Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Thursday, September 10, 2026 23:15
VIEWED: 188027
PAGE 11 of 48
Quote:WTF? Every lab I ever worked, whether research, pharma, govt regulatory, or private consulting, required us to attach our expenses to the equivalent of a program code. Or, if work not attributable to a specific program -example, repairing an instrument used for multiple programs - charge to indirect, or apportion the time.
While Musk initially promised to cut some $2 trillion from the federal budget—and news accounts have focused on his efforts to reduce the federal workforce—DOGE’s real accomplishment so far has been to bring attention to the federal government’s broken accounting systems.
Despite the hue and cry raised over DOGE, previous alarms have been rung by some other agencies only to be ignored.
On Jan. 16, four days before Biden vacated the White House, the Government Accounting Office said it was “unable to provide an opinion on the reliability of the federal government’s consolidated financial statements for fiscal year 2024 and 2023.”
The Office of Management and Budget has also flunked six of the 24 departments and agencies it looked at, including Labor and Education. The Defense Department has failed seven consecutive audits, while the Department of Education hasn’t gotten a “clean” opinion for three years.
It is hard to pass an audit when you don’t follow the basic rules of accounting. Musk reported that he was having difficulty tracing $4.7 trillion in federal spending because the Treasury Access Symbol (TAS)—a code that links payments to budget items—was allowed to be optional for years and often left blank.
Quote:I imagine this will discourage future waste and fraud
In response, Musk tweeted, the Treasury Department now requires “all outgoing government payments have a payment categorization code, which is necessary in order to pass financial audits. ... All payments must also include a rationale for the payment in the comment field, which is currently left blank. Importantly, we are not yet applying ANY judgment to this rationale, but simply requiring that SOME attempt be made to explain the payment more than NOTHING!”
Quote:Well, they'll definitely survive a nuclear attack.
At the Treasury’s usaspending.gov, which experts use regularly and consider valid despite the big topline errors, nearly $150 billion is slotted every year into an “unreported data” box.
While Musk’s team is reportedly using advanced artificial intelligence systems to comb federal records, it will face a different challenge when tackling the federal employee retirement system. DOGE will confront the “sinkhole of bureaucracy”: records still kept on paper and processed almost entirely by hand by some 700 workers who toil 230 feet below ground in an abandoned limestone mine in northwestern Pennsylvania.
I wonder if this is where that X-files scene was filmed? Miles and miles of file cabinets in an old mine....
Quote:
The government’s use of antiquated systems helps explain some of Musk’s team’s biggest mistakes so far. This month, they claimed that millions of deceased people—some listed as more than 300 years old—are receiving social security benefits. It turns out DOGE probably misread the data sets, which includes millions of dead people not receiving benefits, in the antiquated, 1960s-era computer system Social Security still used to disperse more than $1.3 trillion to some 68 million people last year.
Musk conceded errors will be made, but experts told RCI some are impossible to avoid when trying to get a visible net around the surging ocean of federal government spending.
...
“Federal government spending is nebulous and almost designed to be that way because no one person benefits from it being straightforward,” said Lydia Mashburn Newman, a managing director at the American Institute for Economic Research.
“No one is trying to get a holistic picture of what this or that agency is doing and the way money gets appropriated is very fragmented.”
Newman has seen the beast from two sides, as a congressional aide and federal worker, and she says the c
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:WTF? Every lab I ever worked, whether research, pharma, govt regulatory, or private consulting, required us to attach our expenses to the equivalent of a program code. Or, if work not attributable to a specific program -example, repairing an instrument used for multiple programs - charge to indirect, or apportion the time.
While Musk initially promised to cut some $2 trillion from the federal budget—and news accounts have focused on his efforts to reduce the federal workforce—DOGE’s real accomplishment so far has been to bring attention to the federal government’s broken accounting systems.
Despite the hue and cry raised over DOGE, previous alarms have been rung by some other agencies only to be ignored.
On Jan. 16, four days before Biden vacated the White House, the Government Accounting Office said it was “unable to provide an opinion on the reliability of the federal government’s consolidated financial statements for fiscal year 2024 and 2023.”
The Office of Management and Budget has also flunked six of the 24 departments and agencies it looked at, including Labor and Education. The Defense Department has failed seven consecutive audits, while the Department of Education hasn’t gotten a “clean” opinion for three years.
It is hard to pass an audit when you don’t follow the basic rules of accounting. Musk reported that he was having difficulty tracing $4.7 trillion in federal spending because the Treasury Access Symbol (TAS)—a code that links payments to budget items—was allowed to be optional for years and often left blank.
Trust me... This is VERY standard practice within the government, and when these politicians and bureaucrats go into the private sector after decades of training in government, the old habits die hard. They still have all of their former colleagues in the rolodex, they talk to them on the phone all of the time, and quite a few of them just pop in out of the blue to chat on your average Tuesday afternoon.
My first good job was working for a former politician. I was initially brought in as a temp to help them convert from some rinky-dink ass accounting system to QuckbooksPro. More or less a glorified data-entry position that I easily got with typing over 60wpm. After a week, I already had an offer for full time work at 19 years old for more money than I have ever made since if you factor in inflation.
I devised a job number system and over the course of around three months I poured through old documents and came up with $24,000 worth of bills that had never been collected, and I was able to recoup $16,000 of that easily, without any problems.
The owner and 2nd in command loved the system, and we implemented it on all jobs going forward... Except for when we didn't. Several others in the building basically considered me their enemy after I this, and at my boss's request, I hounded them on filling in ALL of the information. This wasn't laziness. This was about hiding things.
And boy... you should have seen political mailing season. We'd get so many contracts that I'd work 120 hour weeks for 3 weeks straight at the end, and everybody in production was put up in a hotel right down the street for that entire time.
But I knew we didn't actually deserve ANY of those contracts. How did I know? Because I knew what we charged private businesses, and if anything because of the sheer size of these mailers it should have been much cheaper per-piece to produce and distribute. But they'd sometimes come in as high as 10 times the going rate. Sometimes I had to pull some teeth and I even had one guy call me a little prick in front of my boss, but they always paid these stupid prices in the end. I was the guy who got all the checks and entered them into Quickbooks. More often than not, even in the good old days before the dotcom bubble burst, I only got those checks after harassing people until they made it their priority to pay off their debt.
There is supposed to be bidding o
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Trump calls his opponents ‘scum’ and lawbreakers in bellicose speech at Justice Department
For more than an hour, he delivered an insult-laden speech that shattered the traditional notion of DOJ independence.
By Irie Sentner and Josh Gerstein | 03/14/2025 06:42 PM EDT
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/14/trump-doj-speech-prison-oppon
ents-00231438
President Donald Trump on Friday walked into the Department of Justice and labeled his courtroom opponents “scum,” judges “corrupt” and the prosecutors who investigated him “deranged.”
With the DOJ logo directly behind him, Trump called his political opponents lawbreakers and said others should be sent to prison.
“These are people that are bad people, really bad people,” the president said in a rambling speech that lasted more than an hour.
While condemning officials who directed the military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan and repeating his false claims about the 2020 election being stolen, Trump said: “The people who did this to us should go to jail.”
In remarks that were by turns dark, exultant and pugnacious, Trump vowed to remake the Justice Department and retaliate against his enemies, some of whom he called “thugs.”
It was, even by Trump’s standards, a stunning show of disregard for decades of tradition observed by his predecessors, who worried about politicizing or appearing to exert too much control over the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency. Trump, instead, called himself the “chief law enforcement officer in our country” and accused the DOJ’s prior leadership of doing “everything within their power to prevent” him from becoming the president.
Trump charged the DOJ with spying on his campaign, raiding his home, persecuting his “family, staff and supporters,” launching “one hoax and disinformation campaign after the other” and breaking the law “on a colossal scale,” making clear the glee he has taken in undermining the department’s typical independence and wielding it to achieve the White House’s objectives.
“First, we must be honest about the lies and the abuses that have occurred within these walls,” Trump said. “Unfortunately in recent years, a corrupt group of hacks and radicals within the ranks of the American government obliterated the trust and goodwill built up over generations. They weaponized the vast powers of our intelligence and law enforcement agencies to try and thwart the will of the American people.”
Those days, Trump said, “are over, and they are never going to come back. He added that he would demand “full and complete accountability for the wrongs and abuses that have occurred.”
While any presidential visit to the Justice Department is a rarity, Trump repeatedly breached other norms in his remarks as he slammed former officials, unleashed attacks on private attorneys, and touted his vote tallies in last year’s election.
“It’s a campaign by the same scum you’ve been dealing with for years,” Trump said of the lawyers and officials who have targeted him. “We will expel the rogue actors and corrupt forces from our government. ... We will restore the scales of justice in our country.”
The president sought to recast his fraught history with the department — most notably the two federal criminal cases he faced last year, one on charges of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and the other for refusing to return a hoard of classified documents after he left office in 2021. Trump also bragged about revoking the security clearance of “deranged Jack Smith,” the special counsel who indicted him in those cases. (Smith and the Justice Department abandoned both cases after Trump won reelection last year.).
Trump boasted about pardoning hundreds of “political prisoners who have been grossly mistreated,” referring to the people convicted in connection with the pro-Trump mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. And he said “there was no better day” than when he fired James Comey, the president’s first-term FBI director who investigated the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to
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Attempts to boost US exports risk undermining the foundations of American exceptionalism
By Jeremy Warner | 15 March 2025 11:00am GMT
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/03/15/trumps-game-plan-for-d
evaluing-the-mighty-dollar/
Stephen Miran, who was confirmed last week as chairman of the US council of economic advisers, suggests that surplus countries should be forced to peg their currencies against the dollar at a beneficial rate to the US by threatening them with even higher trade tariffs should they refuse.
Yet even if this form of competitive devaluation via blackmail were initially successful, it wouldn’t necessarily stop the flow of foreign capital into US markets, and would therefore be hard to maintain.
Miran has got an answer for that, which is to tax the coupon on US treasury securities for overseas buyers so as to discourage foreign demand for them.
The same effect could be achieved, Miran argued in a paper last November, by forcing countries to swap their holdings of US Treasuries for 100-year bonds. In return they would receive security guarantees.
It scarcely needs saying that both these lines of attack would be regarded as a default, and would therefore play havoc with US debt markets and the federal government’s ability to fund its burgeoning budget deficit.
A further approach would be to require the US Federal Reserve to sell dollars for foreign currency without limit, though where that would leave the US’s domestic monetary system is anyone’s guess.
These are by no means fringe views in the Trump camp. Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, has separately pushed the idea of some kind of Bretton Woods-style realignment of global currencies that would put US producers at less of a competitive disadvantage.
The US is by far the biggest buyer of goods in the world; it’s about time, Bessent’s aides say, that the rest of the world started treating the US with the same respect that a business would reserve for its largest customer, and stop ripping Americans off.
As last week drew to a close, Trump’s trade war showed every sign of spiralling out of control. