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

POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Thursday, September 10, 2026 23:15
VIEWED: 186916
PAGE 6 of 48

Of for fucks sake, SIX!

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I didn't say you IDENTIFY AS, but that's how you behave. Consistently and predictably. In a post somewhere up there, you even said you are always "against the power". Even to the point of being against what you were previously for. That's being oppositional.

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No. That is not what I said. ... blah blah blah....

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Touchy, aintcha? I was just trying to to make my post short. Let me rephrase ... while Trump was against the power, you were for him. Now that he IS the power, you worry about what'll be done with that power.
Or whether there is some greater power above him, allowing him to do what he's doing*

That's still oppositional. You're against the power. Right now you're just trying to scope if Trump is it, or if there's a power behind the power.

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I've pointed it out to you time and again. "Nobody ever died of Covid" but the vaccine, which is a subset of viral proteins, kills? That's not fact or logic. That just comes from you absofuckinglutely hating being told what to do.

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That DOES come from facts and logic. The papers are out there for everyone to read

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. Oh yeah??? WHICH papers say that "nobody ever died of Covid"?
LINKS PLEASE

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That opposition, which IMHO is on the far end of the bell curve, is part of what makes you, you, and not somebody else. That's what makes others different from you. It's also something that makes it possible for you to be manipulated. All someone has to do is tell you on authority, with threats, what to do and you'll pull in the opposite direction, whether it makes sense or not. IMHO.

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And all of that didn't just happen overnight in a vacuum.

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You may have been born that way, same as you were born with intelligence and ADHD/bipolar.

I know a pair of identical twins. One is very mellow. The other has been a hellion since the day she was born, and was dx'd late in life with ADHD. Identical. Same genes. Same in utero environment. Not sure what point you think I proved.

And, yes, you are easily manipulated. I see it all the time here.


How about getting back on topic?


* Trump has many wealthy donors, many of them Jewish. So there's that. He also has the richest man on earth behind him. So, of course there's a power behind Trump, just as there are powers opposing Trump.

The powers opposing Trump are, IMHO, globalist financiers like Soros and son, the British bankers (who sunk a fuckton of British pounds into Project Destroy Russia/Project Ukraine), etc. The problem is, their puppets, altho numerous, are stupid to the point of being mentally defective. Just look at Biden and the Eurocrats and various central bankers.

Trump, tho, is NOT FOR THE LITTLE GUY except incidentally. He's for American industrial BUSINESSMEN. For progress to be made, sacrifices must be made. Not by the wealthy.




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


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Of for fucks sake, SIX!

Quote:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I didn't say you IDENTIFY AS, but that's how you behave. Consistently and predictably. In a post somewhere up there, you even said you are always "against the power". Even to the point of being against what you were previously for. That's being oppositional.

---

No. That is not what I said. ... blah blah blah....

---

Touchy, aintcha? I was just trying to to make my post short. Let me rephrase ... while Trump was against the power, you were for him. Now that he IS the power, you worry about what'll be done with that power.
Or whether there is some greater power above him, allowing him to do what he's doing*

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Yes. Call it oppositional or whatever you'd like... anybody intelligent should feel the same way about it.

TPTB have never once shown that they are aligned with the best interests of the people. Not just in America now, but in the history of the world anywhere. Any romantic stories of Great Kings of the past or even our own Founding Fathers cut out all the evil shit, dust off the the good parts and polish it up nice and shiny to give you the good feels when you read about them or see them on the screen.

In real life, the only time The People have ever been served by power is when it's just a happy bi-product of what those in power were looking to accomplish for their own reasons at that particular moment. In these modern times where we have magical printing presses that grow limitless money on trees (until the day they don't anymore), they will show no shame in outright buying your favor and your compliance. Those benefits always end up being temporary when given enough time, but everything you traded away for them seldom ever come back without one hell of a fight.

You may think you're getting what you want. But you're just not looking at the other side of things and you spend far too much time living in the moment and not looking toward the future.

The end goal of all of this constant political see-sawing back and forth is the entire erosion of freedom and individuality, coming from both sides, but done at a pace so glacial that not only don't you even notice that it's happening until far too late, but a good lot of you will beg for it when the time comes.

THAT is the American Experiment in a nutshell.



If you are aligned with whoever is in power, even when you specifically have something to personally to gain from it, you are a useful idiot and a tool. Nothing more. Nothing less.

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

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Instead of your POV depending on who's in and who's out, how about thinking about YOUR GOALS AND HOW TO GET THERE? That way you could be for certain policies and against others, regardless of who's in office.

I knew, for example, that I was going to be 200% against Trump's Middle East policies. Gotta take bad with good.

I've known for decades that this is a power struggle between globalist financiers and American businessmen. (Neither one a friend to the American people.) But what I was most interested in was returning decision- making to America, bc as Americans we have SOME influence over that. We have no influence at all over a secret trade tribunal in Singapore, or a secret BIS meeting in Switzerland.

And America can only exercise sovereignty if we aren't dependent on everyone all over the world for everything, but mostly dependent on everyone accepting our debt and our dollars.

So, economic revival first.

Overthrowing the oligarchs next.

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If you are aligned with whoever is in power, even when you specifically have something to personally to gain from it, you are a useful idiot and a tool. Nothing more. Nothing less.

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If you're aligned with someone in power when you have NOTHING to gain from it ... that's even stupider. You should always be asking "Whats in it for me?" even if your goals are longer term or your definition of "me" covers yiur family, your nation, or the whole globe.

But yanno, SIX, we're too far down on the totem pole to be "aligned" with anyone. Thats like saying an ant is aligned with a homeowner.

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


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Quote:

---

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Instead of your POV depending on who's in and who's out, how about thinking about YOUR GOALS AND HOW TO GET THERE? That way you could be for certain policies and against others, regardless of who's in office.

I knew, for example, that I was going to be 200% against Trump's Middle East policies. Gotta take bad with good.

I've known for decades that this is a power struggle between globalist financiers and American businessmen. (Neither one a friend to the American people.) But what I was most interested in was returning decision- making to America, bc as Americans we have SOME influence over that. We have no influence at all over a secret trade tribunal in Singapore, or a secret BIS meeting in Switzerland.

And America can only exercise sovereignty if we aren't dependent on everyone all over the world for everything, but mostly dependent on everyone accepting our debt and our dollars.

So, economic revival first.

Overthrowing the oligarchs next.

Quote:

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If you are aligned with whoever is in power, even when you specifically have something to personally to gain from it, you are a useful idiot and a tool. Nothing more. Nothing less.

---

If you're aligned with someone in power when you have NOTHING to gain from it ... that's even stupider. You should always be asking "Whats in it for me?" even if your goals are longer term or your definition of "me" covers yiur family, your nation, or the whole globe.

But yanno, SIX, we're too far down on the totem pole to be "aligned" with anyone. Thats like saying an ant is aligned with a homeowner.

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That doesn't stop at least 90% of us from believing they are aligned with someone though, does it?



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

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I guess most people feel they're more important than they really are.

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


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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DOGE Mismanagement Principles
Musk et al. don't know or care about the damage they are doing

By Don Moynihan | Feb 16, 2025

https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/doge-mismanagement-principles

Sam Rayburn, the Texan who served as House Speaker for 17 years was fond of saying:

Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a good carpenter to build one.

Rayburn was talking about policymaking, but the point extends to more broadly to governing. Trashing government agencies is easy. Making them work is hard. DOGE, and the husk of the Office of Personnel Management that has become a DOGE zombie, are a good example.

Elon Musk has a reputation of an extraordinarily successful innovator. If you missed him devolving into a far-right conspiracy nut and hate-monger, it’s still possible to think: “well, he’s an amazing businessman—maybe he can fix government.”

The well of cautious optimism Musk enjoyed among smart people who knew a lot about government has pretty much run dry. We are moving from “maybe Elon will shake things up and reset the system” to “I really hope he does not break some deeply important government functions.”

Musk’s management style when it comes to downsizing has been to cut to the bone, and then hire back if he fired too many. This philosophy might make sense if you are running a social media company where its not a big deal if Twitter goes down for a couple of hours. It makes less sense where the a) failure of government systems has big and sometimes irrevocable costs, and b) it is not easy to replace expertise once you have eliminated it. On the latter point, many public jobs take time to develop knowledge of the policy domain, organizational practice and tasks. Those are not qualities that are easy to rebuild if you just spent a year training a new employee who has now been fired.

After 75,000 people accepted DOGE’s legally questionable deferred resignation offer, DOGE moved to engage in a mass firing of probationary employees, i.e. civil servants who have not yet received full job protections. We don’t have final numbers of those fired (you can find a tracker here), but probationary employees make up about 10% of the civilian workforce. Most of these are employees in their first year, but some were more experienced employees who became probationary when they switched positions.

Musk and DOGE are providing a real-time management case study. Unfortunately, all of the lessons are about what not to do. The quickest way to improve your management skills is to look at what DOGE is doing, and do the complete opposite.

Don’t fire the guys taking care of the nukes

Don’t fire employees, unfire them, and then fire them again

Don’t fire the guys collecting the money

Don’t lie to employees about their performance

Don’t fire the guys keeping the planes in the sky

Don’t tell employees to return-to-office and fire them once they get there

Treat the people who work for you with a modicum of dignity

It is a fundamental error to believe that DOGE is a government efficiency project. Cutting 1 in 4 federal employees would cut federal government spending by 1%. Cost savings are incidental. DOGE is a political control project. Firing and terrorizing public employees is a means to weakening state regulation of private interests and strengthening a personalist presidency.

Sometime soon, some big stuff will start to break in observable ways. It will be important to trace those failures back to decisions being made now.

Much more detail at https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/doge-mismanagement-principles

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

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We don't care about the opinions of the people you listen to.

It would be unfortunate now if some of their warnings were legitimate, but this is the world that you helped usher in.

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

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Quote:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
We don't care about the opinions of the people you listen to.

It would be unfortunate now if some of their warnings were legitimate, but this is the world that you helped usher in.

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

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Trump denied knowing anything about Project 2025 because lying comes naturally to him, but he is following that plan. When Trumptards voted for him, they voted for Project 2025. Trumptards are solely responsible for what Trump is doing right now. You will try to shift the blame away from yourselves, as Trumptards habitually do about every one of their personal failings, but only the dumbest and most peaceful Democrats are going to accept this shifty nonsense from you worthless, lazy, stupid, dishonest, drug-addicted, rapist, tax-cheating Trumptards. Trumptards must be blamed and punished brutally for what Trump does. I look forward to payback time for Trumptards. The smarter and richer Trumptards, such as Musk, will leave the country to avoid being lynched.

https://www.project2025.org/

I was thinking about mentioning the Gettysburg Address. It is short, admirable, doesn't explicitly mention that the Revolution was won by killing Redcoats nor that the Civil War would be won by killing Confederates. Instead, there are hundreds of words to lull listeners into not contemplating how to modify the behavior of their enemies. Effective modification is not done with words but with violence. Lincoln avoided making that the message of his address, which is why it is so admired.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Address

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

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Is the Answer to Trump Hiding in Plain Sight?

By Luke Winkie | Feb 18, 2025, 5:40 AM

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/02/hasan-piker-donald-trump-n
ews-elon-musk-jd-vance.html

. . . Once it becomes clear that a second Trump administration is poised to be just as destructive as advertised, Democrats are once again mired in a communications crisis. With Musk slashing the administrative state to ribbons, the specter of destabilizing tariffs, and a renewed assault on the rights of undocumented immigrants, where was the opposition? It was another stark reminder of just how overmatched the party appears to be, stricken by an enfeebling inability to summon the venom—the anger—its base is feeling.

Piker has never missed an opportunity to express his wrath. The day after the inauguration, he flew to Japan with plans of waking up in the middle of the night to broadcast on Twitch during his usual West Coast time slot.

“If you recognize that Republicans are devastating to the country, to the globe, to the lives of Americans and the lives of your neighbors, then you have to do everything in your power to fight back,” he said on a recent stream, his face softened by the milky lens of a webcam. Piker was analyzing Trump’s order to transform Guantánamo Bay into a detention camp for migrants, an action he believes is the first step toward far more heinous anti-immigration measures. It’s a classic Piker fixation, the sort of thing that innervates his fury for the inert center of the Democratic Party. To him, ceding any policy territory to the conservative elements of your coalition is death. It only provides cover for the Republicans to push further, to savor more cruelty, to inflict more pain.

“This is why I kept criticizing the Democrats during the election cycle. This is why I kept losing my mind,” Piker said. “I was like, ‘Dude, I don’t want Trump to win, and it seems like you guys want him to win, or at least don’t care enough to do what is necessary to stop him from winning.’ And here we are.”

There are more days like this coming for Piker. More executive orders, more electoral defeats, more tepid reactions from the Democrats that he finds anemic or otherwise annoying. The terrible scale of this American era comes rushing at full blast through three computer monitors—on the other end is Piker, and 30,000 people who want to believe in a better future.

“You have nobody to protect you but yourselves and your neighbors,” Piker said at the conclusion of that inauguration stream. “Who knows what will happen tomorrow, but I will be there to cover it. As always.”

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

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'Backfired spectacularly': European officials reportedly now view US as an 'adversary'

By Sarah K. Burris | February 17, 2025 5:33PM ET

https://www.rawstory.com/european-union-trump-2671169459/

If Vice President J.D. Vance hoped to earn respect among international leaders with his speech in Germany last week, it didn't work, according to one senior diplomat.

Vance not only didn't persuade his audience, he insulted them, the Financial Times reported Monday.

"His speech backfired spectacularly, convincing many listeners that America itself is now a threat to Europe," said FT.

“That was a direct assault on European democracy," alleged a German politician.

“It’s very clear now, Europe is alone," confessed a senior diplomat.

The reporter asked the man if he now sees the United States as an adversary and he replied, "Yes."

Gideon Rachman, who was on hand in Munich for the outlet, wrote that the only thing that could considered positive was the allegation it was “puerile bulls---." However, he said it was ignored because it was "aimed at a US audience."

There is now a concern that President Donald Trump could use his power to make demands about trade and security.

"That means that Europe must now start the painful process of 'de-risking' its relationship with the US, looking for areas of dangerous dependence on America and stripping them out of the system," the report closed.

Trump spent much of his first term and his 2024 campaign arguing that other countries didn't respect the United States.

Upon leaving office in 2021, Trump claimed, "The world respects us again." (The world does NOT respect Trump, the oinking and lying pig.)

Read the full report at https://www.ft.com/content/11f121f9-391c-4597-93f7-f12894e1b79d

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

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Making Microbes Great Again
The Texas measles outbreak is just the beginning

By Paul Krugman | Feb 18, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/making-microbes-great-again

https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,
fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F18109301-b9b8-4127-aceb-db72c380c470_1028x657.avif
Source: CDC

I’m almost certain that I had measles as a child. My memories are a bit vague, and unfortunately my parents, who would surely have remembered the incident, have passed on. But I was born in 1953, and grew up in an era when, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “nearly all children got measles by the time they were 15 years old.”

However, measles cases declined precipitously after 1963, when a vaccine was licensed. (My wife, born in 1959, never caught it.) By 1980 all states had laws requiring that children entering school be vaccinated, although most allowed exemptions for religious beliefs. Measles vaccines don’t just protect the person vaccinated; by ensuring that very few children catch the disease, they also break potential chains of infection. So in 2000 the CDC declared measles in the United States eliminated.

But now there’s a significant outbreak in Texas. Only 48 cases have been identified so far (13 of whom have been hospitalized), but officials believe that there are hundreds more that haven’t been reported.

As far as I can tell, nobody following disease trends is surprised by this development, nor does anyone think it’s a one-time event; this is probably just the first of many outbreaks of measles and other infectious diseases we thought had been eliminated.

The reason is simple. Measles was eliminated, for a while, because vaccination was near-universal. The “target” vaccination rate, sufficient to prevent community transmission, is 95 percent. But much of the nation has now fallen well below that target:

Source: KFF

So the widespread return of measles was just a matter of time.

How did this happen? The answer, of course, is politics, specifically Republican politics.

As an illuminating article in Lancet notes, anti-vaccine activism was originally a fringe movement with a “natural-living, left-leaning base.” Translation: it was more or less a hippie thing. In fact, you can still see some traces of those roots in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s incoherent views on health policy — views that unfortunately matter a lot now that he’s in charge of the Department of Health and Human Services.

But the anti-vax movement became powerful and deadly when it took over much of the political right.

The groundwork for that takeover was laid in the Reagan years. Reagan wasn’t specifically anti-vaccine. But he was anti-science — because, as I wrote recently, once you start rejecting scientific research that tells you things you don’t want to hear, you’re basically rejecting the whole scientific enterprise. And he also rejected the idea that the government can ever be a force for good.

