REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

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

POSTED BY: 6IXSTRINGJACK
UPDATED: Thursday, May 8, 2025 13:48
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PAGE 37 of 38

Saturday, May 3, 2025 3:01 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
We don’t need more executive orders. We need a government that does its damn job.



Amen.

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

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

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Saturday, May 3, 2025 5:59 PM

SECOND

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


Rubio Compares Trump to 3rd World Strongman

By Brandon Morse | 7:00 PM on May 06, 2016

https://redstate.com/brandon_morse/2016/05/06/rubio-compares-trump-3rd
-world-strongman-n58885


Here’s what happens in many countries around the world: You have a leader that emerges and basically says, “Don’t put your faith in yourselves. Don’t put your faith in society. Put your faith in me. I’m a strong leader and I’m gonna make things better all by myself.” This is very typical. You see it in the Third World, you see it a lot in Latin America for decades.

Basically, the argument he’s making is that he single-handedly is gonna turn the country around. We’ve never been that kind of country. We have a president. The president is an American citizen who serves for a period of time, constrained by the constitution and the powers vested in that office. The president works for the people not the people the president and if you listen to the way he describes himself and what he’s going to do, he’s going to single-handedly do this and do that without regard to whether it’s legal or not.

Look. I think people are going to have to make up their minds. I can tell you this: no matter what happens in this election, for years to come there are many people on the right, in the media, and voters at large that are going to be having to explain and justify how they fell into this trap of supporting Donald Trump, because this is not gonna end well.

Watch the video at https://www.instagram.com/reel/DGo_2_GCZhu/

https://andrewtobias.com/little-marco-predicts/

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

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Saturday, May 3, 2025 6:12 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK




Shut the fuck up, loser.

You are done. Your party is done. You are politically homeless.

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

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

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Saturday, May 3, 2025 7:44 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:


Shut the fuck up, loser.

You are done. Your party is done. You are politically homeless.

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

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

1) MAGA Melts Down Over Trump’s ‘Disrespectful’ Pope Post

“This is worse than trolling. You’re going to lose a lot of Catholic support over stunts like this.”

By Emell Derra Adolphus | May 3 2025 6:34PM EDT

https://www.thedailybeast.com/maga-melts-down-over-trumps-disrespectfu
l-pope-post
/


2) Catholics Rebuke Donald Trump's AI-Generated Pope Image

May 03, 2025 at 7:23 PM EDT

https://www.newsweek.com/catholics-rebuke-donald-trumps-ai-generated-p
ope-image-2067750



3) Trump criticised after posting AI image of himself as Pope

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cdrg8zkz8d0o



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

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Saturday, May 3, 2025 8:23 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:


Shut the fuck up, loser.

You are done. Your party is done. You are politically homeless.

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

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

1) MAGA Melts Down Over Trump’s ‘Disrespectful’ Pope Post



I'm sure they did.

Fuck the pope.

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

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

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Saturday, May 3, 2025 8:28 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


At this point I've just got to ask myself how far to the ultra-fringe-right I can push Second if given enough time.

Let's see...

We've got him posting about religion in a positive light every other day now. He was in full support of the Cheney family in the months leading up to the election. He posts online at least once per week about who should be murdered this week.



Is it any wonder why GenZ hates the Democratic Party and cringes hard any time one of them talk?

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

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

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Saturday, May 3, 2025 9:23 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:
At this point I've just got to ask myself how far to the ultra-fringe-right I can push Second if given enough time.

Let's see...

We've got him posting about religion in a positive light every other day now. He was in full support of the Cheney family in the months leading up to the election. He posts online at least once per week about who should be murdered this week.



Is it any wonder why GenZ hates the Democratic Party and cringes hard any time one of them talk?

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

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

“That was some weird shit,” George Bush said about Trump. That doesn't mean I approve of Bush, but Trumptard 6ix weirdly thinks different. Weird shit is an excellent description of all Trumptard behavior.

What George W. Bush Really Thought of Donald Trump
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/03/what-george-w-bush-really-thou
ght-of-trumps-inauguration.html


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

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Saturday, May 3, 2025 10:55 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
At this point I've just got to ask myself how far to the ultra-fringe-right I can push Second if given enough time.

Let's see...

We've got him posting about religion in a positive light every other day now. He was in full support of the Cheney family in the months leading up to the election. He posts online at least once per week about who should be murdered this week.



Is it any wonder why GenZ hates the Democratic Party and cringes hard any time one of them talk?

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

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

“That was some weird shit,” George Bush said about Trump. That doesn't mean I approve of Bush, but Trumptard 6ix weirdly thinks different. Weird shit is an excellent description of all Trumptard behavior.

What George W. Bush Really Thought of Donald Trump
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/03/what-george-w-bush-really-thou
ght-of-trumps-inauguration.html


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



Some would argue that thinking it was a good idea to run on a dual-platform of Privatizing Social Security and Banning Gay Marriage would make a mindless Lefty headline-reader-bot question how prudent it would be to use that person's words and judgement as a good choice to bolster their own argument 21 years later in 2025. Especially after doing the same thing with the Cheney family before the election turned out the way that it did. And certainly, especially when the headline-reader-bot already possesses the data that the human being they are interacting with cares not whatsoever for George W. Bush or anything he's ever had to say about any topic.

But we're still dealing with pretty unsophisticated AI when it comes to the Second-Bot and the mindless articles it scrapes off the internet.

Keep watching your party circle the drain and wondering why you're completely powerless to do anything about it, drone.



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

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

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Sunday, May 4, 2025 5:12 AM

SECOND

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


Phillips P. Obrien | May 04, 2025

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-update-131-was-this-the
-week


And of course he has helped put Donald Trump in charge of the USA—which is the most stupendous Russian strategic victory of the last 150 years.

So as a war leader he is a contrast of extremes. This week might have been another. Basically, Donald Trump and his team handed Putin on a plate a close-to-ideal ceasefire plan for Putin—and the Russian leader did not say yes. In doing so Putin might very well have miscalculated about Russian strength, how far the US will go to help him, and the state of Ukraine. It could be a fateful error.

The elements of the Trump plan for Russia were so generous to Putin, that its slightly baffling that the Russian dictator did not take them up immediately—particularly as the one thing he seemed to have to agree to get all these goodies was a cease-fire for 30 days or so (which the Russian military needs btw). What Trump was offering him was extraordinary when you consider it as a package:

• US de jure recognition of the illegal Russian annexation of Crimea.
• US de facto recognition of all other Russian conquests
• A plan to quickly relax or even end sanctions on the Russian economy
• The return of seized Russian assets (at least those under US control)
• A pledge that Ukraine will not join NATO
• No other substantial US security commitment for Ukraine.

The Crimea point alone was a massive concession to Putin. If the USA recognizes Russian legal control of Crimea, you can be sure that much of the rest of the world outside of Europe (and that includes China) would do so as well. It would legalize in much of the world changing borders in Europe through invasion.

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

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Sunday, May 4, 2025 7:20 AM

SECOND

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


Trump’s gaudy-awful Oval Office is all too American

George Will WaPo

https://eedition.houstonchronicle.com/infinity/article_popover_share.a
spx?guid=88d24d05-64cc-4c6a-b69a-c81cccb904e3&share=true


When the 47th president does something right, he repents by doing something that contradicts it. Consider his excellent executive order about the importance of aesthetic good taste in governance, and his subsequent redecoration of the Oval Office.

Issued during the blizzard of orders in his first full day in office, “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture,” was thoughtful and sensible. Making amends for this, the president has redecorated the Oval Office. The style, which is not for the squeamish, is best described (actually, it is best not described, but here goes) as: “The Atlantic-City-Aspiring-to-be-Las-Vegas School of Interior Design.” Or (intellectual whiplash warning) Founding Fathers Bling. In short: Maximalism.

The president evidently likes working inside a Faberge egg. For readers of the Washington Post, Carolina A. Miranda, a talented cultural journalist, has described the new Oval Office, stuffed with stuff:

The mantel is adorned by seven gold examples of authentic bric-a-brac. Gold floral moldings are stuck here and there. Gold angels. Gold eagles on side tables. Gold coasters. Gold medallions on the fireplace. Gilded mirrors on the doors and gilded frames for about 20 paintings, more than triple the number Biden had, so there. Gold cherubs imported from Mar-a-Lago, which is probably still is not destitute of them. Gold coasters. A large gold block paperweight inscribed with TRUMP, in case he momentarily forgets to think about himself.

Miranda finds this sinister. And she bills the decor as “un-American.” If only.

We have a national knack for wretched excess, of which Super Bowl halftime shows are, amazingly, not the most vivid eruptions. Remember Detroit’s 1950s land yachts: The 1956 Chrysler Imperial and the 1958 Lincoln Premiere were 19 feet long. What is more vulgar than 21st-century State of the Union addresses?

Benjamin Franklin pointedly wore clothes of homespun cloth to the Court of St. James’, and Thomas Jefferson sometimes wore slippers when receiving presidential visitors. Nowadays, however, Americans enjoy leavening republican simplicity with touchingly absurd attempts at grandeur: There are, surely, communities where Kiwanis Club lunches are held in Holiday Inns’ Versailles Rooms, cheek-by-jowl with hardware stores and grain silos.

What has become of the aesthete who issued the Day 1 presidential order on “beautiful federal civic architecture”? The president said: “Federal public buildings should be visually identifiable as civic buildings and respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage in order to uplift and beautify public spaces and ennoble the United States and our system of self-government.” Quite right.

Recently Paul Zepeda, an architecture student at Catholic University, writing for Civitas Outlook of the University of Texas at Austin’s Civitas Institute, noted that the current president was reversing his predecessor’s reversal of a 2020 executive order. Cue the “here-comes-Hitler” warnings. (He did have an unhealthy interest in overbearing architecture that diminished the individual relative to the state.)

And critics of the president’s January order issued somber warnings about attacks on “design freedom.”

“Design freedom,” which has often meant indifference to design, has blighted Washington with durable examples of brutalist architecture, such as the FBI Building on Pennsylvania Avenue. Might such architecture foment in citizens a sense of alienation from their government?

In October 1943, after German bombs destroyed the House of Commons, Prime Minister Winston Churchill insisted on rebuilding it with its traditional rectangular, and adversarial, arrangement rather than the semicircular design favored by many legislatures (including the U.S. Congress). Churchill thought it supported the temperateness of a two-party system. He said: “We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.”

Zepeda argues that, traditionally, here and elsewhere, “buildings with the greatest significance to the community” should be designed with cognizance of the moral dimension of the physical. Each building’s human scale, decoration, ornaments and measured proportions should reinforce in those who see and enter them a sense of the nobility and dignity of what transpires in them.

A federal building should be, Zepeda says, “a celebration of self-government, a fluorescence of the republican system.” The classical temple-like building in which the Supreme Court sits is probably related to the court’s remarkably durable prestige, which is a potent fact in contemporary governance.

In the unlikely event that the current president wearies of the golden monochrome of his Oval Office surroundings, he can swivel his chair 180 degrees and contemplate the National Mall, one of the world’s great urban spaces. Its clean, spare, Euclidean geometry is an analogue of our society’s premise and promise: open vistas and open minds.

The Mall’s symmetry, balance and proportion encourage a similar mentality, infusing political institutions and civil society with restraint. At least they used to.

George F. Will is a columnist for the Washington Post.

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

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Sunday, May 4, 2025 10:23 AM

SECOND

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


One Moment That Foretold It All

Ezra Klein | May 4, 2025

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/04/opinion/trump-vance-100-days.html

I’m going to break the boundaries of the prompt and say that the most important — or at least most predictive — day of Donald Trump’s second term came before it even began: It was July 15, 2024, the day he announced that JD Vance was his choice for vice president.

The runner-ups were Marco Rubio and Doug Burgum — representatives of the Republican Party that existed before Trump’s 2016 campaign, choices Trump might have made to reassure voters who doubted or feared him. Vance was of the MAGA movement in a way Rubio and Burgum were not. Vance hated all the right people. Rubio and Burgum were seen as moderating forces; Vance pitched himself as an accelerationist who believed the biggest problem with Trump’s first term was that Trump was surrounded by people who, occasionally, said no to him. Vance was the only one of the three vice presidential contenders to say he would have done what Mike Pence would not: refuse to certify the 2020 election result.

There was little sense, in the days before Trump’s pick, that Vance held the pole position. Later reporting revealed a lobbying campaign: Rupert Murdoch and his allies tried to talk Trump out of Vance, as did Ken Griffin, the chief executive of Citadel, and even Kellyanne Conway. But Trump was swayed by other voices: Don Jr., Elon Musk and Tucker Carlson, who reportedly told Trump that if he picked Rubio or Burgum he was likelier to be assassinated by MAGA’s enemies.

This was the moment we could see the structure of Trump’s first term giving way to the structure of his second. Trump’s first administration was almost like a European coalition government: Trump governed in an uneasy alliance with a Republican Party he did not fully control or even like, with a business community in which many viewed him as a buffoon, with a staff that saw part of its role as curbing and containing the boss’s most destructive impulses, atop an administrative state that often resisted his demands. That friction frustrated Trump and many of his first-term allies. It was also why the most dire predictions for his first term largely did not come true and why so many wrongly predicted that his second term would follow the same script.

But Trump’s second term was never going to follow the same script because it has a completely different structure. This isn’t a coalition government; it’s a royal court. Trump is surrounded by courtiers who wield influence so long as they maintain his favor and not a moment longer. When is the last time he heard the word “no,” or was told, “I’m sorry, sir, you can’t”? In his first term, Trump either sought or was steered toward advisers and appointments that would reassure many of his doubters; in his second, he has prized loyalists who will do what they’re told and enforcers who will ensure that others fall in line as well.

I made this argument before the election, and it has proven true: One of Trump’s fundamental characteristics, for good and ill, is his disinhibition. He will do and say what others will barely think. In his first term, that disinhibition sat in tension with people around him who acted as inhibitors — a staff that was willing to think him wrong or even ridiculous, a congressional Republican Party that was not fully rebuilt around loyalty and sycophancy. For those who believed his first term a success, that tension was essential: Trump pushed the Republican Party and the bureaucracy to consider new policies and possibilities, but he was protected from carrying out his dumbest and most destructive ideas.

In his second term, Trump is surrounded by yes men and accelerationists. His staff has no interest in second-guessing the Grand Ayatollah of MAGA. Congressional Republicans are introducing bills to offer Trump a third term or carve his face onto Mount Rushmore. The guardrails are gone. The choice of JD Vance was when that structure came clear. It revealed that Trump’s second term would offer no concessions, contain no skeptics. The ferocity and recklessness of this presidency are by design.

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

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Sunday, May 4, 2025 1:37 PM

BRENDA


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Trump’s gaudy-awful Oval Office is all too American

George Will WaPo

https://eedition.houstonchronicle.com/infinity/article_popover_share.a
spx?guid=88d24d05-64cc-4c6a-b69a-c81cccb904e3&share=true


When the 47th president does something right, he repents by doing something that contradicts it. Consider his excellent executive order about the importance of aesthetic good taste in governance, and his subsequent redecoration of the Oval Office.

Issued during the blizzard of orders in his first full day in office, “Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture,” was thoughtful and sensible. Making amends for this, the president has redecorated the Oval Office. The style, which is not for the squeamish, is best described (actually, it is best not described, but here goes) as: “The Atlantic-City-Aspiring-to-be-Las-Vegas School of Interior Design.” Or (intellectual whiplash warning) Founding Fathers Bling. In short: Maximalism.

