise."

"It's not at all a measure of tariff level or of any of the other things which we were told might be taken into account in the reciprocal tariffs," Kenningham added.

Where's your imagination, nerd?

Turning this sinking ship is going to require a completely new departure that takes everyone by surprise.

We're unfucking ourselves.

And we've been fucked 6 ways to Sunday. Why limit our Tariff war to just their Tariff's against us when there's just as many loopholes to how they fuck us as there are for rich people in America to avoid paying income taxes?

We hold all the cards.

It's not our problem if foreign countries over-extended themselves after getting used to our chronic and ever-worsening overspending problem propping them up well past the point they started taking that for granted as if that were going to continue on forever.

Of course foreign leaders are mad.

Because they can't fucking do anything about it but come to the bargaining table and lose something.

If Trump were really out of his mind they'd all be lining up to laugh at and mock him.

That is the exact opposite of what they are doing.

Aside from China so far, it doesn't look like anybody is interested in retaliating with a trade war and they're interested in giving something away in turn for not being shut out of any meaningful international trade.

And every day that passes where Trump doesn't destroy the US economy the media and the Democrats feel that noose they put around their own necks getting just a little tighter.

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

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

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Sunday, April 6, 2025 7:45 PM

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

Mr. Musk’s grandfather was a flamboyant leader of the political movement known as technocracy. Leading technocrats proposed replacing elected officials with an army of scientists and engineers under what they called a technate. Some wanted to annex Canada and Mexico. Under the technate, humans would no longer have names; they would have numbers. One technocrat went by 1x1809x56. (Mr. Musk has a son named X Æ A-12.) Musk's grandfather, who had lost his Saskatchewan farm during the Depression, became the movement’s leader in Canada. He was technocrat No. 10450-1.

The Failed Ideas That Drive Elon Musk
Posted on Sunday, Apr 6, 2025 9:21AM
https://3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2025/04/the-failed-ideas-that-dr
ive-elon-musk.html

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

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Sunday, April 6, 2025 9:23 PM

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

Trump Is Losing in a Landslide in Canada

The president’s trade war and threats of annexation have united Canadians as never before

By Guy Lawson | April 6, 2025

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-canada-e
lection-losing-landslide-musk-1235311449/

After a decade under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Canada was ready to move on from his center-left Liberal Party. It seemed inevitable that my homeland was about to elect a new conservative government and perhaps redefine the idea of what it means to be Canadian — an identity that mostly starts with the premise of not being American.

If Trump had said nothing about Canada — if he hadn’t bullied, belittled, and threatened to annex the country — the Conservative Party would have won a massive majority. If Trump and the chainsaw-wielding Elon Musk hadn’t engaged in adolescent taunting of Canadians, for no apparent reason other than frat bro hazing of what they imagined to be a defenseless target, the relationship between the two countries might have been mutually reimagined.

Instead, incredibly, unbelievably — but also inevitably, as any sane Canadian would have told you — Trump’s bully boy behavior resulted in virtually universal revulsion. The trash-talking, Trump-like leader of the Conservative Party best resembled Wile E. Coyote after Trump’s assault; the politico who had long claimed Canada is broken was suddenly lost for words as the bottom fell out of his campaign. In a matter of days, there was a 25-point swing in favor of the governing Liberal Party, now led by a no-nonsense plutocrat banker named Mark Carney. No marketing genius could have come up with a way to unite Canadians more rapidly than Trump’s threats and tariffs, affronts by a supposed marketing savant who is turning America into a globally toxic brand.

Walking the streets of Toronto on a rainy, cold early spring day, under a billboard forecasting “Chances of Canadian Weather: 100 percent,” the most remarkable thing about the city is how unremarkable it is. The frantic chaos of Trump’s America unceasing news cycle is countered with civic calm here. A pro-Palestinian protest marches along University Avenue toward City Hall, with no terror of students being disappeared by government agents wearing masks. The hip-hop exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario proceeds with no fear that the tender feelings of sensitive white men will be bruised by divergent historical and political narratives; a blonde bride poses with her groom on the circular stairs in the main atrium, oblivious to how threatened she is supposed to feel by the large poster on the wall with a set of oversized teeth and braces spelling out “Black Power.”

“NO WAY CANADA can win a trade war with America,” Vice President J.D. Vance declares on television, as he visits an American military base in Greenland — yet another society menaced by the Trump administration.

But here’s the thing: There is no war in Canada. Canada is not at war with America, nor is it at war with reality or empathy or the basic elements of human decency that also define Canadian identity. DEI — or Donald, Eric, and Ivanka as it has been called on Canadian television — is part of the political debate in Canada, of course, but the underlying sentiments of the diversity, equity, and inclusion movement are still the character traits taught in Canadian kindergartens: do your best, tell the truth, respect others, don’t be a bully, the rules matter — along with the lyrics of O Canada.

The most elemental disagreement between Canada and America seems to be about the modern world. For years, conservative America has been engaged in an angry argument with history, with originalists on the Supreme Court selectively retelling the past to serve their ideological interests. For an old man like Donald Trump, instead of yelling at the television and changing the channels with his remote, he now possesses the power to end life on earth and thus the world cringes in fear as his discontent with the present and longing for the past turn the world upside down.

There are historical plaques all over the city, celebrating Canada’s heritage, but no one seriously wants to travel back in time to a fantastical golden age, or live in a fantasy where all the woes of the world can be wished away by a magical red hat.

The rest of the world is now experiencing what Canada has been enduring for months: global trade rules unilaterally discarded and huge new Trump taxes described as an act of kindness — truly transcendental gaslighting — as the crowd in the Rose Garden scramble to catch a tossed MAGA hat.

“Trump likes to be fluffed,” a Canadian commentator says, after listening to Trump praise the Smoot-Hawley tariffs that helped worsen the Great Depression and call to mind the 1880s as a golden age — a rambling proudly incoherent discourse that seems to reject the realities of the 21st century.

Unlike so many cratering American institutions — law firms, universities, soulless groveling tech billionaires —- Canada stands up to the bully as best it can and calls bullshit. No matter who wins the Canadian election, there is already one clear loser: Donald Trump.

In this new era of American lawlessness, treaties like the one Trump negotiated with Canada and Mexico are tossed aside with the same shameless ease that the president once displayed stiffing subcontractors. Trump has now set himself up to dispense and collect tariff favors like a mafia don, the corruption and inscrutability practiced with impunity — and, of course, immunity. The president treats the world like it is a ship of fools — certain that he’s smarter than everyone else. Canadians, politely minding their own business until a few short weeks ago, now behold their neighbors with a mixture of horror and disbelief and fear, dreading that this is the kind of arrogance that always goes before the fall.

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

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Sunday, April 6, 2025 10:28 PM

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

Apr 06, 2025 at 9:24 PM EDT

President Donald Trump has denied that he intended to crash the stock market after he previously posted a video on Truth Social about him crashing the market on purpose.

The president has insisted that markets will "boom" as a result of his trade war.

Meanwhile, trading futures for the Dow Jones, S&P 500, and Nasdaq continue to trend further down ahead of the market's opening on Monday morning.

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-addresses-crashed-markets-purpos
e-tariffs-2056075

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

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Sunday, April 6, 2025 11:43 PM

I hear a lot of screaming out of you, but nothing much else going on in reality.

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

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

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Monday, April 7, 2025 12:49 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I hear a lot of screaming out of you, but nothing much else going on in reality.

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

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

There was a huge explosion at Mont Belvieu, Texas underground storage facility in 1985 that destroyed a control room, etc. I worked more than a year on the engineering so that there would never be another. And there hasn't. I made a truckload of money doing the work, which means the explosion was not a tragedy for me, even though people died.

Trump is causing one explosion after another, all across the USA and in foreign countries, every week. I'm going to make significant money from the disasters caused by Trump's foolish lowering of my taxes and his crashing prices of stocks, which I will buy cheaply.

Like the 1985 explosion in Mont Belvieu, the 2025 explosions caused by Trump will be fatal tragedies, but not for me. Trump is making opportunities for wealthy people.

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

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Monday, April 7, 2025 7:07 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I hear a lot of screaming out of you, but nothing much else going on in reality.

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

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

"What is your message to Americans who want to retire right now and have just seen their lifetime savings drop significantly?"

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated, "I think that's a false narrative. Americans who want to retire right now, Americans who have put away for years in their savings accounts, I think they don't look at the day-to-day fluctuations of what's happening." He further explained that "most Americans in a 401K have what's called a 60/40 account... [which is] down 5 or 6 percent on the year. People have a long-term view... If you look day-to-day, week-to-week, it's very risky. Over the long term, it's a good investment."

Market Plummets After Trump’s New Tariff Announcement

His remarks came just days after the Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered consecutive drops totaling over 2,200 points, following Trump's announcement of sweeping tariffs — including a 10 percent universal rate on all imports and much steeper ones for certain countries.

Critics Compare Bessent to 'Marie Antoinette' in Viral Reaction

"There's something very Marie Antoinette about maybe the wealthiest Treasury Secretary ever saying no one is worried about their 401ks that Trump just crashed."

"Every time Scott Bessent tries to downplay the damage Trump's policies are doing to everyday Americans, just remember: he's worth over half a billion dollars and lived in a $22 million mansion he called the Pink Palace."

Bessent “has a firmly established public record identifying himself as the stupidest Treasury Secretary in history.”

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

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Monday, April 7, 2025 7:21 AM

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

Political Styles of the Rich and Clueless
There are none so blind as those that will not see

By Paul Krugman | Apr 07, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/political-styles-of-the-rich-and

As we wait to see what fresh hell awaits us this week, one obvious question is, who put these malevolent clowns in power?

The short answer is ignorant people. But political ignorance takes two different forms.

On one side there are “less-engaged” voters who don’t follow politics closely. And to be fair, ordinary Americans have good excuses for not paying close attention to the news: They have jobs to do, children to raise, lives to live. Unfortunately, many of these voters believed Trump’s fabulist promises. They are only now beginning to understand what they voted for.

There’s now a huge debate among Democrats about how to reach less-engaged voters. But that’s a topic for future posts.

But less-engaged voters weren’t the only people who missed the warning signs and supported Donald Trump. Trump also had a number of ultra-wealthy backers, both on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, who are now shocked, shocked to discover that he is who he always was.

Over the weekend Bill Ackman, a hedge-fund billionaire who has been one of Trump’s most vocal supporters, suddenly turned on his champion, declaring on X that

by placing massive and disproportionate tariffs on our friends and our enemies alike and thereby launching a global economic war against the whole world at once, we are in the process of destroying confidence in our country as a trading partner, as a place to do business, and as a market to invest capital.

But Ackman refused to take any responsibility for enabling the destruction:

I don't think this was foreseeable. I assumed economic rationality would be paramount. My bad.

Indeed. Who could have foreseen that the self-proclaimed Tariff Man, who posts crazy stuff on Truth Social every day, would impose destructive tariffs? Who could have imagined that the many economists, myself included, who warned that a Trump victory would be very bad for the economy would turn out to have been right? Or if we were wrong, it was only because we underestimated the damage.

OK, Ackman is a fool, but he wasn’t alone in getting Trump all wrong. Many wealthy people imagined that Trump II would be like Trump I, mostly a standard right-winger with a bit of a protectionist hobby. They thought he would cut their taxes, eliminate financial and environmental regulations and promote crypto, making them even wealthier. They expected him to back off his tariff obsession if the stock market started to fall. If he ripped up the social safety net, well, they don’t depend on food stamps or Medicaid.

And if Trump II really had been like Trump I, America’s oligarchs would be very happy right now.

It's also true that successful businessmen often believe that their financial success makes them experts on economic policy even though they haven’t made any effort to understand the issues.

Even relatively sensible business leaders like Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase tend to stumble when they try to play economist. Does anyone remember Dimon proclaiming in 2014 that we couldn’t restore full employment because American workers didn’t have the right skills? Five years later the unemployment rate was below 4 percent.

I was struck over the weekend when Elon Musk (I know, I know), seemingly breaking with Trump, called for zero tariffs between the United States and Europe. I think it’s safe to assume that Musk has no idea that trans-Atlantic tariffs were, in fact, close to zero in 2024: The average European Union tariff on U.S. goods was 1.7%, the average U.S. tariff on EU goods was 1.4%.

Finally, great wealth often enables great pettiness. Some readers may remember Wall Street’s “Obama rage”: Financial titans were furious at the president who bailed them out after the global financial crisis because he dared to hint that they had played some role in causing that crisis. Why, he even called them “fat cats!”

The pettiness has been even worse this time around. A few days before the inauguration the Financial Times ran an article titled “Is corporate America going MAGA?” that quoted one “top banker”:

I feel liberated. We can say ‘retard’ and ‘pussy’ without the fear of getting cancelled . . . it’s a new dawn.

I wonder how liberated he’s feeling now.

To be honest, I’m actually glad that Trump II is proving to be such a disaster for the economy. If he had exercised some restraint, if he had simply claimed credit for the very good economy Joe Biden left him, many wealthy people would have cheered him on while he destroyed democracy. Now they may turn on him.

But I hope the rest of us have learned a lesson from the oligarchy’s support for Trump, even if it’s now cracking: Extreme wealth inequality has given great power to people who exert a malign influence on our politics.

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

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Monday, April 7, 2025 7:37 AM

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

President Donald Trump said Sunday that he won’t back down on his sweeping tariffs on imports from most of the world unless countries even out their trade with the U.S. (Every country must sell less to the U.S. than the U.S. sells to that country or else there shall be high Trump tariffs on goods sold by that country.)

“I spoke to a lot of leaders, European, Asian, from all over the world,” Trump said. “They’re dying to make a deal. And I said, we’re not going to have deficits with your country. We’re not going to do that, because to me a deficit is a loss. We’re going to have surpluses or at worst, going to be breaking even.”

Trump has long denounced foreign trade deals as unfair to the U.S. He is gambling that voters will be willing to endure higher prices for everyday items to enact his economic vision.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-tariffs-recession-financial-markets-n
egotiations-retaliation-860760cdc1aa2cc58853c9aab987e36d

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

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Monday, April 7, 2025 7:47 AM

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

Right now, Bernie Sanders sees not merely a political battle, but a moral and constitutional crisis.

I asked, "Some Republicans chuckle when they see President Trump talk about pursuing a third term. Are you laughing when you hear it?"

"No, I don't," Sanders said. "The idea of a third term? Why not? They don't believe in the rule of law. They don't believe in the Constitution. So, yeah, I would take that seriously."

"That's a serious thing to say as a U.S. senator, pseudo-democracy, not a full democracy?" I asked.

"Look, you get one vote, and Elon Musk can spend $270 million to help elect Trump. Does that sound like a democracy to you?"

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bernie-sanders-says-u-s-under-trump-is-fa
cing-unprecedented-level-of-danger/

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

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Monday, April 7, 2025 9:28 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I hear a lot of screaming out of you, but nothing much else going on in reality.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
"What is your message to Americans who want to retire right now and have just seen their lifetime savings drop significantly?"

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent stated, "I think that's a false narrative. Americans who want to retire right now, Americans who have put away for years in their savings accounts, I think they don't look at the day-to-day fluctuations of what's happening." He further explained that "most Americans in a 401K have what's called a 60/40 account... [which is] down 5 or 6 percent on the year. People have a long-term view... If you look day-to-day, week-to-week, it's very risky. Over the long term, it's a good investment."

Market Plummets After Trump’s New Tariff Announcement

His remarks came just days after the Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered consecutive drops totaling over 2,200 points, following Trump's announcement of sweeping tariffs — including a 10 percent universal rate on all imports and much steeper ones for certain countries.

Critics Compare Bessent to 'Marie Antoinette' in Viral Reaction

"There's something very Marie Antoinette about maybe the wealthiest Treasury Secretary ever saying no one is worried about their 401ks that Trump just crashed."

"Every time Scott Bessent tries to downplay the damage Trump's policies are doing to everyday Americans, just remember: he's worth over half a billion dollars and lived in a $22 million mansion he called the Pink Palace."

Bessent “has a firmly established public record identifying himself as the stupidest Treasury Secretary in history.”

What the Comfort Class Doesn’t Get

People with generational wealth control a society that they don’t understand.

April 6, 2025

https://archive.ph/RFgKS

. . . in the past eight weeks, life for working-class Americans has deteriorated in real ways. Millions of senior citizens are nail-biting about their Social Security benefits. People are worried for their jobs. The costs of eggs, orange juice, and utilities are on the rise. Mortgages and medical bills need to be paid. Rents will be due. Blood pressures will spike; judgments will be clouded; debts will no doubt be incurred. And the pundits and politicians, on all sides, will watch it from a safe, comfortable distance.

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

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Monday, April 7, 2025 9:42 AM

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

Trump Is Gaslighting Us

Trump is an agent of chaos

April 5, 2025

https://archive.ph/IzRB4

The first Trump administration began with a lie.

On January 21, 2017, President Donald Trump’s then–press secretary, Sean Spicer, claimed that Trump had drawn the largest audience to ever witness a presidential inauguration. Photographs clearly showed that the assertion was false; Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, had drawn a much larger crowd at his first inauguration. But it didn’t matter.