So when it comes to childhood vaccinations, what you have is the government telling you that your children must get their shots, because that’s what medical science says must be done. From right-wingers’ point of view, that’s a perfect storm of everything they hate.

And if evidence shows that vaccines and vaccine mandates work — if we went from a nation where almost every child caught measles to one in which the disease had effectively been eliminated — well, people who believe in looking at evidence are probably radical left-wing Marxists who hate America.

Which helps explain the perverse political reaction to what was, by any reasonable standard, one of medical science’s greatest triumphs: the incredibly rapid development of vaccines against Covid-19.

What’s especially perv

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From Comedy to Brutality

With his designs on Greenland and Gaza, Trump has signaled that his first term’s outlandish gestures are the second term’s savage demands.

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2025/03/13/from-comedy-to-brutality-f
intan-otoole/

Trump’s princeling Donald Jr. had landed in his father’s plane emblazoned with the TRUMP logo in Greenland’s capital, Nuuk. He claimed that he and his party were “just here as tourists.” But his father undercut this denial of greater ambitions, posting on Truth Social:

Don Jr. and my Reps landing in Greenland. The reception has been great. They, and the Free World, need safety, security, strength, and PEACE! This is a deal that must happen. MAGA. MAKE GREENLAND GREAT AGAIN!

He later told reporters that he would not rule out using military force to seize Greenland.

Greenland functions for Trump as a terrestrial version of Mars, as that planet appears in the imagination of his sidekick, Elon Musk — a place where an elite can find refuge when climate change extinguishes the common herd of humanity.

Donald Trump initiated a phone call with Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, that was, perhaps aptly, described by the Financial Times as “fiery” and by The New York Times as “icy.” The Financial Times said that Trump “insisted he was serious in his determination to take over Greenland” and quoted a European official describing the call as “horrendous.” A former Danish official said, “It was a very tough conversation. He threatened specific measures against Denmark such as targeted tariffs” if it did not agree to sell the vast Arctic island to the US. The Danes — long-standing and loyal allies of the US — are, according to another source, “utterly freaked out by this.”

After an early Oval Office meeting where Trump expounded on buying Greenland, one mystified cabinet member (from the Trump 45 administration) was struck by the delusional nature of the president’s speech on the matter. “You’d just sit there and be like, ‘Well, this isn’t real.’”

At that time Prime Minister Frederiksen dismissed Trump’s Greenland proposition as “absurd.” And even though Trump was plainly furious at her rebuff, he also played it for laughs. He tweeted a Photoshop mock-up of a mammoth Trump Tower looming over some scattered huts in what looks like an Arctic seaside village: “I promise not to do this to Greenland!”

We know from Baker and Glasser that after Hurricane Maria struck Puerto Rico in 2017, killing more than three thousand people in the deadliest natural disaster to hit the US in a century, Trump asked his national security adviser, John Bolton, “How much hurricane disaster relief are we giving to Puerto Rico?” and added, “Can we just take that and use it for [the purchase of] Greenland?” Likewise, Miles Taylor, who served as chief of staff of the Department of Homeland Security, later told MSNBC that in 2018, before a flight to Puerto Rico to inspect the damage, Trump asked him and other officials whether the US could swap the Caribbean island for Greenland. Thus the cataclysmic consequences of climate chaos — and the people who have to live with them — would become Denmark’s problem, while the US would gain a clean, cool new frontier.

The same warped logic was at work in Trump’s expression in early February of his opinion that the United States should annex the Gaza Strip: “I do see a long-term ownership position…. Everybody I’ve spoken to loves the idea of the United States owning that piece of land.” (It is telling that, in a Fox News interview six days later, the possession of Gaza had become personal: “I would own this.”) Greenland is largely uninhabited; with 56,000 people living in an area of over 800,000 square miles, it is the least densely populated country on earth. Gaza has been rendered almost uninhabitable for its current population, and in Trump’s imagination those people can be made to disappear. Greenland is a postapocalyptic refuge; Gaza looks like the apocalypse has already happened. Each can be envisaged in this twisted thought

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JD Vance’s Debacle in Germany Exposes MAGA’s Sinister Global Endgame

By Michael Tomasky

https://newrepublic.com/article/191622/jd-vance-germany-maga-fascist-g
lobal-endgame

I’d be hard-pressed to argue that JD Vance’s meeting with the leader of the German fascist party on Friday was weakly covered by the press. Yet somehow, it hasn’t registered quite the degree of shock and revulsion here in the United States that it deserves to. That visit, along with Vance’s shocking speech at the Munich Security Conference, confirms every worst suspicion about this morally rudderless mountebank. The argot of diplomats and newspaper editorials, which express “concern” or even “grave concern,” doesn’t begin to describe how we Americans should feel about what Vance did last week in our name.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/berlin-says-vance-should-not-inte
rfere-german-politics-2025-02-14/
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/14/world/europe/vance-europe-immigrati
on-ukraine.html

The Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD) has been declared a “suspected extremist” organization by the German domestic intelligence agency. It has been shunned by all other parties; with a Bundestag election coming up February 23, the leading candidate, Christian Democrat Friedrich Merz, has vowed that he won’t form a government with the fascists. AfD’s leaders have constantly downplayed the country’s Nazi past. And the vice president of the United States just met with its leader. While shunning a meeting with the sitting chancellor.

This is not remotely normal. True, it’s not as if the United States has never allied itself with fascist regimes. There was Chile’s Augusto Pinochet, the Shah of Iran, and some others. But those were all during the Cold War, and U.S. support was, though hardly defensible, merely defensive—that is, it was offered solely because these thugs were enthusiastically anti-communist. It was support based on one mutually shared interest.

Vance’s meeting—and Elon Musk’s earlier one, since he, too, is a member of our government, however shadily—is something much different. It’s ideologically motivated. Vance and Musk, and by extension their boss, President Donald Trump, like what AfD stands for, and they want the world to know they like it.

I never could have imagined, none of us could, that the government of the United States of America would openly ally itself with a fascist political party. In the heart of Europe. In Germany, for God’s sake. And while we’re imagining things, imagine this: Although the conservative Christian Democrats are ahead in the polling, with 29 percent, AfD is in second at 21 percent. Imagine that AfD somehow wins. The U.S. government will be openly cheering a fascist victory.

Combine this with what we already know about Ukraine. The Trump administration is going to give Putin whatever he wants. What exactly this is, we don’t yet know. But when Saudi Arabia is hosting talks that include the U.S. and Russia only, and not Ukraine or the other nations of Europe, you don’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to smell the fix that’s in.

Trump wants Ukraine to basically turn over a big chunk of its wealth to him. The British Telegraph reported Monday that Trump wants $500 billion worth of Ukraine’s minerals, which the paper said would “amount to the US economic colonization of Ukraine, in legal perpetuity.” And take note of what Trump said last week, vis à vis the money the Biden administration spent helping Ukraine defend itself: “They may make a deal. They may not make a deal. They may be Russian someday, or they may not be Russian someday. But I want this money back.”
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/02/17/revealed-trump-confide
ntial-plan-ukraine-stranglehold/

“They may be Russian someday.” We know what that means. That’s a nice little country you got there, I’d hate to see that something should happen to it.

Last year, many people warned that under a second Trump administration, the U.S. would fundamentally alter its posture toward the world. That ou

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Ukrainian Artillery Blasted A Russian Assault Group In Ulakly. It’s The Kind Of Battlefield Win That Gives Ukraine Leverage Over Donald Trump.

As long as Russian forces struggle to advance, Ukraine can reject Trump’s mineral extortion.

By David Axe | Feb 17, 2025, 04:10pm EST

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/02/17/ukrainian-artillery-b
lasted-a-russian-assault-group-in-ulakly-its-the-kind-of-battlefield-win-that-gives-ukraine-leverage-over-donald-trump/

In a cataclysm of artillery and drone strikes, Ukrainian forces smashed an attack by Russian troops in and around the town of Ulakly on or just before Sunday. Surveillance drones working for the Ukrainian Tivaz artillery group registered around 10 destroyed and abandoned Russian vehicles.

The failed assault, one of several in the southeastern corner of Donetsk Oblast in eastern Ukraine in recent days, may have signaled the failure of the Russian offensive in the area. The political implications are profound.

As recently as two weeks ago, the Russians had the momentum. They’d just ejected the Ukrainian Khortytsia Operational Strategic Group from Velyka Novosilka, a few miles south of Ulakly, and were poised to pursue the retreating Ukrainians and potentially achieve a breakthrough in the area where Donetsk Oblast meets Zaporizhzhia Oblast.

Now a Russian breakthrough appears unlikely. “Exhausted by losses and intense battles over the past month, the enemy will not be able to quickly pursue Khortytsia OSG whose units are retreating from Velyka Novosilka,” the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies explained.

Not only have the Russians suffered heavy losses in their modest advance along the Donetsk-Zaporizhzhia corner, they’re also experiencing broader shortages of troops and equipment that have compelled them to prioritize their attacks.

Desperate to eradicate the Ukrainian-held salient in western Russia’s Kursk Oblast and equally eager to capture the fortress city of Pokrovsk, 18 miles north of Ulakly, the Russians are diverting resources from southern Donetsk. “The enemy will not be able to break through to Zaporizhzhia or Dnipropetrovsk Oblasts, as they lack the necessary troops, funds and resources,” CDS assessed.

In conclusion, “the plan to collapse the southern Ukrainian front and advance toward Zaporizhzhia is unfeasible,” the analysis group asserted.

The exhaustion of the Russian offensive in southeastern Ukraine comes at a perilous time for the Kremlin. The administration of U.S. Pres. Donald Trump has threatened to abandon Ukraine unless the government in Kyiv consents to Trump’s $500-billion mineral extortion scheme. At the same time, Trump reportedly is considering pulling U.S. troops from NATO states bordering Russia.

Ukraine—and Europe in general—is grappling with the possibility that 80 years of strong U.S. support for European security may come to a bizarre and abrupt end. Given the chaos resulting from the American retreat, the regime of Russian Pres. Vladimir Putin should be in the strongest possible position to demand huge territorial concessions in exchange for ending its wider war on Ukraine.

But Russia isn’t actually winning on the battlefield in Ukraine. Where its forces make gains, the advance is usually measured in yards—and might cost entire infantry companies with scores of troops.

Yes, the Ukrainian military is struggling to mobilize sufficient forces. But the Russian military is struggling, too—and it’s the one that must advance hundreds of miles against a technologically advanced foe in order to achieve Moscow’s original objectives, including regime change in Kyiv, by force alone.

“The Russian military has objectively failed,” analyst Andrew Perpetua pointed out. “And they do not have the strength to ever recover from the degree to which they have failed. Russia cannot win this war on a battlefield.” But it can win at the negotiating table if, for some reason, Ukraine caves to American pressure to end the war on terms favorable to Russia.

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MAGA's maniacal reaction to Tom Hanks proves they are his 'SNL' character | Opinion

There are so many things that co-presidents Donald Trump and Elon Musk are doing that deserve outrage. MAGA reserved theirs for a TV comedy skit.

By EJ Montini | Feb 18, 2025

https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/ej-montini/2025/02/18/to
m-hanks-saturday-night-live-trump-maga/79025292007/

The most zealous supporters of President Donald Trump practically broke the internet with maniacal rants protesting actor Tom Hanks’ comic portrayal of a guy named “Doug” wearing a Make America Great Again (MAGA) hat during the 50th anniversary show of “Saturday Night Live.”

Strangely (or maybe not), these same people did not go nuts or flood the internet with protests when Trump and co-president Elon Musk fired several hundred Federal Aviation Administration employees, many with training in FAA radar, landing and navigational aid maintenance, at a time when airplane safety is a growing concern.

But watching Hanks speak with a southern accent in a skit about “Black Jeopardy” really, really irked them.

Unlike when Trump and Musk laid off vital employees of the Veterans Health Administration, which U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal called “attempting to balance the budget on the backs of veterans.”

That didn’t trouble them in the least.

Tom Hanks makes MAGA furious, but not this

Not like Hanks cutting it up with SNL cast member Kenan Thompson, which made them absolutely furious.

Then again, these same MAGA faithful expressed no outrage whatsoever when Musk tried to give his bro gang of hackers access to Americans’ most private financial information, including Social Security benefits, VA benefits and much more.

But they went positively ballistic over Hanks reprising a role in a skit first performed eight years ago.

Not a peep from them, on the other hand, when hundreds of employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health were let go, including “disease detectives” at the Epidemic Intelligence Service.

All of which puts Americans at risk.

They are completely unbothered by Elon Musk

Hank backing away from a Black man’s handshake during a comedy TV skit, though, had them foaming at the mouth.

Yet when Trump gave enormous power to Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, an unofficial government agency with no congressional approval, they didn’t blink.

But Hanks wearing a denim jacket over an American Eagle T-shirt. Terrible! Outrageous!

It didn’t bother them at all, however, when Musk — a self-proclaimed champion of free speech — said, “60 Minutes are the biggest liars in the world! They deserve a long prison sentence.”

Maybe MAGA is worse than that 'SNL' character

Musk was upset about a segment the program did on killing the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which provides disaster relief to impoverished countries, particularly those working on democratic reforms.

During the program, it was said about Musk: “The world’s richest man cut off aid for the world’s poorest people.”

The fact that MAGA is angrier and more upset at Hanks than they are with the world’s richest man cutting off aid to the world’s poorest people might prove that Trump supporters outraged by Hanks’ MAGA portrayal could have a point.

It could be they’re not exactly versions of the Hanks character.

It could be they’re worse.

Conservatives BLAST Tom Hanks's MAGA Character On SNL: 'Hate Mongering'

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

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Originally posted by second:
I can’t resist posting one memorable Twitter exchange:

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Andrew Tate wouldn't fuck that broad with your shriveled up micropenis.

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

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Originally posted by second:
'Backfired spectacularly': European officials reportedly now view US as an 'adversary'

By Sarah K. Burris | February 17, 2025 5:33PM ET

https://www.rawstory.com/european-union-trump-2671169459/

If Vice President J.D. Vance hoped to earn respect among international leaders with his speech in Germany last week, it didn't work, according to one senior diplomat.

---

According to who? Give a name.

Quote:

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Vance not only didn't persuade his audience, he insulted them, the Financial Times reported Monday.

---

Fuck his authoritarian audience.

Democrats are on their way to becoming full blown Nazis now.

It suits you.

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

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

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Originally posted by second:
Is the Answer to Trump Hiding in Plain Sight?

By Luke Winkie | Feb 18, 2025, 5:40 AM

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/02/hasan-piker-donald-trump-n
ews-elon-musk-jd-vance.html

. . . Once it becomes clear that a second Trump administration is poised to be just as destructive as advertised, Democrats are once again mired in a communications crisis. With Musk slashing the administrative state to ribbons, the specter of destabilizing tariffs, and a renewed assault on the rights of undocumented immigrants, where was the opposition? It was another stark reminder of just how overmatched the party appears to be, stricken by an enfeebling inability to summon the venom—the anger—its base is feeling.

Piker has never missed an opportunity to express his wrath. The day after the inauguration, he flew to Japan with plans of waking up in the middle of the night to broadcast on Twitch during his usual West Coast time slot.

“If you recognize that Republicans are devastating to the country, to the globe, to the lives of Americans and the lives of your neighbors, then you have to do everything in your power to fight back,” he said on a recent stream, his face softened by the milky lens of a webcam. Piker was analyzing Trump’s order to transform Guantánamo Bay into a detention camp for migrants, an action he believes is the first step toward far more heinous anti-immigration measures. It’s a classic Piker fixation, the sort of thing that innervates his fury for the inert center of the Democratic Party. To him, ceding any policy territory to the conservative elements of your coalition is death. It only provides cover for the Republicans to push further, to savor more cruelty, to inflict more pain.

“This is why I kept criticizing the Democrats during the election cycle. This is why I kept losing my mind,” Piker said. “I was like, ‘Dude, I don’t want Trump to win, and it seems like you guys want him to win, or at least don’t care enough to do what is necessary to stop him from winning.’ And here we are.”

There are more days like this coming for Piker. More executive orders, more electoral defeats, more tepid reactions from the Democrats that he finds anemic or otherwise annoying. The terrible scale of this American era comes rushing at full blast through three computer monitors—on the other end is Piker, and 30,000 people who want to believe in a better future.

“You have nobody to protect you but yourselves and your neighbors,” Piker said at the conclusion of that inauguration stream. “Who knows what will happen tomorrow, but I will be there to cover it. As always.”

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

---

Holy shit.

You're sucking Hasan Piker's dick now?

Democrats will never win an election again.

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

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

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DOGE Finds $4.7 Trillion In Virtually Untraceable Treasury Payments

Tuesday, Feb 18, 2025 - 12:15 PM

The Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) on Monday revealed its finding that $4.7 trillion in disbursements by the US Treasury are "almost impossible" to trace, thanks to a rampant disregard for the basic accounting practice of using of tracking codes when dishing out money.

Mind you, it's not as if such a federal tracking system wasn't already in place -- it simply went casually unused for all sorts of payouts adding up to an almost unfathomable $4.7 trillion. Without Treasury Access Symbol (TAS) identification codes associated with those payouts, there's little hope in figuring out where all that money went.

"In the Federal Government, the TAS field was optional for ~$4.7 Trillion in payments and was often left blank, making traceability almost impossible," DOGE announced via its X account. Thanks to DOGE, those "optional" days are over. “As of Saturday, this is now a required field, increasing insight into where money is actually going," DOGE added.

Musk celebrated the move. "Major improvement in Treasury payment integrity going live!" he tweeted. "This was a combined effort of DOGE, USTreasury and FederalReserve. Nice work by all."

---

I wonder if there's any indication who the departmental payor was, i.e. DoD? HUD? Homeland Security?

That way you could figure out who abused the system the most.

-----------
"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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Why aren't people talking about the Epstein List, the Diddy List and the JFK/MLK files?

If we're going to drain the swamp, you're going to be able to take out a lot of the major players from both sides when those become public.

We were promised them, after the Joe Biden* admin and his criminal party blocked us from seeing them.

Where are they?

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

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

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Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I wonder if there's any indication who the departmental payor was, i.e. DoD? HUD? Homeland Security?

That way you could figure out who abused the system the most.

---

That's all in there.

If they were smart, it's all encrypted or coded with a cypher at least.

If anybody comes out and tells you that information is not in there, they are lying to you.



Because on the off chance that they're not lying to you and there is zero paper trail on all of this, it means that the shadowy corruption rotting our country to the core is much worse than we thought it was.

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

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

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Democrats will never win an election again.

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That is the plan. Trump Is Rolling Out a Huge Part of Project 2025’s Proposed Attacks on Elections

The Trump Administration Is Going After Our Elections Too

Government employees have long protected the ballot from attacks. The president is preparing to fire many of them.

By Lawrence Norden and Derek Tisler | Feb 18, 2025 3:19 PM

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/02/trump-doge-layoffs-project
-2025-election-security-cisa-firing.html

In its crusade against federal agencies, the Trump administration is targeting our election system, making potentially dangerous reductions to protections that help keep elections free, fair, and secure. On Friday, the acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency sent a memo to all agency staff notifying them that “all election security activities” would be paused pending the results of an internal investigation. The memo also stated that the administration was cutting off all funds to the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center—a Department of Homeland Security–funded organization that helps state and local officials monitor, analyze, and respond to cyberattacks targeting the nation’s election hardware and software.

The work of CISA and the EI-ISAC has been central to election security in the United States for most of the past decade, providing state and local election officials with critical tools and assistance to defend against cyber and physical threats to election systems. These steps and other recent blows to federal election guardrails were foretold in Project 2025. Understanding the playbook will help us be ready to push back when the next shoes drop.

Changes to CISA began shortly after Kristi Noem was sworn in as secretary of Homeland Security, which oversees the agency. Beyond the announced election security pause and defunding of EI-ISAC, the agency also put critical election security staff on leave and targeted them for potential termination. These staff include CISA’s regional election security advisers, who are former state and local election officials that provide on-the-ground security support to current frontline election workers, and members of the agency’s Election Resilience team, who were reportedly targeted because they had previously been involved with the agency’s efforts to communicate accurate information about election security to election officials and the public.

Although state and local election officials from both sides of the aisle have praised CISA for providing such support, President Donald Trump and several other conservatives have criticized the agency ever since Trump’s first appointee to lead CISA, Christopher Krebs, promoted accurate information about the 2020 election, including that the election was secure. (The president continues to falsely claim that the 2020 election was rigged.)

According to reports, leaders at the Department of Homeland Security will decide next steps for CISA’s election security initiatives when its review is completed March 6. But given the president’s attacks on CISA’s work, it is not difficult to imagine that the administration will permanently gut the agency’s election security role, as recommended in Project 2025.

Even if CISA nominally continues to offer limited election security support, cutting its staff and deprioritizing its work may mean that the nearly 10,000 local election officials on the ground feel very little benefit from the group.

The new administration’s attacks on federal election security assistance extend beyond CISA or the EI-ISAC. Almost immediately after she was sworn in as attorney general, Pam Bondi disbanded the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force—another target of Project 2025.

More at https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/02/trump-doge-layoffs-project
-2025-election-security-cisa-firing.html

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, i

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Of course, that appears to be exactly what's been happening. On Sunday night, Musk said DOGE might be on the trail of "the biggest fraud in history," as SSA data appears to show that 20.789 million Americans over the age of 100 are collecting Social Security retirement benefits. That includes 12 million who are purportedly over 120 years old.

---

The minimum Social Security payment ranges from about $50 to about $1,000/ month.

Lowballing the typical minimum, let's say $300/ month. Assuming that the recipients under 120 years old are legitimate (unlikely, but possible), that's

$300/mo * 12,000,000 * 12 months= 43,200,000,000

Right?




-----------
"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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Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:

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Of course, that appears to be exactly what's been happening. On Sunday night, Musk said DOGE might be on the trail of "the biggest fraud in history," as SSA data appears to show that 20.789 million Americans over the age of 100 are collecting Social Security retirement benefits. That includes 12 million who are purportedly over 120 years old.

---

The minimum Social Security payment ranges from about $50 to about $1,000/ month.

Lowballing the typical minimum, let's say $300/ month. Assuming that the recipients under 120 years old are legitimate (unlikely, but possible), that's

$300/mo * 12,000,000 * 12 months= 43,200,000,000

---

What happened to your "Critical Thinking Skills" that you brag about, Signym?

No, 150-Year-Olds Aren’t Collecting Social Security Benefits

By David Gilbert | Feb 17, 2025

https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-doge-social-security-150-year-ol
d-benefits/

Elon Musk has repeatedly claimed that his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) project had uncovered massive government fraud when it alleged that 150-year-olds were claiming Social Security benefits.

But Musk has provided no evidence to back up his claims, and experts quickly pointed out that this is very likely just a quirk of the decades-old coding language that underpins the government payment systems.

Musk first made the claims during his Oval Office press conference last week, when he claimed that a “cursory examination of Social Security, and we got people in there that are 150 years old. Now, do you know anyone that's 150? I don't know. They should be in the Guinness Book of World Records … So that's a case where I think they're probably dead.”

While no evidence was produced to back up this claim, it was picked up by right-wing commentators online, primarily on Musk’s own X platform, as well as being reported credibly by pro-Trump media outlets.

Computer programmers quickly claimed that the 150 figure was not evidence of fraud but rather the result of a weird quirk of the Social Security Administration’s benefits system, which was largely written in COBOL, a 60-year-old programming language that undergirds SSA’s databases as well as systems from many other US government agencies.

COBOL is rarely used today, and as such, Musk’s cadre of young engineers may well be unfamiliar with it.

Because COBOL does not have a date type, some implementations rely instead on a system whereby all dates are coded to a reference point. The most commonly used is May 20, 1875, as this was the date of an international standards-setting conference held in Paris, known as the Convention du Mètre.

These systems default to the reference point when a birth date is missing or incomplete, meaning all of those entries in 2025 would show an age of 150.

That’s just one possible explanation for what DOGE allegedly found. Musk could also have simply looked up the SSA’s own website, which explains that since September 2015 the agency has automatically stopped benefit payments when anyone reaches the age of 115.

However, on Monday morning Musk doubled down, posting a screenshot of what he claims were figures from “the Social Security database” to X, writing that “the numbers of people in each age bucket with the death field set to FALSE!”

The figures suggested that over 10 millions people aged over 120 were collecting benefits.

“Maybe Twilight is real and there are a lot of vampires collecting Social Security,” Musk wrote.

The database Musk took the screenshot from listed almost 400 million people, which is more than five times the number of people receiving benefits in 2024, according to the SSA’s own website. It’s also significantly more than the entire US population.

The fact that the Social Security system contains millions of entries from people who are dead is likely distinct f

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Trump Is Already Showing How Much He Hates Labor Unions

After the president hobbled the NLRB, corporate America is jumping for joy.

By Nitish Pahwa | Feb 18, 2025 1:33 PM

https://slate.com/technology/2025/02/whole-foods-union-amazon-trump-la
bor-board-jeff-bezos.html

The National Labor Relations Board is one of the many federal agencies that have been subjected to purges of their employees, obstruction of their duties, and all-around sabotage of their most elemental functions.

Trump fired both the NLRB’s general counsel and a Biden-appointed commissioner on the five-member board, even though she’d been confirmed by the Senate to serve until 2028. The latter firing was blatantly illegal and unconstitutional, which is why the ousted board member sued Trump in court. While that case makes its way through the system, the NLRB has been left with just two members, depriving it of the ability to do just about anything substantive.

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

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Nobody cares about your propaganda.

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

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

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Quote:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Nobody cares about your propaganda.

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

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

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Trumptards create hardships for themselves that normal people wouldn’t:

Trump will replace US attorneys with unemployed Trumptards. They are unemployed for obvious reasons. It is DEI for the incompetent, the obnoxious, and the useless to serve Mein Führer Trump.

Trump says he has instructed DOJ to terminate all remaining Biden-era US attorneys

By Jasper Ward | February 18, 2025 5:58 PM CST

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-he-has-instructed-doj-term
inate-all-remaining-biden-era-us-attorneys-2025-02-18/

WASHINGTON, Feb 18 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he has instructed the Justice Department to terminate all remaining Biden-era U.S. attorneys, asserting that the department had been "politicized like never before."

"We must 'clean house' IMMEDIATELY, and restore confidence. America’s Golden Age must have a fair Justice System - THAT BEGINS TODAY," Trump said in a post on Truth Social.

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

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Quote:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Nobody cares about your propaganda.

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

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6ix, Trump is thinking about forcing you to work in order to get health care for your diabetes:

Republicans consider slashing Medicaid

By Amanda Seitz, Andrew DeMillo, Kevin Freking | February 18, 2025 at 1:03 PM CST

https://fortune.com/well/2025/02/18/republicans-consider-slashing-medi
caid-siphon-billions-health-care-poorest-americans/

Republicans are weighing billions of dollars in cuts to Medicaid, threatening health care coverage for some of the 80 million U.S. adults and children enrolled in the safety net program.

Millions more Americans signed up for taxpayer-funded health care coverage like Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act’s marketplace during the Biden administration, a shift lauded by Democrats as a success.

But Republicans, who are looking to slash federal spending and offer lucrative tax cuts to corporations and wealthier Americans, now see a big target ripe for trimming. The $880 billion Medicaid program is financed mostly by federal taxpayers, who pick up as much as 80% of the tab in some states. And states, too, have said they’re having trouble financing years of growth and sicker patients who enrolled in Medicaid.

To whittle down the budget, the GOP-controlled Congress is eyeing work requirements for Medicaid. It’s also considering paying a shrunken, fixed rate to states. All told, over the next decade, Republican lawmakers could try to siphon billions of dollars from the nearly-free health care coverage offered to the poorest Americans.

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

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Quote:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Nobody cares about your propaganda.

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

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

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About Trump’s proposal to Ukraine. I don’t think we should call it a “deal.” After all, isn’t a deal something in which both sides bring something to the table? What Trump suggested was that Ukraine give the United States half of the revenue it gets from resource extraction in perpetuity. Trump suggested that this would amount to $500 billion, although this seems like a wildly exaggerated sum.

In return, Trump offered, well, zero. No additional aid, no security guarantees, no nothing.

Trump thinks that America’s past aid — which has been substantial, although Europe has given considerably more — entitles us to strip Ukraine of its wealth.

Some observers have compared the Trump proposal to the reparations the victorious allies demanded from Germany after World War I — a demand that yielded very little money to the victors but enraged the Germans and played a role in the rise of Hitler.

But Trump’s vision reminds me more of old-fashioned imperialism, in which powerful nations tried to seize the wealth of less-powerful nations just because they could. This doesn’t look to me like Weimar Germany in the 1920s; it looks like the Belgian Congo in the late 19th century, a personal possession of King Leopold which he brutally exploited for its rubber and ivory.

Trying to carry out that kind of exploitation in the 21st century is depraved. It’s also deeply stupid.

There’s no way we could actually get the money. If Ukraine were to lose, and Putin takes over, he wouldn’t honor the deal. If Ukraine were to survive, its populace would be even more enraged than the Germans after World War I, and they wouldn’t pay either.

And the price of this depravity would be to mark America irrevocably as a rogue nation, one nobody will want to deal with and nobody will trust to honor its promises.

Yet some reports suggest that Trump officials were surprised that Zelensky rejected the proposal.

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/a-belgian-congo-plan-for-ukraine

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

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Originally posted by second:
blah blah blah ....

Trump says he has instructed DOJ to terminate all remaining Biden-era US attorneys

By Jasper Ward | February 18, 2025 5:58 PM CST

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-says-he-has-instructed-doj-term
inate-all-remaining-biden-era-us-attorneys-2025-02-18/

WASHINGTON, Feb 18 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he has instructed the Justice Department to terminate all remaining Biden-era U.S. attorneys, asserting that the department had been "politicized like never before."

---

What SECOND failed to quote

Quote:

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There are 93 U.S. attorneys, each responsible for a specific judicial district. Two districts share a U.S. attorney. In each district, they are the head law enforcement officer.The president replacing federal prosecutors is common as the new administration settles in.

---

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5152413-trump-firing-bide
n-era-us-attorneys/

-----------
"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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“President Trump has a method of operating which the Russians call razvedka boyem —reconnaissance through battle: You push and you see what happens, and then you change your position. … And we need to respond,” the Polish minister said.

---

IMHO Trump makes outrageous proposals. Then he sees who stands firm, who wobbles, and who falls over.


******

Peace may break out in Ukraine!

Quick! Call a meeting to stop that from happening!!!

-----------
"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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Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:

What SECOND failed to quote

Quote:

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There are 93 U.S. attorneys, each responsible for a specific judicial district. Two districts share a U.S. attorney. In each district, they are the head law enforcement officer.The president replacing federal prosecutors is common as the new administration settles in.

---

https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/5152413-trump-firing-bide
n-era-us-attorneys/

---

You failed to quote the part about Trump being a belligerent jackass who fires competent people, replacing them with unemployed Trumptards:

Trump did not understand Pearl Harbor, new book reveals: ‘What’s this all about?’

A Very Stable Genius reveals a US president ignorant of geography who struggled to read constitution

By Tom Embury-Dennis | Wednesday 19 February 2025 07:00 GMT

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-pe
arl-harbor-new-book-very-stable-genius-b2700639.html

Donald Trump barely knew of Pearl Harbor, was ignorant about the basics of geography and complained the US constitution was like reading “a foreign language”, a new book reveals.

A Very Stable Genius, by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig, is the latest book detailing the Trump administration’s tumultuous first three years in the White House.

Named after Mr Trump’s self-declared intellectual brilliance, the book, excerpts of which have been published by The Washington Post, reveals his litany of missteps and willingness to break long-standing legal and ethical norms since becoming president in 2017.

“Hey, John, what’s this all about? What’s this a tour of?” Mr Trump reportedly asked John Kelly, his then-chief of staff, when they took a private tour in 2017 of the USS Arizona Memorial, a ship commemorating the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor during the Second World War.

"Trump had heard the phrase 'Pearl Harbor' and appeared to understand that he was visiting the scene of a historic battle, but he did not seem to know much else," write the authors, who quote a former White House adviser concluding the US president was “dangerously uninformed”.

During a meeting with Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister’s “eyes bulged out in surprise”, the Washington Post reporters claim, when Mr Trump told him: “It’s not like you’ve got China on your border.”

China and India in fact share more than 2,000 miles of common border.

Mr Modi’s expression “shifted from shock and concern to resignation”, with aides telling the authors the Indians “took a step back” in their diplomatic relations with the US following the meeting.

Foreshadowing the later special counsel investigation into his ties with Russia, during the presidential transition Mr Trump interrupted an interview with a potential secretary of state to inquire about when he would be able to meet Vladimir Putin.

"When can I meet Putin? Can I meet with him before the inaugural ceremony?" he reportedly asked.

When the leaders did meet, at a G20 summit in Hamburg, Mr Trump dismissed the expertise of his then-secretary of state Rex Tillerson, an oil executive who knew Mr Putin personally, telling him: “I have had a two-hour meeting with Putin. That's all I need to know ... I've sized it all up. I've got it.”

He also clashed with Mr Tillerson in 2017 when he asked his help in attempting to ditch the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, a decades-old law banning Americans from bribing foreign officials for business deals.