The president evidently likes working inside a Faberge egg. For readers of the Washington Post, Carolina A. Miranda, a talented cultural journalist, has described the new Oval Office, stuffed with stuff:

The mantel is adorned by seven gold examples of authentic bric-a-brac. Gold floral moldings are stuck here and there. Gold angels. Gold eagles on side tables. Gold coasters. Gold medallions on the fireplace. Gilded mirrors on the doors and gilded frames for about 20 paintings, more than triple the number Biden had, so there. Gold cherubs imported from Mar-a-Lago, which is probably still is not destitute of them. Gold coasters. A large gold block paperweight inscribed with TRUMP, in case he momentarily forgets to think about himself.

Miranda finds this sinister. And she bills the decor as “un-American.” If only.

We have a national knack for wretched excess, of which Super Bowl halftime shows are, amazingly, not the most vivid eruptions. Remember Detroit’s 1950s land yachts: The 1956 Chrysler Imperial and the 1958 Lincoln Premiere were 19 feet long. What is more vulgar than 21st-century State of the Union addresses?

Benjamin Franklin pointedly wore clothes of homespun cloth to the Court of St. James’, and Thomas Jefferson sometimes wore slippers when receiving presidential visitors. Nowadays, however, Americans enjoy leavening republican simplicity with touchingly absurd attempts at grandeur: There are, surely, communities where Kiwanis Club lunches are held in Holiday Inns’ Versailles Rooms, cheek-by-jowl with hardware stores and grain silos.

What has become of the aesthete who issued the Day 1 presidential order on “beautiful federal civic architecture”? The president said: “Federal public buildings should be visually identifiable as civic buildings and respect regional, traditional, and classical architectural heritage in order to uplift and beautify public spaces and ennoble the United States and our system of self-government.” Quite right.

Recently Paul Zepeda, an architecture student at Catholic University, writing for Civitas Outlook of the University of Texas at Austin’s Civitas Institute, noted that the current president was reversing his predecessor’s reversal of a 2020 executive order. Cue the “here-comes-Hitler” warnings. (He did have an unhealthy interest in overbearing architecture that diminished the individual relative to the state.)

And critics of the president’s January order issued somber warnings about attacks on “design freedom.”

“Design freedom,” which has often meant indifference to design, has blighted Washington with durable examples of brutalist architecture, such as the FBI Building on Pennsylvania Avenue. Might such architecture foment in citizens a sense of alienation from their government?

In October 1943, after German bombs destroyed the House of Commons, Prime Minister Winston Churchill insisted on rebuilding it with its traditional rectangular, and adversarial, arrangement rather than the semicircular design favored by many legislatures (including the U.S. Congress). Churchill thought it supported the temperateness of a two-party system. He said: “We shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.”

Zepeda argues that, traditionally, here and elsewhere, “buildings with the greatest significance to the community” should be designed with cognizance of the moral dimension of the physical. Each building’s human scale, decoration, ornaments and measured proportions should reinforce in those who see and enter them a sense of the nobility and dignity of what transpires in them.

A federal building should be, Zepeda says, “a celebration of self-government, a fluorescence of the republican system.” The classical temple-like building in which the Supreme Court sits is probably related to the court’s remarkably durable prestige, which is a potent fact in contemporary governance.

In the unlikely event that the current president wearies of the golden monochrome of his Oval Office surroundings, he can swivel his chair 180 degrees and contemplate the National Mall, one of the world’s great urban spaces. Its clean, spare, Euclidean geometry is an analogue of our society’s premise and promise: open vistas and open minds.

The Mall’s symmetry, balance and proportion encourage a similar mentality, infusing political institutions and civil society with restraint. At least they used to.

George F. Will is a columnist for the Washington Post.

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



Tacky for the Oval Office but it figures.

And this guy shouldn't be giving him any ideas for the National Mall. I happen to like that open space and I'm Canadian. Also like the Lincoln memorial which is well deserved for Mr. Lincoln. Now the Washington Monument looks like an obelisk from Ancient Egypt and it was transplanted to DC.

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Sunday, May 4, 2025 4:19 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by Brenda:

Tacky for the Oval Office but it figures.

And this guy shouldn't be giving him any ideas for the National Mall. I happen to like that open space and I'm Canadian. Also like the Lincoln memorial which is well deserved for Mr. Lincoln. Now the Washington Monument looks like an obelisk from Ancient Egypt and it was transplanted to DC.

Trump has plans to take over Canada, but without explicitly stating it, he will do it using only his amazing skills as a salesman without nuking Ottawa. Trump certainly doesn't feel the need to get a Declaration of War from Congress. Congress has not issued such a declaration since 1942, despite the Constitution requiring a declaration before Trump can invade another country:

Trump says ‘I don’t know’ when asked if he’s required to uphold Constitution

By Matt Viser | May 4, 2025

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/05/04/trump-nbc-interview
-constitution-economy
/

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — President Donald Trump, asked during an interview on NBC News’s “Meet the Press” whether he believes that he needs to uphold the Constitution during his presidency, responded, “I don’t know.”
Video at https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-rejects-co
ncerns-prices-economic-uncertainty-defends-agenda-rcna203512


The comment came as Trump remained adamant that he wanted to ship undocumented immigrants out of the country and said it was inconceivable to hear millions of cases in court, insisting he needed the power to quickly remove people he said were murderers and drug dealers.

“I was elected to get them the hell out of here, and the courts are holding me from doing it,” he said.

Pressed by host Kristen Welker on whether he still needs to abide by the Constitution, he said, “I don’t know.”

“I have brilliant lawyers that work for me, and they are going to obviously follow what the Supreme Court said,” he said, appearing to downplay the oath of office that includes a commitment to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.”

In the wide-ranging interview that aired Sunday, Trump was dismissive of his higher tariffs’ economic consequences for consumers, saying Americans would simply have to make do with fewer dolls and pencils, and higher costs for strollers. And he brushed aside the spiraling effects that a recession could bring.

He also did not rule out the use of military force to take Greenland, while saying it’s “highly unlikely” he would use force against Canada. He complimented Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio as potential successors, and he said he planned to foot the bill for adding a ballroom to the White House that would be more in line with his Mar-a-Lago estate.

The interview was remarkable at times, such as when a president elected on a pledge to lower costs and fight inflation minimized concerns about the potential for a recession and suggested that having an economic hit in the short term would be worth it if he can achieve his long-term goals.

“Everything’s okay,” he said. “I said this is a transition period. I think we’re going to do fantastically.”

He said he was not worried about the economy contracting under his watch but did not rule it out.

“Anything can happen,” he said. “But I think we’re going to have the greatest economy in the history of our country. I think we’re going have the greatest economic boom in history.”

Last week, new data showed that the U.S. economy shrank in the first three months of the year, a stark reversal after nearly three years of solid growth amid tariff-related uncertainty.

Trump swiftly blamed his predecessor, and he continued to say in the interview that former president Joe Biden was responsible for aspects of the economy, while conceding that it is “partially” the Trump economy going forward.

“I think the good parts are the Trump economy and the bad parts are the Biden economy because he’s done a terrible job,” he said. “He did a terrible job on everything.”

Pressed further on whether he took responsibility for the impact his tariff plans were having on the economy, he said, “Ultimately, I take responsibility for everything.”

“The tariffs have just started kicking in. And we’re doing really well. Psychologically, I mean, the fake news was giving me such press on the tariffs. The tariffs are going to make us rich. We’re going to be a very rich country.”

Asked about providing relief for small businesses, he said, “They’re not going to need it.”

He raised the possibility that the tariffs could be permanent, although part of that seemed to be a negotiating tactic.

“I wouldn’t do that because if somebody thought they were going to come off the table, why would they build in the United States?” he said.

Trump was criticized last week for suggesting during a Cabinet meeting that consumers would see price increases and may have to do more with less, making the comment that “children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls.”

“I don’t think that a beautiful baby girl needs — that’s 11 years old — needs to have 30 dolls,” he said in the NBC interview. “I think they can have three dolls or four dolls because what we were doing with China was just unbelievable. We had a trade deficit of hundreds of billions of dollars with China.”

He rejected any notion of empty store shelves or increased prices, but maintained that consumers may be affected.

“I’m just saying they don’t need to have 30 dolls. They can have three,” he said on NBC. “They don’t need to have 250 pencils. They can have five.”

He also focused on certain aspects of the economy — including energy prices — and was dismissive of cost increases in other sectors.

“When you say strollers are going up, what kind of a thing?” he said. “I’m saying that gasoline is going down. Gasoline is thousands of times more important than a stroller.”

The president also reiterated his criticism of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell for not lowering interest rates and suggested that it was due to personal animus — “He just doesn’t like me because I think he’s a total stiff,” he said — but Trump also said he would not attempt to remove him before Powell’s term is up in 2026.

Trump also said he would again extend the deadline for a nationwide ban on the popular social media app TikTok if a deal is not done in time. Congress last year voted overwhelmingly to force ByteDance, the app’s Chinese-based parent company, to sell TikTok or face a ban in the United States. A deal was imminent last month, but fell apart amid protests from the Chinese government over Trump’s tariff policies.

“Perhaps I shouldn’t say this, but I have a little warm spot in my heart for TikTok,” Trump said in the interview. “TikTok is — it’s very interesting, but it’ll be protected. It’ll be very strongly protected. But if it needs an extension, I would be willing to give it an extension. Might not need it.”

Trump also soft-pedaled his previous comments suggesting the idea of running for a third term. “This is not something I’m looking to do,” he said in the NBC interview. While he said others have encouraged him, “It’s something that, to the best of my knowledge, you’re not allowed to do.”

“I’m looking to have four great years and turn it over to somebody, ideally a great Republican, a great Republican to carry it forward,” he said. “But I think we’re going to have four years, and I think four years is plenty of time to do something really spectacular.”

He declined to name whom he views as his successor but said that “JD’s doing a fantastic job” and that his vice president “would have an advantage.” But he also brought up Rubio, calling him “great.” Rubio has had a remarkable rise within Trump’s orbit, coming to be seen as a vital conduit to the president. Last week, Rubio was tapped to replace ousted national security adviser Michael Waltz in addition to serving as the nation’s top diplomat.

“I think the other people would all stay in unbelievably high positions. But you know, it could be that he’d be challenged by somebody,” Trump said, referring to Vance. “We have a lot of good people in this party.”

Trump, who is soon supposed to meet the new Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, said he would not cease talking about Canada as a 51st state, suggesting that “it would be a cherished state” while dismissing its importance as a trade ally even though it is one of the U.S.’s largest trading partners.

“We don’t need their cars, we don’t need their lumber, we don’t need their energy. We don’t need anything,” he said. “We do very little business with Canada. They do all of their business practically with us. They need us. We don’t need them.”

When asked about military force to take over Greenland, he said “it’s highly unlikely” but added that “I don’t rule it out.”

“I don’t say I’m going to do it, but I don’t rule out anything. No, not there,” he said. “We need Greenland very badly. Greenland is a very small amount of people, which we’ll take care of, and we’ll cherish them, and all of that. But we need that for international security.”


He rebuffed suggestions that he is taking the country down an authoritarian path, saying that anyone who disagrees with him “had their chance at the election, and they lost big.”

“Many people love Trump. I won the election,” he said. “They didn’t win the election. I got a lot more votes than they did. I won the popular vote. I won all seven swing states by a lot. A lot of people were surprised.”

He also made a baseless claim that the election contained some improprieties.

“Actually, I think there was a lot of hanky-panky going on, but it was too big to rig,” he said. “That’s the good news. It’s too big to rig.”

Asked whether people should be able to criticize him without fear of reprisal, Trump responded, “Absolutely. Yeah, I do. That I do.”

“It’s a part of democracy. It is. You’re always going to have dissent,” he said. “There’s nothing you’re going to do about that. Am I going to get 100 percent unified? It would be a strange place. I can’t even imagine it.”

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

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Sunday, May 4, 2025 4:42 PM

SECOND

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


The U.S. Threat Looming Over Canada

The consequences if Trump followed through on his belligerent rhetoric about a “51st state” would be catastrophic.

By Stephen Marche | May 4, 2025

Stephen Marche is the author of The Next Civil War. https://bookshop.org/a/12476/9781982123215
Download the book for free from the mirrors at https://libgen.rs/search.php?req=Stephen+Marche+The+Next+Civil+War

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/05/canadians-fe
ar-war-trump/682674
/

The idea of a war between Canada and the United States was inconceivable even a few months ago. Most Americans still don’t believe it’s a possibility, or simply haven’t noticed their president’s occupationist rhetoric, or can’t imagine a world in which a neighbor they have been at peace with for 150 years is suddenly an enemy. The very idea seems completely absurd.

But Canada does not have the luxury of dismissing White House rhetoric as trolling. Canadians are imagining the unimaginable because they have to.

Donald Trump’s pointless and malicious trade war has been, by his own account, a prelude to softening up Canada economically so that it can be appropriated as the 51st state. He has brought up his plans for incorporating Canada into the union with Prime Ministers Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney in private calls. The definitive end of the status quo came with the president’s casual comment that he would sell only deliberately downgraded F-47s to allies who purchased American military hardware, “because someday, maybe they’re not our allies.” From that point on, spending on equipment from the American military-industrial complex is a form of national suicide for any country in the free world. Canada could no longer comfortably sit within the American military sphere.

In this stark moment, our nation has abruptly become an adversary of the most powerful country in the world.

An American military threat is Canada’s worst nightmare. And Canada is unprepared precisely because it never considered the U.S. to be a potential threat. Trust made Canada vulnerable. For 60 years at least, both Conservative and Liberal governments have worked toward greater integration with the United States. Our country’s trade and security policies have been built on the premise of American sanity. That assumption, it turned out, was a mistake, hopefully not a fatal one.

What would a continental conflict look like? Conventional war between the United States and Canada would be highly asymmetric, to say the least. The U.S. possesses an enormous military, comprising more than a million men and women under arms. Canada’s armed forces have 72,000 active members. Even worse, because of its deep-seated trust in the United States, Canada has built its forces around interoperability with U.S. forces, both for mutual continental protection, in binational projects such as the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), and for expeditionary forces such as the NATO mission to Afghanistan.

This vulnerability does not mean that Canada would be there for the taking. “The U.S. military does not have the capacity to seize the country,” Scott Clancy, who served as a Colorado-based director of operations for NORAD, told me recently. Clancy served 37 years in the Royal Canadian Air Force and rose to the rank of major-general, and is intimately familiar with U.S. and Canadian military capabilities. “They would have to seize specific points. And the more they went into cities, the more it would become unmanageable from an American military point of view.” A continental war would, then, likely play out as an insurgent conflict in Canadian North America—and across the U.S. homeland, as well. “Let’s say they just hold the oil fields,” Clancy said, referring to a U.S. military occupation of Canadian oil reserves. “We’re not gonna roll over. And just because you attacked Alberta doesn’t mean that we’re not gonna strike at you in New York.”

When I interviewed half a dozen experts on insurgent conflict for my book The Next Civil War, they all agreed that insurgent conflict was the least predictable and containable. Aisha Ahmad, a political-science professor at the University of Toronto, told me she does not think Canada’s reputation for gentleness would make it any less brutal as an opponent. “There’s no such thing as a warrior race,” said Ahmad, who is an expert on insurgency who has conducted field work in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Lebanon, Mali, and Kenya. “Nobody is born an insurgent. Insurgency is what happens when someone kills your mom.” Just one soldier firing on a protester at a rally could be the spark. “All of these cute, latte-drinking TikToker students,” she said. “You look at them and you don’t see insurgents. But if you kill their moms, the Geneva Convention will not save you.”