“These attempts to lessen the enthusiasm of the inauguration are shameful and wrong,” Spicer said.

In one sense, Spicer’s lie was trivial. But in another sense, it mattered quite a lot, because it was a lie about a demonstrable fact. Kellyanne Conway, then a counselor to Trump, memorably defended Spicer by claiming that he was offering “alternative facts,” treating observable reality like hot wax, to be molded at will.

Fast-forward eight years. Trump is once again president. Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, was mistakenly included on a private group chat—via Signal, a nongovernmental messaging app—in which Trump-administration officials discussed a planned bombing campaign in Yemen. Goldberg reported on the reckless and devastating breach of national security. But rather than acknowledging the mistake and promising to address it, the Trump administration reflexively followed its standard approach: attack. Smear. Prevaricate.

“He is, as you know, is a sleazebag, but at the highest level,” Trump said of Goldberg. “His magazine is failing.” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who shared the most sensitive information on the group chat, wrapped his attack on Goldberg in layers of lies: “You’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again.” He added, “Nobody was texting war plans.” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on social media, “This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin.” One high-level person after another insisted that the story was much ado about nothing. The information that had been shared, they assured us, was nothing that was dangerous to disclose.

Except that it was.

. . .

Gaslighters are manipulative and controlling, comfortable belittling and insulting others. They are accomplished at denying, lying, and projecting. And sometimes, if they’re lucky enough and skilled enough, they make it to the White House. When they do, the horrors that are usually visited on an individual are instead visited on an entire nation.

At that point, the enormous machinery of the federal government, supported by outside groups and media outlets, becomes part of a massive and relentless disinformation campaign. The aim is to provoke distrust, confusion, and disorientation, which corrodes people’s confidence in institutions and undermines their grasp of reality. The ultimate goal is to divide and weaken civil society, and to undermine its ability to mobilize and cohere.

When there is no objective truth, when everyone gets to make up their own reality, their own script, and their own facts, authoritarians thrive.

“The point of modern propaganda isn’t only to misinform or push an agenda,” Garry Kasparov, a Russian pro-democracy leader, wrote in 2016. “It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”

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

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Monday, April 7, 2025 11:16 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I hear a lot of screaming out of you, but nothing much else going on in reality.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
"What is your message to Americans who want to retire right now and have just seen their lifetime savings drop significantly?"

"Sorry you bought into the lie. Better luck next life."

"I bet you aren't going to listen to Paul Krugman about anything anymore."

"At least this isn't the 1800s. You probably wouldn't have lived past 40, assuming you were lucky enough to survive birth and infancy. You had a great run."

"Hope you paid off your house."

"I live off $7,000 per year in the mid-2020's."

Pick one.

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

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

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Monday, April 7, 2025 2:23 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

"Sorry you bought into the lie. Better luck next life."

"I bet you aren't going to listen to Paul Krugman about anything anymore."

"At least this isn't the 1800s. You probably wouldn't have lived past 40, assuming you were lucky enough to survive birth and infancy. You had a great run."

"Hope you paid off your house."

"I live off $7,000 per year in the mid-2020's."

Pick one.

You are a true believer in Trump, a group that has tens of millions of believers. There was another group of true believers, but in a certain Saudi Arabian whose group only had tens of thousands of believers. Trump's group can do far more damage than the Saudi Arabian's group did to America:

Is Trump a Bigger Threat to America than Usama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda?

Juan Cole | 04/07/2025

https://www.juancole.com/2025/04/bigger-threat-american.html

Donald Trump has inflicted more damage on the United States’s markets than did Usam Bin Laden and al-Qaeda on 9/11.

The attacks of that date caused the US financial authorities to to close down the NYSE and the Nasdaq for a week, until September 17. This was unprecedented.

When trading resumed that week of September 17, 2001, Marc Davis explains at Investopedia, over the following five days, the Dow Jones average decreased more than 14%, the S&P 500 tumbled 11.6% and Nasdaq fell a whopping 16%. The attacks wiped $1.4 trillion of value off the US markets. Even just the first day of trading after the attacks, the DJIA plummeted 684 points, down 7.1%. At the time, that was the largest loss for a single trading session in the whole history of the exchange.

Trump’s crackpot tariffs have wiped $5 trillion of the value of US markets and that appears only to be the beginning.

Even abroad, trading was halted today (Monday) in Japan after shares on the Nikkei 225 fell nearly nearly 8%. This is 9/11- level carnage.

On September 11, 2001, a small group of terrorists crashed planes into the World Trade Center twin towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. One thing was sure. They wanted to inflict the maximum damage on the United States.

Al-Qaeda militants were driven by a form of Third Worldism, convinced that the US superpower was impoverishing people by taking their petroleum and other resources for pennies on the dollar, using bullying tactics to talk down the price of energy to benefit its own economy. They saw the US as a bulwark of dictatorships in the region, including in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. They bitterly resented the Israeli occupation of the Muslim holy city of Jerusalem, with its threat to the al-Aqsa Mosque complex, the third holiest site for Muslims. But despite their adoption of an Islamic veneer, the religious tradition of the Prophet Muhammad, the Qur’an, and high ethics and philosophy did not drive them. Indeed, many were lawless young men seeking a James Bond lifestyle, visiting strip clubs and bars, buying golden cigarette lighters, and justifying their libertinism on the grounds that they were sacrificing for a higher cause. Bin Laden admitted that they were “not like other Muslims,” by which he likely meant that they were antinomians and did not consider themselves under the law. The monstrous act of terror that killed nearly 3,000 innocent people, including Muslims, was strictly forbidden in Islamic law. They did not care about Muslim ethical principles. They constructed a cult for themselves in which they had drunk the Koolaid and were determined to pour it down the throats of thousands of others.

I spent many years studying al-Qaeda and telling anyone who would listen how I thought it could be defeated. I regularly went out for consulting in Washington, D.C. and am proud of those efforts. Most of its grievances were based on errors of fact or interpretation or both. And anyway, those grievances could not be addressed through mass violence. After the horrific attacks, none of situations about which al-Qaeda gave lip service improved. Political scientists Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan found that in the past century, peaceful social movements were twice as likely to succeed as violent ones. But I did feel as though I came to understand the hideous, crackpot ideology of the al-Qaeda leaders.

Al-Qaeda in my view was always overblown. It never consisted of more than a few tens of thousands of militants, and most of them were not very competent. It was always doomed to defeat because it was a small organization and was hated by most Muslims and certainly by their elites. Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, Syria, and Algeria all pitched in to wipe it out.

In contrast, and although he is from my own culture, I have no idea what Trump thinks he is doing. He says he wants to rejigger global trade so as to bring industry back to the United States. But you could have done that just by setting tax law to punish American corporations that move offshore. Either he is just bonkers or he is fixated on a few false premises about the way the world economy works.

Trump’s assault on civil liberties, scientific and medical research, universities, and freedom of thought and conscience are even deadlier than the economic damage he is doing. And, of course, these un-American activities will also do economic damage on a large scale.

Trump is an agent of destruction for American society and poses a threat far more deadly than al-Qaeda ever did.

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

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Monday, April 7, 2025 2:44 PM

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

Markets Swing Wildly After Trump Holds His Ground on Tariff Plan

S&P 500 briefly hits bear-market territory and oil falls; President Trump stands firm despite alarm on Wall Street

Last Updated: April 7, 2025 at 2:30 PM EDT

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-trump-tariffs-trade-war-
04-07-25

A false dawn on the tariff front fueled a brief midmorning rally Monday, with the S&P 500 surging some 7% from its low on the day, before the administration clarified that there will be no delay in implementing new levies.

The episode, which touched off wild swings throughout the trading day, highlights the increasing desperation on Wall Street as the trade-war rout of 2025 extends into a new week.

In afternoon trading, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.8%, about 330 points. The Nasdaq Composite turned fractionally higher and the S&P 500 was flat, with all three indexes rallying after 1 p.m. ET.

The earlier rally followed erroneous headlines that President Trump was considering a 90-day pause in tariffs. The initial reaction showed how much desire there is among investors to return to the well-trod territory of administrations that want to assist markets and stock declines that are quickly followed by sharp bouncebacks.

This time, some major investors are starting to sound off publicly about what they see as the dangers in the shift to large tariffs. So far, though, it's clear that President Trump and his advisers aren't humming the same tune.

Trump said Monday he plans to add an additional 50% tariff on China starting Wednesday if the country doesn’t withdraw its retaliatory tariff increase on the U.S. “Additionally, all talks with China concerning their requested meetings with us will be terminated!” he wrote.