"It's just so unfair that American companies aren't allowed to pay bribes to get business overseas. We're going to change that," Mr Trump said, according to the authors, who claim the president complained the rule prevented industry friends and his own company officials from paying off foreign governments.

When Mr Trump early in his tenure agreed to feature in an HBO documentary in w

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Originally posted by second:
Trump Is Already Showing How Much He Hates Labor Unions

After the president hobbled the NLRB, corporate America is jumping for joy.

By Nitish Pahwa | Feb 18, 2025 1:33 PM

https://slate.com/technology/2025/02/whole-foods-union-amazon-trump-la
bor-board-jeff-bezos.html

The National Labor Relations Board is one of the many federal agencies that have been subjected to purges of their employees, obstruction of their duties, and all-around sabotage of their most elemental functions.

Trump fired both the NLRB’s general counsel and a Biden-appointed commissioner on the five-member board, even though she’d been confirmed by the Senate to serve until 2028. The latter firing was blatantly illegal and unconstitutional, which is why the ousted board member sued Trump in court. While that case makes its way through the system, the NLRB has been left with just two members, depriving it of the ability to do just about anything substantive.

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

---

I never thought Trump was in favor of labor. He's promoting American BUSINESS, preferably production and manufacturing.

What I think he's trying to do is free up capital on the one hand, and make imports relatively expensive. That is supposed to create investment opportunity.

I personally don't think its going to work as planned. American wealthy have a habit of using their spare capital for speculating in non-productive financial activities like stock buybacks and M&As and hedge funds, or abroad.

Putin managed to re-industrialize Russia, but he did a couple of things first. He re-nationalized the oil and gas industry But in order to do that, he had to take at least one oligarch's head and put it on a pike at the city gates, and that happened to be Mikhail Khodorkovsky, owner of Yukos Oil and one of the winners in the free-for-all after the fall of the Soviet Union. Putin broke the Khordokovsky- Magnitsky- Bill Browder connection. Russia is now majority shareholder of the largest oil and gas companies and defense industries. It offers preferred loans to businesses in critical sectors, like food production. Russia also continues to become owner of various budinesses.. https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/economy/russia-sets-record-with-67-com
panies-nationalized-in-2024/ar-AA1vxGpg. And finally, sanctions against Russia, and especially being barred from SWIFT, created capital controls that the Russian government itself could never hope to achieve.

I bring this up only to say that Putin had options open to him that Trump doesn't have. And even if some options were open, by Trump's nature as a "businessman " he would never take them. Because of that, I predict they'll be a percentage improvement in some sectors, but we won't see production increase by multiples or across the board.

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


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Incoming! DOGE Poised To Strike Defense Department With Mass Layoffs

Wednesday, Feb 19, 2025 - 07:00 AM

After firing thousands of "probationary employees" at various federal departments, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has arrived at the largest of them all -- the Department of Defense -- and is expected to unleash a mass termination as early as this week.

On Tuesday, DOGE staffers were reportedly at the Pentagon and being given lists of probationary employees in compliance with an end-of-business-day deadline. That term generally applies to any federal employee who's in the first one or two years of their current position, regardless of whether they've held other roles before taking their current one. During the probationary period, employees generally can be fired without any privilege of appeal.

Though it's not clear how many DOD employees are probationary, the Pentagon has about 950,000 civilian employees in all. Along with the lists of probationary employees, officials were also asked to identify any employees they wanted to spare, and provide a justification. However, according to the Washington Post's sources, few exceptions are expected to be made. The mass termination may happen by the end of this week. Uniformed service members are exempt.

---

MORE AT https://www.zerohedge.com/political/incoming-doge-poised-strike-defens
e-department-mass-layoffs

-----------
"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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Excellent.

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

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

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Excellent.

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

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

---

Bill Would Make Trump's Birthday A Federal Holiday

It seems that Trump has essentially outsourced the Presidency to Musk and the Project 2025 people while he golfs, signs executive orders and does insane press conferences.

Trump wants all the glory, but doesn't want any of the work that usually entails. He is as lazy as he is dishonest. The only thing he works at diligently is bragging about himself.

Trump got to go to the Super Bowl. He led the cars in the Beast at the Daytona 500.

Trump is acting as a Monarch, Musk his Prime Minister--without bothering with the Parliament thing.

Trump wears the crown. Musk runs the technocracy in its mission to reduce government programs to Gaza-like rubble.

Musk does what Trump won’t. Through his whole career it's been rare for Trump to *do* the wet work with his own hands, face to face. He did a lot of firings on a fake TV show but almost never in reality -- last term it was almost always by tweet or done by someone else. Trump doesn't have the manic ADHD- and ketamine-fueled energy or attention to detail to do even a tenth of this himself. Nor the kind of mind that can grasp how the machinery interacts. Musk doesn't get that last point either. But why should that matter?

The Republican controlled Congress sits on its hands waiting for the Project 2025 apparatchiks' orders. Really. What is the legislative agenda for this regime? Besides tax cuts? Wait! Here's one: a bill was filed to make Trump's birthday a national holiday!

https://www.ktvu.com/news/bill-would-make-trumps-birthday-federal-holi
day

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

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Trump’s plan sounds great to not tax tips. But it’s quite bad for tipped workers.

But wait, as they say, there’s more! If the Republicans make this happen, we’ll soon be tipping lawyers, doctors, and anyone else who is public-facing. Tax-free income for the wealthiest workers! But what about the poorest workers?

Many tipped workers don’t make enough money to be subject to income tax or pay very little. So excluding tips solely for income-tax purposes won’t provide tipped workers much in the way of a benefit. In other words, it’s an empty promise.

However, even if some tipped workers don’t pay income taxes, they do pay payroll taxes, which finance Social Security and Medicare; if Congress exempts tips from those taxes, the workers lose out on better Social Security benefits. Social Security benefits are based on taxed income.

People will tip less if they know that tips are tax-free, and pressure to increase the minimum wage will lessen. That would also be bad for tipped workers.

Now the policy: Imagine that someone told you we should tax teachers at a higher rate than bartenders. To be clear, bartenders perform a valuable service—who doesn’t like a well-made cocktail?—but most people would say that’s ridiculous. A core Republican talking point is, or at least used to be, that the government is not supposed to interfere with the market or pick winners and losers. Exempting from tax income earned by people in certain professions does just that.

Consider a bartender and a teacher, both of whom earn $50,000. They should be taxed the same. But if $20,000 of the bartender’s $50,000 are in the form of tips, the bartender will pay far less in taxes than the teacher, even though they earn the same amount. Do we really want to create a tax incentive for folks to become bartenders instead of teachers?

Now, the skeptic might argue that the tips I would receive under this plan are merely salary in disguise and therefore should be taxed. And that’s the point. Tips are income and should be taxed, no more — and no less — than other kinds of income. If you don’t believe me, check out the federal minimum wage, which is lower for tipped employees.

More at https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/02/trump-taxes-tips-budget-ve
gas-workers-unions.html

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

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Trump and Musk set their sights on killing Social Security by spreading rumors

On X, Musk said he was “100% certain that the magnitude of the fraud in federal entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, Disability, etc) exceeds the combined sum of every private scam you’ve ever heard by FAR.”

Appearing on Fox News Monday night, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt picked up the baton to suggest massive fraud that Trump has directed Musk to investigate.

“They haven’t dug into the books yet, but they suspect that there are tens of millions of deceased people who are receiving fraudulent Social Security payments,” she said.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/18/politics/trump-musk-social-security-pay
ments-what-matters/index.html

Not an atom of evidence for these assertions. It’s just the big lie, and as Lenin and Goebbels showed, the bigger the lie, the more effective it is. Trump's next logical step is to shutdown Social Security payments. That will stop dead people from defrauding the government. Proof of life will be required to restart your Social Security payments. Seems perfectly reasonable that if you can't prove you deserve payment, you shouldn't be paid. And thus fraud is eliminated.

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

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Quote:

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Originally posted by second:
Trump and Musk set their sights on killing Social Security by spreading rumors

---

Blatant lie.

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

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

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Originally posted by second:
Many tipped workers don’t make enough money to be subject to income tax or pay very little. So excluding tips solely for income-tax purposes won’t provide tipped workers much in the way of a benefit. In other words, it’s an empty promise.

---

This paragraph was written by somebody who never worked a day in their life and has no idea how taxes work.

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

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

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Wow, COBOL??? That was the big thing when I was learning Fortran ... 50 years ago!!


If there are errors in the database bc of COBOL deficiencies, these are bright lads doing the looking. I'm sure they'll figure it out.

*****

That software should be rewritten. COBOL is still good software.

-----------
"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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Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:
Many tipped workers don’t make enough money to be subject to income tax or pay very little. So excluding tips solely for income-tax purposes won’t provide tipped workers much in the way of a benefit. In other words, it’s an empty promise.

---

This paragraph was written by somebody who never worked a day in their life and has no idea how taxes work.

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

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

---

Allow me to elaborate....

https://www.bls.gov/oes/2023/may/oes353031.htm

Median Waiter/Waitress yearly salary in 2023 with tips: $36,530

Standard Deduction in 2023: $13,850 if single, $27,700 if married/jointly.

Page 6 here: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-prior/i1040gi--2023.pdf

Federal tax is 10% on the first $11,000 above the deduction, and then 12% on every dime of that $36,530 above $24,850.

$11,000 @ 10% = $1,100

$11,680 @ 12% = $1,401.60

TOTAL FEDERAL TAX = $2,502

Federal minimum wage for servers is $2.13/hr., which means if they worked full time at 40 hours per week, their income from employer pay would only be $4,430.40 per year, which was well under the $13,850 standard deduction in 2023. Even if your employer was paying you $6.50 per hour before tips, you still would earn less than the standard deduction of 2023 with only $13,520 after working 40 hours per week, every week.

The VAST majority of states pay less than $6.50 per hour minimum to servers in 2025, with most of them going along with the federal minimum of $2.13:

https://www.dol.gov/agencies/whd/state/minimum-wage/tipped

Only 15 states and DC pay more than $6.50 per hour minimum for servers:

Washington: $16.66
California: $16.50
Oregon: $14.70
Hawaii: $12.75
Nevada: $12.00
Alaska: $11.91
Arizona: $11.70
Colorado: $11.79
Montana: $10.50
DC: $10.00
Florida: $9.98
Minnesota: $9.25
Illinois: $9.00
New York (has some law where they need to be paid $15/hour, so if they don't get the tips up to that amount the owner needs to kick in the rest... otherwise $2.13 federal minimum).
Maine: $7.33
Missouri: $6.88
Massachusetts: $6.75


At this point I need to point out that only 33% of servers in the US actually get full time with benefits and 40 hours per week.

https://oysterlink.com/career/waitress/demographics/


But if you're living in a state where you're getting an obscene amount of money before you're even starting to count tips, you have the potential to be saving a hell of a lot out of this.


Let's take California for example.

I'm a part-time server getting screwed out of benefits and healthcare and I'm working a steady 30 hours per week in California as a waiter.

My take home pay before tips is going to be at least $25,470, which not only goes way beyond the standard deduction of $13,850 in 2023, but it also bumps me up past the 10% bracket into the 12% bracket which starts at $24,850 when you add the standard deduction back in. This now means that for every dollar I make in tips all year, I'm keeping 12 cents that I would have been pissing away to the Federal Government.

So if I made the $11,060 in tips that would get me to the $36,530 national server average, I'd be paying either $1,372.20 in Federal Taxes on these tips the way the laws are now, or I'd be able to pocket that $1,372.20 if Trump ends tax on tips.


And hey... if they were a really freaking great server and made $20,000 in tips that year, now they just saved $2,400 in Federal taxes. And I'm pretty sure despite how god awful expensive it must be to eat out in California if the servers make that kind of money, they're still getting good tips in California.


Meanwhile the guy in Indiana might have $8,000 or so in tips to earn before he starts getting a 10% tax on them, but if he's making less than that and working 40 hours per week for only $13,800 per year, than that p

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Quote:

---

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Wow, COBOL??? That was the big thing when I was learning Fortran ... 50 years ago!!


If there are errors in the database bc of COBOL deficiencies, these are bright lads doing the looking. I'm sure they'll figure it out.

*****

That software should be rewritten. COBOL is still good software.

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


AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

---

Things that were mostly legacy stuff that was only briefly mentioned in computer courses by the time I went to college.

I wonder how many missiles we've got secured by monochrome AS400 dumb terminals still.

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

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

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Wow, COBOL??? That was the big thing when I was learning Fortran ... 50 years ago!!


If there are errors in the database bc of COBOL deficiencies, these are bright lads doing the looking. I'm sure they'll figure it out.

*****

What I meant was, the application should be rewritten and the database cleaned up. COBOL is still good software.

Quote:

---

A majority of the Computerworld readers who took part in our survey seem to concur with Stoodley: 64% of the respondents said that their organizations still use Cobol — more than any modern language except for Java/JavaScript and Visual Basic. That figure is actually slightly higher than the response rate to a similar question the last time we conducted a survey on Cobol use, back in 2006: In the previous survey, some 62% of the respondents said they still used Cobol.

---

-----------
"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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Yeah? I wasn't saying that COBOL is bad. Just that I don't think it's used or even taught that often anymore except for the fact that there are so many legacy machines that still require them, and even by 2025 it has never been a financially and/or logistically sound decision to take the time and labor to make a switch. Not to mention all the security and backup and privacy problems that can occur when you touch anything like this.

Let's just say that none of the youngin's on youtube making coding look cool today are using COBOL on any of their projects.





I'm still wondering when they're going to start talking about the whole Windows 10/11 situation brewing this year. Outside of some tech YouTube channels, I don't ever hear about it.

The staggering amount of e-waste that is about to be created by Microsoft should be front page news right now, and they should be hammered with that every day until they fix their new operating system to work with PCs that still have years of life left in them, or they are forced to continue at least doing security updates on Win10 for everyone without charging for them.

Oh...

I did just look and the situation has improved slightly. Nowhere near good enough though.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/want-to-stay-on-windows-10-after-2025-itll-
cost-you

It seems like now they're making the offer to extend security updates to anyone, and not just businesses. It looks like a one time fee of $30 per computer, but it's only for 1 year after which they will not even be doing security updates for businesses on Windows10 anymore.




Fortunately, I think there will be a surprisingly big 2nd hand market for these machines because of how cheap they will be. It might even be big enough to keep these things from dropping in price as low as they otherwise should, and it could even keep most if not all of them out of landfills.

I know I will be looking to buy more of them to go along with what I have currently, even if none of my current computers can make the jump. These things make for excellent video game machines, for instance. I've made some really cool things for family and friends out of my outdated tech before. But if I can pick up half a dozen laptops on the cheap, those make the best gifts just because of how little space they take up on somebody's entertainment system compared to a desktop computer with a mouse and keyboard attached.



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

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

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Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

You morons keep taking the 20 side of every 80/20 issue and see where it gets you.



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

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

---

The 80% don't want to pay taxes, neither FICA nor income tax on tips or anything else. The point that the 80% cannot understand is that will kill Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. I know who that 80% is. So does Trump. Neither he nor I need those programs.

Furthermore, Trump proposed funding the government with only tariffs, not with income tax. The 80% cannot understand that is a sales tax they pay. The 80% think it is a tax that foreigners pay. The top 1% will benefit when the 80% get what they want, but the 80% will be worse off, losing all their Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.

Does the 80% understand? No. No. Never. That's why they waste years drinking and why they kill themselves with tobacco and food. Trump knows that perfectly well and so do I: Nobody thinks of themselves as stupid, and yet they are dumb.

The Art of Politics is to get dumb people to act smart, for example, convince them that slavery is bad even when they aren't chained slaves themselves. Or another example, convince them that Hitler needs to die even when they are not Jewish themselves. The same Art, in Trump's hands, can get them to act dumb. For example, Trump would ask voters: Why care about slavery? Why care what Hitler does in Europe? Why pay taxes that benefit someone who is not you?

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

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If people want to understand Trump, they should read the 2006 book Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work (revised and updated in 2019).


Download from https://z-library.sk/book/28355141/d841a8/snakes-in-suits-revised-edit
ion.html



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

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Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

I'm still wondering when they're going to start talking about the whole Windows 10/11 situation brewing this year. Outside of some tech YouTube channels, I don't ever hear about it.

The staggering amount of e-waste that is about to be created by Microsoft should be front page news right now, and they should be hammered with that every day until they fix their new operating system to work with PCs that still have years of life left in them, or they are forced to continue at least doing security updates on Win10 for everyone without charging for them.

Oh...

I did just look and the situation has improved slightly. Nowhere near good enough though.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/want-to-stay-on-windows-10-after-2025-itll-
cost-you

It seems like now they're making the offer to extend security updates to anyone, and not just businesses. It looks like a one time fee of $30 per computer, but it's only for 1 year after which they will not even be doing security updates for businesses on Windows10 anymore.




Fortunately, I think there will be a surprisingly big 2nd hand market for these machines because of how cheap they will be. It might even be big enough to keep these things from dropping in price as low as they otherwise should, and it could even keep most if not all of them out of landfills.

I know I will be looking to buy more of them to go along with what I have currently, even if none of my current computers can make the jump. These things make for excellent video game machines, for instance. I've made some really cool things for family and friends out of my outdated tech before. But if I can pick up half a dozen laptops on the cheap, those make the best gifts just because of how little space they take up on somebody's entertainment system compared to a desktop computer with a mouse and keyboard attached.



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

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

---

Today, anyone smart enough to use Windows, a very low bar indeed, can use desktop Linux.

Take, for example, my own favorite Linux desktop: Linux Mint. I've gotten people in their 70s who wouldn't know a shell command from Excel up and running on Mint without any trouble. https://www.linuxmint.com/

Still not convinced? Tell you what, go to your local junk shop and buy a cheap computer. Unlike Windows, Linux runs on pretty much anything. For instance, Mint only needs 2 GB of RAM (4 GB recommended), 20 GB of disk space (100 GB recommended), and a graphics card that handles 1024 x 768 resolution. In other words, any PC from the last 20 years or so should do just fine.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/28/windows_10_demise_linux/?td=kee
preading

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

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“They’re Scared Shitless”: The Threat of Political Violence Informing Trump’s Grip on Congress

With the president smashing norm after norm, even lawmakers within his party have feared for their personal safety, and at least one has told confidants that it has swayed his decision-making.

By Gabriel Sherman | February 19, 2025

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/trump-congress-political-violenc
e

In the past week, Donald Trump has signaled a desire to rule like a strongman rather than a president constrained by constitutional norms. Last Friday, Trump’s vice president, JD Vance, scolded democratic NATO allies and met with the leader of Germany’s extreme-right AfD party. On Saturday, Trump declared on social media: “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”

Senate and House Republicans know Trump will orchestrate the running of a primary challenger backed by Elon Musk’s unlimited resources if a member defies him. But this is not the whole story of Republican subservience to the president. In private, Republicans talk about their fear that Trump might incite his MAGA followers to commit political violence against them if they don’t rubber-stamp his actions.

“They’re scared shitless about death threats and Gestapo-like stuff,” a former member of Trump’s first administration tells me.

According to one source with direct knowledge of the events, North Carolina senator Thom Tillis told people that the FBI warned him about “credible death threats” when he was considering voting against Pete Hegseth’s nomination for defense secretary. Tillis ultimately provided the crucial 50th vote to confirm the former Fox & Friends host to lead the Pentagon. According to the source, Tillis has said that if people want to understand Trump, they should read the 2006 book Snakes in Suits: When Psychopaths Go to Work. (When asked for comment for this story, a spokesperson for Tillis said it was false that the senator had recommended the book in that capacity. The FBI said it had no comment.) Download the 2019 revised and updated book from https://z-library.sk/book/28355141/d841a8/snakes-in-suits-revised-edit
ion.html

From the moment Trump descended his golden escalator in June 2015 to announce his first run for president, he injected menace into his political rhetoric. On the campaign trail he talked about wanting to punch protesters in the face. During his first term, he praised Montana’s then representative Greg Gianforte for physically attacking Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs in 2017. “Any guy that can do a body slam, he is my type!” Trump said. (Gianforte later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault and received a six-month deferred jail sentence.) When protests erupted after a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd in 2020, Trump called protesters “thugs” and said: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” The phrase echoed a remark made in the 1960s by a Miami police chief associated with stoking racial tensions in the city (Trump claimed he wasn’t aware of its origins). In a September 2020 debate against Joe Biden, Trump refused to condemn white supremacist violence and told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.”

January 6 further catalyzed GOP fear of Trump-inspired violence. Romney told his biographer, McKay Coppins, that an undercurrent of anxiety thwarted Republican efforts to formally punish Trump for his role in inciting the riot. “One Republican congressman confided to Romney that he wanted to vote for Trump’s second impeachment, but chose not to out of fear for his family’s safety,” Coppins wrote in his book. “When one senator, a member of leadership, said he was leaning toward voting to convict, the others urged him to reconsider. You can’t do that, Romney recalled someone saying. Think of your personal safety, said another. Think of your children. The senator eventually decided they were right.”

Former Wyoming representative and prominent anti-Trump Republican Liz Cheney told CNN that House GOP members confided to her that they were “afraid for their own security — af

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An Explosion of Lies

The Musk Administration chokes on the truth

By Paul Krugman | Feb 20, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/an-explosion-of-lies

On Monday a White House official made an extraordinary declaration. Elon Musk, he said, doesn’t run DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency. Why, he doesn’t even work there.

This was obviously a lie, since Donald Trump has repeatedly said that Musk does, in fact, run DOGE. The immediate purpose of the lie may have been to protect Musk from the consequences of a case brought by Democratic attorneys general against DOGE and Musk himself.

But the lie about Musk’s role in DOGE barely registered amid the explosion of lies emanating from Musk and Trump these days, ranging from the claim that Social Security is sending checks to tens of millions of dead people to the claim that Ukraine started a war that, as I hope everyone remembers, began with a Russian attempt to seize Kyiv.

Why the frantic lying? I suspect that it’s because Musk, Trump and their Congressional allies are flailing. I don’t think any past administration has ever failed so thoroughly in its first month.

About DOGE: Until last week DOGE’s efforts mainly came across as sinister — an effort to gain control of federal payments systems, along with the personal information of millions of Americans. That effort remains deeply sinister, and we shouldn’t forget about that menace even as we note just how shambolic the Musk team’s efforts have been on other fronts.

But it has been an extraordinary shambles.

Beginning late last week Trump officials, clearly operating on instructions from DOGE, laid off large numbers of “probationary” federal workers — that is, workers who have been hired relatively recently or, in some cases, have experienced a change in job status (often a promotion!) and as a result have fewer job protections than the rest of the federal work force.

As I wrote the other day, this was mainly austerity theater — an attempt to look strong and decisive, to create the appearance that DOGE was saving lots of money even though it wasn’t. And Musk’s people appear to have believed that these layoffs would have few visible consequences, that essential public services wouldn’t be much affected.

They were proved wrong almost immediately, indeed within hours after the layoffs began.

There has been a fair amount of coverage of the layoffs at the National Nuclear Security Agency, which officials somehow failed to realize helps secure our nuclear weapons. When they figured this out, they quickly tried to rehire some of those laid off, but had trouble reaching them because their government email accounts had already been suspended.

There has been less coverage of the firing, then attempted un-firing, of workers who help maintain the western power grid, or the layoffs of USDA employees working on bird flu, whom the administration is similarly trying to get back on the job.

All in all, what we’ve just witnessed is a stunning display of incompetence, dismissal of critical federal workers by people with no idea of what they do and why it matters. Musk and Trump have, of course, apologized and promised to do better in the future.

See, I made a joke.

What they have actually done is try to cover up the mess they made with desperate lies — and the lies themselves provide even more evidence that they have no idea what they’re doing.

DOGE quickly responded to the chaos created by the layoffs it orchestrated by claiming that it has already saved taxpayers $55 billion. But the purported specific savings it listed added up to only $16.6 billion — and half of that number reflected a typo, listing a canceled $8 million contract as $8 billion.

Think about the level of incompetence it takes to get a number crucial to your case wrong by a factor of a thousand.

Wait, it gets worse. On Monday Musk put up a series of posts on X claiming that the Social Security Administration has been wasting vast amounts of money, making pa

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Give me Greenland or you're dead – Trump

Exclusive: Denmark’s PM Opens Up About Fiery Trump Call, Greenland, and NATO’s Future

By Simon Shuster | February 20, 2025 8:03 AM EST

https://time.com/7259818/exclusive-denmark-frederiksen-trump-greenland
-interview/

Speaking anonymously since then to the media, European diplomats called the tone of the phone call “horrendous” and said the Danes are “freaked out” about the pressure Trump could bring to bear against them. In an exclusive interview with TIME on Feb. 16, Frederiksen spoke out in detail for the first time about her call with Trump, what it means for his relationship with Europe, and how she’s navigating new transatlantic tensions on Ukraine and NATO.

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

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Quote:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
The entire atmosphere surrounding all of this is completely different than it was in 2016 and 2020.

Things just kind of feel normal again.

It's like all the loudest voices either screamed themselves out or they aren't being platformed anymore and/or we just finally, collectively tuned them out for a change.

It's kind of nice, innit?


Happy Inauguration Day!

---

Feels normal if you are a disgrace to the human race:

'It's morally disgusting': Trump torched for lying Ukraine 'should have never started' Putin's war

Trump is siding with Putin against Ukraine, just as he famously sided with Putin over the FBI.

And just as — or at least reminiscent of the way that — Charles Lindbergh and the America First Party sided with Hitler in 1938 when he invaded Austria.

And again in 1939 when he invaded Czechoslovakia and Poland.

And in 1940 when he invaded Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, and France.

And in 1941 (Yugoslavia, Greece, Albania, the Soviet Union) — until Pearl Harbor, when they dropped their opposition to opposing Hitler.

And it got worse yesterday, as I’m sure you know, when Trump explicitly doubled and tripled down.

https://andrewtobias.com/must-watch-siding-with-putin/

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

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FUCK UKRAINE.

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

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

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Quote:

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Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
FUCK UKRAINE.

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

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

---

Why not say fuck GOP Congressmen for being ungrateful for what Musk gives them?

After ceding power of the purse, GOP lawmakers beg Trump team for funds

Republican senators find themselves in an unusual position these days: begging Trump officials to release funds they themselves appropriated.

Senators have in recent days made the case to Cabinet secretaries and other Trump officials to let money flow back into their states. They are trying to finagle exceptions to President Donald Trump’s sweeping executive orders or cuts made by billionaire Elon Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service that freeze hundreds of billions of dollars, including money for farmers and infrastructure projects. That push comes as the administration has also sought to fire a wide swath of federal employees — some of whom live in red states.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/02/19/trump-musk-senators
-funding/


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

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“He’s a fantastically bad manager — a tone-deaf bully who inspires ridicule rather than trust.”

On Monday, President Donald Trump nominated Ed Martin to become the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, and thus one of the most powerful prosecutors in the country. Martin has been serving in the role on an interim basis for a month.

Because of Martin’s inexperience, he will need to persuade someone in his office to carry out his projects. Thus far, he seems to have done a terrible job of ingratiating himself to others: Most recently, the office’s top criminal prosecutor resigned rather than follow his allegedly improper orders. One former prosecutor in the office said, “He’s a fantastically bad manager — a tone-deaf bully who inspires ridicule rather than trust.” Perhaps as a result, Martin’s officewide emails are often leaked, including a message complaining about leaks.

More at U.S. Attorney Ed Martin May Have Already Messed Up Trump’s Retribution Tour
By Brendan Ballou | Feb 20, 2025 2:43 PM

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/02/ed-martin-musk-trump-reven
ge-prosecutions-fail.html

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

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Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
FUCK UKRAINE.

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

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

---

Why not say fuck GOP Congressmen for being ungrateful for what Musk gives them?

---

Fuck GOP Congressmen regardless.

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

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

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Quote:

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Originally posted by second:
U.S. Attorney Ed Martin May Have Already Messed Up Trump’s Retribution Tour
By Brendan Ballou | Feb 20, 2025 2:43 PM

---

Been hearing shit like this out of you for over 8 years now.

Nobody gives a shit.

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

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

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Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:
U.S. Attorney Ed Martin May Have Already Messed Up Trump’s Retribution Tour
By Brendan Ballou | Feb 20, 2025 2:43 PM

---

Been hearing shit like this out of you for over 8 years now.

Nobody gives a shit.

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

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

---

Donald Trump says he's going to expand IVF. Not quite, it turns out:

Within 90 days of the date of this order, the Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy shall submit to the President a list of policy recommendations on protecting IVF access and aggressively reducing out-of-pocket and health plan costs for IVF treatment.

A list of policy recommendations falls a little short, no? What's more, Congress would have to pass these recommendations, something they've shown no inclination of doing in the past. It's just more smoke and mirrors.

“Don’t be fooled. Donald Trump’s executive order does nothing to expand access to IVF,” Duckworth said in a statement. “In fact, he’s the reason IVF is at risk in the first place. But if he is actually serious about taking real action to accomplish his own campaign promise to make IVF free for everyone, there’s a simple way he can prove it: He can call on Senate Republicans to immediately back my Right to IVF Act that would require insurance plans to cover IVF. Otherwise, it’s all just lip-service from a known liar.”

https://www.usnews.com/news/national-news/articles/2025-02-19/what-to-
know-about-trumps-ivf-executive-order

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

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Trump’s Economic Promises Timeline (Many promises of fast improvement before the election. After the election, promises changed to either slow or no improvement. Sometimes Trump even changed the prediction to economic conditions getting worse. Sad for you but that makes life easy for Trump.)

https://doggett.house.gov/issues/trumps-economic-promises-timeline

8/9/24:
NBC Montana, Trump Rally in Bozeman, MT, YouTube (August 9, 2024).

“Starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again, to bring down the prices of all goods.”

8/14/24
PBS NewsHour, Trump Rally in North Carolina, YouTube (August 14, 2024).

“Under my administration, we will be slashing energy and electricity prices by half within 12 months, at a maximum 18 months”

“Prices will come down. You just watch: They’ll come down, and they’ll come down fast, not only with insurance, with everything.”

8/17/24
PBS NewsHour, Trump speaks at campaign rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, YouTube (August 17, 2024).

“Starting the day I take the oath of office, I will rapidly drive prices down and we will make America affordable again. We’re going to make it affordable again.”

“We’re going to get your energy prices down. We’re going to get your energy prices down by 50%.”

9/5/24
NBC News, Trump Addresses Economic Club Of New York, YouTube (September 5, 2024).

@ 10:56 “We will bring our auto-making industry to the record levels of 37 years ago, and we’ll be able to do it very quickly through tariffs and other smart use of certain things that we have that other countries don't.”

@ 18:05 “Energy is going to bring us back. That means we’re going down and getting gasoline below $2 a gallon, bring down the price of everything from electricity rates to groceries, airfares, and housing costs.”

@ 48:04 “We will eliminate regulations that drive up housing costs with the goal of cutting the cost of a new home in half. We think we can do that.”

9/18/24
Former President Trump Campaigns in Uniondale, New York, C-SPAN (September 18, 2024).

“While working Americans catch up, we’re going to put a temporary cap on credit card interest rates. We can’t let them make 25 and 30%.”

9/29/24
Speech: Donald Trump Holds a Campaign Rally in Erie, Pennsylvania, Roll Call (September 29, 2024).

“We're going to get the prices down. We have to get them down. It's too much. Groceries, cars, everything. We're going to get the prices down. While working Americans catch up, we are going to put a temporary cap on credit card interest rates at 10%. People are being made to pay 25%. Temporary ban.”

10/1/24:
PBS NewsHour, Trump delivers campaign remarks in Waunakee as vice presidential debate set to begin, YouTube (October 1, 2024).

“Starting on day one, we will end inflation and make America affordable again. We’ll do that. We’ve got to bring it down.”

11/04/24
Former President Trump Campaigns in Pittsburgh, C-SPAN (November 4, 2024).

“A vote for Trump means your groceries will be cheaper”

12/12/24
Time Staff, Read the Full Transcript of Donald Trump’s 2024 Person of the Year Interview With TIME, TIME (December 12, 2024).

“I can’t guarantee anything. I can’t guarantee tomorrow”

1/5/25
Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump), X (January 5, 2025, 9:11PM).

“We must secure our border, unleash American energy, and renew the Trump tax cuts, which were the largest in history, but we will make it even better - There will be no tax on tips. It will all be made up with tariffs, and much more, from countries that have taken advantage of the U.S. for years.”

1/7/25
Associated Press, Trump holds a press conference at Mar-a-Lago, YouTube (January 7, 2025).

“We’re going to have prices down- I think you’re going to see some pretty drastic price reductions.”

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

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DOGE Said It Cut $232 Million From Social Security Budget. It Was Only About Half a Million.

By Matt Sledge | February 20, 2025, 3:54 p.m.

https://theintercept.com/2025/02/20/doge-social-security-cuts-musk-rec
eipts/

The “Department of Government Efficiency” claimed to have saved the American taxpayer nearly $232 million by canceling an IT contract for the Social Security Administration.

They were only off by about $231 million.

In fact, the government cut only $560,000, a paltry savings generated by yet another Trump administration anti-trans attack: the elimination of a project to develop an “X” gender marker for the agency’s internal databases. The Social Security Administration Wednesday confirmed the discrepancy between the DOGE claims and the actual total, which was first uncovered by The Intercept.

