REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

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

POSTED BY: 6IXSTRINGJACK
UPDATED: Monday, April 14, 2025 11:32
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VIEWED: 15630
PAGE 29 of 31

Tuesday, April 8, 2025 5:11 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Trump "calling judges names"? Hardly a reason for impeachment. After all, how many politicians and deep-staters called Trump a "Putin pupppet" and conspired to drive him from office on false charges?

Now, if Trump conspired with the DOJ and FBI to cook up fake investigations on judges he didn't like, and they conspired with Congress, and the media to organize a defamation campaign leading to false charges ... THAT would be grounds for impeachment.

Wouldn't you say??



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"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 5:47 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Donald Trump Must Be Impeached

By Andrew Latham | April 8, 2025


Go ahead and do it pussy. See where it gets you.

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

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

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Tuesday, April 8, 2025 5:48 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Stocks Pump'n'Dump As Beijing's 'Nope' Trumps Bessent's Hope

Appeals Court Clears Way For DOGE To Access Data At 2 Agencies

IRS To Provide Illegal Immigrants' Data To ICE Under New Agreement

New Research Confirms Standardized Tests Are Predictor Of 'College Success - Without Bias'

US Supreme Court Sides With Trump (For Now) In Fired Federal Worker Case

Trump Set To Sign Exec Order Boosting Domestic Coal To Meet AI Power Demands [that's what you get for insisting that any new gas-fired plant must have 100% carbon capture]

Dismal, 3Y Auction Has 3rd Biggest Tail On Record, Only Covid, SVB Worse

-----------
"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 5:48 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Trump "calling judges names"? Hardly a reason for impeachment. After all, how many politicians and deep-staters called Trump a "Putin pupppet" and conspired to drive him from office on false charges?

Now, if Trump conspired with the DOJ and FBI to cook up fake investigations on judges he didn't like, and they conspired with Congress, and the media to organize a defamation campaign leading to false charges ... THAT would be grounds for impeachment.

Wouldn't you say??




You write to Second as if he has the neurological capability to decipher the meaning of any of your words.



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

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

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Tuesday, April 8, 2025 5:50 PM

JAYNEZTOWN


and just when the US film industry thought it could make money again?

quote

To be clear: No official word or reliable source says or suggests China has considered banning US films in the aim of countering U.S tariffs.
https://x.com/gavinincinema/status/1909553786697154837
A local blogger gave the suggestion on social media, but I don’t know why presses from both China and US take it as official thoughts.



Full on Global Trade War might kick off btw

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Tuesday, April 8, 2025 5:53 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by JAYNEZTOWN:
Full on Global Trade War might kick off btw


*meh*

Ain't going to wreck nothing for me. Good luck everyone.

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

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

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Tuesday, April 8, 2025 9:00 PM

SECOND

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


Vance’s whopper on alleged Social Security fraud

The vice president falsely claims 40 percent of calls to a retirement program involve fraud.

By Glenn Kessler | April 8, 2025

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/04/08/vance-social-securi
ty-fraud-false/

“You look at people who are 150 years old who are fraudulently collecting Social Security payments. You see our Social Security system — 40 percent of the people who are calling are actually committing fraud. That means the 60 percent who need their Social Security checks are waiting in line.”

— Vice President JD Vance, during an interview on Fox & Friends, April 3

In the lexicon of the second Trump administration, “fraud” often translates to “programs we dislike.” The administration dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development based on specious examples of alleged fraud.

Now, we would be the first to admit that foreign aid is an easy target for disdain, as many people dramatically overestimate how much money the United States distributes to other countries. But Social Security is one of the most beloved government programs in the U.S. Even Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation blueprint the administration is using to target government agencies for cutbacks, offered no suggestions for cutting Social Security, despite efforts by Kamala Harris’s campaign to claim as much.

So why is the Trump administration attacking Social Security as being fraudulent? As Willie Sutton supposedly said when asked why he robbed banks: “Because that’s where the money is.” Social Security is 22 percent of the federal budget — and that’s more than 20 times the funds spent on foreign aid.

But administration officials are going to have to come up with better lines than this — both of which have been debunked by the Social Security Administration itself.

The Facts

First, a quick refresher. Social Security was created in response to the pervasive poverty during the Great Depression. It is designed to provide workers with a basic level of income in retirement, as well as disability pay and life insurance while they work.

About 80 percent of the 68 million beneficiaries are retired workers and their dependents; the rest are disabled workers or survivors. The benefits are progressive, meaning lower-income workers get a relatively better deal than higher-income workers; however, workers making above a certain salary ($176,100 in 2025) don’t have to pay as much of their income into the system, though their benefits are capped too. (About 6 percent of workers earn above the taxable maximum.)

About 96 percent of workers must pay a certain amount of their paycheck, generally 6.2 percent. That amount is matched by their employers, for a total tax of 12.4 percent. (Some state and local workers don’t participate in Social Security.)

The benefits are inflation-adjusted after initial receipt, a feature that is almost impossible to find in the U.S. annuity market. Social Security is a pay-as-you-go system, which means that payments collected today are immediately used to pay benefits. Because Social Security was not prefunded, it depends heavily on the contributions of current workers. The baby-boom generation (people born between 1946 and 1964) will have fully hit retirement age by 2031, reducing the number of workers per retiree. Meanwhile, before the coronavirus pandemic, people had been living longer and thus will collect benefits longer, while people are not having as many children, which limits the pool of new workers.

All of that means that there is a crunch coming in less than 10 years. If Congress does not act to either raise revenue or change benefits — both politically perilous positions — then benefits would automatically be cut by 23 percent in 2033. The administration appears to be looking for ways to find savings through the shortcut of exposing supposed fraud.

Trump, in his speech to Congress last month, also claimed that people as old as 150 years had been getting benefits. But The Washington Post had reported in February that this is largely a coding issue. The Social Security Administration (SSA) maintains its databases using COBOL, a nearly 70-year-old computer programming language that doesn’t have a standardized way to store and work with dates. Often a default date is chosen, most commonly May 20, 1875, if no birth date is known.

Moreover, SSA had announced in 2022 that benefits automatically cut off when someone reaches 115 years of age. So it is simply impossible for “people who are 150 years old who are fraudulently collecting Social Security payments,” as Vance put it.

But notice the pattern: The Post debunked it in February, Trump repeated it anyway in a major speech in March, where it was debunked again, and then Vance repeated it one more time in April. Officials presumably believe repetition of falsehoods will make them sound more real.

As for Vance’s claim that 40 percent of the people who are calling Social Security are committing fraud, that is an absurdity on its face — the kind of twisted logic that turns up at the end of a long game of telephone tag. Vance echoed a statement made by billionaire Elon Musk, when he was campaigning on behalf of a conservative judicial candidate in Wisconsin on March 30. Like Vance, Musk said 40 percent of the calls to Social Security were fraudulent.

In a March 28 interview on Fox News, Aram Moghaddassi, a DOGE engineer, had given a slightly more nuanced version: “At Social Security, one of the first things that we learned is that they get phone calls every day of people trying to change direct-deposit information. So when you want to change your bank account, you can call Social Security. We learned 40 percent of the calls that they get are from fraudsters.”

But here’s what the Social Security Administration actually said on March 12: “Approximately 40 percent of Social Security direct deposit fraud is associated with someone calling SSA to change direct deposit bank information.” As a result, SSA said it would begin requiring people to change bank account information either in person or with two-factor authentication on the Social Security website.

The only thing similar to Vance’s statement is the use of 40 percent. Just simple math shows that the percentage of calls to the agency that involve Social Security direct-deposit fraud is minuscule. The Social Security Administration receives about 80 million calls a year on its national 800 number, handling all sorts of queries. For Vance to be right, 32 million calls would need to be fraudulent efforts to divert direct-deposit payments.

A 2012 audit by the SSA inspector general only identified, over an 11-month period, 19,000 reports of unauthorized changes to a direct-deposit account or a suspected attempt to make an unauthorized change. The inspector general interviewed 29 beneficiaries who did not authorize the changes. It turned out that over 30 percent of those frauds originated through the agency’s 800 number, which is roughly similar to the SSA’s statement of about 40 percent. Most of the rest took place at a financial institution, as almost half of the people interviewed reported they gave up private information to someone who called and falsely claimed the Social Security beneficiary had won a lottery. As a result of the report, SSA tightened procedures.

Note that one-third of 19,000 reports (about 6,000) is a minuscule percentage of 80 million calls (which is also what the agency handled in 2012). A White House official said an internal, unreleased study by the SSA’s call center operations team found that, since 2023, over 40 percent of all direct-deposit change request calls they received came from fraudulent callers. The official was unable to say how many calls Social Security receives a year to change direct-deposit information.

In March, Leland Dudek, the agency’s acting commissioner, told reporters that the agency loses $100 million a year to direct-deposit fraud. That sounds like a lot of money, but Social Security doles out $1.6 trillion in benefit payments a year, with 99.3 percent of those payments made via direct deposit.

Put another way, only 0.00625 percent of Social Security benefits are lost to direct-deposit fraud, with 0.0025 percent (40 percent) via Social Security’s 800 number.

Asked for a response, Vance press secretary Taylor Van Kirk sent this statement: “Instead of investigating the tremendous waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government that the DOGE team has been valiantly uncovering, the left-wing media would prefer to try to smear the Administration and the DOGE team’s work protecting seniors from scammers and preserving Social Security payments for current and future beneficiaries.”

The Pinocchio Test

There’s a monumental difference between 40 percent and 0.0025 percent. But in the Trump administration’s scramble to serve up outrage and scandal about alleged fraud at Social Security, Vance went on national television and told a whopper. He earns Four Pinocchios.

Four Pinocchios

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 10:22 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Vance’s whopper on alleged Social Security fraud

The vice president falsely claims 40 percent of calls to a retirement program involve fraud.


Nothing false about it. At least not anything presented in this article. He stated what he stated above. You're boy Glenn is trying to frame it as if Vance said that 40 percent of people getting social security involve fraud.

You are an idiot.

Quote:
Moreover, SSA had announced in 2022 that benefits automatically cut off when someone reaches 115 years of age. So it is simply impossible for “people who are 150 years old who are fraudulently collecting Social Security payments,” as Vance put it.

But notice the pattern: The Post debunked it in February, Trump repeated it anyway in a major speech in March, where it was debunked again, and then Vance repeated it one more time in April. Officials presumably believe repetition of falsehoods will make them sound more real.


Anybody can say whatever they want. It doesn't mean that it's true. Especially when there was zero oversight.

I trust Vance a lot more than I trust anybody working inside the government circa 2022 who were saying anything that would reflect positive on Joe Biden*'s shitshow of a presidency that you inflicted upon the world.

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

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

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Wednesday, April 9, 2025 8:26 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Vance’s whopper on alleged Social Security fraud

The vice president falsely claims 40 percent of calls to a retirement program involve fraud.


Nothing false about it. At least not anything presented in this article. He stated what he stated above. You're boy Glenn is trying to frame it as if Vance said that 40 percent of people getting social security involve fraud.

You are an idiot.

Anybody can say whatever they want. It doesn't mean that it's true. Especially when there was zero oversight.

I trust Vance a lot more than I trust anybody working inside the government circa 2022 who were saying anything that would reflect positive on Joe Biden*'s shitshow of a presidency that you inflicted upon the world.
The Trumptards at work are always confident that they have correctly diagnosed a machine malfunction. They are right if this is a frequently seen problem, but when it is infrequent, the Trumptard's diagnosis seldom has any connection to the final fix. Trumptards only slowly get better at what they are doing. They plateau early in their careers because of their excessive self-confidence. I'd tell them, or 6ixStringJack, to rethink their diagnosis, but they come up with the same one even after whatever it is going on in their heads labeled "rethinking".

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

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Wednesday, April 9, 2025 8:58 AM

SECOND

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


The end of IRS enforcement

Joel Eissenberg | April 8, 2025 5:14 pm

https://angrybearblog.com/2025/04/the-end-of-irs-enforcement

Don’t like income taxes? Next year, don’t pay ‘em. Who’s gonna force you to?

“DOGE is also in the process of essentially closing down the Tax Division at the Department of Justice.

“Since the Tax Division is a statutory creation, it can’t literally be shuttered. As DOGE has done at numerous other offices and agencies, the entity is kept notionally alive in a zombie state of suspended animation: a few employees, a desk lamp and a couple workstations. That’s the legal fig leaf that allows the White House, with a compliant judiciary, to say that it hasn’t violated any congressional statute or terminated one of Congress’ creations. It’s simply choosing a new strategy of enforcement.

“What they plan to do is essentially “reform” and “reorganize” the Tax Division out of existence. The plan is to dramatically reduce the number of Tax Division staff attorneys and then take the great majority of those that remain and disperse them out to the country’s 93 U.S. attorneys’ offices. Only a small managerial layer is to be left working from Washington, DC.”

It’s the 1% who make their money through complex schemes that require government tax accountants to figure out. Get rid of those folks and you have an IRS in name only. Only the little people pay taxes under Trump.

DOGE ends tax enforcement https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/doge-to-shutter-doj-tax-division

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

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Wednesday, April 9, 2025 9:07 AM

SECOND

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


The Cost of Chaos: This is Getting Scary
And it’s all on Donald Trump

By Paul Krugman | Apr 09, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-cost-of-chaos-this-is-getting

Herbert Hoover, move over.

The 31st president has long been the patron saint of bad economic management. But while Hoover responded badly to the coming of the Great Depression, he didn’t cause the slump. By contrast, it seems more and more likely that Donald Trump will single-handedly push the solid economy he inherited into crisis. This is, as Trump might say, disastrous policy like nobody has seen before.

How is he managing that feat? While the vast majority of economists think high tariffs are bad policy, they don’t normally associate them with recession. Many, perhaps most economists who’ve looked hard at the evidence don’t accept the popular story that the Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930 caused the Great Depression.

But this time looks and feels different. Why is a Trump Slump brought on by tariffs looking more probable by the day?

Like many others, I’ve been talking a lot about the huge uncertainty Trump is creating. Ignore the desperate efforts to retcon Trump’s trade policy, to pretend that it comes out of some coherent economic doctrine. We’re clearly looking at tariffs driven by id, not ideology — Trump’s biggest motivation seems to be the desire to see other countries grovel. Because there’s no clear policy objective, nobody knows what Trump will do tomorrow, let alone over the next few years. Did you have 104 percent tariffs on China and 34 percent tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber on your dance card? (Are 2x4s the industry of the future?)

As I wrote a few days ago,

Permanent tariffs are bad for the economy, but businesses can, for the most part, find a way to live with them. What business can’t deal with is a regime under which trade policy reflects the whims of a mad king, where nobody knows what tariffs will be next week, let alone over the next five years. Are these tariffs going to be permanent? Are they a negotiating ploy? The administration can’t even get its talking points straight, with top officials saying that tariffs aren’t up for negotiation only to be undercut by Trump a few hours later.

Under these conditions, how is a business supposed to make investments, or any kind of long-term commitment? Everyone is going to sit on their hands, waiting for clarity that may never come.

But wait, there’s more. There are growing signs that we’re at risk of a tariff-induced financial crisis.

There are multiple indicators of that risk. Bear with me while I give a somewhat wonkish explanation of one indicator that really caught my eye.

Back in the good old days, that is, two weeks ago, the main concern about Trump’s tariffs was that they would cause sustained inflation. We knew that they would produce at least a temporary bump in consumer prices, but the big question — crucial for Federal Reserve policy — was whether this bump would lead to a sustained rise in expected inflation, and become entrenched in the economy.

That’s what happened in the 1970s and is the reason getting inflation down in the 1980s required years of high unemployment. It didn’t happen during the Biden years, which is why this time we were able to get inflation way down without a recession.

So everyone has been watching measures of expected inflation for clues. And the news from consumer surveys has been very worrying. Here’s long-term expected inflation from the widely cited Michigan Consumer Surveys:

Source: University of Michigan

Whoa. But consumers don’t set prices. Furthermore, the last few years have shown that what consumers say they believe about the economy isn’t a good predictor of their behavior. So you’d want some confirmation from other measures.

Late last month Austan Goolsbee, president of the Chicago Fed, said that it would be a “major red flag of concern” if market-based measures of expected inflation rose. He mainly meant “breakeven” rates, the spread between interest rates on bonds that are indexed to consumer prices and bonds that aren’t. That spread can normally be seen as an implicit prediction of how much consumer prices will rise.

So here’s the 5-year breakeven rate this year:


Wait, what? Has expected inflation actually fallen as Trump’s tariff plans have proved far more aggressive than anyone expected?

No, that’s not what’s happening. What we’re actually seeing is investors, especially hedge funds, selling assets in a “dash for cash.” When investors sell off bonds, they drive their price down, which means that they push their yield up. Why does this cause the breakeven rate to fall? Because the market for indexed bonds is relatively small and thin, so the rush to sell has a bigger effect in depressing prices and raising interest rates for index bonds than for ordinary bonds.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. Look at the breakeven rate over the long term: It plunged during the 2008-9 financial crisis and again when Covid hit:


Investors weren’t really predicting huge deflation in 2008-9, they were just rushing to sell assets and raise cash. And that’s what’s happening now, although not to the same degree (yet).

In other words, I was looking for guidance about inflation and instead found the telltale signs of an incipient financial crisis. Others, looking at other indicators, from the basis trade to junk bonds to struggles to refinance private loans, are seeing the same thing.

Why is this happening? Trump’s erratic policies have increased the risk of recession, but besides that their sheer extremism — from almost-free trade to tariffs higher than Smoot-Hawley in less than three months — has hurt some borrowers much more than others. Look at the chart for Tesla. There’s a reason Elon Musk is lashing out at Peter Navarro, Trump’s tariff guru, calling him “Peter Retarrdo” and declaring that he is a “moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks.”


Aren’t you glad that grownups are in charge?

And here’s the thing: Lenders will be hurt if some borrowers are forced into default, even if others are doing well, because lenders don’t share in the upside. So even though stock prices are dominating the headlines, the real, scary action is in the bond market. The nightmare scenario, which we saw play out in 2008, is that falling asset prices cause a scramble for cash, which leads to fire sales that drive prices even lower, and the whole system implodes. Suddenly, that scenario doesn’t look impossible.

Maybe we’ll steer away from the edge of the abyss. But Trumponomics has already proved worse than even its harshest critics imagined, and the worst may be yet to come.

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

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Wednesday, April 9, 2025 10:48 AM

SECOND

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


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?

OK, Ackman was fooled, 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.

If Trump II really had been like Trump I, America’s oligarchs would be very happy right now. (I’m happy with a regime where my income taxes probably won’t be audited because Trump closed down the part of the IRS that audits complex tax returns. The Winds of Change are Blowing, 6ixStringJack!)

https://angrybearblog.com/2025/04/clueless-and-rich

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

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Wednesday, April 9, 2025 1:12 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
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?

OK, Ackman was fooled, 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.

If Trump II really had been like Trump I, America’s oligarchs would be very happy right now. (I’m happy with a regime where my income taxes probably won’t be audited because Trump closed down the part of the IRS that audits complex tax returns. The Winds of Change are Blowing, 6ixStringJack!)

https://angrybearblog.com/2025/04/clueless-and-rich

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



You should be happy. You know how many billionaires he fucked.

You Democrats have no core values.

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

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

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Wednesday, April 9, 2025 1:13 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The end of IRS enforcement

Joel Eissenberg | April 8, 2025 5:14 pm

https://angrybearblog.com/2025/04/the-end-of-irs-enforcement

Don’t like income taxes? Next year, don’t pay ‘em. Who’s gonna force you to?


You Democrats just keep saying the dumbest shit.

Go ahead and try it. See what happens.

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

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

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Wednesday, April 9, 2025 1:14 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Vance’s whopper on alleged Social Security fraud

The vice president falsely claims 40 percent of calls to a retirement program involve fraud.


Nothing false about it. At least not anything presented in this article. He stated what he stated above. You're boy Glenn is trying to frame it as if Vance said that 40 percent of people getting social security involve fraud.

You are an idiot.

Anybody can say whatever they want. It doesn't mean that it's true. Especially when there was zero oversight.

I trust Vance a lot more than I trust anybody working inside the government circa 2022 who were saying anything that would reflect positive on Joe Biden*'s shitshow of a presidency that you inflicted upon the world.
The Trumptards at work


Nobody is interested in reading fake stories about your fake business.

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

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

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Wednesday, April 9, 2025 3:27 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Nobody is interested in reading fake stories about your fake business.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
6ixStringJack, somebody needs to shoot tranquilizing darts into both you and Trump to calm your senseless talk. That is the primary weakness with all Trumptards. They run their mouths without using their brains. In 90 days, or sooner, Trump will be giving more crazy/contradictory orders about tariffs:

Stocks surged Wednesday after President Donald Trump announced a pause in some of the ‘reciprocal’ tariffs, causing a market that’s been under extreme pressure for the last week to explode higher.

“I have authorized a 90 day PAUSE, and a substantially lowered Reciprocal Tariff during this period, of 10%, also effective immediately,” Trump posted on his Truth Social. Trump, in the same post, said he was raising the tariff on China higher again to 125%. (Trump should have said a thousand percent because that is fewer syllables and just as mindlessly excessive. Makes the tariff calculation simple by adding a zero to the price of everything. Even Trump can do that multiplication in his head.)

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/08/stock-market-today-live-updates-.html

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

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Wednesday, April 9, 2025 3:54 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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

Nobody is interested in reading fake stories about your fake business.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
6ixStringJack, somebody needs to shoot tranquilizing darts into both you and Trump to calm your senseless talk.


I'm not the one losing my mind everyday.

I'm quite happy with the way things are going now.

Have fun being miserable. You earned it.



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

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

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Wednesday, April 9, 2025 6:29 PM

SECOND

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


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

Nobody is interested in reading fake stories about your fake business.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
6ixStringJack, somebody needs to shoot tranquilizing darts into both you and Trump to calm your senseless talk.


I'm not the one losing my mind everyday.

I'm quite happy with the way things are going now.

Have fun being miserable. You earned it.



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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
6ix, for entertainment Trump can say that he is about to bomb Ottawa because Canada won't peacefully joint the United States. Then he changes his mind.

Next, Trump swears he will bomb Copenhagen because Denmark won't peacefully allow Greenland to become an American property. Then he changes his mind.

Next, he says he will drop bombs in Mexico because . . . whatever reason pops into his head. Then he changes his mind.

Trump needs to be shot with a tranquilizer gun. Or maybe shot in head with a lead bullet to make sure he doesn't nuke the world whenever he feels the need.

Or Trump can return to his old routine of raising tariffs because, you know, he feels the need to finish what he started.

Trump is as mental unstable as the typical Trumptard, which is the main reason Trumptards have so many problems staying sober and holding on to jobs and marriages, and maintaining financial solvency and a healthy weight to height ratio. Trump sure is getting fatter and fatter.

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

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Wednesday, April 9, 2025 6:56 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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

Nobody is interested in reading fake stories about your fake business.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
6ixStringJack, somebody needs to shoot tranquilizing darts into both you and Trump to calm your senseless talk.


I'm not the one losing my mind everyday.

I'm quite happy with the way things are going now.

Have fun being miserable. You earned it.



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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
6ix, for entertainment Trump can say that he is about to bomb Ottawa because Canada won't peacefully joint the United States. Then he changes his mind.

Next, Trump swears he will bomb Copenhagen because Denmark won't peacefully allow Greenland to become an American property. Then he changes his mind.

Next, he says he will drop bombs in Mexico because . . . whatever reason pops into his head. Then he changes his mind.

Trump needs to be shot with a tranquilizer gun. Or maybe shot in head with a lead bullet to make sure he doesn't nuke the world whenever he feels the need.

Or Trump can return to his old routine of raising tariffs because, you know, he feels the need to finish what he started.

Trump is as mental unstable as the typical Trumptard, which is the main reason Trumptards have so many problems staying sober and holding on to jobs and marriages, and maintaining financial solvency and a healthy weight to height ratio. Trump sure is getting fatter and fatter.

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



I think he's just 10 times as smart as you, and you dummies are playing checkers.

He's outsmarted all of the dipshits that you voted for, time and time and time again. And he's made them all, along with the entire legacy media, eat crow for dinner for almost a decade now.


You keep cheerleading and praying for the downfall of America.

Because at this point, outside of finally shutting the fuck up, that's all your failed and dead Party has left for you to do.



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

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

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Wednesday, April 9, 2025 9:17 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

I think he's just 10 times as smart as you, and you dummies are playing checkers.

He's outsmarted all of the dipshits that you voted for, time and time and time again. And he's made them all, along with the entire legacy media, eat crow for dinner for almost a decade now.


You keep cheerleading and praying for the downfall of America.

Because at this point, outside of finally shutting the fuck up, that's all your failed and dead Party has left for you to do.



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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
I am absolutely certain that if millions of the most loyal to Trump Trumptards killed themselves they would be Making America Great Again. I pray that you fucking Trumptards, even the minor ones such as 6ix, stop being lazy, aimless and worthless before we have to kill you, but killing you is the the quickest, cheapest and most straightforward way to handle Trumptards, Confederate slave-owners, Nazis, bandits, racists, tax-cheaters, rapists, Taliban, Russian infantry, etc. rather than rehabilitation or incarceration.

That is Trump on the floor of the Oval Office. The soldiers are there for his therapy session.



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

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Wednesday, April 9, 2025 9:19 PM

SECOND

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


The Reaction on Fox News Really Said It All About About Trump’s Sudden Tariff Reversal Today

"Trump is back!” they screamed, apparently unaware that the tariffs were his idea in the first place.

By David Mack | April 09, 2025 6:26 PM

https://slate.com/business/2025/04/donald-trump-tariffs-the-reaction-o
n-fox-news-really-said-it-all-about-trumps-sudden-reversal.html


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

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Wednesday, April 9, 2025 9:39 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The Reaction on Fox News Really Said It All About About Trump’s Sudden Tariff Reversal Today

"Trump is back!” they screamed, apparently unaware that the tariffs were his idea in the first place.

By David Mack | April 09, 2025 6:26 PM

https://slate.com/business/2025/04/donald-trump-tariffs-the-reaction-o
n-fox-news-really-said-it-all-about-trumps-sudden-reversal.html


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




Trump never went anywhere.

FOX News is Establishment trash.



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

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

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Wednesday, April 9, 2025 9:40 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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

I think he's just 10 times as smart as you, and you dummies are playing checkers.

He's outsmarted all of the dipshits that you voted for, time and time and time again. And he's made them all, along with the entire legacy media, eat crow for dinner for almost a decade now.


You keep cheerleading and praying for the downfall of America.

Because at this point, outside of finally shutting the fuck up, that's all your failed and dead Party has left for you to do.



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

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


You've been certain about a lot of things. None of them have ever panned out the way you thought they would, or more accurately, none of them have ever panned out the way the Legacy Media programmed you to believe that they would.

And they all lead you to right here, right now. An outcome that would have happened whether or not you or I even existed to post here every day.


Nobody cares about your borrowed "opinion" on any issue.

I read at least half a dozen disingenuously well-written newspaper headlines every day that are more insightful than you.

And half of those are probably written by A.I. in 2025.



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

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

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Thursday, April 10, 2025 7:27 AM

SECOND

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


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

I think he's just 10 times as smart as you, and you dummies are playing checkers.

He's outsmarted all of the dipshits that you voted for, time and time and time again. And he's made them all, along with the entire legacy media, eat crow for dinner for almost a decade now.


You keep cheerleading and praying for the downfall of America.

Because at this point, outside of finally shutting the fuck up, that's all your failed and dead Party has left for you to do.



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

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


You've been certain about a lot of things. None of them have ever panned out the way you thought they would, or more accurately, none of them have ever panned out the way the Legacy Media programmed you to believe that they would.

And they all lead you to right here, right now. An outcome that would have happened whether or not you or I even existed to post here every day.


Nobody cares about your borrowed "opinion" on any issue.

I read at least half a dozen disingenuously well-written newspaper headlines every day that are more insightful than you.

And half of those are probably written by A.I. in 2025.



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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
For a century, American newspapers wrote editorials about the evils of slavery. Did people act against slavery? No. Well, there was the Underground Railroad, but that didn't stop slavery. Did slave-owners act? No. Well, there was George Washington who freed his slaves, but only after his death. So, how did slavery end?

The slave-owners got convinced that slavery was positively good and that people saying it was evil were the true evil. At that point, the editorial writers became aware that words were insufficient. The writers kept writing and changing nothing in America but some of the readers decided it was time to kill the evil slave-owners. And the killing was not limited to the most famous examples of slave-owners.

The United States is headed in that same direction, today. The Trumptards are convinced that Trumpism is positively good and that people saying it is evil are the true evil.

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

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Thursday, April 10, 2025 7:29 AM

SECOND

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


Trump Is Stupid, Erratic and Weak
The disaster of Trumponomics continues

By Paul Krugman | Apr 10, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trump-is-stupid-erratic-and-weak

Anyone sounding the all-clear on tariffs, or Trump economic policy in general, should be kept away from sharp objects and banned from operating heavy machinery. We’re in a hardly better place than we were before Donald Trump announced a tariff pause (in a Truth Social post, of course.) In fact, we may be in a worse place.

Let me make four points about Trump’s post-pause tariff regime.

1. Even the post-pause tariff rates represent a huge protectionist shock

2. Destructive uncertainty about future policy has increased

3. We’re still at risk of a major financial crisis

4. The world now knows that Trump is weak as well as erratic

Still a huge protectionist shock

Yesterday Trump announced that he wasn’t going to impose all those tariffs he announced last week after all. Instead, he’s putting a 10 percent tariff on everyone, and 125 percent on China.

Question of the day: Does the 10 percent rate still apply to the penguins of the Heard and McDonald islands?

Anyway, this new announcement still sets tariffs at a much higher level than they were before Trump took office, indeed higher than he suggested during the campaign. For example, during the campaign researchers at the Peterson Institute for International Economics constructed a model assuming Trump implemented a 10 percent tariffs across the board and 60 percent on China. The researchers concluded that this regime would impose a nasty shock on the US economy. Now we are facing a tariffs of more than twice that level against China as well as 10 percent on all other countries.

How high are overall tariffs after the “pause” was announced?

That’s actually a tricky question. China accounted for 13 percent of U.S. imports in 2024, and if you apply the newly announced rates to 2024 imports you come up with an average rate of 24.95 — higher than before the pause. Incredibly high tariff rates on China will, however, lead to lower imports from China, so a calculation based on 2024 trade is problematic.

However, not importing from China is also very costly: if we no longer import a good from China we must either shift to other, more expensive suppliers or the good simply disappears from the shelves. In the chart below I’ve made an estimate of the “effective” tariff rate post-pause. The effective tariff takes into account both direct and indirect costs, and reflects the increase in the cost of living imposed by the tariff. With a 125% tariff on Chinese imports and a 10% tariff on all other imports, I arrive at an effective tariff rate that is slightly below the Smoot-Hawley level of 1930. But this still represents a huge jump in tariffs in a US economy that now imports three times as much as it did in 1930. Trump’s post-pause tariff regime remains the biggest trade shock in U.S., and I think world history.


It's the uncertainty, stupid

Like many other observers, I’ve been arguing that uncertainty about Trump’s policies is as big a drag on the economy as the policies themselves. Before the Rose Garden announcement, I warned that it wouldn’t be the end of the story:

Trump may impose further tariffs, or slash them as suddenly as he raised them, depending on who spoke to him last. L’Etat, c’est Trump.

This kind of uncertainty is paralyzing for businesses, who are realizing that any kind of long-term commitment can turn out to have been a disastrous mistake. Build a plant that depends on imported parts, and Trump may cut you off at the knees with new tariffs. Build a plant that’s only profitable if tariffs stay in place, and Trump may cut you off at the knees by backing down.

Again, the point is that there really isn’t a MAGA economic philosophy, just whatever suits Trump’s fragile ego.

And so it has proved. So are things settled now? Hardly. The pause is for 90 days. Then what happens? Nobody, Trump included, has the faintest idea. If you imagine that the U.S. can negotiate “tailored” tariff deals with the more than 75 countries Trump claims are seeking a deal in just three months, ask yourself, who’s supposed to be sorting out the details?

So if you were a business owner or executive, would you make any major investments or long-term commitments over the next few months? I wouldn’t.

Still a risk of financial crisis

Yesterday I noted that financial markets were showing the telltale signs of an incipient financial crisis. I looked mainly at the breakeven inflation rate, but many other indicators were also flashing yellow. Even yields on long-term federal bonds, normally a safe haven in troubled times, were sounding a warning.

The inimitable Nathan Tankus has a new post explaining why we were and continue to be vulnerable to a new crisis. He explains why the Rose Garden announcement may have been a new tariff-induced “Lehman moment” for the financial system. He explains a lot of stuff that I didn’t know or had grasped only vaguely — in particular, how hedge funds have become key providers of liquidity, even in the Treasury market (via the “basis trade.”) So when hedge funds’ portfolios take a hit from erratic policy, this quickly creates system-wide stress.

I’m planning to write a primer about financial crises and how they happen this weekend.

The level of financial market stress declined somewhat yesterday, but the situation remains fraught. Trump’s next stupid policy move — and there will be more stupid moves — could quite easily tip us over the edge.

Above all, don’t take yesterday’s relief rally as a sign that the danger is behind us. Look at how the NASDAQ behaved after the original Lehman moment:


There were several big but short-lived stock rallies along the way to a huge decline. Assuming that yesterday’s surge was the end of the story requires ignoring both the fundamentals of erratic policy and the lessons of history.

Bullies are weak

The story of the tariffs so far — at least as other countries will see it — is that Trump announced extreme policies, insisted that he would persist with those policies no matter what, then beat an ignominious retreat. In other words, Trump is a typical bully, full of swagger and tough talk, who runs away at the first sign of adversity.

On tariffs, Trump’s cowardice and weakness may be a good thing. But what about everything else?

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

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Thursday, April 10, 2025 8:23 AM

SECOND

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


Tariff Flip-Flop – Outrage grows over Trump's chaotic about-face

We could end up with the worst of all outcomes — a series of unfavorable special interest deals, all the economic damage caused by tariff uncertainty, no trade re-balancing, no increase in U.S. manufacturing capacity, and no new job opportunities.

https://www.alternet.org/tariff-flip-flop/

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

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Thursday, April 10, 2025 9:38 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Stocks Pump'n'Dump As Beijing's 'Nope' Trumps Bessent's Hope
Tariffgate: How Trump’s trade war blew up in his face

The president's calls to buy stocks after the market slumped and his subsequent climbdown over tariffs have led to accusations of insider trading. Together with scandalous economic incompetence, this could be his Watergate

By Simon Walters | Thursday 10 April 2025 13:15 BST

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/tariffgate-trump-trade-war-b27307
92.html

Markets duly surged – as did social media, with accusations that the president’s “art of the deal” was, in fact, a reverse “pump and dump” whereby stock prices were hammered down and then bought before they rose. The Democrats, led by California Senator Adam Schiff, are calling for an investigation into insider trading. Even Trump himself seemed muddled over when he decided to make this change, telling reporters in the same sentence that it was “over the last few days” and “fairly early this morning.”

There are two possible explanations for Trump’s Tariffgate: it was reckless incompetence on a scale never seen before in global economics. Or, as Adam Schiff has claimed, it was market manipulation. Maybe it was a combination of both. Anything is possible in Trump’s mad and disturbing world. Either way, it is a scandal that deserves to rank with Watergate.

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

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Thursday, April 10, 2025 11:25 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Stocks Pump'n'Dump As Beijing's 'Nope' Trumps Bessent's Hope
Tariffgate: How Trump’s trade war blew up in his face

The president's calls to buy stocks after the market slumped and his subsequent climbdown over tariffs have led to accusations of insider trading. Together with scandalous economic incompetence, this could be his Watergate

By Simon Walters | Thursday 10 April 2025 13:15 BST

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/tariffgate-trump-trade-war-b27307
92.html

Markets duly surged – as did social media, with accusations that the president’s “art of the deal” was, in fact, a reverse “pump and dump” whereby stock prices were hammered down and then bought before they rose. The Democrats, led by California Senator Adam Schiff, are calling for an investigation into insider trading. Even Trump himself seemed muddled over when he decided to make this change, telling reporters in the same sentence that it was “over the last few days” and “fairly early this morning.”

There are two possible explanations for Trump’s Tariffgate: it was reckless incompetence on a scale never seen before in global economics. Or, as Adam Schiff has claimed, it was market manipulation. Maybe it was a combination of both. Anything is possible in Trump’s mad and disturbing world. Either way, it is a scandal that deserves to rank with Watergate.

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



JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.

Are we going to have to listen to you fucking goons freak out about the fucking market on a daily basis now?

Is he "stupid, erratic and weak" on economic policy like Paul Krugman said, or he is Nancy Pelosi like The Atlantic says?

SHUT THE FUCK UP.

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

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

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Thursday, April 10, 2025 11:29 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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

I think he's just 10 times as smart as you, and you dummies are playing checkers.

He's outsmarted all of the dipshits that you voted for, time and time and time again. And he's made them all, along with the entire legacy media, eat crow for dinner for almost a decade now.


You keep cheerleading and praying for the downfall of America.

Because at this point, outside of finally shutting the fuck up, that's all your failed and dead Party has left for you to do.



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

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


You've been certain about a lot of things. None of them have ever panned out the way you thought they would, or more accurately, none of them have ever panned out the way the Legacy Media programmed you to believe that they would.

And they all lead you to right here, right now. An outcome that would have happened whether or not you or I even existed to post here every day.


Nobody cares about your borrowed "opinion" on any issue.

I read at least half a dozen disingenuously well-written newspaper headlines every day that are more insightful than you.

And half of those are probably written by A.I. in 2025.



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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
For a century, American newspapers wrote editorials about the evils of slavery. Did people act against slavery? No. Well, there was the Underground Railroad, but that didn't stop slavery. Did slave-owners act? No. Well, there was George Washington who freed his slaves, but only after his death. So, how did slavery end?

The slave-owners got convinced that slavery was positively good and that people saying it was evil were the true evil. At that point, the editorial writers became aware that words were insufficient. The writers kept writing and changing nothing in America but some of the readers decided it was time to kill the evil slave-owners. And the killing was not limited to the most famous examples of slave-owners.

The United States is headed in that same direction, today. The Trumptards are convinced that Trumpism is positively good and that people saying it is evil are the true evil.


Is that what you think you're doing here, for the benefit of 5 people who still post here, Mr. Billionaire? You're fighting evil? You're Bruce Wayne in your own little made up world?

You're so fucked dude.

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

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

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Thursday, April 10, 2025 1:34 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


I used to think that Vietnam warped SECOND.

After his unusually honest post where he admitted that he never intended to be "good" I now realize that shooting people from a helicopter, risk free, liberated the evil in him. And he believes that his mission in life is a continuation of that: To punish, hopefully kill, "evil" people, as long as there's no personal risk to himself.

Even tho he's a would-be killer, he separates himself from "evil" people bc

1) He's a Democrat
2) He lives a healthy lifestyle
3) He pays his taxes (!!!)
4) He's rich, and only good/smart people prosper

So he can continue his "war" (He believes he's fighting a holy war; he said so. And all is fair in war...) without having to acknowledge that he's a sniveling, lying sociopath.

I also now think that the reason why he hates Republicans began with Nixon. Not bc Nixon convinced him to leave Jehovah's Witness and kill in war, but bc Nixon negotiated a withdrawal from Vietnam and ended the war against "evil".

Right, SECOND?

So, yes: SECOND thinks he's Batman.

-----------
"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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Thursday, April 10, 2025 1:38 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
House Passes Bill Requiring Proof Of Citizenship To Vote

Yay!

Quote:
Trump Admin Will Fine Illegals Almost $1000 Per Day If They Don't Self-Deport
Thursday, Apr 10, 2025 - 08:45 AM

Authored by Steve Watson via Modernity.news,

The Trump administration has announced it will issue fines of $998 per day to illegal immigrants who do not voluntarily deport themselves.

Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Fox News, “Illegal aliens should use the CBP Home app to self-deport and leave the country now.”

“If they don’t, they will face the consequences. This includes a fine of $998 per day for every day that the illegal alien overstayed their final deportation order,” McLaughlin added.

Reuters further notes that a Trump official confirmed the administration intends to use a 1996 law to apply retroactive penalties on illegal aliens dating back up to five years, meaning fines could rack up to over $1 million.

The report also states that government emails suggest the administration could seize property owned by illegals who refuse to pay the fines.

A DHS flyer aimed at illegals has also been highlighted by Fox News, touting the “benefits” and “consequences” of self-deporting, and includes mention of the huge fines.

“Self-deportation is safe. Leave on your own terms by picking your departure flight,” the flyer states.

The flyer further notes that those who make the decision to leave will be allowed to keep the money they earned in America, and still be eligible for legal immigration, in the future as well as subsidized flights if they cannot afford them.

It further adds that those who do not leave immediately will be “apprehended by DHS with no opportunity to get your affairs in order beforehand,” and could face additional fines of $1,000 to $5,000 for failing to self deport after “claiming that you will.”

More yay!


-----------
"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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Thursday, April 10, 2025 2:18 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Wonderful.

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

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

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Thursday, April 10, 2025 3:16 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.

Are we going to have to listen to you fucking goons freak out about the fucking market on a daily basis now?

Is he "stupid, erratic and weak" on economic policy like Paul Krugman said, or he is Nancy Pelosi like The Atlantic says?

SHUT THE FUCK UP.
6ixStringJack, you act the same as every Trumptard. Weaklings that cannot calmly, bravely, and intelligently face adversity. Always on the edge of a mental breakdown. Frequently over the edge.

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

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Thursday, April 10, 2025 3:20 PM

SECOND

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


Trump Has Blinked In the Worst Possible Way

By Phillips P. Obrien | Apr 10, 2025

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/sentiment-can-be-overrated-trus
t

You might want to see this video of Trump speaking to his supporters on Tuesday night.



There is, as always, the damaged and weak ego of a tyrant on display. Everyone is supposedly afraid of him, cowering in his presence and, naturally, lining up to start “kissing” his ass. The crowd cheering this nonsense is sign enough of the terrible state that the USA is in.

However, beyond the childish and cruel sentiments—there was also the boasting. Trump has been saying for days that there would be no pause in his tariffs—that they were beautiful things that would set the USA on a course to greater prosperity, blah, blah, blah.

Then yesterday, without a single ass-kissing deal agreed, he blinked and paused the tariffs for 90 days (at which point they will almost certainly be paused again).

Trump had blinked before when faced with the prospect of tariffs on Canada and Mexico alone—and they would not have created as much chaos as the full package of tariffs he proposed last week. If you don’t remember that earlier climb down—here is a piece on it from early February. Trump’s behavior proceeded in a cycle eerily similar to the last few days. There was the bombast, the threats (51st State!), the attacks on US friends—and then, inevitably the humiliating climb down.
Damaging US Relationships for Nothing
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/damaging-us-relationships-for-n
othing

The truth, as always, is Trump remains a weak, bully—something which is being repetitively highlighted to other states by his cycle of threats and folds with no significant gains.

And who do you think will be most effected by this? Naturally the states that have the most to gain or lose through interacting with the USA—America’s security partners and possible security threats.

The role of Allies is something that Trump simply does not understand. He views relationships from what might best be termed a bilateral, zero-sum position. No state is a friend or a foe (except for Russia under Putin—which is always given the benefit of the doubt), and the success of the US relationship with any other state is measured by what the US gets financially and gives up financially. This is why he obsesses about trade deficits or relative levels of defense spending—because they are childish but easy to read metrics (which tell you almost nothing of the true value of an ally).

This deeply flawed view of international relations and power misses the enormous benefits that the US has accrued from its allies and partners. The entire US position in the western Pacific, which has given the country enormous strategic benefits, is secured by its alliances with places such as Japan and South Korea, and partnership with countries like Taiwan. There importance is such that they could very well be determinative in any war in the Indo Pacific—as was outlined in my recent CSIS piece.

These benefits have only accrued because the United States has been seen—and has acted—like a trustworthy partner who has in the past and will continue in the future to fulfill its obligations.

However, what these and others states have seen since Trump returned to the White House has been the US acting like an economic bully (and failing), while rowing back on security commitments where possible. Yes these states will and have had their feelings hurt—but more importantly, they are coming to no longer believe that the US is their ally—but instead an extractive competitor who would never stand by them in a crisis.

And if allies lose their trust in the USA, that will also be a huge benefit to possible competitors such as China. The Chinese can now present themselves as defenders of free trade, as a reliable business partner and as a state that can be counted on for consistency. In other words, the US cannot be trusted on to be a good friend (or really any kind of friend) but at least the Chinese can be counted on not to blow up the world trading system.

And that is why Trump’s constant cycle of threats and bombasts, followed by a cave-in and lies, is so destructive. He is destroying the idea of consistency and reliability—the trust factor that has held together the US alliance system since World War II.

The last few days have been a hard lesson for the world as to why the USA cannot be trusted. The only states to benefit from this are the ones that wish the USA ill.

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

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Thursday, April 10, 2025 3:23 PM

SECOND

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


Economists Say America’s Trade Deficits Are a Sign of Dominance Not Weakness

https://time.com/7275957/trump-tariffs-usa-trade-deficits-economic-gro
wth-strength-world-order/

Paul Wiseman in Time:

Trump and his trade advisers insist that the rules governing global commerce put the United States at a distinct disadvantage. But mainstream economists—whose views Trump and his advisers disdain—say the president has a warped idea of world trade, especially a preoccupation with trade deficits, which they say do nothing to impede growth.

The administration accuses other countries of erecting unfair trade barriers to keep out American exports and using underhanded tactics to promote their own. In Trump’s telling, his tariffs are a long-overdue reckoning: The U.S. is the victim of an economic mugging by Europe, China, Mexico, Japan and even Canada.

It’s true that some countries charge higher taxes on imports than the United States does. Some manipulate their currencies lower to ensure that their goods are price-competitive in international markets. Some governments lavish their industries with subsidies to give them an edge.

However, the United States is still the second-largest exporter in the world, after China.

More at https://time.com/7275957/trump-tariffs-usa-trade-deficits-economic-gro
wth-strength-world-order/

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

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Thursday, April 10, 2025 3:26 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK




Keep crying about everything man. It must be miserable to be you right now, huh?

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

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

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Thursday, April 10, 2025 3:33 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.

Are we going to have to listen to you fucking goons freak out about the fucking market on a daily basis now?

Is he "stupid, erratic and weak" on economic policy like Paul Krugman said, or he is Nancy Pelosi like The Atlantic says?

SHUT THE FUCK UP.
6ixStringJack, you act


Shut. the. fuck. up.

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

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

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Thursday, April 10, 2025 4:44 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Keep crying about everything man. It must be miserable to be you right now, huh?

Shut. the. fuck. up.
It's too bad for Trumptards that Trump had a mental breakdown. Send get-well-soon cards to the White House.

Trump blinks on tariffs in the face of GOP resistance — but hasn't given up his cult-leader dreams

"BE COOL": Trump is still projecting "last days of Waco" vibes, despite a 90-day "pause" on tariffs

By Amanda Marcotte | April 10, 2025

https://www.salon.com/2025/04/10/blinks-on-tariffs-in-face-of-resistan
ce--but-he-hasnt-given-up-on-his-leader-dreams/

We're getting a compelling illustration on the national stage of how a cult leader can induce his followers to stick by him, even as he loses his mind and his behavior becomes too erratic and dangerous to defend. Almost every Republican on Capitol Hill knows that Donald Trump's tariff plan is political suicide, but few are willing to admit that Dear Leader fully intends to see this idiocy to the very end.

Calling Trump's move a "victory" among his true believers, it will likely be short-lived because of his underlying problems.

Trump has a messiah complex, which has only grown since that missed assassin's bullet from July was hyped by his followers into 'proof' that he's the Chosen One. Even as he blinks momentarily on his tariff mania, his behavior is getting even more erratic in a way that's got 'last days of Waco' vibes from a president who has already unsubtly compared himself to David Koresh. His Truth Social meltdown when announcing the 'pause' indicates a decline in Trump's already-fragile mental state.

The president tried to explain away his about-face just days after posting on Truth Social he has no intention of backing down from his policies.

With Trump writing, "They are dying to make a deal. 'Please, please sir, make a deal. I’ll do anything sir,'” it was a moment quite reminiscent of how late-stage cult leaders experience a total collapse between reality and their grandiose fantasies before boasting, "Everything is going to work out well. The USA will be bigger and better than ever before!"

It all feels like the final stage of a cult, when the leader's frantic efforts to retain control result in escalating dictates and prophecies that become increasingly hard for followers to make sense of.

Republicans would be foolish to treat this 90-day pause as a victory big enough to justify scurrying back to their holes, to hide from the wrath of Dear Leader. He is spiraling and sees these tariffs as the final proving ground of his total conquest of the GOP. He will keep going back to that well — which means economic tumult, more stock market crashes, and more panicked constituents — unless this tariff nonsense is put to bed entirely.

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

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Thursday, April 10, 2025 7:16 PM

SECOND

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


Trump’s Tariff Policies Are Perfectly Coherent After Factoring In His Psychology

The fundamental truth of Donald Trump is that he apparently cannot conceive of any relationship between individuals, peoples or states as anything other than a status game, a competition for dominance. His long history of scams and hostile litigation — not to mention his frequent refusal to pay contractors, lawyers, brokers and other people who were working for him — is evidence enough of the reality that a deal with Trump is less an agreement between equals than an opportunity for Trump to abuse and exploit the other party for his own benefit. For Trump, there is no such thing as a mutually beneficial relationship or a positive-sum outcome. In every interaction, no matter how trivial or insignificant, someone has to win, and someone has to lose. And Trump, as we all know, is a winner.

This simple fact of the president’s psychology does more to explain his antipathy to international trade and enthusiasm for tariffs and other trade barriers than any theorizing about his intentions or overall vision. It certainly is not as if he has a considered view of the global economy. It is not even clear that Trump knows what a tariff is. This isn’t a dig. The president genuinely seems to think of tariffs as fees that foreign countries pay to the United States. “We have massive Financial Deficits with China, the European Union, and many others,” he wrote on his Truth Social website on Sunday. “The only way this problem can be cured is with TARIFFS, which are now bringing Tens of Billions of Dollars into the U.S.A.” Here, you also see his related belief that a trade deficit is an actual absence of funds, akin to a negative balance in a bank account.

“I spoke to a lot of leaders — European, Asian — from all over the world. They’re dying to make a deal, but I said, ‘We’re not gonna have deficits with your country,’ ” the president told reporters on board Air Force One over the weekend. “We’re not gonna do that, because to me a deficit is a loss. We’re gonna have surpluses, or at worst we’re gonna be breaking even.”

Of course, a trade deficit is not a loss any more than it is a loss when you, as a consumer, spend your cash at a grocery store. When American businesses buy raw materials from foreign countries to make their own products — when they buy finished products and sell them on their shelves — they aren’t incurring a loss. They are exchanging currency for something of value, which they will go on to use or sell for a profit. As a statement of economic policy, Trump’s pronouncement makes no sense. But as an expression of his zero-sum instinct, of his desire to dominate, it is perfectly coherent.

https://attentiontotheunseen.com/2025/04/09/trumps-drive-to-dominate-c
an-neither-be-satisfied-nor-appeased/

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

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Thursday, April 10, 2025 8:04 PM

SECOND

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


Trump’s Orwellian rewrite of 2020

He’s trying to criminalize telling the truth about 2020.

By Patrick Reis | Apr 10, 2025, 4:43 PM CDT

https://www.vox.com/the-logoff-newsletter-trump/408211/trump-2020-elec
tion-denialism-cybersecurity-january-6

Economic chaos from President Donald Trump’s tariffs continues to dominate headlines, but today I want to focus on his continuing effort to rewrite the history of the 2020 election — and his troubling use of government power to push the lie that he won it.

What’s the latest?

• Trump ordered the Justice Department to investigate Chris Krebs, his first-term pick to lead a cybersecurity agency. Krebs, while in office, publicly acknowledged that the 2020 election was a fair contest.

• Trump attempted to pull security clearances and kill government contracts for the law firm Susman Godfrey, which represented a voting machine firm that sued Fox News for lying about the 2020 race’s integrity, leading to a $787.5 million settlement. It’s the latest law firm to incur Trump’s wrath for engaging in disfavored political activity.

• Trump’s pick for a top Interior Department position was forced to withdraw amid revelations she’d criticized Trump for his role in the January 6 insurrection.

What’s the big picture? Trump has long insisted that Joe Biden’s 2020 victory was fraudulent. That’s a lie. What’s true is that Trump lost the 2020 election but tried to stay in power anyway. But Trump has now accumulated enough power — and is willing enough to abuse that power — to impose consequences for noncompliance with the official narrative. It’s the exact kind of abuse the First Amendment was intended to prevent.

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

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Thursday, April 10, 2025 8:31 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


BUMP

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I used to think that Vietnam warped SECOND.

After his unusually honest post where he admitted that he never intended to be "good" I now realize that shooting people from a helicopter, risk free, liberated the evil in him. And he believes that his mission in life is a continuation of that: To punish, hopefully kill, "evil" people, as long as there's no personal risk to himself.

Even tho he's a would-be killer, he separates himself from "evil" people bc

1) He's a Democrat
2) He lives a healthy lifestyle
3) He pays his taxes (!!!)
4) He's rich, and only good/smart people prosper

So he can continue his "war" (He believes he's fighting a holy war; he said so. And all is fair in war...) without having to acknowledge that he's a sniveling, lying sociopath.

I also now think that the reason why he hates Republicans began with Nixon. Not bc Nixon convinced him to leave Jehovah's Witness and kill in war, but bc Nixon negotiated a withdrawal from Vietnam and ended the war against "evil".

Right, SECOND?

So, yes: SECOND thinks he's Batman.



-----------
"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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Thursday, April 10, 2025 8:35 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST.

Are we going to have to listen to you fucking goons freak out about the fucking market on a daily basis now?

Is he "stupid, erratic and weak" on economic policy like Paul Krugman said, or he is Nancy Pelosi like The Atlantic says?

SHUT THE FUCK UP.
6ixStringJack, you act


Shut. the. fuck. up.

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

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

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Friday, April 11, 2025 4:59 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Well.

Trumpis doing some things right, especially about illegal aliens.

I wish he had the same laser focus on the other things he's trying to accomplish, but he's making hash of his opportunities.

He seems to think he has to ... and can ... solve everything in 100 days. He acts like he has way more leverage than he does. And promising every day that "a deal" is just around the corner .... how stupid does he think we are?

Ukraine.
There's a long bad history of the west screwing with Russia: breaking promises, creating a color revolution, blowing up pipelines, torpedoing negotiations, waging covert war etc. Many reasons for Russia not to trust us. And Trump is in a no-win situation, because NO MATTER WHAT HE DOES, RUSSIA IS GOING TO WIN. So Trump isn't gonna get a cease fire in 1000 days, no matter how much he blusters and bullies. What Trump should do is just stop supporting Ukraine. Right now.

Ending globalization and tariffs.
I think tariffs are an essential part of remaking our economy. But not the ONLY part, and - again- it's not gonna happen in six months, or a year, or even two years. I think Russia did an EXEMPLARY job rebuilding its economy, from being a basket-case kleptocracy in 2000 to being a resilient nearly self-sufficient economy able to withstand everything the west could throw at it - militarily, economically, and financially, in 2022. BUT IT TOOK 22 YEARS TO GET THERE.
China has spent every year since 2008 trying to unhitch itself from the USA market... 15 YEARS. Can it survive an all-out trade war with the USA? I don't know. But CHINA IS A LOT MORE PREPARED THAN WE ARE.
So. Igniting a full-on trade war with China?.
Counterproductive.
Oh BTW... I dont give a fuck what happens to the stock market. Its been one big speculative bubble that the Fed refuses to let pop for over 20 years.

Saving money
The one thing that DOGE uncovered is that nobody really follows any sort of accounting practices. YOU CAN'T SAVE MONEY UNTIL YOU KNOW WHO IS BEING PAID, AND FOR WHAT. So until accounting practices have been followed for at least six months, it's hard to determine what to cut. Also ... a TRILLION DOLLAR DEFENSE BUDGET?

'If Trump breaks the economy he owns it... but if he fixes it, he owns that too' Problem is, NOBODY can fix an economy in two years.

If Trump breaks the economy, he'll lose Congress in two years. Fuck up bad enough, and Vance will lose the WH, and there will go our best chance at a rational national economic strategy. It's not just about Trump.


-----------
"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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Friday, April 11, 2025 6:57 AM

SECOND

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


This Is Why Dictatorships Fail

The authors of the Constitution separated powers for a reason.

By Anne Applebaum | April 10, 2025

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/04/dictatorships-tru
mp-republicans/682387/

He blinked. But we don’t really know why.

Whether it was the stock market cascading downward, investors fleeing from U.S. Treasury bonds, Republican donors jamming the White House phones, or even fears for his own portfolio, President Donald Trump decided yesterday afternoon to lift, temporarily, most of his arbitrary tariffs. This was his personal decision. His “instinct,” as he put it. His whim. And his decision, instinct, or whim could bring the tariffs back again.

The Republicans who lead Congress have refused to use the power of the legislative branch to stop him or moderate him, in this or almost any other matter. The Cabinet is composed of sycophants and loyalists who are willing to defend contradictory policies, even if doing so makes them look like fools. The courts haven’t decisively intervened yet either. No one, apparently, is willing to prevent a single man from destroying the world economy, wrecking financial markets, forcing this country and other countries into recession if that’s what he feels like doing when he gets up tomorrow morning.

This is what arbitrary, absolute power looks like. And this is why the men who wrote the Constitution never wanted anyone to have it. In that famously hot, stuffy room in Philadelphia, windows closed for the sake of secrecy, they sweated and argued about how to limit the powers of the American executive. They arrived at the idea of dividing power between different branches of government. As James Madison wrote in “Federalist No. 47”: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary in the same hands … may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

More than two centuries later, the system created by that first Constitutional Congress has comprehensively failed. The people and institutions that are supposed to check executive power are refusing to restrain this president. We now have a de facto tyrant who thinks he can bend reality to his will without taking any facts or any evidence into consideration, and without listening to any contrary views. And although the economic damage he has caused is easier to measure, he has inflicted the same level of harm to scientific research, to civil liberties, to health care, and to the civil service.

From this wasteful and destructive incident, one useful lesson can be drawn. In recent years, many people who live in democracies have become frustrated by their political systems, by the endless wrangling, the difficulty of creating compromise, the slow pace of decisions. Just as in the first half of the 20th century, would-be authoritarians have begun arguing that we would all be better off without these institutions. “The truth is that men are tired of liberty,” said Mussolini. Lenin spoke with scorn about the failings of so-called bourgeois democracy. In the United States, a brand-new school of techno-authoritarian thinkers find our political system inefficient and want to replace it with a “national CEO,” a dictator by a different name.

But in the past 48 hours, Donald Trump has just given us a pitch-perfect demonstration of why legislatures are necessary, why checks and balances are useful, and why most one-man dictatorships become poor and corrupt. If the Republican Party does not return Congress to the role it is meant to play and the courts don’t constrain the president, this cycle of destruction will continue and everyone on the planet will pay the price.

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

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Friday, April 11, 2025 6:58 AM

SECOND

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


Why Trump Paused the Tariffs

A stock-market swoon, or even a recession, might not frighten him, but the prospect of a 2008-style meltdown apparently still does.

By Jonathan Chait | April 9, 2025

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/04/why-trump-paused-
trade-war/682376/

Only yesterday, President Donald Trump was mocking Republicans nervous about his global trade war as “Panicans.” In a defiant speech to the National Republican Congressional Committee, he insisted, “This time I’m doing what I want to do with respect to the tariffs,” and that only he had the courage to defy “the globalists.”

But the globalists turn out to have had enough power to bring Trump to heel after all. This afternoon, the president announced a 90-day pause on what he has called his “reciprocal tariffs” against every country other than China.

According to Charlie Gasparino of Fox News, Trump retreated in the face of troubling developments in the bond market. Asked by reporters, Trump didn’t deny this, noting that, even with a “beautiful” bond market, “I saw last night where people were getting a little queasy.” This was a completely new layer of danger that appeared overnight. Before yesterday evening, the interest rate on Treasury bonds had fallen slightly, a sign of increased demand as nervous investors retreated to the historically safe strategy of lending their savings to the U.S. government. Then, suddenly, investors began pulling money out, sensing that the U.S. government was no longer safe, a prospect that created the risk of everything from higher interest payments on the debt to a full-scale financial crisis.

All of this is to suggest that if a stock-market swoon, or even a recession, does not frighten Trump, the prospect of a 2008-style meltdown apparently still does. And so the gargantuan trade war is back off, for now.

Where does this leave the economy? The new 10 percent tariff on almost every good imported from every country not controlled by Vladimir Putin remains in place. This global flat tax on imports, it must be said, is much closer to the policy he campaigned on in 2024 than the confusing sampler platter of tariffs unveiled on Liberation Day.

That policy is, to be clear, quite harmful. Despite Trump’s rhetoric about reindustrialization, the universal tariff applies indiscriminately to almost every country and product. Some of those products, like coffee and bananas, cannot be practically grown in the United States, and will just get more expensive. Others, like metals and other industrial inputs, will make American manufacturing less competitive, not more.

The stock market surged after Trump’s “pause” announcement, but once the relief wears off, reality is likely to dull investors’ enthusiasm. Goldman Sachs, absorbing the news, has returned to its previous economic forecast, which calls for meager 0.5 percent economic growth this year and a 45 percent chance of recession. That is not the blinking-light disaster that the economy was facing before the pause, but it is still terrible, and much worse than the situation Trump inherited when he took office.

That’s one view, anyway. Within the MAGAverse, Trump’s latest pivot has been hailed as a masterstroke of economic statecraft. Treasury Secretary “Scott Bessent and I sat with the President while he wrote one of the most extraordinary Truth posts of his Presidency,” gushed Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on X. (This is plausible, to be fair; “one of the most extraordinary Truth posts of his Presidency” is not exactly the highest bar.) The financier Bill Ackman, who had spent much of the past few days posting (and occasionally deleting) careful critiques of Trump’s tariffs, posted, “This was brilliantly executed by @realDonaldTrump. Textbook, Art of the Deal.”

What deal? Nobody has made a new trade agreement with Trump. To the contrary, other countries have found the administration unable to even articulate its goals or objectives, because Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs are the product of a nonsensical formula putatively serving a grab bag of mutually exclusive goals.

To the extent that the reciprocal tariffs created any leverage, it rests on the side of Trump’s counterparties, who now know that he may be a madman, but is not mad enough to risk a full-blown global economic meltdown. The gun on the table is pointed at Trump’s own foot.

Trump could very well restore the gigantic tariffs, especially if he feels humiliated by today’s events. The likelier outcome is that he will muddle through with policies that push prices up and growth down, but don’t directly precipitate an economic collapse. Trump’s allies will tolerate an enormous amount of damage to the country, especially damage that takes place over an extended period of time or primarily hurts people who aren’t rich. Immediate, massive harm to his wealthiest supporters appears to be one of the few red lines that Trump still won’t cross.

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

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Friday, April 11, 2025 7:07 AM

SECOND

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


Trump’s Dumbest Order Is Hiding His Most Dangerous Rule Change Yet

Donald Trump snuck an insidious change into an executive order on showerheads.