Stocks took their latest leg down in response. The S&P stood close to bear-market territory, defined as a 20%-plus decline from a recent peak. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite fell into a bear market last week.

Wall Street's "fear gauge," the VIX, leapt as investors braced for further volatility ahead, and global markets recoiled. The index has more than doubled in the last month.

Treasurys were volatile, as investors considered how tariffs could both slow short-term growth and rekindle inflation, complicating the task of the Federal Reserve. Futures prices showed traders stepping up bets on multiple rate cuts this year. Early Monday, Trump renewed his call for the Fed to ease policy and said his policies were bringing down oil prices and interest rates.

In Asia, where many economies are highly trade-reliant, stocks plunged. Hong Kong's main equity benchmark lost 13%, in its worst day since the Asian financial crisis. Indexes in Shanghai, Taipei and Tokyo fell between 7% and 10%.

In Europe, the Stoxx Europe 600 sank more than 4%. Bitcoin and oil prices fell.

Last week, U.S. stocks lost $6.6 trillion in value during a two-day washout after Trump announced larger tariffs than Wall Street expected and China said it would match the duties on all U.S.-made goods.

Here’s what else you need to know:

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is the first world leader to hold in-person talks with Trump about the tariffs. U.S. officials said more than so countries had reached out to start negotiations.

• The Chinese Communist Party’s flagship newspaper said Chinese policymakers were well-prepared to cope with U.S. tariffs by using policy tools including monetary’ and fiscal easing.

• Influential Wall Street voices raised concerns. JPMorgan’s Jamie Dimon warned about the effect of tariffs on growth, prices, and the economic alliances that have underpinned America's “extraordinary standing in world affairs.”

• Meanwhile, billionaire investor Bill Ackman called for a 90-day pause on the implementation of the tariffs, saying they are a mistake.

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

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Monday, April 7, 2025 2:46 PM

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

"Sorry you bought into the lie. Better luck next life."

"I bet you aren't going to listen to Paul Krugman about anything anymore."

"At least this isn't the 1800s. You probably wouldn't have lived past 40, assuming you were lucky enough to survive birth and infancy. You had a great run."

"Hope you paid off your house."

"I live off $7,000 per year in the mid-2020's."

Pick one.
You are a true believer in Trump,

No. I'm not.

I've never once exhibited 5% of the religious fervor that are on display here for the Democratic Party every day by you and the other idiot. I can go a whole month without even mentioning Trump's name. You can't go a single day without him plaguing your every thought.

I don't know how any of this is going to work out. I've already said that I've never seen this movie before. The one thing I care about and I'm rooting for is a better life for Americans in the future. Your party fucked everyone from every direction for long enough.

Don't ask me to feel sorry for people in their 60's that weren't smart with their money while the gettin' was still good. You will get no tears from the GenX guy who owns his house outright and has only grossed less than $250,000 in his entire life.

Because I'm just sitting here laughing at all of you lemmings and your lifetime of mindless consumerism and consumption. Filling the only roles that most of us were destined for like good little soldier ants.

If they want to bitch they don't have enough money in their retirement account, the first thing they really need to be doing is figuring out a budget that isn't in the clouds. Then they should take a real hard look at how they spent their entire lives wasting money away on bullshit that they didn't need and wishing that they'd done better.

Maybe they should think twice about buying that McMansion in retirement, and spending another $60,000 to immediately knock out the jacuzzi and put in a giant walk in shower in its place. And good luck to them who already made that mistake and have to spend $8,000 every winter heating the 30 foot cathedral ceiling on top of their $25,000 per year property tax bill.

94% of the stock market is owned by 8% of the people. 50% of people are in at least $7,000 worth of credit card debt and have zero assets and can't even afford to pay for a $1,000 emergency without taking out more debt to pay for it.

We don't relate with your kind at all, and we don't want to.

Fuck your stock market.

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

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

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Monday, April 7, 2025 3:04 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

No. I'm not.

I have heard that from every Trumptard I have fired. They were told to stop doing what would eventually get them fired. When told for the last time why they are being fired, they can't recognize themselves for being lazy / stupid / obnoxious / incompetent / dishonest / crazy / etc. Trump has all of those defects, plus a few more such as rapist, tax-cheater, and nonstop liar who loves the sound of his own voice.

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

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Monday, April 7, 2025 3:14 PM

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

No. I'm not.
I have heard that from every Trumptard I have fired.

I'd stop mentioning that online if I were you.

But of course, if I were you, I'd be a 27 year old chronic beat-off living in my mom's basement, too cowardly to put on my black garb and set shit on fire with whatever's left of my dead-beat 27 year old chronic beat-off friends who haven't died of overdoses or killed themselves yet.

I've heard whispering that there might be some upcoming court cases involving people who voted for Trump who got fired from their employer for their politics.

Not a great environment for any person who owned a business and went online bragging all the time about who they fired becuase they didn't agree with their politics...

What with Elon Musk updating all of our tech, allowing the remaining mandatory departments to seemlessly communicate all sorts of things in micro-seconds that used to take 6 months of filing paperwork through the tunnel of three other agencies that only existed to put a stamp on something and hand it off to the next superfluous government employee at the next superfluous agency; rinse and repeat.

... and a Supreme Court that is ready to make that a president going forward if it's brought to them...

... with an aimless and desperate Democratic Party fast-tracking all of their greatest hits through the lower courts and pushing them right on up to only get shot down again, and again, and again. All in hopes that they can finally get Trump on one thing. That one thing finally sticks...

You guys are fucking cooked buddy. You still don't even realize how the government is never going to operate the way that it did before. That world is gone now.

If you really were a business owner and had any money, you would be the saddest billionaire on the planet with the way you choose to live the last few years of your life.

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

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

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Monday, April 7, 2025 4:18 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
If you really were a business owner and had any money, you would be the saddest billionaire on the planet with the way you choose to live the last few years of your life.

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

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

Don't you get it yet, buddy?

You and I... what we do here?

This is pathetic.

This is pathetic behavior.

As in, take that etymology a step further and it's a pathos. Anybody who comes back here and actually reads the stuff we post, and I'm sure there is at least one person out there... They feel sad for us. This is like Jerry Springer reality TV slop to a person who would rather read it all play out instead of watching it on TV.

I'd say that since at least 2006, FireFlyFans was never a happy place because of the RWED, but it lasted a hell of a lot longer than it ever had any right too because of the RWED. They tried their best to make it be a lasting place, but the RWED poison always seeped out into the forums that truly belonged here.

And in the end, as of no surprise to me, the RWED far outlasted everything else on this site but a few anon updates about our OG Browncoats staying strong... Never letting that signal truly die. Short of that, we've managed to keep the Cinema board alive since we co-opted that for ourselves and filled it all with RWED poison too....

And you can see with 20/20 hindsight if you think back to all the awesome old sites that were out there and are now only archived with a bunch of broken links at best or fond memories that we've warped into something else entirely as they merge with other memories and nobody 30 years later really remembers what it was like anymore. Haken apparently decided that he'd keep that signal going as long as somebody was still making noise on it. Even if it meant that it all it was picking up was the sounds of poison sloshing around at the bottom of the sink basin.

We're the holdouts man.

They started yelling last call hours ago and we just won't leave.

All the hot chicks left 5 hours ago...

But we were never there for that, were we?

We were here to fight.

Not physically. That would make the bouncers and the owner very happy if we did that.

We were here to argue. We were here to be awful to somebody. And what better place to do it than on an old-school anonymous forum. A place where nobody really knew who each other were and as long as we don't really step over that final boundary we can just have a guilt free conscious about being truly awful to somebody else because you never have to say it to somebody's face in real life, and there is a very high assumption that nobody will ever bother to truly spend the time and money to figure out who you are.

We found a daily adversary and a lightning rod to let out just a bit of that rage so we never show it in real life. We both consider ourselves Batman, while thinking of the other as the Joker. And from an objective viewpoint, neither one of us is right all the time about who is who.

Our discussions will never, ever amount to anything fruitful. Not only because neither one of us was ever interested in budging on any of their positions from the get-go, but because we're both just pissing into the wind. Screaming into the void.

"HELLO!!!! HELLO!!!!!!! CAN YOU HEAR ME!!!!!

There's nobody here man. Save maybe Haken and or whoever bought Haken out long ago for some reason or another. Maybe we've all been part of a low-priority, low-profile, low-cost scientific study that has been paid for by the government for the last 20 years? And though it might not always be interesting to them, it's still interesting enough to justify the small monthly expense and the occasional babysitting, while also not interesting enough to put in a new hard drive or whatever minor change they could make to keep the site from going offline as often as it does.

Think about JSF. Still pops in randomly to say a few antagonizing things. Comes off like a normal guy, but then does really weird shit like not pay for internet at home, telling everyone he's only able to use the internet at the library, but making some of his posts around midnight Wisconsin time and nobody bothers to ask him how he's making midnight posts at a Wisconsin library that's open 24/7 that doesn't exist. Also seems to be the guy who knows to get in touch with Haken to put another temporary band-aid on the site.

I've told you before that I'm actually every other person that still posts on this site but you. But the funny thing is, sometimes I wonder if this was all just a game against me and that one or several people are actually doing a study on me like a low-effort Truman Show. Or did I just say that because I don't want you to start thinking that maybe you're the one who's being played here?

Who knows why this site is still up dude.

What I do know is that neither of us have ever written a single word that influenced anybody or changed a single mind a single mind about anything since the day we signed up for an account here.

In the good old days, we confirmed each other's biases while yelling at each other together. Now we just yell at each other.

You and Ted are easily the most politically aligned among what is left of us here by far and you can't even bring yourself to talk to him.

That's not what you're here for.

And this here... What we do here here in 2025...

This is a selfish action.

This is an addiction that we've fostered and allowed to build such a tolerance to that it only became more time-consuming, life-consuming and just downright nasty the longer it went on. And I think that COVID multiplied all of that by 10 when it happened.

I'm willing to admit all of this is true.

I'm assuming that you will not be able to do the same for yourself.

But I will tell you that I think about that from time to time in my real life.

What would happen if Second and Ted died from some natural cause thing like Kevin Drum did and they weren't here to argue anymore? I don't think you'd either ever quit posting here any sooner than I would, so I don't factor that in as a possibility, but the lights could actually go off at any time without any warning. They don't owe anything to us.

What would happen?

My life would actually change if any of those above scenarios were to come true at any point in the future.

Brain chems are funny man.

We don't have to be drinking or smoking or snorting or shooting up to get high.

We warped our pleasure centers online buddy.

I've always been a bit of an adrenaline junkie. As I got older it appears that I've found much safer ways to get it than the lesson-teaching mistakes I was making earlier in life. Not behaviors that would indicate to anyone watching to believe that I will ever live to be an old man, but finding increasingly less-immediately taxing ways to feed that addiction without needing to be living constantly on the edge, and certainly not anything that could put anybody else out.

I'm wise enough to occasionally ask myself what it is exactly that I'm still doing here, in this place, almost every single day of my life.

And what that means for an inevitable future where this place no longer exists or I have no compulsion to come back to it.

How does that effect the rest of my life when that day comes?

Go ahead and blow this entirely off and keep on pretending that you're right about every opinion you've ever had and that every person who doesn't agree every opinion you have is pure trash. All I'm saying is that it ain't healthy is all.

I'm not going to pretend like I have any intention to stop doing what I've been doing. I know it's not logical behavior, but I know why I do it.

I always tell you that nobody in your real life is going to miss you while you're gone. And while I still believe that is true based off of your persona here, I could be misjudging that and you're actually pretty well adjusted and liked in your personal life. You'd probably be surprised at just how well I do it on my end too.

What happens when we don't get to do this anymore? Will we be able to say the same thing 6 months from now?

I do not like you, but I do not look forward to a future where FFF is gone or nothing compels me to come back.

That will be a life-changing event for me when that happens.

It will be for you as well.

We're going to have to find another way for all this bullshit we do here to conjure up them warped feel good chems we got ourselves hooked on here. And where would you even look to find that? Twitter ain't the same buddy. None of the stuff everybody is using on those whitewashed normie corporate sites is anywhere close to the hits we've been taking here. There ain't no other home for us online. You can't find this anywhere else.

And all of that is really fucking pathetic.

And it's why I really hope you are lying when you tell people you're a business owning billionaire. Because man... being a part of everything that's gone on here for so long now... that would truly be the saddest thing that anybody ever admitted to me about themselves even in real life.

Nobody cares about how much money you got dude, unless you're sharing it.

And the more money you actually have saved up and the more true any of the tales you spin about your real life actually are, the more pathetic all of this here that we do is in your case.

All the best, "Batman".

I'll end the time-out here because I assume that none of this is even going to be read, let alone absorbed.

Game On!

And now, back to your Regular Programming.

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

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

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Monday, April 7, 2025 4:37 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

You guys are fucking cooked buddy. You still don't even realize how the government is never going to operate the way that it did before. That world is gone now.

If you really were a business owner and had any money, you would be the saddest billionaire on the planet with the way you choose to live the last few years of your life.

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

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

You really are crazy, 6ix. No kidding. So is Trump, especially if you and he think there is not an brutal ending for you both. Flushed down the toilet bowl of history. I know it is pretty hard for Trumptards to understand since they all think of themselves as permanent, irreplaceable and indispensable but you are disposable as used toilet paper.

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

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Monday, April 7, 2025 4:38 PM

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

Trump is pressuring the Federal Reserve to save his tariffs. It should ignore him.

Tariffs of this magnitude pose an especially tough challenge for the economy.

April 7, 2025, 10:48 AM CDT
By Jared Bernstein, former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-tariffs-stock-market
-federal-reserve-powell-rcna199796

Though the Trump administration inherited a strong economy, in under three months, it has generated a steep stock market sell-off and deep concerns about where things are headed. The market losses Thursday and Friday were worse than 99.9% of all trading days since 1929, and Monday morning brought even further declines. This historical sell-off was without doubt the result of Trump’s big “Liberation Day,” when he revealed a set of tariffs that raises the average U.S. tax on imports to levels not seen in almost a century.

Tariffs of this magnitude pose an especially tough challenge for the economy. Because they are largely passed forward to consumers, they raise prices. And because they similarly raise the price of inputs for domestic producers — 45% of our imports are “intermediate goods” — they raise the cost of production, which hurts growth. Add to these woes the tremendous uncertainty created by Trump’s on-again, off-again policy lurching, along with the aforementioned market meltdown, and you understand a) why both consumer and investor sentiment has fallen off a cliff, and b) why economic forecasters have lowered their growth expectations and raised their inflation forecasts.

This combination of lower growth and faster inflation is called stagflation, and it is a particular challenge for the Federal Reserve. To counteract slower growth, Fed officials can lower the benchmark interest rate they control. But to counteract inflationary pressures, they typically raise rates. Faced with stagflation, what’s a central banker to do?

Their best play is to leave rates where they are until it is clear which problem requires addressing with a rate change. In fact, that’s just what Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Friday. Given that the appropriate path for Fed policy is “not clear at this time,” he said, “it feels like we don’t need to be in a hurry.”

So, what’s the problem? Well, here’s what the president posted on Truth Social that same day, as the stock market was tanking: “This would be a PERFECT time for Fed Chairman Jerome Powell to cut Interest Rates. He is always “late,” but he could now change his image, and quickly.”

“CUT INTEREST RATES, JEROME, AND STOP PLAYING POLITICS!” Trump concluded.

Now, to understand what’s going on here, we need to go back to one of Powell’s predecessors, Alan Greenspan. Under Greenspan, the Fed was so consistent in cutting rates as soon as the market softened that investors came to depend on the Fed chair to protect them from bear markets. This was known as the “Greenspan put,” a reference to a financial tool by which an investor is protected from downside losses.

To be clear, I’m not saying Trump is an avid student of monetary history. I am saying he wants and expects Powell to bail him out, and he know there’s a precedent for the Fed to provide a macroeconomic insurance policy against a policy shock, even if it’s Trump’s own doing.

His post also reveals that he’s clearly uninterested in a guiding principle of past administrations, including the Biden presidency, during which I chaired the Council of Economic Advisers. When I was asked about Fed policy, with zero exceptions, my answer was to say nothing. Well, not exactly nothing, but nothing more than this: “We don’t talk about Fed policy because we are fully committed to Fed independence. History is littered with examples of economies severely damaged by the inflation unleashed by pressuring the Fed to cut rates.” In fact, at CEA, we published a detailed defense of this stance, showing the historical importance of Fed independence, especially to control inflation.

It’s common sense. If you let the president oversee the central bank, the risk that he will force it to overly juice the economy is just too damn high.

There’s one more important wrinkle here for the Fed to consider. Because a tariff is a tax that takes effect at a point in time and stays on until it’s lifted, it does raise prices, but it does so just once. You get a spike in inflation over a month or two, and then inflation drifts back to where it was pre-tariff. Economists call this a “one-time rise in the price level” versus a permanently higher inflation rate.

The Fed probably doesn’t like that anymore than you or I do, but as long as inflation doesn’t stay elevated, it doesn't have to raise interest rates to get it back down.

That could work to Trump’s advantage — unless the tariffs just keep coming. Remember, the scenario I just outlined requires one and done. But if Trump keeps lurching around the way he has since he got back into office, the producers, businesses and employers who set prices and wages in the economy are going to expect ever-higher price pressures.

This is a huge problem for the Fed that deeply depends on inflationary expectations remaining “anchored.” A one-time hit doesn’t dislodge the anchor. But repeated hits definitely can. As Powell said Friday, “While tariffs are highly likely to generate at least a temporary rise in inflation, it is also possible that the effects could be more persistent … Our obligation is to keep longer-term inflation expectations well anchored and to make certain that a one-time increase in the price level does not become an ongoing inflation problem.”

The upshot is that Powell and the Federal Reserve must ignore Trump, maintain independence, watch what happens to both policy and inflation, and raise or lower rates as they see fit. But ignoring Trump is a lot easier said than done. Especially if the markets keep tanking, Trump will demand a “Powell put” with increasing fury. But the Fed chair is unquestionably right about tuning Trump out, and those of us who speak on such matters should give him all the backup we can.

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

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Monday, April 7, 2025 5:11 PM

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

You guys are fucking cooked buddy. You still don't even realize how the government is never going to operate the way that it did before. That world is gone now.

If you really were a business owner and had any money, you would be the saddest billionaire on the planet with the way you choose to live the last few years of your life.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
You really are crazy, 6ix.

100% the expected response out of you, as predicted.

I know you'll never admit any truth about yourself to anyone else. But deep down you know I'm not wrong.

Very well, Arthur.

Let us continue this downward spiral together.

Oh... and that bit about JSF and his patterns...

Don't you think that behavior is a little odd?

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

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

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Monday, April 7, 2025 5:44 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

The point of tariffs is to raise prices on imports to make wholly American-made goods price competitive.

Unless, of course, Trump is just using tariffs to wring investment from various nations, which is another potential benefit.

AFA the tariffs that Trump says other nations charge us... maybe he tossed darts at a dartboard? I really don't care how he came up with those numbers.

Stock market .... it's speculation based on a combination of Fed interest rates and QE, and has nothing to do with the health of the underlying companies or "the economy". Since it's SPECULATION, speculators should understand that what goes up can come down...

But it's a damn good thing we never went to privatized Social Security (investing in stocks) bc everybody's retirement would be in the shitter.

Trump is unhinged but he's doing necessary stuff. Nobody likes to take medicine but its been delayed far too long. So now we have a loose cannon, doing what "responsible" people should have done decades ago.

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Monday, April 7, 2025 5:49 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

100% the expected response out of you, as predicted.

I know you'll never admit any truth about yourself to anyone else. But deep down you know I'm not wrong.

Very well, Arthur.

Let us continue this downward spiral together.

Oh... and that bit about JSF and his patterns...

Don't you think that behavior is a little odd?

I have always known this about Trumptards before Trump made them feel invincible and powerful. They were ruining themselves but didn't see their troubles as caused by their mental malfunctions. See Trump for an extremely detailed record of one misfortune after another, with lawyers rescuing him from consequences. Most Trumptards can't afford the high-quality lawyers that keep Trump out of deeper trouble. Those poor Trumptards have to live with the consequences. And they want to bring their dysfunctional way of life to all Americans. Tourists are noticing and avoiding the Trumptards:

Foreign visits into the U.S. fell off a cliff in March (Thanks to lunatic Trump and his Trumptards)

By Alex Fitzpatrick | Apr 4, 2025

https://www.axios.com/2025/04/04/foreign-visits-american-airports-trav
el-warnings

Foreign arrivals into major U.S. airports tumbled in mid-to-late March compared to the same time last year, based on customs pass-through data.

Why it matters: The findings suggest a sudden reluctance to visit the U.S. isn't a purely Canadian phenomenon and should sound alarm bells for the country's $1 trillion-plus travel industry.

Driving the news: The number of foreigners passing through customs at the 10 busiest U.S. airports fell by over 20% year over year toward late March, based on a seven-day rolling average.

Between the lines: Trade wars, a volatile economic and political climate and fears of detainment or harassment may be dissuading foreigners from visiting the U.S. Several American allies, including Canada, France, Germany and others, recently issued new travel warnings or advisories about U.S. travel.

What's next: Goldman's note predates Trump's sweeping new tariffs issued Wednesday, which stand to uproot the global economic order in unpredictable and chaotic ways. If those tariffs hold, they could amplify any potential hit to U.S. travel businesses.

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

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Monday, April 7, 2025 6:11 PM

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

What’s the latest? After more losses today, the Dow is down more than 4,000 points since Trump rolled out his tariffs on Wednesday afternoon. The markets last dropped like this in 2020, when the economy was being systematically shut down to fight Covid-19.

What’s next? The 10 percent, across-the-board tariffs took effect Saturday. The targeted, higher tariffs on specific nations go into effect April 9.

And more tariffs could be coming. After China threatened to retaliate against Trump’s new tariffs with a 34 percent tax on US goods, the president threatened an additional 50 percent tariffs on Chinese goods unless Beijing pulls back. It’s the latest sign Trump’s tariffs have started a global trade war.

Can anyone stop Trump’s tariffs? A handful of Senate Republicans are backing a bill that would curtail Trump’s authority to impose tariffs without Congress’s blessing. But even with all the Democrats on board, the legislation doesn’t have enough support to override Trump’s promised veto and seems unlikely to become law.

What’s the big picture? Even before Trump took office, observers debated whether his talk of massive tariffs was a bluff or a blueprint. It seems investors were betting on the former, and now that the tariffs are going into effect, the financial shocks are real.

How bad is this going to get? That depends largely on Trump. He has said that other nations are sending teams to negotiate, which means there’s still a chance that some of the tariffs could be canceled. But if any significant chunk of those taxes moves forward, economists predict higher prices and slow economic growth — if not an outright recession.

https://www.vox.com/the-logoff-newsletter-trump/407468/trump-tariff-ma
rket-crash-economy-recession

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

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Monday, April 7, 2025 7:18 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The point of tariffs is to raise prices on imports to make wholly American-made goods price competitive.

Unless, of course, Trump is just using tariffs to wring investment from various nations, which is another potential benefit.

AFA the tariffs that Trump says other nations charge us... maybe he tossed darts at a dartboard? I really don't care how he came up with those numbers.

Stock market .... it's speculation based on a combination of Fed interest rates and QE, and has nothing to do with the health of the underlying companies or "the economy". Since it's SPECULATION, speculators should understand that what goes up can come down...

But it's a damn good thing we never went to privatized Social Security (investing in stocks) bc everybody's retirement would be in the shitter.

Trump is unhinged but he's doing necessary stuff. Nobody likes to take medicine but its been delayed far too long. So now we have a loose cannon, doing what "responsible" people should have done decades ago.

Signym, literally, you are as ignorant as this UAW President and Trumptard:

UAW President Shawn Fain explains why he supports Trump's tariffs

By Steve Inskeep | April 7, 2025 5:00 AM ET

https://www.npr.org/2025/04/07/nx-s1-5352409/trump-auto-tariffs-uaw-sh
awn-fain

UAW president Shawn Fain on NPR today defended the auto tariffs by saying, in part, that “half of Americans don’t even have stock” and “sixty percent of Americans have no retirement savings.”

I wonder if he realizes that 100% of UAW members have both retirement savings and stocks in UAW pension plans?

Quote:
He doesn't care much about the stock market's decline.

"You know, half of Americans don't even have stock," he said. (Some estimates say well over half of Americans own some stock.)

"Sixty percent of Americans have no retirement savings," he said. "So when I hear all the crying about the stock market, this is just Wall Street. They're people that are already rich, and at the end of the day, most working class people are trying to survive right now. And it's infuriating that our livelihoods have been stripped from us for decades and no one's cared."

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

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Monday, April 7, 2025 7:27 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The point of tariffs is to raise prices on imports to make wholly American-made goods price competitive.

Unless, of course, Trump is just using tariffs to wring investment from various nations, which is another potential benefit.

AFA the tariffs that Trump says other nations charge us... maybe he tossed darts at a dartboard? I really don't care how he came up with those numbers.

Stock market .... it's speculation based on a combination of Fed interest rates and QE, and has nothing to do with the health of the underlying companies or "the economy". Since it's SPECULATION, speculators should understand that what goes up can come down...

But it's a damn good thing we never went to privatized Social Security (investing in stocks) bc everybody's retirement would be in the shitter.

Trump is unhinged but he's doing necessary stuff. Nobody likes to take medicine but its been delayed far too long. So now we have a loose cannon, doing what "responsible" people should have done decades ago.

I was just talking about that with the old man the other day.

The worst thing we ever did was end pensions and tie up everyone's retirement in the stock market.

GWB ran on doing just that with Social Security his 2nd term and thank god that never happened.

Are you kidding me, Sigs? It doesn't take a massive shock and speculators being fearful for that to have been a terrible idea. This that's happening in the stock market is just a great example of why it would be a terrible idea. The example where millions of people are hurt from it through no bad choices on their own.

Your average person is a stupid asshole that can't even budget their own lives or pay their own taxes. Somebody thinks it's a great idea to let them run their retirement choices from the day they start working? It's bad enough they're all doing that with a 401k. If that was ever done to Social Security, you'd have to have to build an entire 2nd retirement safety net to bail out all the failures of the first safety net. That's not even taking into consideration the ones that would just gamble away their social security day-trading them away like they gamble away their weekly earnings on sports ball gambling apps.

401ks were evil from the beginning.

They put a cheap noose around everyone's neck.

They made it nearly impossible for anybody to have a real talk about real wealth inequality or have any legitimate conversations about class.

They made it so anything that hurts the richest of us, even just a little bit, could ruin the retirement plans of millions who saved all of their life and listened to the wrong people.

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

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

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Monday, April 7, 2025 7:41 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
401ks were evil from the beginning.

They put a cheap noose around everyone's neck.

They made it nearly impossible for anybody to have a real talk about real wealth inequality or have any legitimate conversations about class.

They made it so anything that hurts the richest of us, even just a little bit, could ruin the retirement plans of millions who saved all of their life and listened to the wrong people.

Do you know how many times I read and actually had people tell me in real life that I was making a mistake paying for my house with cash when I didn't need to and that I should have kept that money in my retirement account? There was a point of time where that was inescapable dogma from anyone "in the know".

I've lived here going on 14 years now. It paid for itself 6 years ago based off of local rent rates that I would have been paying in that time, with all the adjustments made to bills I do pay that I wouldn't and vice versa.

Though it's not money in the bank, that's 8 years of rent receipts I didn't flush down any toilets and it's another 6 years worth of rent I wasn't required to pay to anyone. My property taxes even after the increase I fought and several more years where everyone's has gone up is still less than most people pay for 1 month's rent.

Not only didn't I lose any money, but doing it the way I did it is paying me back right here, right now. Not only is my house valued at 3 times the price I paid for it, but I "make" over $13,200 per year just for the 11 months of rent I'm not paying after I pay the property taxes. More than that, when you consider there were no taxes exchanged and if I were paying rent I'd also be paying income tax on the money for that rent. And then quite a bit more than that when you consider I'm basing my rental numbers on a 1 bedroom/1 bathroom apartment and not a full house.

And that goes on until the day I die or I sell this place. And that number increases with the inflation of rent prices every year. And if for some reason it actually somehow manages to start falling every year with the average rent prices and things to start getting better, that doesn't hurt me because I wasn't actually making any money at all. If the average rent fell $300 per month to $900 around here again, all I've lost is bragging rights on about $3000 per year I was "making" in my situation, simply by doing nothing. And I get to be surrounded by happier people all around me who aren't walking around with that noose so tight around their neck all the time.

Meanwhile, I don't spend one single second stressing about the Stock Market. I was blissfully unaware that it had gone from 20,000 to over 40,000 when I wasn't paying any attention.

... and now I can just sit back on the sidelines and eat some popcorn while all of this plays out.

And on top of all of this the value of my house has gone up at a higher ratio than the stock market I wasn't paying attention to did. The house I don't have any intention of selling and the house I would actually prefer went down in value along with everyone elses'. I'm paying too much property taxes now because of all the investors. My house is seriously overvalued. I'm one of the only ones with sense enough to actively go out of my way to have it devalued and it's still overvalued. Hopefully we can slowly ease those prices back down and we don't end up with another market collapse.

Truly... Good luck to y'all.

I'm always rooting for us little guys.

I think we'll all make it through this.

Maybe we'll even learn a few lessons from it this time and we won't always be so quick to believe anything somebody calling themselves an expert tells us to believe.

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

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

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Tuesday, April 8, 2025 12:30 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Well, SECOND, I feel sorry for ppl whose retirement funds are tied up in stocks. A lot of ppl at work put their deferred comp into stocks, and every time the market went down they all looked like they were waiting on a potentially fatal diagnosis. Talk about stress!

I had enough stress in my life.

But I did clean up investing in forex tho, once. And bank stocks after the 2008 implosion. Did quite well in silver too. But I'm really just a dabbler with a 50/50 success rate.

BTW IMHO the only real investment is venture capital. The money that goes into buying stocks... does anyone really believe the company is raising money for some capital improvement , and not just making corporate officers rich on their stock options?

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Tuesday, April 8, 2025 5:17 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Do you know how many times I read and actually had people tell me in real life that I was making a mistake paying for my house with cash when I didn't need to and that I should have kept that money in my retirement account? There was a point of time where that was inescapable dogma from anyone "in the know".

I thought that a paid advertisement had been inserted into my reading. But then I realized that it was 6ixStringJack patting himself on the back for his farsighted financial acumen once again.

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

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Tuesday, April 8, 2025 5:20 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Well, SECOND, I feel sorry for ppl whose retirement funds are tied up in stocks.

Signym is empathizing with ppl. Any left for these ppl?

US ends life-saving food aid for millions. The World Food Program calls it a ‘death sentence’

8:15 PM CDT, April 7, 2025

https://apnews.com/article/usaid-trump-humanitarian-aid-1167e0f64dde9a
b6cafa0d5e0b812710

The projects were being canceled “for the convenience of the U.S. Government” at the direction of Jeremy Lewin, a top lieutenant at Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency who was appointed to oversee the elimination of USAID programs, according to termination notices sent to partners and viewed by the AP.

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

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Tuesday, April 8, 2025 5:24 AM

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

David Brooks: I Should Have Seen This Coming

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/05/trumpism-maga-pop
ulism-power-pursuit/682116/

George Orwell is a useful guide to what we’re witnessing. He understood that it is possible for people to seek power without having any vision of the good. “The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake,” an apparatchik says in 1984. “We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power.” How is power demonstrated? By making others suffer. Orwell’s character continues: “Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation.”

Russell Vought, Donald Trump’s budget director, sounds like he walked straight out of 1984. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains,” he said of federal workers, speaking at an event in 2023. “We want to put them in trauma.”

The pathetic thing is that I didn’t see this coming even though I’ve been living around these people my whole adult life. I joined the conservative movement in the 1980s, when I worked in turn at National Review, The Washington Times, and The Wall Street Journal editorial page. There were two kinds of people in our movement back then, the conservatives and the reactionaries. We conservatives earnestly read Milton Friedman, James Burnham, Whittaker Chambers, and Edmund Burke. The reactionaries just wanted to shock the left. We conservatives oriented our lives around writing for intellectual magazines; the reactionaries were attracted to TV and radio. We were on the political right but had many liberal friends; they had contempt for anyone not on the anti-establishment right. They were not pro-conservative—they were anti-left. I have come to appreciate that this is an important difference.

I should have understood this much sooner, because the reactionaries had revealed their true character as far back as January 1986. A group of progressive students at Dartmouth had erected a shantytown on campus to protest apartheid. One night, a group of 12 students, most of them associated with the right-wing Dartmouth Review, descended on the shanties with sledgehammers and smashed them down.

Even then I was appalled. Apartheid was evil, and worth opposing. A nighttime raid with sledgehammers seemed more Gestapo than Burkean. But conservative intellectuals didn’t take this seriously enough. In large part, I think this was because we looked down on the Dartmouth Review mafia, whose members had included Laura Ingraham and Dinesh D’Souza. Their intellectual standards were so obviously third-rate. I don’t know how to put this politely, but they just seemed creepy—nakedly ambitious in a way that I thought would destroy them in the end.

Instead, history has smiled on them. A prominent publisher of right-wing authors once told me that the way to sell conservative books is not to write a good book—it’s to write a book that will offend the left, thereby causing the reactionaries to rally to your side and buy it. That led to books with titles such as The Big Lie: Exposing the Nazi Roots of the American Left, and to Ann Coulter’s entire career. Owning the libs became a lucrative strategy.