An occupying military force has three strategies for dealing with insurgent conflicts, none of which work. The first we could call “Groznification”: complete suppression, as the Russian army did in Chechnya at the turn of the century. Even the destruction of any means of resistance works only temporarily, as Colonel Gaddafi learned in Libya. “Hearts and minds,” the strategy applied in Iraq and Afghanistan, is also ineffective: If you build hospitals and then fill them with corpses, you just generate more insurgents. The third option is “decapitation,” but the systematic targeting of insurgent networks’ leaders—the idea behind the recent U.S. air strikes on the Houthis in Yemen—can easily be countered by detailed succession plans. And killing leadership has the unintended consequence of fragmenting the insurgency’s power structures, so that, if you ever do want to negotiate a peaceful settlement, you have dozens of mini-insurgencies to deal with, rather than a single contained force.

The Canadian population would present particular challenges to any counterinsurgency strategy. “The Taliban would look lightweight,” Ahmad told me. “Canada has all of the attributes to have an even fiercer insurgency than the other places in the world where I study these problems.” Canada has the most educated population in the Group of Seven advanced industrial nations, which for a resistance movement would be “an asset in being able to identify pressure points, in being able to know what critical infrastructure is, in being able to develop technology and weapons that can be highly disruptive,” Ahmad said. “The scale and the capacity would be so much higher.” If only one in 100 Canadians took up arms against an American occupation, that force would be 10 times the estimated size of the Taliban at the outset of the Afghan War. And that force would consist of machine-learning specialists and petroleum engineers rather than shepherds and subsistence farmers.

Canadians are already a well-armed population. More than a quarter of Canadian households own a gun. Consider, also, the Canadian landscape, which is vast beyond imagination and would provide ideal cover for insurgents. To give you an idea of that wilderness, Manitoba alone, one of 10 Canadian provinces, has some 90,000 unnamed lakes—even Canadians can’t keep track of their territory.

In short, a continental conflict would be an unmitigated act of murderous folly. But murderous folly is not beyond the capacity of this new iteration of the United States.

Already, the once-unthinkable idea of a war between Canada and the United States is growing less unthinkable. Before the 2024 U.S. election, 12 percent of Republicans viewed Canadians as “unfriendly” or “an enemy.” Now that number is 27 percent. Persuading the military to carry out an attack on Canada would probably be more difficult than convincing the population to support such an attack. The American officer class is trained, from the beginning, in “the duty not to follow orders,” and combat operations against Canada would involve fighting against fellow soldiers who shed blood beside them in Afghanistan and other theaters. Canadian and American soldiers have attended a great number of one another’s funerals.

But turning the U.S. military is far from impossible. The Trump administration fired the commander of a Space Force base in Greenland the moment she expressed a position wavering from his annexationist aims there. The Naval Academy has already purged its library and canceled various speakers. At least some of the U.S. military’s leaders are on board with the ideological purification of their institutions.

The conditions required for the occupation of Canada would also mean the end of American democracy. That, too, is not an impossible outcome—and a U.S. military adventure might even have both objectives in view. “The orchestration of a security crisis allows the incumbent government to declare emergency powers and bypass ordinary politics,” Ahmad said. “The Trump administration has already signaled that it wants a third term.” The 2028 election will be a watershed. If Trump decides to run again, a manufactured emergency over Canada would be a convenient excuse for overturning the constitutional barriers.

Nobody wants to believe that a continental conflict could happen. Very few Ukrainians, right up until the point of Russia’s 2022 invasion, believed that their malignant neighbor would invade. Canadians cannot afford complacency.

Reflecting on U.S.-Canadian relations in happier times, President John F. Kennedy said: “Geography has made us neighbors. History has made us friends. Economics has made us partners. And necessity has made us allies. Those whom nature hath so joined together, let no man put asunder.” Now, and for the foreseeable future, Trump has sundered us. And yet, even so, our fates remain entwined. The end of America would destroy Canada. The occupation of Canada would destroy America.

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

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Sunday, May 4, 2025 5:00 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


There will be no war with Canada.

That would be over in 2 hours.





Shut the fuck up, stupid. Your party is dead and your media is next.

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

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

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Sunday, May 4, 2025 5:02 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
At this point I've just got to ask myself how far to the ultra-fringe-right I can push Second if given enough time.

Let's see...

We've got him posting about religion in a positive light every other day now. He was in full support of the Cheney family in the months leading up to the election. He posts online at least once per week about who should be murdered this week.



Is it any wonder why GenZ hates the Democratic Party and cringes hard any time one of them talk?

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

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

“That was some weird shit,” George Bush said about Trump. That doesn't mean I approve of Bush, but Trumptard 6ix weirdly thinks different. Weird shit is an excellent description of all Trumptard behavior.

What George W. Bush Really Thought of Donald Trump
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/03/what-george-w-bush-really-thou
ght-of-trumps-inauguration.html


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



Some would argue that thinking it was a good idea to run on a dual-platform of Privatizing Social Security and Banning Gay Marriage would make a mindless Lefty headline-reader-bot question how prudent it would be to use that person's words and judgement as a good choice to bolster their own argument 21 years later in 2025. Especially after doing the same thing with the Cheney family before the election turned out the way that it did. And certainly, especially when the headline-reader-bot already possesses the data that the human being they are interacting with cares not whatsoever for George W. Bush or anything he's ever had to say about any topic.

But we're still dealing with pretty unsophisticated AI when it comes to the Second-Bot and the mindless articles it scrapes off the internet.

Keep watching your party circle the drain and wondering why you're completely powerless to do anything about it, drone.



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

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




No reply to this one, huh bigmouth?

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

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

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Monday, May 5, 2025 5:07 AM

SECOND

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


Trump’s assault on the media is being welcomed by authoritarians around the world

By Michael Savage | Sat 3 May 2025 02.00 EDT

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/ng-interactive/2025/may
/03/a-cocktail-for-a-misinformed-world-why-china-and-russia-are-cheering-trumps-attacks-on-us-media


As Donald Trump’s executive order in March led to the shuttering of Voice of America (VOA) – the global broadcaster whose roots date back to the fight against Nazi propaganda – he quickly attracted support from figures not used to aligning themselves with any US administration.

Trump had ordered the US Agency for Global Media, the federal agency that funds VOA and other groups promoting independent journalism overseas, to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law”. The decision suddenly halted programming in 49 languages to more than 425 million people.

In Moscow, Margarita Simonyan, the hardline editor-in-chief of the state broadcaster RT described it as an “awesome decision”. The Global Times, an English-language Chinese state media publication, crowed that the broadcasters had been discarded by the White House “like a dirty rag”, ending their “propaganda poison”. Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, whose regime has been accused of repressing political opposition, described Trump’s move as “very promising”.

Domestically, Trump has continued to target the media, whether by taking outlets including CBS News and ABC to court, attempting to block political access to the White House by the Associated Press, or defund National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service – institutions he has described as “radical left monsters”.

For many senior media figures around the world, there has been a tipping of the scales as authoritarian regimes are emboldened by a US administration not only attacking the media at home, but also withdrawing from the fight for free information overseas.

As the world marks Press Freedoms Day on May 3, observers are now warning that in countries where free media is weak, America’s withdrawal from this geopolitical balancing act will have far-reaching effects.

As well as VOA, which was founded in 1942 at the height of the second world war and broadcasts in nearly 50 languages, Trump has withdrawn funding from Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), which was founded during the cold war and broadcasts to countries including Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.

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

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Monday, May 5, 2025 5:09 AM

SECOND

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


Lawyers warn that the president's assault on the legal profession threatens the rule of law itself.



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

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Monday, May 5, 2025 5:10 AM

SECOND

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


Donald Trump Is Using the Presidency to Get Rich

“The amount of money flowing into the Trump family coffers is of a scale and scope that just sort of blows the mind in any context,” the staff writer Susan B. Glasser says.

With Susan B. Glasser, Jane Mayer, and Evan Osnos | May 3, 2025

https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/political-scene/donald-trump-is-usin
g-the-presidency-to-get-rich


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

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Monday, May 5, 2025 5:11 AM

SECOND

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


Trump Says He’s Instituting a “100% Tariff” on Films Produced Outside of the U.S. Because the “Movie Industry in America Is Dying”

The president posted that Hollywood and other areas are "being devastated" due to "a concerted effort by other Nations," which constitutes a "National Security threat."

By Kimberly Nordyke, Aaron Couch | May 4, 2025 8:39pm

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/trump-tariff-movie
s-produced-outside-america-1236206949
/

“The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death,” he wrote. “Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated. This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda!”

“Therefore, I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands. WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”

“What they’ve done is other nations have been stealing the movies, the moviemaking capabilities from the united States,” he said, adding: “I’ve done some very strong research over the past week, and we’re making very few movies now. Hollywood is being destroyed. Now, you have a … grossly incompetent governor that allowed that to happen, so I’m not just blaming other nations, but other nations have stolen our movie industry. If they’re not willing to make a movie inside the United States, then we should have a tariff on movies that come in. And not only that, governments are actually giving big money. They’re supporting them financially. That’s sort of a threat to our country in a sense.”

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

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Monday, May 5, 2025 5:34 AM

SECOND

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


The crisis isn’t Trump. It’s the Republican Party.
Anne Applebaum wrote the book on why people choose to collaborate with authoritarian regimes. So what does she think of the GOP?

by Ezra Klein | Nov 13, 2020 (Five Years Past)

https://www.vox.com/21562116/anne-applebaum-twilight-of-democracy-gop-
trump-election-fraud-2020-biden-the-ezra-klein-show


The most alarming aspect of the past week is not Donald Trump’s anti-democratic efforts. He is doing exactly what he has always done, exactly what he said he would do. It’s the speed at which Republican elites have consolidated support around him. Without the Republican Party’s support, Trump is just the loser of an election, ranting ineffectually about theft as a way to rationalize defeat. With the Republican Party’s support, he’s a danger to the country.

Some Republicans, like Lindsey Graham, have wholeheartedly endorsed Trump’s claims. On Monday, the South Carolina senator said that Trump should not concede the election and that “Republicans win because of our ideas and we lose elections because [Democrats] cheat.” Others — including Vice President Mike Pence and Sens. Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley — have signaled solidarity with the president, while not quite endorsing his conspiracy theories. The message is clear: When faced with the choice of loyalty to Trump and the legitimacy of the democratic process, Republicans are more than willing to throw democracy under the bus.

Anne Applebaum is a staff writer for the Atlantic, a senior fellow of international affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, and most recently the author of Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism. In it, Applebaum, once comfortable in center-right elite circles, grapples with why so many of her contemporaries across the globe — including right here in America — have abandoned liberal democracy in favor of strongman cults and autocratic regimes.

We discuss why most politicians under increasingly autocratic regimes choose to collaborate with the regime, how Graham went from outspoken Trump critic to one of Trump’s most vocal supporters in the US Senate, why the Republican Party ultimately took the path of Sarah Palin, what we can expect to happen if and when a much more capable demagogue emerges, and much more.

Ezra Klein

How do you think we would cover what Trump and the Republican Party are doing and saying right now if it were happening in another country?

Anne Applebaum

If this were happening in another country, we would be talking about a populist authoritarian seeking to create disillusion with democracy in his country in order to have a base of supporters who will help him return to power. But I don’t think we have to talk about it as if it were another country. I’m very happy to use the same language that I would use if this were happening in Brazil or Argentina or anywhere else.

Ezra Klein

I think that Americans — and I would include myself in this — have had an implicit exceptionalism in the way we understood our country’s immunity to some of the political trends and dangers that afflict other countries. As if authoritarianism can’t happen here, as if our parties can’t turn against democracy here. That just no longer seems true.

Is it time for Americans to be disabused of the idea that there is any special protection to our system, our political culture?

Anne Applebaum

This is a conclusion that I came to several years ago through the agonizing personal experience of living in Poland and watching one of the political parties here become a populist authoritarian party. Watching it try to undermine democracy, undermine the courts, undermine the media once it came to power. And then, glancing over at the United States and realizing that I was seeing many of the same things.

I think you’re absolutely right. I think it’s partly American exceptionalism. It’s also partly our incredible luck over the past six or seven decades. We had a stable democracy, we had an expansion of prosperity, we were the leading country in the world, and others were following us. And we somehow came to assume that it was always going to be like that — just because it had been like that for 60 or 70 years, it would go on indefinitely.

We forget that even in our own history, we had previous moments when democracy was in doubt. We had a civil war. And even if you look at our own Constitution, it was written by people who also had doubts about democracy and also wondered whether it would succeed. One of the reasons we have some of the odd institutions that we do is that the Founding Fathers were people who had doubts about human nature, who wanted checks and balances, who wanted some control over the president, who were reading Greek and Roman history where there were lots of stories of democracy going wrong. All of that was coded into the system from the very beginning.

I think that the last several decades have blinded us to our own history and our own origins.

Ezra Klein

I want to put my cards on the table for a moment: I don’t find Donald Trump very interesting in this story. I think what he is is known. He’s a very familiar type historically.

What I am interested in is how quickly the Republican Party has fallen to somebody like Trump. The architecture of your book is about watching people you admired and respected — people who fought alongside you against tyrannies and strongmen for liberal democracy — become functionaries in populist-right, authoritarian parties, and often authoritarians themselves.

Why do you think that happens? What separates the people who end up as dissidents in those moments from those who become functionaries in them or accommodate themselves to them?

Anne Applebaum

I’ve tried to stay away from sweeping vast generalizations. But there is one sentiment, I think, that links the people who were once part of the center-right — the anti-communist movement in Poland or Reaganism or Thatcherism — and who began to change in a different direction over the past decade or so: disappointment.

These are very often people who are disappointed, and they are almost always disappointed with their society. Whether it’s the superficiality of modern democracy, the demographic change that they don’t want or like, the decline in morals and values that they see all around them, or, in the case of Britain, England’s loss of its voice in the world. It’s a feeling of loss or disappointment, and sometimes it’s quite an extreme form of disappointment — a kind of despair. “My society has ended.”

I think anybody who has that view of the contemporary world — that it’s over, it’s finished, my civilization is dead and gone, my society is decayed — leads you almost inevitably into a kind of radicalism. If you have that feeling that it’s over, then why wouldn’t you try to smash everything?


Ezra Klein

As a very quick typology of the Republican Party, I think you could cut people into three groups. There are the people who liked Donald Trump from the beginning, or bought into an apocalyptic understanding of America that Donald Trump seemed to share. A good example is Patrick Buchanan. Then there are people who don’t have unbelievably strong feelings about Donald Trump, but they really hate the left. They’re the anti-anti-Trumpers. And their dislike for the left is enough to make them make peace with him. I would probably put Mitch McConnell in this category.

But the people I’m most interested in are the people who saw exactly what Donald Trump is and loathed it and then also accommodated it. Somebody I want to use here as a case study, because you’ve written about him and I’ve spent some time reporting about him, is Lindsey Graham. He ran against Donald Trump in 2016 and called him “a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.” And he said, “if we nominate Trump, we’ll get destroyed, and we’ll deserve it.”

Now, he’s out there telling Trump not to concede the election. He’s saying that if Republicans concede, they’ll never win again. He’s telling Sean Hannity that Democrats only win elections when they cheat. What do you think happened to Lindsey Graham?

Anne Applebaum

Lindsey Graham is particularly difficult to explain when you look at his background. If you were to look at him as a type, you would imagine him to be the most loyal American patriot and admirer of the Constitution. He has a very strong affiliation to the military. He got through college on a military scholarship. His parents died when he was young, so he had a hard-knock story and was saved by the American military. And he’s said that many times. If you were to imagine a type of person who would never betray American ideals, it would be Lindsey Graham.

But this is where you have to get into questions of personality and personal weakness. Graham is clearly someone who needs to be around a leader. For many, many years, he was John McCain’s sidekick. And in those years, he was a McCain Republican. I saw him at conferences in Europe where he talked about America’s role in the world, America promoting democracy. And then when McCain died, he seemed to need another role and he attached himself to Trump.