By Edith Olmsted | April 10, 2025/10:42 a.m. ET

https://newrepublic.com/post/193852/donald-trump-dangerous-rule-change
-executive-order

Buried within Donald Trump’s executive order “undoing the left’s war on water pressure” was a shady phrase to help the president fast-track his deregulatory crusade.

In a section of the order signed Wednesday repealing a 13,000-word regulation defining “showerhead,” Trump noted that notice and comment on the recission would not be accepted.

“Notice and comment is unnecessary because I am ordering the repeal,” the order stated.

Notice-and-comment rulemaking, as outlined by the Administrative Procedure Act, or APA, requires federal agencies to give the public time to comment after presenting a new rule. The agency must then consider all relevant, timely submitted comments before publishing the final rule.

But in his order, Trump implies that because he was the one rewriting the rule, the public would not be given the opportunity to comment, essentially fast-tracking any deregulation effort he pitches in the future.

Legal experts were quick to challenge Trump’s rulemaking rule change.

“This is so illegal. Just utterly, utterly unlawful,” wrote Aaron Reichlin-Melchick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, in an X post Wednesday. “The President cannot overturn the commands of the APA by just declaring ‘because I said so.’”

“If President Biden could have written executive orders requiring rules just be written without comment, we’d have a whole helluva lot of new regulations on the books protecting consumers, workers, and the environment,” Todd Phillips, an assistant law professor at Robinson College of Business, wrote on X.

In a separate post, Phillips warned that rescissions would be challenged “so, so, so quickly. And in the D.C. Circuit.”

In a separate executive order signed Wednesday, Trump ordered U.S. agencies to get moving on rescinding “unlawful” regulations under several Supreme Court decisions, including Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, by once again skipping the process of notice and comment—this time claiming a “good cause” exception.

“In effectuating repeals of facially unlawful regulations, agency heads shall finalize rules without notice and comment, where doing so is consistent with the ‘good cause’ exception in the Administrative Procedure Act,” the order stated. “That exception allows agencies to dispense with notice-and-comment rulemaking when that process would be ‘impracticable, unnecessary, or contrary to the public interest.’”

In February, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a statement revoking its long-standing policy of using notice-and-comment rulemaking, which could potentially allow for expedited reforms to Medicaid programs.

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

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Friday, April 11, 2025 7:40 AM

SECOND

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


How to destroy 80 years of monetary credibility in less than 3 months

By Paul Krugman | Apr 11, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-third-worlding-of-america

Oops, they’re doing it again. Major news media organizations sanewashed Donald Trump all through the 2024 campaign, cleaning up his incoherence and downplaying his extreme policy positions. Aaron Rupar reminds us of this:
Quote:
Harris and Trump Embrace Tariffs, Though Their Approaches Differ
Both Democrats and Republicans are expressing support for tariffs to protect American industry, reversing decades of trade thinking in Washington.
It’s hard to know how much that contributed to his victory, but it must have been a factor.

But the desire to see Trump as reasonable is a more widely shared syndrome which isn’t confined to the media. It was abetted by the business world, which was gripped by “euphoria” after he won, despite clear signs that he would implement destructive economic policies.

Remarkably, the sanewashing continues despite the unprecedented craziness of the past 10 days. Many observers assert that Trump has backed down on tariffs and will speedily make a bunch of trade deals. The first assertion is just false, while the second is very unlikely.

In fact, savvy traders have realized that there’s no coherent economic strategy. There’s an old line about military analysis: “Amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals talk about logistics.” Well, when it comes to taking the pulse of financial markets, amateurs talk about stocks, but professionals talk about bond and currency markets. That’s because bond and currency markets are generally less driven by emotion. There’s no “meme gambling investing” in bond and currency markets. And these markets are both signaling major loss of faith in America.

First, about tariffs: It’s true that for the time being Trump has scaled back some of the tariffs displayed on his big piece of cardboard last week. For example, unless we have another policy swerve, the European Union will now face a 10 percent tariff over the next three months rather than a 20 percent tariff. But the tariff on China, our third-biggest trading partner after Canada and Mexico, has gone from 34 percent to more than 130 percent. And we still have high tariffs on steel, aluminum and so on. In effect, observers who claim that tariffs have gone down are missing the biggest part of the story.

Economists who have actually run the numbers, like those at the Yale Budget Lab, estimate that the April 9 tariff regime will raise consumer prices more than the April 2 regime because of the extraordinarily high tariff rate on Chinese imports. Specifically, the budget lab estimates that the latest version of Trump’s trade war will raise consumer prices by 2.9 percent. This is roughly ten times the probable impact of the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff of 1930.

It’s hard to overstate the craziness of announcing a radical tariff plan, then announcing a quite different but equally radical plan just a week later. Furthermore, the claim that the wild zigzags in policy were always part of Trump’s plan just adds to the destruction of the administration’s credibility.

But are these tariffs just an opening gambit for trade negotiations? I doubt it. Bear in mind that Trump and Peter Navarro, his tariff guru, start from the premise that other countries are cheating, that they’re taking advantage of America and treating us unfairly. In fact, however, most of them aren’t. Take the case of the European Union. The EU imposes an average tariff on U.S. goods of just 1.7%, and there aren’t any significant hidden barriers.

So what are we supposed to be negotiating about? Nations can’t promise to lower their trade barriers when there aren’t any barriers. Navarro has been claiming that value-added taxes are de facto tariffs, but they aren’t, and EU nations literally can’t afford to give them up.

I guess other countries might make fake concessions that Trump can claim as fake victories. This is what he did with China during his first term, claiming that it had made significant concessions — claims which were, in the end, false. In fact, American soybean farmers have never fully recovered the loss of market share. And remember too how Trump made minor changes to NAFTA and claimed to have negotiated a whole new trade pact.

However, Trump is now clearly high on his own supply. Even with the April 9 tariff regime, Trump is imposing high tariff rates on our three largest trading partners. Currency and bond market traders — no fools they — are certainly not acting as if we’re on a path to successful deals.

For example, economic theory and history both say that the imposition of tariffs normally leads to a stronger currency unless other countries retaliate. During his confirmation hearing Scott Bessent, the incoming Treasury secretary, argued that a 10 percent tariff would lead to something like a 4 percent rise in the dollar. But not this time. Instead of going up, the dollar has plunged.

Source: xe.com

The obvious explanation is that crazy policies have shaken investors’ faith in America, which has traditionally been viewed as a safe haven.

The topic of how Trump’s policies have messed with the bond markets – including the market for US Treasuries -- is too difficult for me to cover today, but here’s more. The key point is that massive tariffs have disrupted the plumbing of the financial system, leading to soaring interest rates on U.S. government debt. That’s abnormal: rising odds of a recession usually lead to falling long-term interest rates, because the prospect of a recession raises the likelihood of future cuts by the Fed, which controls short-term rates. This time, however, rates are spiking, especially for very-long-term instruments like 30-year bonds:

Source: CNBC

The common thread in currency and bond markets is that, thanks to Trump, dollar assets — traditionally the foundation of foundation of the global financial system — are no longer perceived as safe.

The combination of interest rates soaring amid a slump and the currency plunging despite rising interest rates isn’t what we normally expect for advanced countries, let alone the owner of the world’s leading reserve currency. It is, however, what we often see in emerging-market economies. That is, investors have started treating the United States like a third-world economy.

Did I see this coming? No, not really. Unlike the sanewashers, I knew that Trump’s policies would be irresponsible and destructive. However, even I didn’t expect him to destroy credibility accumulated over 80 years in less than three months. But he has.

And even if Trump were to backtrack on everything he’s done, we wouldn’t get the lost credibility back. The whole world, sanewashers aside, now knows that America is run by a mad king, surrounded by enablers, who can’t be trusted to behave rationally.

I don’t know how this ends. In fact, I don’t know what policy will be next week. But that’s basically the point.

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

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Friday, April 11, 2025 8:43 AM

SECOND

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


In posts published - and later deleted - on X and Instagram on Thursday, ICE declared that it would stop any "ideas" that tried to enter the U.S. "illegally." What idea is de-facto illegal in the United States? None, but that hasn't stopped the Trump administration from increasingly targeting individuals for detention and removal based on their ideology and political beliefs.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/ice-pledges-stop-i
llegal-ideas-1235314913/

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

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Friday, April 11, 2025 11:29 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
In posts published - and later deleted - on X and Instagram on Thursday, ICE declared that it would stop any "ideas" that tried to enter the U.S. "illegally." What idea is de-facto illegal in the United States? None, but that hasn't stopped the Trump administration from increasingly targeting individuals for detention and removal based on their ideology and political beliefs.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/ice-pledges-stop-i
llegal-ideas-1235314913/

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



You're explaining the Joe Biden* administration here.

Or possibly Trudeau when they were locking up Canadian citizens.

Or any numerous European countries who have thrown people in prison for expressing online their problems with their countries being overrun by Muslims.

YOU are the bad guy here.

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

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

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Friday, April 11, 2025 11:31 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
How to destroy 80 years of monetary credibility in less than 3 months

By Paul Krugman | Apr 11, 2025


Unless this is about how Joe Biden* added 1/4 of the $37 Trillion dollar debt in a single term, nobody wants to hear a fucking thing out of you, Paul.

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

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

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