Although Trump may have campaigned as a MAGA populist, leveraging this working-class resentment to gain power, he governs as a Palm Beach elitist. Trump and Elon Musk are billionaires who went to the University of Pennsylvania. J. D. Vance went to Yale Law School. Pete Hegseth went to Princeton and Harvard. Vivek Ramaswamy went to Yale and Harvard. Stephen Miller went to Duke. Ted Cruz went to Princeton and Harvard. Many of Musk’s DOGE workers, according to The New York Times, come from elite institutions—Harvard, Princeton, Morgan Stanley, McKinsey, Wharton. These are the Vineyard Vines nihilists, the spiritual descendants of the elite bad boys at the Dartmouth Review. This political moment isn’t populists versus elitists; it is, as I’ve written before, like a civil war in a prep school where the sleazy rich kids are taking on the pretentious rich kids.

The MAGA elite rode to power on working-class votes, but—trust me, I know some of them—they don’t care about the working class. Trump and his crew could have taken office with actual plans to make life better for working-class Americans. An administration that cared about the working class would seek to address its problems, such as the fact that the poorest Americans die an average of 10 to 15 years younger than their higher-income counterparts, or that by sixth grade, many of the children in the poorest school districts have fallen four grade levels behind those in the richest. An administration that cared about these people would have offered a bipartisan industrial policy to create working-class jobs.

These faux populists have no interest in that. Instead of helping workers, they focus on civil war with their left-wing fellow elites. During Trump’s first months in office, one of their highest priorities has been to destroy the places where they think liberal elites work—the scientific community, the foreign-aid community, the Kennedy Center, the Department of Education, universities.

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

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Tuesday, April 8, 2025 4:03 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Pentagon chief hails first $1 trillion defense budget

President Donald Trump announced the record boost in US military spending on Monday

Oy vey!

Wrong direction, chief!

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Tuesday, April 8, 2025 4:28 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Pentagon chief hails first $1 trillion defense budget

President Donald Trump announced the record boost in US military spending on Monday

Oy vey!

Wrong direction, chief!

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

Yeah. That one belongs in the legitimate gripes about Trump thread.

Although that thread has already been ruined long ago with Second's crap.

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

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

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Tuesday, April 8, 2025 4:31 PM

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

Do you know how many times I read and actually had people tell me in real life that I was making a mistake paying for my house with cash when I didn't need to and that I should have kept that money in my retirement account? There was a point of time where that was inescapable dogma from anyone "in the know".
I thought that a paid advertisement had been inserted into my reading. But then I realized that it was 6ixStringJack patting himself on the back for his farsighted financial acumen once again.

I never tire of speaking about my own brilliance. Especially when the choices I made flew right in the face of all the so-called "experts" and I came out way on top.

Good luck in the stock market buddy. I feel for you. Really I do.

Be sure to thank Paul Krugman for all his great advice so far.

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

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

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Tuesday, April 8, 2025 4:33 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
David Brooks: I Should Have Seen This Coming

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/05/trumpism-maga-pop
ulism-power-pursuit/682116/

George Orwell is a useful guide to what we’re witnessing.

Fuck off David.

From Covid to Inflation to International Politics, 1984 was the blueprint for Biden*'s administration.

The reason you didn't see it coming is because YOU, specifically, are part of what George Orwell was warning about. And any suggested solution you propose in this article for what Trump should have been doing all this time instead of what he has been doing is all things that your party promised several times and always failed to follow through with after they won an election. If this weren't true, Harris would be President today.

And nobody gives a flying fuck about your opinions on any topic in 2025.

Enjoy the rest of your life being irrelevant. You had a good ride for a grifter.

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

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

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Tuesday, April 8, 2025 5:04 PM

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

Donald Trump Must Be Impeached

By Andrew Latham | April 8, 2025

https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/donald-trump-must-be-impeached/

The Case for Impeaching Donald Trump Is Clear: The Will to Do It Just Isn’t There – The case for impeaching President Donald Trump—again—is not difficult to make.

In some ways, it’s stronger than ever.

And yet, it will go nowhere.

Because the question before us isn’t whether Trump should be impeached. It’s whether America still possesses the political maturity—or the institutional integrity—to confront what that would actually mean.

Let’s be clear: Trump’s return to the presidency was a democratic result, a response to elite failure. The American people, or at least enough of them in enough places, gave him a mandate. But a mandate to govern is not a license to undermine the very structures that make governing possible. What we are witnessing is not a debate over policy direction or ideological contest. It is a slow-motion confrontation between one man and the constitutional order itself—disguised, as always, as populism.

Already, this administration is skirting the outer edges of legality and constitutional fidelity. The warning signs are not buried deep. They are right in front of us—Trump defying court rulings, publicly deriding judges who rule against him, and calling for their impeachment simply for doing their jobs. His vision of presidential power is not expansive—it is absolute, even monarchical. And that, in the American system, is a tendency that impeachment was designed to check.

It’s tempting to wave this all away – to pretend what’s going on is not really a threat to democracy. After all, haven’t we been down this road before? Twice? Didn’t the American people just signal that they are, if not enthusiastic, at least unbothered by Trump’s past offenses? That’s the wrong lesson. Impeachment is not a popularity contest.

It’s not a referendum on electoral legitimacy. It is a constitutional remedy for those moments when the chief executive officer refuses to be constrained by law, when the very idea of checks and balances becomes intolerable to the man at the top.

By that standard, Trump qualifies.

The fundamental political issue isn’t Trump’s personal conduct, however contemptuous it may be, but his systematic rejection of the system of checks and balances that defines the American system of republican democracy. When a sitting president declares that courts have no right to question his policies, when he floats the idea of ignoring rulings from various courts, and when he demands his supporters in Congress simply accede to his demands, the republic is not merely being tested. It is being threatened.

What makes this moment especially dangerous is that Trump is not alone. He is enabled by a political movement that no longer even pretends to be constitutionalist in any meaningful sense. The institutional Republican Party has become a vehicle not for policy, but for power. It does not challenge Trump’s violations—it echoes and amplifies them. The legislative branch, designed by the Founders to check executive ambition, has become more of a cheering section than an institutional constraint on that ambition.

And so, Trump will not be impeached—not because he doesn’t deserve it, but because the institutional will, or capacity, no longer exists. This is not a partisan point. It’s a structural one. The House majority, cowed by Trump’s influence, is incapable of serious oversight. The Senate, still reeling from the political trauma of two failed impeachment efforts, has no appetite to try again. And much of the electorate, exhausted by years of performative outrage and media madness, has lost the capacity to distinguish between real constitutional overeach and mere partisan posturing.

That collapse of discernment – or, in classical terms, prudence – is perhaps the most dangerous development of all. When impeachment becomes nothing more than a punchline, constitutional decay follows. We are now at the point where a president can announce, openly, that he may ignore the courts and Congress—and half the country shrugs. The argument is no longer about whether Trump’s behavior is unprecedented. It’s about whether precedent matters at all.

This is how republics fall—not with tanks in the streets, but with one or two branches of a tripartite government abdicating their duty to constrain the others. Trump didn’t invent this dynamic. But he has perfected it. And in his second term, unshackled by reelection pressure and surrounded by loyalists who view the Constitution as a nuisance rather than the DNA of democratic self-governance, he is testing just how much power a president can seize before anyone stops him.

Some will argue that the courts can stand as the last line of defense. But courts are not self-enforcing. They issue rulings. They do not command armies. If a president refuses to comply—and if Congress refuses to hold the chief executive accountable—then the entire system becomes performative. It exists on paper, and in the media, but not in political practice.

This is where we now find ourselves: with a president who should be impeached for his open constitutional overreach, for his contempt for the constitutional system of checks and balances, and for his effort to turn the executive branch into a quasi-monarchy. But he won’t be. Because the mechanisms of accountability have collapsed, not under the weight of any one scandal, but under the corrosive acid of political cowardice.

It may be that the American people, or at least the institutional players who claim to represent them, have decided that the cost of removing a president—even one who openly challenges the legitimacy of the courts and the Constitution—is higher than the cost of keeping him in place. If that is true, then the crisis we face is not Trump. It is us.

Impeachment is not about vengeance. It is not about political theater. It is about whether we believe, in the very marrow of our political bones, that executive power must be constrained. If we no longer believe that, then we should stop pretending. The pretense is simply worse than the reality.

Trump should be impeached – and convicted. But he won’t be. And in that quiet abdication, a republic inches closer to becoming a feudal state, one ruled not by law but by feudal ties of fealty, homage and service – one composed of lords and vassals rather than citizens and their elected representatives.

And the truly tragic part? When the reckoning comes, we will pretend we never saw it coming. But we did. We just lacked the courage to act.

About the Author: Andrew Latham

Andrew Latham is a non-resident fellow at Defense Priorities and a professor of international relations and political theory at Macalester College in Saint Paul, MN. You can follow him on X: @aakatham.

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

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Tuesday, April 8, 2025 5:06 PM