He appears to like the role of a power broker. When he runs into journalists in Washington, he likes recounting how he was just on the phone with the president. So the feeling of being close to power, of being next to someone important, this seems like a role that he is psychologically attached to playing. It’s a recognizable personality type.

If you look at the story of other nations that have been occupied by others or where people are part of political systems that they don’t admire, you will always find people like Lindsey Graham who give up their ideas, who move close to power, and who then seek to play some kind of role in the new system benefiting them.

Ezra Klein

My understanding of Graham — and I spent a bit of time with him over the years — is that in the middle of the Trump era, as he began to make this transition, his explanation was if he flattered Trump enough, he could direct Trump in important ways on things that are important to him, particularly foreign policy. This ends up failing. The abandonment of the Kurds, for instance, was a huge blow to Graham. But he does try to become this adviser to Trump, and from what I understand, there was a certain level of realpolitik about that.

And then slowly it became something other than that. He began to look at things through new eyes. He was very radicalized by the Kavanaugh [Supreme Court] hearings. He’s out there telling people that the thing about the left is they hate us. All the smart people out there, they hate us.

Something that you emphasize in the book is the way that cooperating with a regime like this often is a product not of one big decision to change sides, but of a series of small decisions, a series of small accommodations. And eventually you wake up and you’re on the other side. Can you talk a little bit about that process?

Anne Applebaum

There’s actually social science studies of this and usually it’s done in the form of examining corruption inside companies. How do people end up going along with corruption if their company is carrying out some kind of scam?

The studies show that it’s always a step-by-step process. You accept one aspect of it: “Well, everybody else is keeping double books, so I can, too. That’s just what people do in this company, and it’s normal.” And then the next step is: “I’ll do this transaction in cash and I’ll keep it in the drawer. And I’m still a good person; I’m still a good worker. I’m doing this to help my company stay out of trouble or keep its head above water.” As each step becomes normalized, as people get used to the situation, then they can take the next step.


This is very similar to what happens in occupied countries. I’m not saying that the United States is Vichy France or occupied East Germany. But these are useful parallels to look at because they show you what human psychology is like when someone is working inside a system whose ideology they previously disagreed with or disliked. You see the same kinds of patterns.

Something like that also happened inside the Republican Party: People who thought of themselves as patriots, as good people — as politicians working in the interest of the United States — made small decisions over time, each time reminding themselves of why what they were doing was for the good of the country.

For Lindsey Graham, it was: I’m here to guide Donald Trump in the right direction. And then, at each stage, the situation becomes normalized. Eventually Lindsey Graham came to see his opponents as anti-American radical leftist socialists who he had to fight against. He still probably thinks he’s playing the same role — that he’s a good person fighting for American values — even though what he’s doing is almost precisely the opposite of what he said he would do or the kind of person that he was four years ago.

Ezra Klein

I want to talk about one of those decision trees that I think is happening right now, which has to do with the stolen election narrative that is taking hold among the Republican base.

Donald Trump is simply saying outright, in all caps, that he won the election and that the election has been stolen. There are some Republicans, like Graham, who are siding with him explicitly on that. But many of the others are doing something that I would describe as signaling emotional solidarity with Trump’s claims while not quite buying into them but not disputing them either. On Saturday, Marco Rubio tweeted, “The media can project an election winner, but they don’t get to decide if claims of broken election laws & irregularities are true. That is decided by the courts and on the basis of clear evidence and the law.”

I agree with everything in that tweet. But the point of that tweet is to signal solidarity with a president saying something quite different. I think there is a belief among many elected Republicans right now that their base needs to grieve the election, that Donald Trump needs to grieve the election, and so it’s best to indulge the idea that it might have been stolen. Let them process the law slowly, let the courts shut that down, and then you can move on in a less emotionally traumatic way for your base. I just don’t think they’re going to be able to control it in that way. I think this is going to overtake them just like all the other conspiracies have overtaken them.

But I’m curious, do you have sympathy for that view? Is there something to be said for that strategy?

Anne Applebaum

I’m afraid that I think it’s a little bit more sinister than that. I think that — certainly on Trump’s part, and other Republicans are probably coming to see this the same way as well — this is an attempt to create a new kind of base: an enraged receiving base, which will always think that the election was stolen and which will always assume that something went wrong and will always feel that they were deprived of something. And this base will then have uses in the future.

I don’t believe it will be all of the Republican Party. I can’t tell you right now how many of them it will be. But it will be a significant number of people. And in some congressional districts and some states, it could even be a majority. And this will be a base that is usable. This will be a base that not only dislikes the Democratic Party or disagrees with them, it will think that the Democratic Party is evil and anti-democratic — that they have stolen the election.

Think about what that means. That means that they aren’t even a legitimate political party. It means that there is a base of people who will be not just skeptical of mainstream media — whatever you think mainstream media is, which may even include Fox now. They will be not just skeptical of Fox, CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. They will think all of those institutions are part of a deliberately constructed conspiracy to steal the presidency. And that kind of feeling — that conviction that the other side isn’t just wrong, it’s evil and traitorous — that’s then a useful group of people who can be motivated politically and maybe in other ways in the future.

Download Anne Applebaum's books for free, especially the Authoritarian one, at https://libgen.rs/search.php?&req=Anne+Applebaum+Authoritarianism

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

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Monday, May 5, 2025 9:19 AM

SECOND

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


A Note From the Netherlands
The Dutch have nice things. Why can’t we?

By Paul Krugman | May 05, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/a-note-from-the-netherlands

Our local hosts will be taking us around to see some sights, so I only have time for a brief, impressionistic post.

Robin and I are currently in Leiden, which is a lovely town not far from Amsterdam. And after spending yesterday walking around, we both felt depressed. Why? Because the Dutch have so many nice things that we deny ourselves at home.

Disclaimer: Yes, we’ve spent our time here in affluent, attractive areas. I know that there are depressed areas in the Netherlands, some of them not far from here. Still, I don’t think it’s wrong to say that life for most people here is pretty good, with far fewer people in misery than there are in America. And life isn’t just less nasty and brutish; it’s also longer, with Dutch life expectancy 4 years higher than ours.

Urban life is especially appealing. Leiden, and I’m told many other Dutch cities, is spectacularly walkable — and people do indeed walk. They also ride bicycles, thanks both to dedicated bike lanes everywhere and a culture in which commuting and shopping by bike is normal for people of all ages.

Oh, by the way, a computer shop in downtown Leiden quickly repaired my laptop. But I guess that I’m worse off according to Trumponomics. After all, I paid them 80 euros, and all I got in return was my digital life back.

More subjectively, people here don’t seem to be gripped by the political anxiety that has infested America since Trump took power again. Yesterday was Liberation Day, which in the Netherlands means the day the Nazis were driven out — by the Canadian army! — rather than the day they hiked tariffs. We watched the ceremony with Dutch friends, and it was beautiful and moving. It is nice to be in a country where everyone agrees that the Nazis were bad.

To be fair, I can’t take the pulse of feelings here especially well, since one unfortunate thing about the Netherlands, from my point of view, is that people speak Dutch. But looking around here is a reminder that life in an advanced economy can be pleasant. If Americans feel that they’re teetering on the edge of the abyss, we only have ourselves to blame.

I’m still eager to get back to the United States. Indeed, traveling ends up reminding me how American I am, how much I love the good things about my country. But we could live better lives than we do, and it’s sad that we choose not to.

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

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Monday, May 5, 2025 9:44 AM

SECOND

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


The most disturbing aspect of Trump’s first 100 days
Too many American businesses are acting like he’s already a dictator
By Matthew Yglesias | May 05, 2025

https://www.slowboring.com/p/the-most-disturbing-aspect-of-trumps

Almost everything Donald Trump does becomes a bizarre, larger-than-life spectacle.

But precisely for that reason, it’s important to remember that “normal” aspects of politics continue to be incredibly relevant to understanding Trump-era politics.

Barack Obama’s single most effective line of attack on Mitt Romney focused on Republican plans to privatize Medicare, and the boring fact that Trump backed away from the GOP’s least-popular idea was an important factor in his rise to power. Similarly, the 2022 midterms were heavily influenced by public backlash to abortion bans, and a crucial strand of the 2024 campaign was Trump backing away from GOP policy commitments in this regard.

Like most newly elected presidents, Trump enjoyed a honeymoon of positive approval ratings after he won the election.

He also had strong political winds at his back. The inflation of 2022-2023 had broken the public’s faith in the Democratic Party’s economic stewardship. A lot of people were upset about the volume of immigrants who’d arrived through irregular channels and exploited loopholes in the asylum system. Trump had largely restored the Republican Party’s traditional status as the preferred political ally of big business. Even though the sharp rise in shootings and murders of 2020-2021 had already faded, crime — a perennially good issue for Republicans — had become salient as a topic of public debate. As I wrote last November in “How Donald Trump Could Succeed,” there was a clear path for him to become a popular and successful president. And as I wrote on Inauguration Day in “Nobody Knows What Trump is Going to Do,” there was an extraordinary lack of clarity regarding the policy agenda he would actually pursue, because he was constantly contradicting himself.

What Trump ultimately decided to do is what most contemporary presidents have done: He’s interpreted a backlash against the other party’s most strident policy activists as an endorsement of his side’s most strident activists.

The response has been predictable, with thermostatic backlash on the issues and plummeting approval ratings for Trump.

This does not, on its own, solve all of the Democrats’ political problems, especially in the Senate, but those problems too are a pretty normal part of politics. Having lost the prior election, Democrats seem leaderless because they literally are leaderless. Being in the minority in Congress leaves you whining on the sidelines, which looks weak and ineffectual because, again, it literally is weak and ineffectual. Democrats now need to do the basic blocking and tackling work of recruiting midterm candidates, writing a policy agenda, and holding a presidential primary, all of which will play out in time. There’s no guarantee that any of this will turn out well, but there are also plenty of obvious opportunities for it to do so.

But despite much of this having broadly normal contours, I think there’s one under discussed way in which it has been not normal.

Trump is making economic policy decisions that have not only engendered backlash from the mass public, they’ve been bad in specific ways for business. There’s obviously nothing inherently wrong with a politician making a call that’s bad for a particular company or industry. But normally when that happens, the leaders of the companies that are harmed complain vociferously and try to mobilize political support for their own interests. Under Trump, though, corporate America is acting like they absolutely agree with all the darkest warnings about democracy being on the ballot in 2024. They seem to have decided that America is now a dictatorship, where if you publicly complain about Trump you’ll be sent to the gulag.

I don’t want to defend Trump on this score, because he really is a madman who enjoys abusing power. But this is still the United States of America, and the appropriate response to his actions is for business leaders to act normally, which in this case would mean standing firm in defense of their own interests rather than bandwagoning with a leader who is erratic, impulsive, and deeply unpopular.
The mystery of Amazon’s tariff surcharge

Amazon recently considered attaching a visible “tariff surcharge” to goods when their prices rise as Trump’s trade policies go into effect. The administration got mad about this, yelled at them, and Amazon immediately backed down.

I could take or leave the tariff surcharge as a gambit.

But the tariffs are obviously bad for Amazon’s business. Not only is the increase in the cost structure for goods they sell as a retailer bad for them, but the larger concepts underpinning Trump’s trade ideas are bad for Amazon. Amazon Web Services is a major exporter of services globally, for example, and part of Trump’s fuzzy thinking about trade deficits is a belief that services exports don’t count. Amazon also employs a large blue collar workforce in its warehouses and other facilities, and one of the premises of MAGA economics is that for some reason, these jobs (like construction jobs) don’t count and the only acceptable path forward is for blue collar workers to work specifically in factories.

You would expect a company to speak up about something like this.

That doesn’t mean Andy Jassy or Jeff Bezos needs to start talking like a highly partisan Democrat. These are rich businessmen, and if they want to shower praise on Trump for trying to cut their taxes or for appointing business-friendly regulators to various posts, then by all means do it. But Trump is simultaneously hurting their company in tangible ways, while also deriding its contributions to the American economy. That’s the kind of thing people normally complain about.

Similarly, the entire pharmaceutical industry made the bizarre decision not to oppose RFK Jr.’s nomination as Secretary of Health and Human Services, even though RFK himself quite openly says that he hates this industry and wants to injure their interests.

Whatever calculus went into that immediately failed to pay off, as Trump inaugurated a broad attack on medical research. Some of this seems to be about Kennedy’s bizarre views on health, and some of it is about DOGE’s eccentric ideas about government spending. But a lot of it is using medical research grants as a weapon to pursue unrelated culture war grievances. Politicians are allowed to decide what fights to pick, but normally, if you were to make a business segment collateral damage in an unrelated political dispute, the leaders of those businesses would complain about it. What I’ve heard instead from medical researchers is that pharma executives are “afraid” to get on Trump’s bad side.

And we’re seeing this across the board. Homebuilders, like all industry segments, are inclined to praise some of the Trump administration’s policies. But the combination of tariffs and higher budget deficits, plus an immigration crackdown, is straightforwardly bad for the industry in ways that are also straightforwardly bad for the country.

Why don’t these guys speak up for themselves?

Why is it left to Slow Boring to point out that there are win-win ways to create high-wage blue collar jobs in the construction sector rather than wrecking the global economy to try to turn carpenters into garment manufacturers? Part of the normal give and take of a democratic society is that if you try to screw people over, they complain vocally, and then the public might hear certain criticisms that don’t come from partisan Democrats or even people who are anti-Trump.

Worse than silence

Of course, the business leaders who remain silent are not the worst of the lot.

Even as Jeff Bezos says he wants the Washington Post to mount an intellectual defense of personal liberty and free markets, Amazon has paid tens of millions of dollars to Melania Trump for a vanity documentary. ABC paid $15 million to Trump to settle a bogus defamation lawsuit rather than fighting in court, and Paramount has compromised the integrity of 60 Minutes and is now prepared to fork over its own giant settlement fee in a case most people think that they could win in court.

Companies’ concerns about Trump are not totally misguided.

During his first term, Trump tried to yank a defense contract that Amazon had won in order to punish the Washington Post for its reporting. He had the Justice Department try to block AT&T’s merger with Warner Bros in order to punish CNN for its reporting. Donald Trump is genuinely a bad person who tries to use the powers of his office in inappropriate ways. But it’s worth remembering that the Trump administration lost in court on both counts. There is a cost to litigating, but the way to address it is to fight and win and then complain to the public and to your fellow rich businessmen and make sure the politicians who are messing with you pay a political price.

The United States has existed as a democratic republic for over 200 years now, and this is not really a new scenario or a new playbook.

The most shameful actors of all have, strikingly, been several major law firms, which decided to reach preposterous settlements with Trump in response to extortion rather than putting their faith in the rule of law and their ability to litigate. The law firms that are fighting Trump in court seem to be winning, and Microsoft recently gave one of them a vote of confidence.

Again, to be clear, I am not insisting that every sane person needs to believe that every single thing Trump says and does is wrong. As I’ve written before, Harvard is right to fight Trump’s coercion, but rather than cave with an ignominious settlement, they should fight him with the one hand while acknowledging the legitimacy of some conservative critiques with the other. The Princeton faculty just took a vote to bar the idea of issuing campus-wide statements on political issues, saying they should limit themselves to commenting on university administration. That’s a smart idea and an example of institutions trying to show that they are responsive to trends in society. But there is no basis for this belief that every company and business lobby in the country needs to be cowering in terror of Trump.
A stack of self-fulfilling prophecies

A noteworthy counterexample is the behavior of certain genuinely Trump-friendly institutions, like the Wall Street Journal editorial page and The Free Press.

These are right-of-center outlets, but they’re also run by human beings who have eyes and ears and the capacity for independent judgment, so they occasionally run blistering articles taking issue with Trump over some particular policy or action. Because that’s how politics works! Throughout my career, I have written articles criticizing administrations I voted for and defending administrations I voted against.

To an extent, I think a strength of Rupert Murdoch’s stewardship of the Wall Street Journal is precisely that he is committed to the view that Democrats’ dark warnings about Trump as a dictator are wrong. If you think he’s not a dictator and you think he’s worth supporting because he’s right on the majority of issues, then you act like a normal person living in a democracy and criticize him when you think he’s wrong.

The only way for Trump to actually become a dictator is for everyone to stop the normal political process of speaking up when they disagree with him and ensuring that his overreach generates backlash.

Obviously, when liberals complain about Trump as an authoritarian menace to the rule of law, their intention is not for business leaders to respond this way! What they want to do is recruit people into the resistance. Which would be great. But we do also seem to be giving people, especially business leaders, either a reason or an excuse to cave to illegitimate demands or downplay normal criticisms of Trump's actions. And I think that’s the single most disturbing thing that I’ve seen over the course of the first 100 days.

Of course, Trump has done plenty that is directly horrifying and harmful in a first-order way. At the same time, “he’s going to do terrible things that harm people” was baked into the cake the moment he won the election. He’s done terrible things, Democrats have criticized the terrible things, he’s become unpopular, and now Democrats mostly need to focus on self-help and improving their public image.

But what ought to be happening is that as his approval rating sinks, frontline Republicans start distancing themselves from him.

That’s what would actually check his power and run the risk of him facing real legislative defeats. And yet despite the big shift in public opinion, I still don’t see stakeholders in the health care industry complaining vocally about the harms of Medicaid cuts. This is putting a bit of a floor under Trump and also ensuring that he’s not being treated like a toxically unpopular president by Congress.

I don’t really know what’s going on here. But Ryan Petersen of the shipping company Flexport has been quite publicly outspoken about tariffs and recently came to DC to lobby. And I think he smartly wrapped that up with a patriotic post celebrating the First Amendment.
Quote:

Ryan Petersen @typesfast

I criticized the American government a lot the last 4 weeks. The tariffs seem stupidly implemented and are hurting our customers and millions of other businesses and consumers in the U.S.

I spent the last two days in Washington, DC visiting with senior administration officials and republican senators and congress people to learn and share my views. Everyone was respectful and interested in learning what our logistics data is showing about the emerging situation.

At no time did I worry I would be locked up or disappeared for criticizing them. They didn’t even ask me to stop. We take this for granted but it’s not the norm everywhere around the world or through most of human history. And where it is, that’s in large part because of our founding father’s wisdom in creating the Bill of Rights.

Again feeling grateful for the first amendment!

11:35 PM • Apr 30, 2025 • 363K Views

There is obviously something a bit odd about someone feeling like he has to note that he didn’t fear being locked up for criticizing the president’s policies. But he is correct on the merits, and I also think that encouraging people to lean in to the first amendment and the proud American tradition of free speech is tactically shrewd here. This is America, and it’s pathetic for powerful business leaders to be whining about how they’re afraid to anger the president.

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

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Monday, May 5, 2025 11:05 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
The most disturbing aspect of Trump’s first 100 days
Too many American businesses are acting like he’s already a dictator
By Matthew Yglesias | May 05, 2025



Are you fucking kidding me?

12 straight years of every corporation under the sun blowing Democrats. A rainbow flag around every one of their logos for a whole month, and bans for anyone on Twitter and YouTube anywhere else who has a problem with it. But they only put the rainbow flag around their logos in countries that ban you or lock you up for saying something about it, and none of them had any fucking balls to do it in China or the Middle East.

EVERYTHING government and business have been acting as if Democrats were dictating everything.

Go fuck yourself dude. They're finally shutting the fuck up and getting out of our lives.

Company makes X product and/or provides X service. That is all that is necessary out of Company.

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

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

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Monday, May 5, 2025 11:07 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
The crisis isn’t Trump. It’s the Republican Party.



Well, that's mixed messaging, Vox.

Are you sure that Vox isn't acting like Trump's a dictator now too?



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

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

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Monday, May 5, 2025 11:08 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Trump Says He’s Instituting a “100% Tariff” on Films Produced Outside of the U.S. Because the “Movie Industry in America Is Dying”

The president posted that Hollywood and other areas are "being devastated" due to "a concerted effort by other Nations," which constitutes a "National Security threat."

By Kimberly Nordyke, Aaron Couch | May 4, 2025 8:39pm

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/trump-tariff-movie
s-produced-outside-america-1236206949
/

“The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death,” he wrote. “Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated. This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda!”

“Therefore, I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands. WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”

“What they’ve done is other nations have been stealing the movies, the moviemaking capabilities from the united States,” he said, adding: “I’ve done some very strong research over the past week, and we’re making very few movies now. Hollywood is being destroyed. Now, you have a … grossly incompetent governor that allowed that to happen, so I’m not just blaming other nations, but other nations have stolen our movie industry. If they’re not willing to make a movie inside the United States, then we should have a tariff on movies that come in. And not only that, governments are actually giving big money. They’re supporting them financially. That’s sort of a threat to our country in a sense.”

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



Good.

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

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

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Monday, May 5, 2025 7:49 PM

SECOND

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


Trump sons’ deals on 3 continents directly benefit the president

May 5, 2025 at 1:27 pm

The president's family members are raking in a fortune in deals across the world.

In the past 10 days, Donald Trump Jr. made stops in Hungary, Romania, Serbia, and Bulgaria. At the same time, Eric Trump was visiting Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and other Middle East spots promoting the family’s real estate company and crypto plans.

“There’s nothing like it,” Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley told the Times about the potential conflicts of interest posed by the trips.

Details about how the winds of change are filling Trump's bank accounts are at https://www.seattletimes.com/business/trump-sons-deals-on-3-continents
-directly-benefit-the-president
/

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

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Monday, May 5, 2025 7:57 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Trump sons’ deals on 3 continents directly benefit the president

May 5, 2025 at 1:27 pm

The president's family members are raking in a fortune in deals across the world.

In the past 10 days, Donald Trump Jr. made stops in Hungary, Romania, Serbia, and Bulgaria. At the same time, Eric Trump was visiting Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and other Middle East spots promoting the family’s real estate company and crypto plans.

“There’s nothing like it,” Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley told the Times about the potential conflicts of interest posed by the trips.

Details about how the winds of change are filling Trump's bank accounts are at https://www.seattletimes.com/business/trump-sons-deals-on-3-continents
-directly-benefit-the-president
/

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



Until you tell me you have a problem with Joe Biden's crackhead son making $60,000 per month working at Burisma, I don't fucking want to hear it.

Nobody else does either.

How's that?

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

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

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Monday, May 5, 2025 8:13 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Until you tell me you have a problem with Joe Biden's crackhead son making $60,000 per month working at Burisma, I don't fucking want to hear it.

Nobody else does either.

How's that?

I have a problem with Hunter Biden's criminal behavior. Trumptards don't have a problem with criminal behavior by a Trump son or even The Trump.

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

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Monday, May 5, 2025 8:43 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Until you tell me you have a problem with Joe Biden's crackhead son making $60,000 per month working at Burisma, I don't fucking want to hear it.

Nobody else does either.

How's that?

I have a problem with Hunter Biden's criminal behavior.



First we have ever heard that out of you.

Now ask yourself why he was "working" for Burisma in Ukraine, in between the regime change during Obama's administration and his father's administration.

Do not play that off as something trivial, because you know very well that it is not.


Quote:

Trumptards don't have a problem with criminal behavior by a Trump son or even The Trump.


Once again, the problem here is your Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome. Nobody cares anymore period. We've been listening to 24/7 bullshit out of you for 12 years now and nearly all of it was proven bullshit over time. Meanwhile, the happiness level in this country is lower than nearly any living human being remembers it ever being, and your party has been in control of everything or at least maintained a majority of the control for the last 30 years.

Our streets aren't safe. Homlessness is higher than it's ever been. Our country is dumber and fatter than almost everyone else in the 1st world. People like you going out of your way to ruin everyone's day all the time.

You're fucking right we don't care.

Not anymore.

Maybe you should have been so fucking principled as to admit the Hunter Biden/Burisma thing was shady as fuck when it was relevant and people might take anything you have to say in May of 2025 seriously.

But you didn't, so we don't.

Go. Fuck. Yourself.


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Monday, May 5, 2025 8:56 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

First we have ever heard that out of you.

Now ask yourself why he was "working" for Burisma in Ukraine, in between the regime change during Obama's administration and his father's administration.

Do not play that off as something trivial, because you know very well that it is not.


Once again, the problem here is your Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome. Nobody cares anymore period. We've been listening to 24/7 bullshit out of you for 12 years now and nearly all of it was proven bullshit over time. Meanwhile, the happiness level in this country is lower than nearly any living human being remembers it ever being, and your party has been in control of everything or at least maintained a majority of the control for the last 30 years.

Our streets aren't safe. Homlessness is higher than it's ever been. Our country is dumber and fatter than almost everyone else in the 1st world. People like you going out of your way to ruin everyone's day all the time.

You're fucking right we don't care.

Not anymore.

Maybe you should have been so fucking principled as to admit the Hunter Biden/Burisma thing was shady as fuck when it was relevant and people might take anything you have to say in May of 2025 seriously.

But you didn't, so we don't.

Go. Fuck. Yourself.

You could have saved energy by typing "Fake News." Trump uses those two words all the time as a convenient time-conserving tactic.

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

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Monday, May 5, 2025 9:19 PM

SECOND

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


In a post on his Truth Social site Sunday evening, Trump wrote that, “For too long, America has been plagued by vicious, violent, and repeat Criminal Offenders, the dregs of society, who will never contribute anything other than Misery and Suffering. When we were a more serious Nation, in times past, we did not hesitate to lock up the most dangerous criminals, and keep them far away from anyone they could harm. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.”

“That is why, today,” he said, “I am directing the Bureau of Prisons, together with the Department of Justice, FBI, and Homeland Security, to reopen a substantially enlarged and rebuilt ALCATRAZ, to house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders.”

The prison was closed in 1963 due to crumbling infrastructure and the high costs of repairing and supplying the island facility, because everything from fuel to food had to be brought by boat.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-alcatraz-prison-fabe3385415ae03829d44
e50efb3c1fb


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

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Monday, May 5, 2025 10:12 PM

SECOND

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


Trump declares 2 new national holidays — as he bemoans 'we already have too many'

President Donald Trump took to his social media platform Monday evening to double down on his plans to celebrate the end of World War I and World War II in the United States by designating specific "Victory Days" for each conflict.

He would rename May 8 as "Victory Day for World War II" and Nov. 11 as "Victory Day for World War I".

Trump had floated renaming Veterans Day to "Victory Day for World War I," but the White House walked that back facing backlash from veterans' groups and others.

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-holidays/

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

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Tuesday, May 6, 2025 7:55 AM

SECOND

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


The American polity is cracked, and might collapse. Canada must prepare

The U.S. is becoming increasingly ungovernable, and some experts believe it could descend into civil war. What should Canada do then?

By Thomas Homer-Dixon
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published December 31, 2021
Updated January 2, 2022

This article was published more than 3 years ago. Some information may no longer be current.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-american-polity-is
-cracked-and-might-collapse-canada-must-prepare
/

Washington, Jan. 6, 2021: A police flash-bang grenade illuminates Trump protesters outside the U.S. Capitol, which they stormed after a provocative speech by the outgoing president. The Capitol insurrection was a wake-up call about the vulnerabilities in American democracy.

Thomas Homer-Dixon is executive director of the Cascade Institute at Royal Roads University. His latest book is Commanding Hope: The Power We Have to Renew a World in Peril. It is a free download at https://libgen.rs/search.php?req=Thomas+Homer-Dixon

By 2025, American democracy could collapse, causing extreme domestic political instability, including widespread civil violence. By 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship.

We mustn’t dismiss these possibilities just because they seem ludicrous or too horrible to imagine. In 2014, the suggestion that Donald Trump would become president would also have struck nearly everyone as absurd. But today we live in a world where the absurd regularly becomes real and the horrible commonplace.

Leading American academics are now actively addressing the prospect of a fatal weakening of U.S. democracy.

This past November, more than 150 professors of politics, government, political economy and international relations appealed to Congress to pass the Freedom to Vote Act, which would protect the integrity of US elections but is now stalled in the Senate. This is a moment of “great peril and risk,” they wrote. “Time is ticking away, and midnight is approaching.”

I’m a scholar of violent conflict. For more than 40 years, I’ve studied and published on the causes of war, social breakdown, revolution, ethnic violence and genocide, and for nearly two decades I led a centre on peace and conflict studies at the University of Toronto.

Today, as I watch the unfolding crisis in the United States, I see a political and social landscape flashing with warning signals.

I’m not surprised by what’s happening there – not at all. During my graduate work in the United States in the 1980s, I sometimes listened to Rush Limbaugh, the right-wing radio talk show host and later television personality. I remarked to friends at the time that, with each broadcast, it was if Mr. Limbaugh was wedging the sharp end of a chisel into a faint crack in the moral authority of U.S. political institutions, and then slamming the other end of that chisel with a hammer.

In the decades since, week after week, year after year, Mr. Limbaugh and his fellow travellers have hammered away – their blows’ power lately amplified through social media and outlets such as Fox News and Newsmax. The cracks have steadily widened, ramified, connected and propagated deeply into America’s once-esteemed institutions, profoundly compromising their structural integrity. The country is becoming increasingly ungovernable, and some experts believe it could descend into civil war.
How should Canada prepare?

Then-president Donald Trump arrives with far-right conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh at a rally in Cape Girardeau, Mo., in 2019. Mr. Limbaugh died on Feb. 17 this year. JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images

In 2020, president Donald Trump awarded Mr. Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The act signalled that Mr. Limbaugh’s brand of bullying, populist white ethnocentrism – a rancid blend of aggrieved attacks on liberal elites, racist dog-whistling, bragging about American exceptionalism and appeals to authoritarian leadership – had become an integral part of mainstream political ideology in the U.S.

But one can’t blame only Mr. Limbaugh, who died in early 2021, and his ilk for America’s dysfunction. These people and their actions are as much symptoms of that dysfunction as its root causes, and those causes are many. Some can be traced to the country’s founding – to an abiding distrust in government baked into the country’s political culture during the Revolution, to slavery, to the political compromise of the Electoral College that slavery spawned, to the overrepresentation of rural voting power in the Senate, and to the failure of Reconstruction after the Civil War. But successful polities around the world have overcome flaws just as fundamental.

What seems to have pushed the United States to the brink of losing its democracy today is a multiplication effect between its underlying flaws and recent shifts in the society’s “material” characteristics. These shifts include stagnating middle-class incomes, chronic economic insecurity, and rising inequality as the country’s economy – transformed by technological change and globalization – has transitioned from muscle power, heavy industry, and manufacturing as the main sources of its wealth to idea power, information technology, symbolic production and finance. As returns to labour have stagnated and returns to capital have soared, much of the U.S. population has fallen behind. Inflation-adjusted wages for the median male worker in the fourth quarter of 2019 (prior to the infusion of economic support owing to the COVID-19 pandemic) were lower than in 1979; meanwhile, between 1978 and 2016, CEO incomes in the biggest companies rose from 30 times that of the average worker to 271 times. Economic insecurity is widespread in broad swaths of the country’s interior, while growth is increasingly concentrated in a dozen or so metropolitan centres.

Two other material factors are key. The first is demographic: as immigration, aging, intermarriage and a decline in church-going have reduced the percentage of non-Hispanic white Christians in America, right-wing ideologues have inflamed fears that traditional U.S. culture is being erased and whites are being “replaced.” The second is pervasive elite selfishness: The wealthy and powerful in America are broadly unwilling to pay the taxes, invest in the public services, or create the avenues for vertical mobility that would lessen their country’s economic, educational, racial and geographic gaps. The more an under-resourced government can’t solve everyday problems, the more people give up on it, and the more they turn to their own resources and their narrow identity groups for safety.

America’s economic, racial and social gaps have helped cause ideological polarization between the political right and left, and the worsening polarization has paralyzed government while aggravating the gaps. The political right and left are isolated from, and increasingly despise, each other. Both believe the stakes are existential – that the other is out to destroy the country they love. The moderate political centre is fast vanishing.

And, oh yes, the population is armed to the teeth, with somewhere around 400 million firearms in the hands of civilians.

An attendee wears a U.S. flag with guns, crosses and a pro-Trump slogan at America Fest 2021, a conservative gathering in Phoenix this past Dec. 18. Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Some diagnoses of America’s crisis that highlight “toxic polarization” imply the two sides are equally responsible for that crisis. They aren’t. While both wings of U.S. politics have fanned polarization’s flames, blame lies disproportionately on the political right.

According to Harvard’s renowned sociologist and political scientist Theda Skocpol, in the early 2000s fringe elements of the Republican party used disciplined tactics and enormous streams of money (from billionaires like the Koch brothers) to turn extreme laissez-faire ideology into orthodox Republican dogma. Then, in 2008, Barack Obama’s election as president increased anxieties about immigration and cultural change among older, often economically insecure members of the white middle-class, who then coalesced into the populist Tea Party movement. Under Mr. Trump, the two forces were joined. The GOP became, Dr. Skocpol writes, a radicalized “marriage of convenience between anti-government free-market plutocrats and racially anxious ethno-nationalist activists and voters.”

Now, adopting Mr. Limbaugh’s tried-and-true methods, demagogues on the right are pushing the radicalization process further than ever before. By weaponizing people’s fear and anger, Mr. Trump and a host of acolytes and wannabees such as Fox’s Tucker Carlson and Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene have captured the storied GOP and transformed it into a near-fascist personality cult that’s a perfect instrument for wrecking democracy.

And it’s not inaccurate to use the F word. As conservative commentator David Frum argues, Trumpism increasingly resembles European fascism in its contempt for the rule of law and glorification of violence. Evidence is as close as the latest right-wing Twitter meme: widely circulated holiday photos show Republican politicians and their family members, including young children, sitting in front of their Christmas trees, all smiling gleefully while cradling pistols, shotguns and assault rifles.

Those guns are more than symbols. The Trump cult presents itself as the only truly patriotic party able to defend U.S. values and history against traitorous Democrats beholden to cosmopolitan elites and minorities who neither understand nor support “true” American values. The Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. capitol must be understood in these terms. The people involved didn’t think they were attacking U.S. democracy – although they unquestionably were. Instead, they believed their “patriotic” actions were needed to save it.

Democracy is an institution, but underpinning that institution is a vital set of beliefs and values. If a substantial enough fraction of a population no longer holds those beliefs and values, then democracy can’t survive. Probably the most important is recognition of the equality of the polity’s citizens in deciding its future; a close runner-up is willingness to concede power to one’s political opponents, should those equal citizens decide that’s what they want. At the heart of the ideological narrative of U.S. right-wing demagogues, from Mr. Trump on down, is the implication that large segments of the country’s population – mainly the non-white, non-Christian, and educated urban ones – aren’t really equal citizens. They aren’t quite full Americans, or even real Americans.

This is why Mr. Trump’s “Big Lie” that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him – a falsehood that nearly 70 per cent of Republicans now accept as true – is such potent anti-democratic poison. If the other side is willing to steal an election, then they don’t play by the rules. They’ve placed themselves outside the American moral community, which means they don’t deserve to be treated as equals. There’s certainly no reason to concede power to them, ever.

Willingness to publicly endorse the Big Lie has become a litmus test of Republican loyalty to Mr. Trump. This isn’t just an ideological move to promote Republican solidarity against Democrats. It puts its adherents one step away from the psychological dynamic of extreme dehumanization that has led to some of the worst violence in human history. And it has refashioned – into a moral crusade against evil – Republican efforts to gerrymander Congressional districts into pretzel-like shapes, to restrict voting rights, and to take control of state-level electoral apparatuses.
When the situation is framed in such a Manichean way, righteous ends justify any means. One of the two American parties is now devoted to victory at any cost.

Many of those with guns are waiting for a signal to use them. Polls show that between 20 and 30 million American adults believe both that the 2020 election was stolen from Mr. Trump and that violence is justified to return him to the presidency.

Trump supporters protest against the U.S. election result on Nov. 4, 2020, outside the Clark County Election Department in Las Vegas. John Locher/The Associated Press

In the weeks before the November, 2016, U.S. election, I talked to several experts to gauge the danger of a Trump presidency. I recently consulted them again. While in 2016 they were alarmed, this last month most were utterly dismayed. All told me the U.S. political situation has deteriorated sharply since last year’s attack on Capitol Hill.
Jack Goldstone, a political sociologist at George Mason University in Washington, D.C., and a leading authority on the causes of state breakdown and revolution, told me that since 2016 we’ve learned that early optimism about the resilience of U.S. democracy was based on two false assumptions: “First, that American institutions would be strong enough to easily withstand efforts to subvert them; and second, that the vast majority of people will act rationally and be drawn to the political centre, so that it’s impossible for extremist groups to take over.”

But especially after the 2020 election, Dr. Goldstone said, we’ve seen that core institutions – from the Justice Department to county election boards – are susceptible to pressure. They’ve barely held firm. “We’ve also learned that the reasonable majority can be frightened and silenced if caught between extremes, while many others can be captured by mass delusions.” And to his surprise “moderate GOP leaders have either been forced out of the party or acquiesced to a party leadership that embraces lies and anti-democratic actions.”

Mr. Trump’s electoral loss has energized the Republican base and further radicalized young party members. Even without their concerted efforts to torque the machinery of the electoral system, Republicans will probably take control of both the House of Representatives and Senate this coming November, because the incumbent party generally fares poorly in mid-term elections. Republicans could easily score a massive victory, with voters ground down by the pandemic, angry about inflation, and tired of President Joe Biden bumbling from one crisis to another. Voters who identify as Independents are already migrating toward Republican candidates.

Once Republicans control Congress, Democrats will lose control of the national political agenda, giving Mr. Trump a clear shot at recapturing the presidency in 2024. And once in office, he will have only two objectives: vindication and vengeance.

A U.S. civil-military expert and senior federal appointee I consulted noted that a re-elected president Trump could be totally unconstrained, nationally and internationally.
A crucial factor determining how much constraint he faces will be the response of the U.S. military, a bulwark institution ardently committed to defending the Constitution. During the first Trump administration, members of the military repeatedly resisted the president’s authoritarian impulses and tried to anticipate and corral his rogue behaviour – most notably when Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley, shortly after the Capitol insurrection, ordered military officials to include him in any decision process involving the use of military force.

But in a second Trump administration, this expert suggested, the bulwark could crumble. By replacing the civilian leadership of the Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs with lackeys and sycophants, he could so infiltrate the Department with his people that he’ll be able to bend it to his will.

U.S. President Joe Biden signs new legislation for ALS therapy at the White House on Dec. 23.Drew Angerer/Getty Images

After four years of Mr. Trump’s bedlam, the U.S. under Mr. Biden has been comparatively calm. Politics in the U.S. seems to have stabilized.

But absolutely nothing has stabilized in America. The country’s problems are systemic and deeply entrenched – and events could soon spiral out of control.

The experts I consulted described a range of possible outcomes if Mr. Trump returns to power, none benign. They cited particular countries and political regimes to illustrate where he might take the U.S.: Viktor Orban’s Hungary, with its coercive legal apparatus of “illiberal democracy”; Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil, with its chronic social distemper and administrative dysfunction; or Vladimir Putin’s Russia, with its harsh one-man hyper-nationalist autocracy. All agreed that under a second Trump administration, liberalism will be marginalized and right-wing Christian groups super-empowered, while violence by vigilante, paramilitary groups will rise sharply.

Looking further down the road, some think that authority in American federalism is so disjointed and diffuse that Mr. Trump, especially given his manifest managerial incompetence, will never be able to achieve full authoritarian control. Others believe the pendulum will ultimately swing back to the Democrats when Republican mistakes accumulate, or that the radicalized Republican base – so fanatically loyal to Mr. Trump – can’t grow larger and will dissipate when its hero leaves the stage.

One can hope for these outcomes, because there are far worse scenarios. Something resembling civil war is one. Many pathways could take the country there – some described in Stephen Marche’s new book The Next Civil War: Dispatches from the American Future. The most plausible start with a disputed 2024 presidential election. Perhaps Democrats squeak out a victory, and Republican states refuse to recognize the result. Or conversely, perhaps Republicans win, but only because Republican state legislatures override voting results; then Democratic protestors attack those legislatures. In either circumstance, much will depend on whether the country’s military splits along partisan lines.

But there’s another political regime, a historical one, that may portend an even more dire future for the U.S.: the Weimar Republic. The situation in Germany in the 1920s and early 1930s was of course sui generis; in particular, the country had experienced staggering traumas – defeat in war, internal revolution and hyperinflation – while the country’s commitment to liberal democracy was weakly rooted in its culture. But as I read a history of the doomed republic this past summer, I tallied no fewer than five unnerving parallels with the current U.S. situation.

First, in both cases, a charismatic leader was able to unify right-wing extremists around a political program to seize the state. Second, a bald falsehood about how enemies inside the polity had betrayed the country – for the Nazis, the “stab in the back,” and for Trumpists, the Big Lie – was a vital psychological tool for radicalizing and mobilizing followers. Third, conventional conservatives believed they could control and channel the charismatic leader and rising extremism but were ultimately routed by the forces they helped unleash. Fourth, ideological opponents of this rising extremism squabbled among themselves; they didn’t take the threat seriously enough, even though it was growing in plain sight; and they focused on marginal issues that were too often red meat for the extremists. (Today, think toppling statues.)

To my mind, though, the fifth parallel is the most disconcerting: the propagation of a “hardline security doctrine.” Here I’ve been influenced by the research of Jonathan Leader Maynard, a young English scholar who is emerging as one of the world’s most brilliant thinkers on the links between ideology, extremism and violence. In a forthcoming book, Ideology and Mass Killing, Dr. Leader Maynard argues that extremist right-wing ideologies generally don’t arise from explicit efforts to forge an authoritarian society, but from the radicalization of a society’s existing understandings of how it can stay safe and secure in the face of alleged threats.
Hardline conceptions of security are “radicalized versions of familiar claims about threat, self-defence, punishment, war, and duty,” he writes. They are the foundation on which regimes organize campaigns of violent persecution and terror. People he calls “hardliners” believe the world contains many “dangerous enemies that frequently operate in and through purported ‘civilian’ groups.” Hardliners increasingly dominate Trumpist circles now.

Dr. Leader Maynard then makes a complementary argument: Once a hardline doctrine is widely accepted within a political movement, it becomes an “infrastructure” of ideas and incentives that can pressure even those who don’t really accept the doctrine into following its dictates. Fear of “true believers” shifts the behaviour of the movement’s moderates toward extremism. Sure enough, the experts I recently consulted all spoke about how fear of crossing Mr. Trump’s base – including fear for their families’ physical safety – was forcing otherwise sensible Republicans to fall into line.

The rapid propagation of hardline security doctrines through a society, Dr. Leader Maynard says, typically occurs in times of political and economic crisis. Even in the Weimar Republic, the vote for the National Socialists was closely correlated with the unemployment rate. The Nazis were in trouble (with their share of the vote falling and the party beset by internal disputes) as late as 1927, before the German economy started to contract. Then, of course, the Depression hit. The United States today is in the midst of crisis – caused by the pandemic, obviously – but it could experience far worse before long: perhaps a war with Russia, Iran, or China, or a financial crisis when economic bubbles caused by excessive liquidity burst.

Beyond a certain threshold, other new research shows, political extremism feeds on itself, pushing polarization toward an irreversible tipping point. This suggests a sixth potential parallel with Weimar: democratic collapse followed by the consolidation of dictatorship. Mr. Trump may be just a warm-up act – someone ideal to bring about the first stage, but not the second. Returning to office, he’ll be the wrecking ball that demolishes democracy, but the process will produce a political and social shambles. Still, through targeted harassment and dismissal, he’ll be able to thin the ranks of his movement’s opponents within the state – the bureaucrats, officials and technocrats who oversee the non-partisan functioning of core institutions and abide by the rule of law. Then the stage will be set for a more managerially competent ruler, after Mr. Trump, to bring order to the chaos he’s created.

Washington State Park workers put up a new Canadian flag in front of an American flag about to be replaced during scheduled maintenance atop the Peace Arch in Blaine, Wash., this past Nov. 8. Elaine Thompson/The Associated Press

A terrible storm is coming from the south, and Canada is woefully unprepared. Over the past year we’ve turned our attention inward, distracted by the challenges of COVID-19, reconciliation, and the accelerating effects of climate change. But now we must focus on the urgent problem of what to do about the likely unravelling of democracy in the United States.

We need to start by fully recognizing the magnitude of the danger. If Mr. Trump is re-elected, even under the more-optimistic scenarios the economic and political risks to our country will be innumerable. Driven by aggressive, reactive nationalism, Mr. Trump “could isolate Canada continentally,” as one of my interlocutors put it euphemistically.

Under the less-optimistic scenarios, the risks to our country in their cumulative effect could easily be existential, far greater than any in our federation’s history. What happens, for instance, if high-profile political refugees fleeing persecution arrive in our country, and the U.S. regime demands them back. Do we comply?

In this context, it’s worth noting the words of Dmitry Muratov, the courageous Russian journalist who remains one of the few independent voices standing up to Mr. Putin and who just received the Nobel Prize for Peace. At a news conference after the awards ceremony in Oslo, as Russian troops and armour were massing on Ukraine’s borders, Mr. Muratov spoke of the iron link between authoritarianism and war. “Disbelief in democracy means that the countries that have abandoned it will get a dictator,” he said. “And where there is a dictatorship, there is a war. If we refuse democracy, we agree to war.”

Canada is not powerless in the face of these forces, at least not yet. Among other things, over three-quarters of a million Canadian emigrants live in the United States – many highly placed and influential – and together they’re a mass of people who could appreciably tilt the outcome of coming elections and the broader dynamics of the country’s political process.

But here’s my key recommendation: The Prime Minister should immediately convene a standing, non-partisan Parliamentary committee with representatives from the five sitting parties, all with full security clearances. It should be understood that this committee will continue to operate in coming years, regardless of changes in federal government. It should receive regular intelligence analyses and briefings by Canadian experts on political and social developments in the United States and their implications for democratic failure there. And it should be charged with providing the federal government with continuing, specific guidance as to how to prepare for and respond to that failure, should it occur.

If hope is to be a motivator and not a crutch, it needs to be honest and not false. It needs to be anchored in a realistic, evidence-based understanding of the dangers we face and a clear vision of how to get past those dangers to a good future. Canada is itself flawed, but it’s still one of the most remarkably just and prosperous societies in human history. It must rise to this challenge.

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

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Tuesday, May 6, 2025 8:41 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:
Trump Says He’s Instituting a “100% Tariff” on Films Produced Outside of the U.S. Because the “Movie Industry in America Is Dying”

The president posted that Hollywood and other areas are "being devastated" due to "a concerted effort by other Nations," which constitutes a "National Security threat."

By Kimberly Nordyke, Aaron Couch | May 4, 2025 8:39pm

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/trump-tariff-movie
s-produced-outside-america-1236206949
/

“The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death,” he wrote. “Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated. This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda!”