DOGE’s mixed-up math came as no surprise to Dylan Hedtler-Gaudette, the director of government affairs at the Project on Government Oversight, who testified before the House DOGE subcommittee last week about the shortcomings of the Elon Musk effort.

“This, to me, is just part and parcel of the amateur-hour nature of what DOGE is doing,” he told The Intercept. “They’re going to destroy more than they help. It’s absolutely counterproductive.”

“They’re going to destroy more than they help.”

When Musk’s “Department of Governmental Efficiency” — officially the U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization — was first announced in November, it seemed like little more than a stunt. Immediately following Trump’s inauguration, however, the initiative sprang into action with murky processes and unclear outcomes. The Social Security contract snafu is just the latest example of confusion spread by Musk and DOGE as they boast of big cuts that vanish upon closer inspection.

On Monday, in response to criticisms from Democrats that the entity was not producing evidence to back up Musk’s extravagant claims of success, DOGE first posted its “wall of receipts,” an effort billed as follow-through on promises of transparency.

The rollout since then has been anything but smooth. On Tuesday, the New York Times reported that one claim of having saved $8 billion by axing a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement contract was wildly incorrect, since the underlying contract only amounted to $8 million.

On Wednesday, other media outlets such as CNN picked apart DOGE’s claim to have saved $1.9 billion from USAID contracts — the hypothetical maximum of contracts that have so far only cost the government $55 million over several years.

The Cut That Wasn’t

The mislabeling of savings from cuts to the Social Security Administration stem from apparent confusion — or misdirection by DOGE — around a massive IT contract with Leidos, a Fortune 500 company that also contracts for defense and intelligence agencies.

Since 2018, Leidos has billed $1.5 billion to the Social Security Administration through an overarching contract that currently has a ceiling of $1.9 billion.

On the surface, the contract’s goals of upgrading Social Security software systems seem to align with Musk’s stated concerns about outdated technology.

Still, DOGE claimed that it had taken a hatchet to the contract, in the process slashing $231,864,794 in government spending.

The actual savings were limited to the funds allocated to the Gender X Marker project, and were orders of magnitude smaller: According to a Social Security spokesperson, DOGE snipped a grand total of $560,000. Somehow, by the time that cut appeared on the “wall of receipts,” the amount it purported to save the government had ballooned by hundreds of millions.

“The task order referenced on the DOGE receipt website includes numerous IT development efforts, one of which was Social Security’s former Gender X Marker project,” said the spokesperson, Darren Lutz. “While the overarching task order was not terminated, we continue to assess and identify other projects under this task order that may be cancelled or streamlined to create further cost savings.”

The cancellat

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Quote:

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Originally posted by second:

“I don’t think they’ve earned the benefit of the doubt.”

---

Not only does Musk lie about DOGE numbers, inflating to make himself look competent, but he pretends to have knowledge he lacks. He is not trustworthy with facts and numbers:

Musk Blows Up at Astronaut for Calling Out His Space Station Lie

The billionaire lost it after Andreas Mogensen corrected his false claim

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-musk-bashes-a
stronaut-space-station-lies-1235274293/

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

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Trump’s Putinization of America

It’s not just in foreign policy that the President is turning Russia’s way.

By Susan B. Glasser | February 20, 2025

https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-trumps-washington/trumps-pu
tinization-of-america

No matter how many times Donald Trump openly parrots the Kremlin line, it’s never not going to sound wrong coming from the President of the United States. In 2018, at a press conference in Helsinki, Trump announced that he accepted Vladimir Putin’s claim that Russia did not intervene in American elections, despite our own intelligence agencies’ conclusion to the contrary. I watched the scene sitting outside in the glaring Finnish summer sun on a CNN set, with Anderson Cooper, who, after a short, stunned silence, concluded, “You have been watching perhaps one of the most disgraceful performances by an American President.” Later, Fiona Hill, the National Security Council senior director who had staffed Trump at the summit, would recall what it felt like inside the room when she heard Trump’s words: she thought about faking an illness, pulling a fire alarm, anything to stop him from talking.

On Tuesday afternoon, a few hours after his foreign-policy team met in Riyadh with Russian officials to discuss how to end the war in Ukraine, the President had what can only be described as another Helsinki moment. Holding forth at a press conference at Mar-a-Lago about why he had refused to include the Ukrainians in the Saudi meeting, Trump said that there was no reason to have done so, since Russia’s invasion, three years ago this week, was actually Ukraine’s fault. “You should never have started it,” he said, addressing Ukraine’s President, Volodymyr Zelensky. “You could have made a deal.” To hear Trump tell it, Ukraine might as well be bombing its own cities and killing its own citizens. He claimed that the United States had spent three hundred and fifty billion dollars helping Ukraine, and that Zelensky’s popularity had plummeted to just four per cent in recent polls — both statements so far divorced from reality that Putin himself might not have been brazen enough to make them.

By Wednesday, Zelensky pushed back on Trump’s ridiculous assertions by saying that he was living in a Russian-made “disinformation space,” and, in response, Trump attacked the Ukrainian leader as a “Dictator without Elections” in a long, falsehood-riddled social-media post. His officials, meanwhile, have made clear in the course of the last week that Trump’s pro-Kremlin rhetoric is more than just empty words; he appears ready to concede to Russia on most of its major demands for a peace deal, including pledging that Ukraine will never join NATO, not allowing U.S. troops to participate in providing security for Ukraine after a ceasefire, pressuring Ukraine to cede illegally occupied territory to Russia, and lifting Western sanctions imposed on Russia. Trump’s embrace of America’s adversary and rejection of its ally has been so swift and complete that even top Kremlin officials are astonished. “If you’d told me just three months ago that these were the words of the US president, I would have laughed out loud,” the former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev posted on X.

That all this has taken place exactly one month into his second term seems fitting, however, for an American President who’s never made much secret of his inexplicable desire to suck up to Putin. One difference from Trump’s first four years in office, though, is that he has now adopted not only a pro-Putin take on Russia’s conflict with Ukraine but an approach to foreign policy over all which echoes Putin’s throwback view of the world, as a playground for predatory great powers to exert nearly unlimited control over the smaller nations that fall within their sphere of influence. How else to explain Trump’s initial moves on the world stage since returning to office, as he threatened to outright seize territory in the Western Hemispher

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Trump's failure to challenge Putin in Ukraine ceasefire talks would cause a war in Europe in five years warns Former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Richard Shirreff.

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

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In an editorial, the Wall Street Journal says:

Trump on Tuesday mimicked Russian propaganda by claiming Ukraine had started the war with Russia and that Kyiv is little better than the Kremlin because it hasn’t held a wartime election. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky replied on Wednesday that Mr. Trump was living in a “disinformation space,” which may have been imprudent but was accurate.

Mr. Trump escalated on Wednesday, as he usually does, calling Mr. Zelensky a “dictator,” and suggesting Ukraine’s leader snookered the U.S. into supporting a war “that couldn’t be won, that never had to start.” Mr. Zelensky “refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden ‘like a fiddle.’” It’s tempting to dismiss this exchange as mere rhetoric, but it has the feel of political intention for Mr. Trump. He may be trashing Ukraine’s democracy to make voters think there’s no real difference between the Kremlin and Kyiv. He may think this will make it easier to sell a peace deal that betrays Ukraine.

We doubt most Americans will overlook his false moral equivalence. Mr. Putin’s war of conquest started three years ago this month when Russian troops rolled over the border and tried to capture Kyiv. The war began not because Mr. Putin had legitimate security fears — but because the aging former KGB agent wants to reassemble most of the Soviet empire he saw crumble as a young man. Ukraine has delayed elections while it is operating under martial law and fighting a war for survival. Its constitution allows this, and Britain under Nazi siege didn’t hold an election during World War II. Was Churchill a dictator?

The U.S. has a profound interest in denying Mr. Putin a new perch on more of the NATO border, which is the real reason America has been right to arm Ukraine. A deal that amounts to Ukrainian surrender will be a blow to American power that will radiate to the Pacific and the Middle East. It would be the opposite of Mr. Trump’s promise to restore a golden age of U.S. prestige and world calm.

Last week Mr. Trump said Ukraine can’t join NATO and must give up much of its territory to Russia — concessions to Mr. Putin with nothing in return. Mr. Putin’s response this week has been more drone attacks on Ukraine. And here we thought Mr. Trump doesn’t like being played.

As it stands now, Mr. Trump’s seeming desperation for a deal is a risk to Ukraine, Europe, U.S. interests — and his own Presidency.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-russia-ukraine
-volodymyr-zelensky-10464d9c

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

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Since 99% of your sources are proven wrong, sometimes within hours, I'm gonna assume you're sucking up to more neocon bullshitters, SECOND.

You really should learn to distinguish fact from fantasy.

-----------
"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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Quote:

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Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Since 99% of your sources are proven wrong, sometimes within hours, I'm gonna assume you're sucking up to more neocon bullshitters, SECOND.

You really should learn to distinguish fact from fantasy.

---

Signym, for all the years you have been on fff.net, you have constantly bragged about being right and praised yourself for your "Critical Thinking Skills", and yet you don't bring the proof.

When the news media was counting Trump's lies, he got into the thousands, mostly because he was claiming knowledge and attributes he did not have, much like Signym has always done.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Trump's+lies

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

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Trump is dropping fast in the polls

Did you know that the all-time record holders for the poorest early approval ratings are Donald Trump and Donald Trump?



https://jabberwocking.com/trump-is-dropping-fast-in-the-polls/

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

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Trump is one month in and Americans are already mad at him about inflation

Trump vowed repeatedly that he’d bring prices down “starting on Day One” if elected. Consumer prices rose 0.5% last month compared to December — the fastest monthly increase in prices since August 2023, according to Consumer Price Index data.

Vice President JD Vance said, “Consumers are going to see lower prices at the pump and at the grocery store, but it’s going to take a little bit of time.” Translation: My boss misspoke previously.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/21/economy/us-economy-trump/index.html

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

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Since Musk insists the Truth is a falsehood, he cannot be trusted with DOGE.
The same goes for Trump.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/02/21/elon-musk-fix-x-users-
correct-trumps-ukraine-claims/

Elon Musk has vowed to crack down on X users who have tried to correct false claims by Donald Trump that Volodymyr Zelensky’s approval ratings have collapsed.

The billionaire said he planned to “fix” the social network’s system of community notes, which allows users to label fake news and add fact-checks or further context. Mr Musk claimed the system was being “increasingly gamed by governments [and] legacy media” and said he was “working to fix this”.

On X, users have pushed back on the US president’s claims that the Ukraine president’s approval rating has collapsed to 4pc. One widely shared poll from the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology suggested his popularity was closer to 57pc.

In response, Mr Musk said that it was “utterly obvious that a Zelensky-controlled poll about his OWN approval is not credible”.

The billionaire claimed that Mr Zelensky was “despised by the people of Ukraine, which is why he has refused to hold an election”. Mr Musk added: “If Zelensky was actually loved by the people of Ukraine, he would hold an election. He knows he would lose in a landslide, despite having seized control of ALL Ukrainian media, so he canceled the election.”

His remarks come after the Ukrainian president said Mr Trump lived in a “disinformation bubble”. Mr Trump has repeated a series of inflammatory claims about the war in Ukraine that have echoed Kremlin talking points, including labelling Mr Zelensky a “dictator”.

Polling experts have dismissed Mr Trump’s suggestions about Mr Zelensky’s popularity among Ukrainians.

Prof Olga Onuch, of the University of Manchester, which has conducted polling in Ukraine, said: “Trump’s claim is not only factually incorrect, but also irresponsible and anti-democratic – Zelensky remains a fairly popular political leader in Ukraine.

“Spreading misinformation about his legitimacy directly aids Kremlin propaganda and undermines the Ukrainian people’s right to determine their own future.”

Mr Musk has championed the use of community notes on X as a means of providing context to misleading posts. The notes are crowd-sourced from contributors and voted on by other users. But the billionaire has increasingly fallen foul of his own system as dozens of his own posts receive fact-checks.

In response to a community note on another of his posts, Mr Musk said: “This Community Note is False. Legacy media is NOT a reliable source.”

Researchers have said the notes have been helpful in diverting users away from disinformation. A 2024 paper suggested they reduced the spread of a false claim by 61pc, although noted they were often too slow to stop the initial viral spread of fake news.

The system was praised by Mark Zuckerberg, who scrapped independent fact-checkers at Meta in the US last month and pledged to bring community notes to Facebook.

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

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Quote:

---

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Since 99% of your sources are proven wrong, sometimes within hours, I'm gonna assume you're sucking up to more neocon bullshitters, SECOND.

You really should learn to distinguish fact from fantasy.

---

He's either a deep state plant or he's irredeemably stupid. There is no 3rd option.

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

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

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Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:
Since Musk insists the Truth is a falsehood, he cannot be trusted with DOGE.
The same goes for Trump.

---

Tens of millions of dead people aren’t getting Social Security checks, despite Trump and Musk claims

https://apnews.com/article/social-security-payments-deceased-false-cla
ims-doge-ed2885f5769f368853ac3615b4852cf7

The Trump administration is falsely claiming that tens of millions of dead people over 100 years old are receiving Social Security payments.

Over the past few days, President Donald Trump and billionaire adviser Elon Musk have said on social media and in press briefings that people who are 100, 200 and even 300 years old are improperly getting benefits — a “HUGE problem,” Musk wrote, as his Department of Government Efficiency digs into federal agencies to root out waste, fraud and abuse.

What are some of the concerns about misinformation on Social Security payments?

Chuck Blahous, a senior research strategist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, said, “Two cheers for Elon Musk if he can root out and put a stop to improper payments.”

But to pick the places in the federal government where error rates are high, “Social Security would be near the bottom of the list, not near the top,” Blahous said. “Medicaid improper payment rates are quite substantial, and soared after the Medicaid expansion of the ACA.”

“By all means — go after any improper payments that are found, but let’s not pretend that’s where the system’s biggest financial problems are,” he said.

Sita Nataraj Slavov, a professor of public policy at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, said the claims by Musk and Trump will make people think the solutions to the government’s financial problems are simpler than they appear.

“The real concern is that this claim may mislead people into thinking there’s an easy fix to Social Security’s financial problems — that we can somehow restore solvency without making sacrifices through higher taxes or lower benefits,” Slavov said. “This is simply not true.”

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

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Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Since 99% of your sources are proven wrong, sometimes within hours, I'm gonna assume you're sucking up to more neocon bullshitters, SECOND.

You really should learn to distinguish fact from fantasy.

---

He's either a deep state plant or he's irredeemably stupid. There is no 3rd option.

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

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

---

There is a third option, one that I see every day while watching Trumptards, such as yourself, at work or not: Trumptards are full of shit. They are also lying sacks of shit, as are Trump and Musk. Those extremely salient Trumptard Characteristics should make Trumptards reevaluate the true cause of their struggles to prosper in America. The power to improve your Trumptardy lives is within yourself, but you must stop lying about yourself and others before the power can make a difference.

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

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Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:
Since Musk insists the Truth is a falsehood, he cannot be trusted with DOGE.
The same goes for Trump.

---

Tens of millions of dead people aren’t getting Social Security checks, despite Trump and Musk claims

https://apnews.com/article/social-security-payments-deceased-false-cla
ims-doge-ed2885f5769f368853ac3615b4852cf7

The Trump administration is falsely claiming that tens of millions of dead people over 100 years old are receiving Social Security payments.

Over the past few days, President Donald Trump and billionaire adviser Elon Musk have said on social media and in press briefings that people who are 100, 200 and even 300 years old are improperly getting benefits — a “HUGE problem,” Musk wrote, as his Department of Government Efficiency digs into federal agencies to root out waste, fraud and abuse.

What are some of the concerns about misinformation on Social Security payments?

Chuck Blahous, a senior research strategist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, said, “Two cheers for Elon Musk if he can root out and put a stop to improper payments.”

But to pick the places in the federal government where error rates are high, “Social Security would be near the bottom of the list, not near the top,” Blahous said. “Medicaid improper payment rates are quite substantial, and soared after the Medicaid expansion of the ACA.”

“By all means — go after any improper payments that are found, but let’s not pretend that’s where the system’s biggest financial problems are,” he said.

Sita Nataraj Slavov, a professor of public policy at the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University, said the claims by Musk and Trump will make people think the solutions to the government’s financial problems are simpler than they appear.

“The real concern is that this claim may mislead people into thinking there’s an easy fix to Social Security’s financial problems — that we can somehow restore solvency without making sacrifices through higher taxes or lower benefits,” Slavov said. “This is simply not true.”

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

---

Your bullshit article counters its own headline. A headline which is a blatant lie, which they offer no proof to support.

We're getting rid of all of the Democratic Party corruption and waste.

Meanwhile, sit down and shut the fuck up, idiot.

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

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

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Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Your bullshit article counters its own headline. A headline which is a blatant lie, which they offer no proof to support.

We're getting rid of all of the Democratic Party corruption and waste.

Meanwhile, sit down and shut the fuck up, idiot.

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

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

---

6ix, you are literally full of shit, as are Trump and Musk. The power to improve your Trumptardy lives is within yourself, but you must stop lying about yourself and others before the power can make a difference. That is the ultimate self-help message for Trump voters: fix yourself rather than blame others for your sad predicament.

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

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Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:
Trump is dropping fast in the polls

---

No he's not. He's holding quite steady. Not sure what poll that idiot Kevin is cherry picking here, but he is not living in reality.

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

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

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Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Your bullshit article counters its own headline. A headline which is a blatant lie, which they offer no proof to support.

We're getting rid of all of the Democratic Party corruption and waste.

Meanwhile, sit down and shut the fuck up, idiot.

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

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

---

6ix, you are literally full of shit, as are Trump and Musk. The power to improve your Trumptardy lives is within yourself, but you must stop lying about yourself and others before the power can make a difference. That is the ultimate self-help message for Trump voters: fix yourself rather than blame others for your sad predicament.

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

---

Sit down and shut the fuck up, retard.

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

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

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Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:
Did you know that the all-time record holders for the poorest early approval ratings are Donald Trump and Donald Trump?

---

No he's not. He's holding quite steady. Not sure what poll that idiot Kevin is cherry picking here, but he is not living in reality.

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

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

---

6ix, you really are totally committed to being a fruitcake. Trump's Job Approval Rating is 45%. Republicans Register High Approval of Trump at 93%, which indicates they are out of their tiny minds. Being crazy correlates perfectly with struggling to be successful in America. Only about 7% of Trumptards are in any way successful people, which is about same number who disapprove of Trump. What about the rest of Trumptards? They are big flops.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/656891/trump-job-approval-rating-congress
-jumps.aspx

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

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Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Sit down and shut the fuck up, retard.

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

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

---

Call It eXtortion

Elon Musk really is intimidating an advertising agency to do business with X or else he will prevent their merger with another company:

A lawyer at advertising conglomerate Interpublic Group fielded a phone call in December from a lawyer at X. The message was clear, according to several people with knowledge of the conversation: Get your clients to spend more on Elon Musk’s social-media platform, or else.

....Interpublic leaders interpreted the communications from X as reminders that the recently announced $13 billion deal to merge Interpublic with rival Omnicom Group could be torpedoed, or at least slowed down, by the Trump administration.

....The push for agency agreements follows a flurry of brands returning to spending on X, including Amazon...Apple...and telecom company Verizon.

....“We now see brands returning in quite significant numbers, because the easiest route is to just spend a minimum viable amount on the platform,” said Ebiquity’s Schreurs. “Not because they want to advertise there and run their ads adjacent to the content on X, but because they are afraid of legal and political ramifications of not doing so.”

For some reason, the judge in this case—Northern District of Texas, natch—seems surprisingly sympathetic toward Musk. Golly, I wonder why?

https://www.wsj.com/business/media/x-hinted-at-possible-deal-trouble-i
n-talks-with-ad-giant-to-increase-spending-feb122a6?st=88VbZ8&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink

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

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Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:
Did you know that the all-time record holders for the poorest early approval ratings are Donald Trump and Donald Trump?

---

No he's not. He's holding quite steady. Not sure what poll that idiot Kevin is cherry picking here, but he is not living in reality.

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

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

---

6ix, you really are totally committed to being a fruitcake. Trump's Job Approval Rating is 45%. Republicans Register High Approval of Trump at 93%, which indicates they are out of their tiny minds. Being crazy correlates perfectly with struggling to be successful in America. Only about 7% of Trumptards are in any way successful people, which is about same number who disapprove of Trump. What about the rest of Trumptards? They are big flops.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/656891/trump-job-approval-rating-congress
-jumps.aspx

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

---

You're just angry because you wake up to more losing in the headlines every day.

Must be rough.

Get used to it. Your party is dead.

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

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

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Very soon we will be seeing the official end of Birthright Citizenship.

It will either be codified by congress, or it will end up in the Supreme Court where it will finally die the death it has deserved for generations now.



I guess Democrats will have to come up with another plan to Grow voters.

Not that this plan worked out very well for them in the first place. A majority of Mexican Americans voted for Trump.

Gee. Imagine that, huh? It turns out that once they're citizens they don't agree with you giving all of their shit away either.



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

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

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‘Mar-a-Lago Accord’ Chatter Is Getting Wall Street’s Attention

Ill try to re-org and summarize, the article is scattershot

Liz Capo McCormick
Fri, February 21, 2025

(Bloomberg)

The term ‘Mar-a-Lago Accord’ is a riff on the on the 1985 Plaza Accord and, before that, the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement, both major milestones in the establishment of the modern global economic system. Each were named after the resorts where they were negotiated.


The idea of dramatically restructuring America’s debt load is part of the Trump team’s agenda to revamp global trade via tariffs, weaken the dollar and ultimately reduce borrowing costs, all with the goal of putting US industry on more even footing with the rest of the world, said Bianco, an over three-decade market veteran and founder of Bianco Research.

Many of the ideas behind the agenda come from a November 2024 paper by Stephen Miran, Trump’s nominee to lead the White House Council of Economic Advisers. In it, the former Treasury official laid out a road map for reforming the global trading system and weeding out economic imbalances driven by “persistent dollar overvaluation.”
This may not happen "anytime soon, if ever".

“The whole idea hopefully is lower the value of the dollar, lower the value of interest rates, bring down the debt burden in the country. And that’s what they [Miran, Bessent] are trying to do.”

Bianco, like Miran’s paper, referenced the work of former Credit Suisse Group AG strategist Zoltan Pozsar, who has for several years called for a “Bretton Woods III” revamp as part of his theory that the dollar will play a much less dominant role in global finance in the coming decades.

[One element is to reduce the actual deficit- which Trump's team is supposedly already doing. Altho those savings may be completely undone -and more- by tax cuts. - SIGNY]

[Another] element[s] of the plan include[s] the creation of a sovereign wealth fund — which Trump has already set in motion

[Another element includes] forcing America’s allies to shoulder a larger share of security spending. One key idea of Pozsar’s is that other nations should pay more for the security and stability provided by the US. A way to do so would be by swapping some of their Treasuries into 100-year, non-tradeable zero-coupon bonds. If these nations needed cash quickly, the Federal Reserve could make it temporarily available to them through a lending facility.

“It’s time to take the risk of the Trump administration orchestrating a weaker dollar more seriously. The Trump administration has a proclivity for bold, high-stakes maneuvers.”— Simon Flint, macro strategist

Bianco stressed that this type of debt swap may not actually happen, and if the US were to pursue it, it would require significant international cooperation and could potentially impact global financial stability. Bond investors are so far showing little sign of concern, with trading in the Treasury market particularly calm in recent days.

Still, the point of discussing these ideas with clients is to emphasize the magnitude of the potential changes in store, Bianco said.

“Take them seriously, don’t take it literally,” he said referring to the debt swap idea and some of Trump’s more radical proposals in general. “If Trump is willing to blow up NATO, why wouldn’t he be willing to blow up the financial system?”

*****

So, OOC I looked up who holds the most in US treasuries and who might be "persuaded" to accept a debt swap. Currently, formal NATO allies hold about 1.6 trillion. Japan holds 1.2 trillion. China holds 0.8 trillion, and other misc nations about 1.8 trillion. I think we can forget China agreeing to a debt swap. Japan and NATO might agree. Other misc nations, I assume mostly in the global south, don't actually get "protection" from the USA. Some might be arm twisted, some not. Given that th

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Parks were already facing a staffing problem. Then came the government purge.

America’s beloved national parks face a problem that could, in a matter of weeks, grow into a full-blown crisis.

https://www.vox.com/down-to-earth/400209/national-parks-trump-governme
nt-layoffs-visit-data

The number of people visiting areas managed by the National Park Service — which includes national parks, monuments, and other sites — is way up. In 2023, the most recent year for national data, parks had more than 325 million visits. That’s about a 16 percent bump relative to 2010. At least in some parks, visitation rates have continued to rise.

Meanwhile, staffing at the National Park Service is down, having dropped about 13 percent over that same period, according to the National Parks Conservation Association, an advocacy group. Staffing specifically in parks has fallen even further in that time, the group said, as the agency’s budget has failed to keep pace with rising personnel costs. That means there are fewer employees to oversee more visitors and mitigate their impact on our public lands and ecosystems.

And this was before the recent layoff.

Late last week, the Trump administration laid off roughly 1,000 workers in the National Park Service, or about 5 percent of its workforce, as part of a broader gutting of the federal workforce. The latest cuts targeted employees who were still in a probationary period, often meaning they were recently hired or had just moved into a new role. The layoff does not include many additional employees who opted for a deferred resignation or had offers for full-time employment rescinded.

“In an agency that has already experienced a significant staffing decline over the past decade, these layoffs will severely affect park operations and the visitor experience,” Phil Francis, chair of the Executive Council of the Coalition to Protect America’s National Parks, a group representing current and former employees and volunteers of the National Park Service, said in a statement Friday. “National Park Service employees dedicate their careers to preserving our nation’s most treasured landscapes and historic sites. We should be supporting them — not jeopardizing their livelihoods.”

The Department of the Interior and the National Park Service did not respond to a request for comment.

Reporting by the Washington Post indicates the National Park Service will reinstate 5,000 seasonal job offers that were previously rescinded under a government-wide hiring freeze. That may help fill some immediate needs; seasonal employees perform a range of tasks, from collecting fees to researching wildlife. Yet it’s not clear when those jobs will be reinstated and they won’t make up for the permanent roles that have been lost, said John Garder, senior director of budget and appropriations at the National Parks Conservation Association.

“Those seasonal employees, who are critical to serving visitors during the busy season, are no substitute for the permanent employees who manage those seasonal workers and provide the expertise and institutional knowledge and experience to ensure resource protection and a well functioning park,” Garder said.

The National Park Service is among the most popular US government agencies, ranking above the Postal Service and NASA for favorability, according to a 2024 poll by the Pew Research Center. Parks are also an economic engine, contributing some $56 billion to the US economy in 2023.

“Did those who made the decision know or care that the main objective of my position is to provide preventive search and rescue education, to keep park visitors safe?” Stacy Ramsey, a worker at the Buffalo National River in Arkansas who was fired, wrote in a now-viral Facebook post. “Did they know that I am part of the visitor and resource protection division, and that I spent my days on the frontline, looking out for the safety of park visitors?”

Over the weekend, Travis Mason-Bushman, an employee at Great Basin National Park in Nevada, wrote on LinkedIn that he lost five colleag

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Thanks to Trump's tariffs and other economic illiteracies, inflation expectations have gone up 1.7 percentage points since Election Day, from 2.6% to 4.3%. Aside from the 2022 inflationary surge, this is the highest that consumer expectations have been over the past decade.

https://jabberwocking.com/inflationary-expectations-are-up-a-lot-since
-november/

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

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The Psychological Phenomenon at Play in Every Elon Musk Move

By Denise Cana | Feb 21, 2025, 3:30 PM

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/02/elon-musk-doge-psychology-
government-workers.html

The administration’s framework for governance is known by its acronym from psychology, DARVO: Deny, attack, reverse victim and offender.

First: Deny. Any and all claims of wrongdoing are derided as false. They’re baseless lies, slander, misinformation.

Next: Attack. The accuser is cast as the enemy. The people pointing out missteps and misconduct? They’re not trustworthy, they aren’t properly virtuous, they’re too stupid to understand the situation, or they’re so gullible they’ll believe anything.

Finally: Reverse the positions of victim and offender.

DARVO is a small-minded and petty ploy. And it is the go-to move at every level of this administration.

Presented with mounting evidence of and growing public concern for institutionalized racism, the administration says, No, you’re the racist! And then it sets about dismantling diversity, equity, and inclusion programs with a doth-protest-too-much fury.

Called out by reporters for demonstrably spreading misinformation and baseless conspiracy theories, the administration insists, No, you’re spreading misinformation. Or, an oldie but a goodie: No, you’re selling fake news.

Caught exchanging favors for prosecutorial leniency in a quid pro quo to blackmail indicted New York Mayor Eric Adams into doing Donald Trump’s bidding, the administration shouts: No, you’re weaponizing the Justice Department! or No, your motives are partisan and political!

Across the executive branch, workplaces are seeing the rollout of senselessly inefficient return-to-office protocols that will likely force people to work while sick, that will punish families with children, that will pressure employees to take leave even when they would otherwise be willing and able to work, and that even fail to recognize that some offices might need to collaborate across time zones. And when we point out incongruities or inefficiencies in these policies, we’re told: No, you’re inefficient and lazy.

These are the adult tantrums of “I know you are, but what am I?” bullies, vacuous but vicious. And they have the desired effect of confusing the story, forcing onlookers to choose a side based on whom they trust rather than the evidence. Is the whiny deep state complaining about losing a cushy work-from-home gig? Or is the Musk–Trump appointee twisting the screws on well-meaning civil servants just because he can?

At every level, the administration implements a DARVO protocol, the modus operandi of abusers looking to control a situation that has spiraled out of hand or spilled into public view.

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

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

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

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Why are you looking for the government to make your life better, Second?

Nobody is going to help you except for yourself.



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

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

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Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Why are you looking for the government to make your life better, Second?

Nobody is going to help you except yourself.

---

6ix, what I am doing is very simple, but you have no true sense of what it is, do you? Trumptards have so many misadventures in life because they misconstrue the motivations of the people all around them. Here is something you will misunderstand but I've posted it despite your silly way of dealing with even the simplest things in the world:

Trump has now fired seven senior military officers, including the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff; the Chief of Naval Operations; the Commandant of the Coast Guard; the vice chief of the Air Force; and three judge advocate generals (Navy, Army, and Air Force). All were apparently fired for being too DEI. Take a look:

Two things are going on here.
(1) high-ranking officers who are not white or not men were fired. (Top row.)
(2) JAG lawyers, even if they are white men, need to be replaced by the most hackish lawyers Trump can find who will NOT tell him, when he tries to issue an illegal or unconstitutional order, that it's illegal or unconstitutional. (Bottom row.)

https://jabberwocking.com/trump-fires-diverse-military-officers/

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

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Here is Elon Musk explaining that he has to fire people to save Social Security from bankruptcy. He is a hero! Just kidding. Only a Trumptard would believe that is Musk's true motivation:

https://imgur.com/gallery/there-wont-be-money-social-security-theres-n
o-social-security-YiDyCNN

If Musk fired everybody, cutting all personnel costs to zero, he would save 2.4 million employees times $106,382 per employee per year. That is $255.3 billion per year. But Musk's goal is $2,000 billion per year (or maybe $1,000 billion) since he is unsure which it is. On the other hand, there is $1,000 billion in unpaid taxes each year. That is where Musk should go to get the money. But Musk does not want to pay his taxes. He'd prefer to fire everybody before he'd pay.

1) What the data says about federal workers
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/07/what-the-data-says-
about-federal-workers/

2) Offshore Tax Evasion by Big Corporations, the Wealthy Cheats American People
https://www.budget.senate.gov/chairman/newsroom/press/whitehouse-offsh
ore-tax-evasion-by-big-corporations-the-wealthy-cheats-american-people

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

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Fact Sheet: Trump Administration, DOGE Punish Agencies Investigating Elon Musk’s Companies

Several Federal Agencies That Were Investigating Elon Musk’s Companies Have Become The Early Targets Of The Trump Administration And Musk’s Department Of Government Efficiency (DOGE)

Details here: https://democrats-judiciary.house.gov/uploadedfiles/2025.02.13_fact_sh
eet_re_musk_investigations.pdf

Musk fires the government employees who fined him for breaking rules.
The White House and Musk deny doing today what they did yesterday. Blame Amnesia!
https://www.newsweek.com/white-house-elon-musk-doge-sec-target-conflic
t-2032567

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

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Americans sharply divided over Trump’s embrace of Putin

While US allies are alarmed at changing loyalties, ordinary Americans are starkly divided on the president’s shift away from Ukraine and Europe

By Joan E Greve in Washington | Sat 22 Feb 2025 03.01 EST

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/22/trump-putin-friendship

Donald Trump’s shocking and mendacious attack this week on the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, as a “dictator” while cozying up to the Russian president and indicating that traditional US security support for Europe is waning may have alarmed US allies abroad but has prompted a more starkly divided response among Americans at home.

Reflecting the country’s deeply partisan attitude to the new president and his “America first” foreign policy doctrine, polling suggests that Republicans are much more likely to oppose additional help for war-torn Ukraine. A Pew Research Center survey earlier this month found that 47% of Republicans but just 14% of Democrats thought the US was providing too much support to Ukraine – views that have changed dramatically since the war began three years ago, when just 7% of all American adults (9% of Republicans and 5% of Democrats) said the US was providing too much support to Ukraine.

Many voters on the left say Trump’s comments make them fearful that the president’s stance toward Ukraine could further embolden the Russian leader, Vladimir Putin, and jeopardize national security.

“It is an outrageous denial of the truth and shows his allegiance to Russia and to Putin especially,” said Carla Bayles, a voter from Washington state who supported Kamala Harris in last year’s presidential election. “We are alienating our allies and getting us closer to a world war.”

Other Harris voters feel the same, though many say they aren’t surprised given Trump during the campaign expressed minimal support for Ukraine, dubiously claiming that the war would not have begun if he had been president in 2022. But Trump attacking a US ally and implicitly blaming Ukraine for Russia’s invasion, suggesting that Kyiv could have “made a deal” to avert war, have them watching in horror.

“I’m disgusted by Trump’s foreign policy,” said Dawna Williams-Landis, a Harris voter from North Carolina. “He has discarded 200 years of intentional diplomacy that would have built peace by negotiation and freedom.”

Some Americans went so far as to compare Trump to historical world leaders who shrank in the face of fascism, such as Neville Chamberlain, the former UK prime minister who adopted an ultimately disastrous approach of appeasement toward Adolf Hitler.

“I can’t figure out whether Trump is Neville Chamberlain at Munich, or Vidkun Quisling in Norway,” said David Cohen, a Harris voter from Connecticut. “Either way, his approach is bad for Europe, the US and democracies.”

Among Republicans, Trump himself maintains nearly unanimous support with a 93% approval rating, but his denunciation of Zelenskyy could still leave him vulnerable to criticism, even among his most loyal supporters. The Gallup poll showed that 80% of Republicans approve of Trump’s approach to the situation in Ukraine, marking one of his weakest policy areas with fellow members of his party.

Judy Kim, a registered Republican voter in California who nevertheless supported Harris in the election, accused Trump of attempting to create a dictatorship and aligning himself with authoritarian leaders like Putin.

“Isolationism has never worked,” Kim said. “The American people support Nato and Ukraine. We should encourage ties with our democratic allies in Europe and the world, not with dictators like Putin.”

Another Trump voter from California who chose to remain anonymous said she did not support the president’s embrace of Putin and feared he would drive the US to the brink of calamity.

“It has put the US and the world in a very dangerous situation,” the voter said. “I did not vote for his stance towards Europe.”

But some of Trump’s supporters celebrated his approach to Ukraine and foreign poli

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Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Why are you looking for the government to make your life better, Second?

Nobody is going to help you except yourself.

---

6ix, what I am doing is very simple, but you have no true sense of what it is, do you?

---

You're a idiot and a chronic liar. Nobody cares what you think you are doing. Go call your mom and tell her about it.

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

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

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Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:
Americans sharply divided over Trump’s embrace of Putin

While US allies are alarmed at changing loyalties, ordinary Americans are starkly divided on the president’s shift away from Ukraine and Europe

By Joan E Greve in Washington | Sat 22 Feb 2025 03.01 EST

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/22/trump-putin-friendship

Quote:

---

In at least one case Trump’s approach to Putin has already cost him a vote: a man from Florida who spoke on condition of anonymity and said he supported Trump in 2016 and 2020 – but not 2024, precisely because he feared the president was alienating allies at a time when the US needs them most.

---

---

Yeah. Okay Joan.

You couldn't write better fake dialog than this for your fake Floridian?

Quote:

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“Trump has some sort of infatuation with Putin,” the voter said. “He doesn’t seem to understand that Putin will lie, cheat and do anything to control Russia and win internationally at any cost. Putin wants to rule all of Europe and wouldn’t stop there.”

---

That is not something that a real person says. That is just 3 sentences you will hear on MSNBC 150 times every evening.

You don't have to keep doing this now Joan. That USAID money is never coming back to you.


Fuck Ukraine.

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

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

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Quote:

---

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
It's a tornado, and it's going to be a wild ride.

---

-----------
"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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Quote:

---

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
It's a tornado, and it's going to be a wild ride.

---

---

You've sown the fucking wind. Now reap the whirlwind. ~Carl Benjamin

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

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

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Quote:

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Pentagon Purge: Trump Fires Chairman Of Joint Chiefs, Navy Chief And Other Top Brass

---

https://www.zerohedge.com/military/pentagon-purge-trump-fires-chairman
-joint-chiefs-5-more-senior-pentagon-officers

-----------
"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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Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

That is not something that a real person says. That is just 3 sentences you will hear on MSNBC 150 times every evening.

You don't have to keep doing this now Joan. That USAID money is never coming back to you.


Fuck Ukraine.

---

If Trump/Musk were real, they wouldn't be talking about sending out $5,000 checks until after they have the money. But since they are a pair of lunatics, they will say anything.

Trump/Musk are counting their chickens before they hatch:

DOGE savings to give a $5,000 refund to every taxpaying household in the country.

A "DOGE dividend" to be exclusively funded by the department's $2 trillion savings target. DOGE could take 20% of that savings ($400 billion) and divide it between roughly 79 million taxpaying U.S. households, approximately $5,000 per household.

On Feb. 19, Trump told attendees of the FII PRIORITY Summit investment conference in Miami Beach, Florida, that his administration was deliberating the proposal. In a video of his speech posted by the White House YouTube channel, he said:

Quote:

---

There's even under consideration a new concept where we give 20% of the DOGE savings to American citizens and 20% goes to paying down debt. Because the numbers are incredible, Elon. So many billions of dollars — billions, hundreds of billions. And we're thinking about giving 20% back to the American citizens.

---

Some experts have expressed skepticism regarding the claim that DOGE could cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. Musk even cast doubt on the figure in early January 2025, telling political strategist Mark Penn in an interview broadcast on X:

Quote:

---

I think we'll try for 2 trillion. I think that's like, the best-case outcome. But I do think that you kind of have to have some overreach. I think if we try for 2 trillion we've got a good shot at getting 1 [trillion]."

---

Fishback's plan suggested that, should the proposal be accepted, the tax refund could be sent after the expiration of DOGE in July 2026.

We contacted the White House for comment and will update this story if we receive a response.

Trump previously issued government-issued checks during the coronavirus pandemic, when he sent out stimulus checks that had his signature on them to millions of Americans.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/musk-taxpayer-5000-refund/

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

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Quote:

---

Originally posted by second:

Quote:

---

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

That is not something that a real person says. That is just 3 sentences you will hear on MSNBC 150 times every evening.

You don't have to keep doing this now Joan. That USAID money is never coming back to you.


Fuck Ukraine.

---

If Trump/Musk were real, they wouldn't be talking about sending out $5,000 checks until after they have the money. But since they are a pair of lunatics, they will say anything.

Trump/Musk are counting their chickens before they hatch:

DOGE savings to give a $5,000 refund to every taxpaying household in the country.

A "DOGE dividend" to be exclusively funded by the department's $2 trillion savings target. DOGE could take 20% of that savings ($400 billion) and divide it between roughly 79 million taxpaying U.S. households, approximately $5,000 per household.

On Feb. 19, Trump told attendees of the FII PRIORITY Summit investment conference in Miami Beach, Florida, that his administration was deliberating the proposal. In a video of his speech posted by the White House YouTube channel, he said:

Quote:

---

There's even under consideration a new concept where we give 20% of the DOGE savings to American citizens and 20% goes to paying down debt. Because the numbers are incredible, Elon. So many billions of dollars — billions, hundreds of billions. And we're thinking about giving 20% back to the American citizens.

---

Some experts have expressed skepticism regarding the claim that DOGE could cut $2 trillion from the federal budget. Musk even cast doubt on the figure in early January 2025, telling political strategist Mark Penn in an interview broadcast on X:

Quote:

---

I think we'll try for 2 trillion. I think that's like, the best-case outcome. But I do think that you kind of have to have some overreach. I think if we try for 2 trillion we've got a good shot at getting 1 [trillion]."

---

Fishback's plan suggested that, should the proposal be accepted, the tax refund could be sent after the expiration of DOGE in July 2026.

We contacted the White House for comment and will update this story if we receive a response.

Trump previously issued government-issued checks during the coronavirus pandemic, when he sent out stimulus checks that had his signature on them to millions of Americans.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/musk-taxpayer-5000-refund/

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

---

20% of DOGE savings and $5,000 per person are two very, very different things, Snopes.

Which one is it?


I've already done the math for that here...

http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=66530

Quote:

---

This number, at 20% of the savings, would be a hell of a lot less at least than the number I heard some people floating around yesterday.

I was hearing $5,000 per person. Fucking ridiculous, whether that's for every American Citizen or even if it's only for those 170.7 Million Americans currently working.

$5,000 x $170,700,000 comes out to $853.5 BILLION, which is $12.1 Billion more than the US Military cost to run in 2024.

There are roughly 297.5 Million American Citizens after your remove the 14.3% of people who don't matter and won't be here for much longer. $5,000 x 297.5 Million comes out to $1.487 TRILLION.

---

If we're talking 20% of anything DOGE saves, that depends on how much they save.

Well... how much do they spend in total? In 2024, the US Government spent $6.9 Trillion in total.

https://www.cbpp.org/research/federal-budget/where-do-our-federal-tax-
dollars-go

20% of $6.9 Trillion is $1.38 Trillion.

That means if Elon and Trump shut down the Federal Government completely and not a single dime is spent in 2025, the amount of money coming back to US Taxpayers at 20% would still be less than $5,000 per person if every American citizen, excluding illegals, got tha

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Trump has been recently trying to extort Ukraine out of half its mineral wealth. The odd thing about this is that Ukraine doesn't have very much mineral wealth.

Revenues from Ukraine’s resources would be directed to a fund in which the United States would hold 100 percent financial interest, and that Ukraine should contribute to the fund until it reaches $500 billion.... That figure far exceeds the country’s actual revenues from resources, which were $1.1 billion last year.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/22/world/europe/ukraine-trump-minerals
.html

Trump has also been nonsensically insisting that Ukraine started the war even though we were all there and saw Russia cross the border and try to run a tank column into Kyiv. And he's been calling Zelensky a dictator even though if there's a dictator around it's obviously Vladimir Putin.

There's nothing complicated here. In 2019 Trump asked Zelensky for dirt against Joe Biden in return for military aid. Zelensky declined and Trump was impeached. Trump has felt aggrieved ever since.

Trump is motivated by revenge and now he's getting it. He's a simple man.

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

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Trump’s 13 biggest lies since he was inaugurated on January 20. It was hard to choose.

The (non-)uniqueness of birthright citizenship: Trump offered what might have sounded like a reasonable rationale for his attempt to get rid of birthright citizenship. The United States, he said, is the only country that has birthright citizenship.

Except that is not true. Dozens of countries, including Canada and Mexico, also grant automatic citizenship to people born on their soil.

More up-is-down reversing of the reality of January 6: For years now, Trump has presented a version of the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021, that bears little resemblance to what actually happened. When he was asked in early February why he granted pardons to people who assaulted first responders, he said the people he pardoned were actually “assaulted by our government” and that “they didn’t assault.” This “they didn’t assault” claim was a brazen denial of the obvious truth, clear in video after video and trial after trial. The Justice Department has said more than 140 officers were assaulted on January 6, and that more than 170 people pleaded guilty to such assaults.

A gusher of deceit about California water policy: Amid disaster, more dishonesty. First, Trump linked the Los Angeles wildfires to California’s decision to use some of its water to protect a fish species in the northern part of the state – even though the two things have nothing to do with each other, as befuddled experts explained to anyone who would listen.

Then, after ordering the sudden release of billions of gallons of water from Central Valley reservoirs for no apparent good reason, Trump declared that some of this water was heading to Los Angeles – even though it wasn’t heading to Los Angeles and couldn’t go to Los Angeles.

The election lie he refused to let die: What can you even say about this one at this point? Trump’s win in the free and fair 2024 election did not convince him to abandon his endless lying about his defeat in the free and fair 2020 election. More than four years after his loss to Joe Biden, he repeated his “rigged” nonsense during at least three events on his 2025 inauguration day alone, then a bunch of times after that.

That fable about Olympic boxers, again: Trump, once a prominent promoter of lies about President Barack Obama’s birthplace, continued to demonstrate no hesitation lying about not only policy issues but also individual people. This time, to promote his push to try to get transgender athletes banned from the Olympics, he told his familiar story about how two gold medalists in women’s boxing at the Games in Paris last year were men who “transitioned.”

Wrong. As the International Olympic Committee repeatedly noted during the Olympics, when Trump and others made such claims, neither champion had transitioned; both were born as female and have always competed in women’s events. Even the discredited boxing authority that controversially disqualified the women from a 2023 competition, vaguely claiming a test had found they had unfair competitive advantages, did not allege they had transitioned.

The president’s fictionalized northern neighbor: Before taking office, Trump casually asserted that the Canadian people “like” his idea of Canada becoming the 51st US state. That was the opposite of the truth; the idea is hugely unpopular with the Canadian public. Then, after his inauguration, Trump continued to make stuff up about Canada – at one point posting on social media and then saying out loud that Canada prohibits US banks from doing business there. He added, “Can you believe that?” No doubt some Americans believe it, but it’s false.

Blasting Biden for a program launched under Trump: After the deadly January collision between a military helicopter and a passenger jet, Trump blamed Biden administration diversity initiatives at the Federal Aviation Administration without providing any evidence any FAA diversity policy had anything to do with the crash. He added in a fictional story

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It's remarkable how much conflict of interest Elon Musk has with the federal government he now controls. A few examples:

1. Musk has been fighting with the FAA for years over regulation of SpaceX, culminating in a couple of large fines levied against SpaceX last year. Musk wanted administrator Michael Whitaker out and said so in no uncertain terms. And guess what? After the election, Whitaker announced he would resign years early before Trump could fire him.

2. The NHTSA is America's premier highway safety agency. Among other things, this makes it the agency in charge of investigating crashes of driverless cars—like Elon Musk's Tesla. But unlike Google's Waymo, which cooperates with the NHTSA, Tesla decidedly doesn't:

Musk has accused NHTSA of holding back progress on self-driving technology with its investigations and recalls.... NHTSA has mandated that Tesla and other automakers using self-driving technology report crash data on vehicles, a requirement that Tesla has criticized and that watchdogs fear could be eliminated.

No matter. Musk is in charge of firing workers, so he decided to slash nearly half the jobs at the specialized unit overseeing the safety of autonomous vehicles:

“If the question is, will this affect the federal government’s ability to understand the safety case behind Tesla’s vehicles, then yes, it will,” said one terminated engineer. “The amount of people in the federal government who are able to understand this adequately is very small. Now it’s almost nonexistent.”

It must be nice to complain about over-regulation and then actually do something about it by firing half the regulators.

3. Donald Trump has ordered the removal of all 8,000 EV chargers installed at government buildings nationwide. Why? It's one thing not to build any more, but why demolish the ones that are already there?

Who else has a profitable network of high-speed chargers that doesn't need any competition? That would be Elon Musk and Tesla.

4. When he took office, Donald Trump promised to end the federal $7,500 subsidy for electric vehicles. This may just be part of Trump's jihad against EVs, but it's worth noting that it would help Tesla:

“Take away the subsidies. It will only help Tesla,” Musk wrote in a post on X as he campaigned and raised money for Trump in July. Auto industry experts say the move would have a nominal impact on Tesla — by far the largest electric vehicle maker in the U.S. — but have a potentially devastating impact on its competitors in the EV sector since they are still struggling to secure a foothold in the market.

It's all a zero-sum game. Subsidies might benefit Tesla, but they benefit smaller EV companies a lot more. Getting rid of them now would be a big net positive for Tesla.

5. When the Ukraine war started Elon Musk immediately activated his Starlink network for use by Ukraine's military. But that turns out to be a two-edged sword:

The US has threatened to cut off Ukraine’s access to Starlink — the global satellite network that has proven essential on the battlefield — if Kyiv does not accept the White House’s deal to exchange its rare earth minerals for continued security guarantees, according to anonymous sources.... “Ukraine runs on Starlink. They consider it their North Star,” the source told Reuters. “Losing Starlink... would be a massive blow.”

This is less an example of Musk benefiting from his control over government than it is the opposite. The government, it turns out, can benefit by knowing Musk will cooperate with them since he doesn't want to lose his access or inadvertently annoy his patron Trump.

https://jabberwocking.com/how-elon-musk-benefits-from-being-elon-musk/

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

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