“Therefore, I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands. WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”

“What they’ve done is other nations have been stealing the movies, the moviemaking capabilities from the united States,” he said, adding: “I’ve done some very strong research over the past week, and we’re making very few movies now. Hollywood is being destroyed. Now, you have a … grossly incompetent governor that allowed that to happen, so I’m not just blaming other nations, but other nations have stolen our movie industry. If they’re not willing to make a movie inside the United States, then we should have a tariff on movies that come in. And not only that, governments are actually giving big money. They’re supporting them financially. That’s sort of a threat to our country in a sense.”

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



Good.

Good? No, No, No: President Trump's threat to impose tariffs on film imports to the U.S. could risk retaliatory actions in international markets, where American film studios make the bulk of their box office revenue.

The U.S. is the top exporter of films globally by far, with export value running at three times imports, according to the Motion Picture Association (MPA).

U.S. movie studios typically drive the bulk of global box office sales. The majority of their revenue tends to come from distribution outside of the U.S., which is why any sort of retaliatory tariffs on U.S. film exports would be disastrous for Hollywood.

For example, the top-grossing movie globally last year, "Inside Out 2," was produced by U.S.-based entertainment giant Disney, but the bulk (61.6%) of its $1.7 billion in box office revenue was made abroad.

Similarly, 56% of global ticket sales to Warner Bros. Pictures' "Barbie," the top-grossing film the year prior, came from international distribution.

https://www.axios.com/2025/05/06/movie-tariffs-trump-studios

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

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Tuesday, May 6, 2025 12:07 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Trump Says He’s Instituting a “100% Tariff” on Films Produced Outside of the U.S. Because the “Movie Industry in America Is Dying”

The president posted that Hollywood and other areas are "being devastated" due to "a concerted effort by other Nations," which constitutes a "National Security threat."

By Kimberly Nordyke, Aaron Couch | May 4, 2025 8:39pm

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/trump-tariff-movie
s-produced-outside-america-1236206949
/

“The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death,” he wrote. “Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated. This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat. It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda!”

“Therefore, I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands. WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”

“What they’ve done is other nations have been stealing the movies, the moviemaking capabilities from the united States,” he said, adding: “I’ve done some very strong research over the past week, and we’re making very few movies now. Hollywood is being destroyed. Now, you have a … grossly incompetent governor that allowed that to happen, so I’m not just blaming other nations, but other nations have stolen our movie industry. If they’re not willing to make a movie inside the United States, then we should have a tariff on movies that come in. And not only that, governments are actually giving big money. They’re supporting them financially. That’s sort of a threat to our country in a sense.”

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



Good.

Good? No, No, No: President Trump's threat to impose tariffs on film imports to the U.S. could risk retaliatory actions in international markets, where American film studios make the bulk of their box office revenue.

The U.S. is the top exporter of films globally by far, with export value running at three times imports, according to the Motion Picture Association (MPA).

U.S. movie studios typically drive the bulk of global box office sales. The majority of their revenue tends to come from distribution outside of the U.S., which is why any sort of retaliatory tariffs on U.S. film exports would be disastrous for Hollywood.

For example, the top-grossing movie globally last year, "Inside Out 2," was produced by U.S.-based entertainment giant Disney, but the bulk (61.6%) of its $1.7 billion in box office revenue was made abroad.

Similarly, 56% of global ticket sales to Warner Bros. Pictures' "Barbie," the top-grossing film the year prior, came from international distribution.

https://www.axios.com/2025/05/06/movie-tariffs-trump-studios

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



It's not about charging people more money to see a movie.

It's about making sure Disney films in America and not the UK.

They can take that $50 Million in tax breaks per movie out of The Rock's payday for all I care.

Get fucked, dummy.

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

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

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Tuesday, May 6, 2025 12:23 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

First we have ever heard that out of you.

Now ask yourself why he was "working" for Burisma in Ukraine, in between the regime change during Obama's administration and his father's administration.

Do not play that off as something trivial, because you know very well that it is not.


Once again, the problem here is your Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome. Nobody cares anymore period. We've been listening to 24/7 bullshit out of you for 12 years now and nearly all of it was proven bullshit over time. Meanwhile, the happiness level in this country is lower than nearly any living human being remembers it ever being, and your party has been in control of everything or at least maintained a majority of the control for the last 30 years.

Our streets aren't safe. Homlessness is higher than it's ever been. Our country is dumber and fatter than almost everyone else in the 1st world. People like you going out of your way to ruin everyone's day all the time.

You're fucking right we don't care.

Not anymore.

Maybe you should have been so fucking principled as to admit the Hunter Biden/Burisma thing was shady as fuck when it was relevant and people might take anything you have to say in May of 2025 seriously.

But you didn't, so we don't.

Go. Fuck. Yourself.

You could have saved energy by typing "Fake News." Trump uses those two words all the time as a convenient time-conserving tactic.

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



Once again, you miss the point because you are a very stupid person.

The point is, it doesn't matter anymore whether it's fake news or not.

We've heard 12 similar stories out of you every day for a decade. Nobody gives one single fuck what you or your lying media have to say about anything anymore.

This is exactly what I told you was going to happen, and you didn't listen to me.

I don't want to hear about it from you. Go cry to your dead party about it.

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

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

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Tuesday, May 6, 2025 1:55 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:

Once again, you miss the point because you are a very stupid person.

The point is, it doesn't matter anymore whether it's fake news or not.

We've heard 12 similar stories out of you every day for a decade. Nobody gives one single fuck what you or your lying media have to say about anything anymore.

This is exactly what I told you was going to happen, and you didn't listen to me.

I don't want to hear about it from you. Go cry to your dead party about it.

Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

It's not about charging people more money to see a movie.

It's about making sure Disney films in America and not the UK.

They can take that $50 Million in tax breaks per movie out of The Rock's payday for all I care.

Get fucked, dummy.

6ix, reading your stuff makes me feel that you are channeling the spirit of Rush Limbaugh. Arrogantly confident. Endlessly hostile. Diarrhea of the mouth. The Libtards tried to get one idea into that Trumptard's head but he knew this was a lie: smoking kills. The Libtards could save his life but Rush didn't believe anything from Libtards because he had strong principles and unwavering beliefs. Rush, and many others have taught me a lesson: let your enemies die for their ideas. Don't grant them good health and long life. Trumptards will find a way to ruin their health early because "freedom" for them means no chain-link fences keeping them away from their vices.

Health problems and death
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rush_Limbaugh#Health_problems_and_death

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

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Tuesday, May 6, 2025 2:10 PM

SECOND

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


I don't understand why a Trumptard Senator would refuse to vote for a criminal nominated by Trump! Why? It is an unprecedented refusal!

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said he wouldn't support Ed Martin, President Donald Trump's nominee for U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, likely blocking the path to confirmation for the “Stop the Steal” organizer who had closely aligned himself with Jan. 6 defendants.

“I’ve indicated to the White House I wouldn’t support his nomination,” Tillis said Tuesday after meeting with Martin on Monday night.

Tillis is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, which is overseeing Martin's nomination. The panel has 12 Republicans and 10 Democrats, meaning if all other members aside from Tillis voted along party lines, the vote on Martin would end in a tie and his nomination would not be reported favorably to the full Senate.

Trump's nomination of Martin, a longtime right-wing activist who had no prosecutorial experience until Trump named him as interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia on the day of his inauguration, has raised major concerns with alumni of the office, which prosecutors both federal and local crimes in Washington.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/thom-tillis-wont-s
upport-ed-martin-dc-us-attorney-rcna205104


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

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Tuesday, May 6, 2025 2:12 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

First we have ever heard that out of you.

Now ask yourself why he was "working" for Burisma in Ukraine, in between the regime change during Obama's administration and his father's administration.

Do not play that off as something trivial, because you know very well that it is not.


Once again, the problem here is your Boy Who Cried Wolf syndrome. Nobody cares anymore period. We've been listening to 24/7 bullshit out of you for 12 years now and nearly all of it was proven bullshit over time. Meanwhile, the happiness level in this country is lower than nearly any living human being remembers it ever being, and your party has been in control of everything or at least maintained a majority of the control for the last 30 years.

Our streets aren't safe. Homlessness is higher than it's ever been. Our country is dumber and fatter than almost everyone else in the 1st world. People like you going out of your way to ruin everyone's day all the time.

You're fucking right we don't care.

Not anymore.

Maybe you should have been so fucking principled as to admit the Hunter Biden/Burisma thing was shady as fuck when it was relevant and people might take anything you have to say in May of 2025 seriously.

But you didn't, so we don't.

Go. Fuck. Yourself.

You could have saved energy by typing "Fake News." Trump uses those two words all the time as a convenient time-conserving tactic.




SECOND, YOU could have saved yourself energy by not posting fake news. Instead, you waste yourself spewing endless amounts lies- like the 3 year old piece of crap (above) that literally nobody will bother to read.

Why will nobody bother to read your posts?

Because nobody is going to dig thru that mountain of crap you created, just to find a speck of insight. YOU are the overarticulate 'tard that you keep accusing others of being.

Oh, and BTW, about Hunter Biden ... weren't you the one calling his laptop "Russian disinfo" and anyone who disagreed with you a Russian troll (or words to that effect)?

-----------
"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, May 6, 2025 5:37 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Once again, you miss the point because you are a very stupid person.

The point is, it doesn't matter anymore whether it's fake news or not.

We've heard 12 similar stories out of you every day for a decade. Nobody gives one single fuck what you or your lying media have to say about anything anymore.

This is exactly what I told you was going to happen, and you didn't listen to me.

I don't want to hear about it from you. Go cry to your dead party about it.

Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

It's not about charging people more money to see a movie.

It's about making sure Disney films in America and not the UK.

They can take that $50 Million in tax breaks per movie out of The Rock's payday for all I care.

Get fucked, dummy.

6ix, reading your stuff makes me feel that you are channeling the spirit of Rush Limbaugh.



Oh fuck off, dude.

I already let everyone here know that if I were in the area I'd go out of my way to stop at Limbaugh's grave and piss on his ashes.

Fuck Rush Limbaugh, and fuck you.

Quote:

Arrogantly confident. Endlessly hostile. Diarrhea of the mouth. The Libtards tried to get one idea into that Trumptard's head but he knew this was a lie: smoking kills. The Libtards could save his life but Rush didn't believe anything from Libtards because he had strong principles and unwavering beliefs. Rush, and many others have taught me a lesson: let your enemies die for their ideas. Don't grant them good health and long life. Trumptards will find a way to ruin their health early because "freedom" for them means no chain-link fences keeping them away from their vices.


Say hi to Kevin Drum for me.

Oh... wait.

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

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

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Wednesday, May 7, 2025 5:57 AM

SECOND

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


Opposing SB37

By Scott Aaronson | May 6th, 2025

https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8853

Yesterday, the Texas State Legislature heard public comments about SB37, a bill that would give a state board direct oversight over course content and faculty hiring at public universities, perhaps inspired by Trump’s national crackdown on higher education. Text at https://legiscan.com/TX/text/SB37/2025

So, encouraged by a friend in the history department, I submitted the following public comment, whatever good it will do.

I’m a computer science professor at UT, although I’m writing in my personal capacity. For 20 years, on my blog and elsewhere, I’ve been outspoken in opposing woke radicalism on campus and (especially) obsessive hatred of Israel that often veers into antisemitism, even when that’s caused me to get attacked from my left. Nevertheless, I write to strongly oppose SB37 in its current form, because of my certainty that no world-class research university can survive ceding control over its curriculum and faculty hiring to the state. If this bill passes, for example, it will severely impact my ability to recruit the most talented computer scientists to UT Austin, if they have competing options that will safeguard their academic freedom as traditionally conceived. Even if our candidates are approved, the new layer of bureaucracy will make it difficult and slow for us to do anything. For those concerned about intellectual diversity in academia, a much better solution would include safeguarding tenure and other protections for faculty with heterodox views, and actually enforcing content-neutral time, place, and manner rules for protests and disruptions. UT has actually done a better job on these things than many other universities in the US, and could serve as a national model for how viewpoint diversity can work — but not under an intolerably stifling regime like the one proposed by this bill.

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

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Wednesday, May 7, 2025 6:00 AM

SECOND

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


'Millions are dying' because of 'foolish decision' to ban Russia from G8, Trump says

By Lucy Pakhnyuk | May 7, 2025 3:14 AM

https://kyivindependent.com/millions-are-dying-because-of-foolish-deci
sion-to-ban-russia-from-g8-trump-says
/

United States President Donald Trump attributed Russia's invasion of Ukraine to its exclusion from the Group of Eight (G8), now the Group of Seven (G7).

Speaking to reporters at a World Cup planning meeting on May 6, Trump said it was a "foolish decision" to ban Russia from the group.

"If they didn't vote Russia out... I think you probably wouldn't have this ridiculous, deadly war... It was a very bad decision," Trump said.

"They threw them out and because of that... millions of people are dying," Trump added, referring to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

When pressed about whether he would invite Russia back to the group, Trump responded that "it's not good timing now," contradicting previous statements.

Earlier this year, Trump said that he would "love" to see Russia readmitted into the G7, calling Russia's expulsion from the group a "mistake."

The G8 became the G7 after Russia was expelled in 2014 for its invasion of Ukraine's Donbas, and subsequent annexation of Crimea.

Since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, G7 countries have collectively supported Ukraine, including through the Extraordinary Revenue Acceleration program, which aims to provide Kyiv with $50 billion in loans using frozen Russian assets.

Current G7 members include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The European Union is also represented in the group.

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

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Wednesday, May 7, 2025 6:46 AM

SECOND

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


Is Trump Carrying Out His Mass Deportation Promises? The Numbers Might Surprise You.

By Shirin Ali | May 07, 2025 5:40 AM

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/05/trump-mass-deportation-pro
mises-numbers-statistics.html


The Trump administration is aiming to deport 1 million immigrants this year. (85,000 per month)

In February, Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed 11,000 migrants, and just over 12,300 in March.

Those figures are higher than the monthly pace of removals during Trump’s first term, when he deported 6,800 noncitizens per month, but still lower than former president Barack Obama’s, when ICE deported about 12,900 noncitizens per month.

Looking at all of Trump’s immigration actions since he took office on Jan. 20, the Brookings Institution concluded that there’s been “more arrests, less due process, but not yet more deportations.” https://www.brookings.edu/articles/100-days-of-immigration-under-the-s
econd-trump-administration
/

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

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Wednesday, May 7, 2025 10:52 AM

SECOND

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


Here’s Where Trump Got His Idiotic Idea to Tariff Foreign Movies
Someone close to Donald Trump planted the idea in his head that the United States should tariff foreign movies (whatever that means).

Ellie Quinlan Houghtaling | May 5, 2025, 10:35 a.m. ET

https://newrepublic.com/post/194830/where-trump-got-idea-tariff-foreig
n-movies


Donald Trump’s “eyes and ears” in Hollywood seem to have hand-delivered him his shocking idea to tax foreign films.

On Sunday, Trump revealed that he would be instituting a “100 percent tariff” on films produced outside of the United States.

“The Movie Industry in America is DYING a very fast death,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States. Hollywood, and many other areas within the U.S.A., are being devastated. This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat.

“It is, in addition to everything else, messaging and propaganda! Therefore, I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands,” Trump continued. “WE WANT MOVIES MADE IN AMERICA, AGAIN!”

Days before Trump took office in January, he announced online that he’d be tapping Mel Gibson, Sylvester Stallone, and Jon Voight to be his special envoys to Hollywood, mentioning that he would “get done what they suggest” in order to spark another “Golden Age of Hollywood.”

Months later, it appears that Voight—also known as the film industry’s most ardent conservative—spoke with Trump, and Trump listened.

Voight has reportedly spent weeks talking to the Directors Guild of America, Teamsters, and IATSE, Deadline reported Friday. The fruit of those conversations, according to sources with knowledge of them who spoke to the entertainment publication, was supposed to be a tax incentive that Hollywood has been clamoring for.

Instead, Trump went the way of the tariff, which squares into an administration that has aggressively curtailed spending in order to extend extremely expensive tax breaks for billionaires.

The details of the tariff were still being sorted out by Hollywood executives as of Sunday night, reported Reuters. It’s unclear, per Trump’s post, whether the tariffs would only impact movies in the theater or if they would also apply to streaming services. It’s also unclear if the tariffs would be calculated based on production costs or box office revenue, the newswire noted. By Monday, Netflix, Disney, Paramount Global, and Fox Corp stocks went tumbling.

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

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Wednesday, May 7, 2025 10:52 AM

SECOND

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


Donald Trump’s Biggest, Dumbest Lie Is … Really Big and Really Dumb

By Michael Tomasky

https://newrepublic.com/article/194821/trump-tariffs-income-tax-innume
racy


Great news, my fellow Americans! Tariff revenue last month was way up. The government took in $17.4 billion from tariffs in April, nearly double the March haul of $9.6 billion. So far this year, the government has collected around $70 billion in tariff revenue. In 2024, with Sleepy Joe at the helm, it took in only about $77 billion for the whole year. Today, under the beautiful leadership of Pope Donald, we’re on pace for $210 billion in revenues. Maybe more!

Could Trump be right, then, that tariffs will pay for everything and one day replace the income tax?

No. Not even close. Not even kinda-sorta-maybe-in-dreamland close. This is a very under-discussed aspect of this whole tariff debate. Commentary typically focuses on whether the tariffs will really reduce the trade deficit and bring manufacturing back to the United States. Far too little attention is paid to one of Donald Trump’s chief claims, which he makes constantly: He fervently believes, or sure seems to, that the revenue from tariffs will be so great as to allow for the shutting down of the IRS and the end of income taxes.

Permit me to arm you with the answers to three fundamental questions. How much does the federal government spend every year? How much revenue does the federal government take in every year? And how much revenue might Trump’s tariffs generate once his plan is really up and running?

Answers to the first two questions: In 2024, the government spent about $6.75 trillion. In the same year, federal government revenues totaled $4.9 trillion. Yes, that made for a hefty budget deficit of $1.8 trillion, give or take, and that is certainly on the very high side, but that isn’t what we’re here to discuss today.

Now—let’s break down that revenue figure into its constituent categories. The largest chunk of that $4.9 trillion, about $2.4 trillion—or essentially half—came from income taxes. Another $1.7 trillion came from payroll taxes. About $530 billion came from corporate taxes (which Trump wants to lower again, so don’t expect that number to stay that high). Finally, $253 billion came from our old friend “Other.” The largest piece of the “Other” pie was excise taxes ($101 billion), which are taxes on things like airline tickets and so forth. “Other” also included the aforementioned $77 billion in tariff revenue, also known as customs duties.

In other words: To vaporize the IRS, Trump’s tariffs would need to produce $2.4 trillion in revenue. So, how’s that looking?

It’s looking insane is how it’s looking.
As noted, the government is on pace to generate something north of $200 billion in tariff revenue this year. But let’s imagine that Trump’s wildest dreams are met or even exceeded. Will customs duties produce anywhere near $2.4 trillion?

No. They’ll come about as close as Publisher came to winning the Kentucky Derby Saturday (he finished fourteenth out of 19; my dream exacta of Journalism-Publisher went up in smoke around the first turn). Here’s a good report from USA Today that covers all the bases. The Yale Budget Lab estimates that the tariffs will bring in, wouldn’t you know it, exactly $2.4 trillion. But oops—that’s over the next 10 years, not one, so it’s not even going to cover the first year of this wild experiment. Other estimates are similar. Even Peter Navarro, Trump’s tariffs adviser who made his small contribution to the 2024 deficit by forcing you and me to pay his housing tab for four months (in a federal prison in Miami, that is), estimates they’ll only bring in $600 billion a year. And that’s from the most passionate tariff evangelist in the country, in some ways even more ardent than Trump himself.

So, doing the math, we find that $2.4 trillion (income tax revenue) minus $600 billion (the most optimistic projection of tariff revenue) would leave the country $1.8 trillion short of current revenues. Or, using the Yale Budget Lab number ($240 billion a year in tariff revenue), the country would be left $2.16 billion in the hole.

So no: Tariff revenues won’t “make up for” income tax revenue. Not even anywhere near close. Yet Trump says this and says it and says it.


There is, as you probably know, a running debate about Trump’s lies: Does he actually believe X, or does he know X isn’t true but just says it anyway? Usually, consensus tends toward the latter explanation. But on this one, one suspects that he’s actually ill-informed enough to believe it. Somebody told him about how under William McKinley, tariffs paid for everything, and he liked the sound of that, without stopping to think that the federal government of the 1890s needed very little money because it did virtually nothing (federal spending today as a percentage of gross domestic product hovers somewhere around 20 percent; in the 1890s, it was more like 2 percent).

This brings us to a further wrinkle in this debate. Maybe Trump has no intention of replacing the whole $2.4 trillion. Maybe he and the Heritage Foundation and his Project 2025 operatives intend to shrink the government down to the size where a few hundred billion in revenue is plenty.

That would involve laying off the majority of the federal workforce and ending most of what the federal government does. The public already disapproves of what Elon Musk and DOGE are up to. Trying to take the government back to what it was in the 1890s would be an act of political suicide. Some red-hot ideologues of the right may want to do this, but I sincerely doubt Trump does. He probably doesn’t care that much, and he surely doesn’t want to see his approval rating hit a number that’s lower than the age of Bill Belichick’s girlfriend.

I get why people support Trump. If you’re angry at the system, you’ll vote for someone who is anti-system. If you’re enraged about the border, well, he’s your guy, and it is true that border crossings are down dramatically, although needless to say he and his people are doing some funny counting. And finally, let’s not forget that millions of Americans are getting their “news” from outlets that never utter a cross syllable about the man and regurgitate every word he says as biblical truth, so of course they support him since there’s nothing they’ve heard about to oppose.

But really. If you believe his nonsense about tariffs and the IRS, you’re drinking some Kool-Aid that even Ken Kesey wouldn’t have served. Or put it this way: If Trump really does fancy himself pope, well, he’s peddling a truckload of papal bull.

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

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Wednesday, May 7, 2025 2:59 PM

SECOND

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


The world commemorates the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Europe

By David Frum | May 7, 2025, 10:30 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2025/05/the-david-frum-sh
ow-the-most-corrupt-presidency-in-american-history/682720
/

This is a time of commemoration, and in this time, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, issued a very strange post about the event on the 8th of May. He wrote:
Quote:

Many of our allies and friends are celebrating May 8th as Victory Day, but we did more than any other Country, by far, in producing a victorious result on World War II. I am hereby renaming May 8th as Victory Day for World War II and November 11th as Victory Day for World War I. We won both Wars, nobody was close to us in terms of strength, bravery, or military brilliance, but we never celebrate anything—That’s because we don’t have leaders anymore, that know how to do so! We are going to start celebrating our victories again!
Now, that post was such a perfect crystallization of the Trump style: bombast, boast, all of it making Trump himself the center of a story that he had nothing whatsoever to do with. The statement is unwise and unattractive in all kinds of other ways too. It denigrates the sacrifices and heroism of others. And it turns the tragedy and horror of war into a triumphant narrative that was completely alien to almost all the people who experienced it as nothing but a tale of suffering and waste and cruelty and misery.

I want to draw attention to something maybe less obvious about what is wrong—what is missing—from the president’s statement. The first is, as so often when Donald Trump talks about American military history, he emphasizes power and success and triumph and military genius, but always lacking is any mention of the values for which Americans fought. America didn’t go into World War II—or even World War I—to be top nation, to beat and dominate others. It went to defend things that Americans regarded as precious, and not only Americans but others too—and one of the measures of how precious those values were, not only to Americans and to others, but to the world that has grown up as a result of the war.

Because at this interval of eight decades, I think it’s maybe most useful and most necessary not to think about the war that ended in Europe on May 8, or the war overall that ended on September 2 in Tokyo Bay. I think it’s more useful to think about what began the process of reconstruction and reconciliation that occupied the next eight decades: the way in which former enemies became present partners, the way the Germans and the Japanese themselves discovered, in their own defeat, their own liberation because they came to accept the values for which Americans went into battle.

The story of how we turned the chaos and trauma of the Second World War into something better—and not Americans alone but Americans working with allies, working with defeated adversaries—that is not as dramatic as the battles of World War II. I don’t know that people are going to make successful documentary series out of trade negotiations in food aid and the negotiation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But those achievements were great, and they are the things that at the eighth-decade interval require us most to be mindful, because they’re the things that are most in danger of being lost. You know, there are marble and bronze statues that commemorate all the horror and bloodshed of the war. But those quiet victories of peacetime that built a better world, we’re in danger of forgetting them because right now, the United States is, step by step, unraveling its own great achievement.

You know, Winston Churchill described the Battle of Britain, in 1940, as Britain’s finest hour. If Americans are looking for a finest hour of their own, it’s not anything that happened during the war—when America was, by the way, a late entrant. It’s the five, seven years, 10 years after the war, when Americans and others learned from the mistakes after the First World War and built a better world that we still enjoy. Now all of those lessons have been forgotten, and Donald Trump is single-handedly determined to repeat all the mistakes that after the First World War put the world on the path to the Second World War: protectionism, isolationism, narrow nationalism, lack of forbearance, lack of mutual understanding, lack of any understanding of America’s place as a leader—because of its values, because it’s a country that is admired and trusted, not just because it’s a country that is strong and powerful and feared.


We should think of the 8th of May, and the Victory in Europe Day and Victory in Japan Day, as the beginnings of our modern story. And maybe the message that we need to hear from leaders is not a message of self-congratulation and self-celebration but a message of rededication to the work that was done after the end of the war to build a better world that those of us who grew up in it had the privilege of enjoying and that we are at risk of not bequeathing to the generations that come after us.

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

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Wednesday, May 7, 2025 3:19 PM

SECOND

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


Tariffs and Poverty Around the World
Why you should care about Bangladesh

By Paul Krugman | May 07, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/tariffs-and-poverty-around-the-worl
d



Many people, including many small investors, still believe and/or hope either that Donald Trump will soon negotiate many trade deals or that he will claim he has, declare victory, and back off his massive tariff hike. They’re deluding themselves.

Consider what we’ve learned about Trump as the negative fallout from his tariffs has started to become obvious.

First, he’s invincibly ignorant. The collapse of imports from China has businesses terrified and warning both of soaring consumer prices and of looming shortages. But Trump says it’s all good:
Quote:

We were losing hundreds of billions of dollars with China. Now we’re essentially not doing business with China. Therefore, we’re saving hundreds of billions of dollars. Very simple.
Hey, remember those empty shelves during Covid? Americans were doing great! Think of all the money they saved by not buying toilet paper, because there was none to be had. Very simple.

Second, when he’s in a hole, he just keeps digging. His talk about making Canada the 51st state had a decisive effect in Canada’s recent election, hugely bolstering anti-Trump forces. But yesterday, meeting with Prime Minster Mark Carney, who kept his office thanks to this backlash, Trump kept pushing the idea.

Carney remained polite — he is, after all, Canadian — but his facial expressions during the meeting were something to behold.

The best bet, then, is that the trade war will proceed, even intensify. There will be some winners, at least in terms of global influence, including China, which gains from America’s loss of credibility, and the European Union, which unlike Trump’s America can be trusted to honor its agreements. The United States will be a big loser, both politically and economically.

But the biggest losers will be poor countries that have become less poor largely thanks to exports and are about to see their hopes of progress dashed.

Possibly the most hated article I’ve ever written was a 1997 piece for Slate titled “In Praise of Cheap Labor,” which was mainly aimed at left-wing critics of globalization. I argued that much as the sight of low-paid workers producing cheap goods for rich countries may — and should — disturb us, labor-intensive exports are often poor countries’ best hope of progress.

This argument has only become stronger over time. The New York Times recently had a very good article on Bangladesh, which 50 years ago was the poster child for warnings about mass famine driven by overpopulation. Instead, the South Asian nation became, not a banana republic, but a pajama republic, one of the world’s leading clothing exporters. It’s still a poor country, with wages and working conditions that are appalling by advanced-country standards. But as the chart at the top of this post shows, Bangladesh is about four times as rich as it was in the 1980s, when its exports began rising.

But now the country faces the possibility of economic catastrophe, made in America. Trump’s “Liberation Day” trade plan would have imposed a 37 percent tariff on imports from Bangladesh. That plan is temporarily on hold, but it seems all too possible that it or something as bad or worse will come back.

OK, I know that most Americans don’t care about Bangladeshi living standards. They should, even on selfish grounds: condemning 170 million people to deeper poverty would be a threat to global stability. But here’s the thing: Throwing up barriers to Bangladeshi exports doesn’t involve a tradeoff, helping American workers at others’ expense. It’s pure loss, hurting both nations.

Why? Because making imported clothing more expensive here won’t create U.S. jobs. Apparel production, still largely carried out by people hunched over sewing machines, is just too labor-intensive to be economically feasible in the United States, no matter how high the tariffs.

Trump’s people don’t seem to get that. True, Howard Lutnick, the Commerce Secretary, famously claimed that tariffs could indeed create jobs in labor-intensive activities, although he didn’t use clothing as an example:
Quote:

The armies of millions of people- well, remember, the army of millions and millions of human beings screwing in little- little screws to make iPhones, that kind of thing is going to come to America.
Um, no it isn’t, and shouldn’t.

Taxes on imported clothing will, however, raise Americans’ cost of living. The poor and the working class, who are more likely to buy inexpensive imported clothing, will be hurt worst. But hey, Trump says that children don’t need multiple dolls; why do their parents need multiple pairs of underwear?

Not incidentally, Greg Sargent looked into what it would actually take to manufacture dolls in the United States. Even if it could be done, it would produce only a handful of jobs — and the jobs would be terrible and pay badly.

The point is that Trump and his team have done something remarkable: They have started a trade war that is bad both for Americans and for countries that sell to us. But Trump is unlikely to change course. The economic punishment will continue until morale improves.

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

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Wednesday, May 7, 2025 3:39 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Seven TDS posts today in this single thread alone.



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

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

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Wednesday, May 7, 2025 3:42 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Is Trump Carrying Out His Mass Deportation Promises? The Numbers Might Surprise You.

By Shirin Ali | May 07, 2025 5:40 AM

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/05/trump-mass-deportation-pro
mises-numbers-statistics.html


The Trump administration is aiming to deport 1 million immigrants this year. (85,000 per month)

In February, Immigration and Customs Enforcement removed 11,000 migrants, and just over 12,300 in March.

Those figures are higher than the monthly pace of removals during Trump’s first term, when he deported 6,800 noncitizens per month, but still lower than former president Barack Obama’s, when ICE deported about 12,900 noncitizens per month.

Looking at all of Trump’s immigration actions since he took office on Jan. 20, the Brookings Institution concluded that there’s been “more arrests, less due process, but not yet more deportations.” https://www.brookings.edu/articles/100-days-of-immigration-under-the-s
econd-trump-administration
/

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




Yeah. We need to do better and we will once we finally get the Supreme Court to put muzzles on your activist judges.

In the meantime, what are the level of current border crossings?

Just about zero per month.

That's 200,000 less per month that we have to remove than what Joe Biden* was letting in, and that's only when you believe the Legacy Media liars that were cutting the actual number in half.


Once your party finally dies off once and for all, we're removing every single last one of them. Including the kids.

But in the meantime, much more importantly, we've cut down illegal immigration into this country down to nothing per month. So at least the problem isn't continuing to get worse while the Anti-Americans in the Democratic party are fucking around.


Keep fucking around. You're about to find out.

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

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

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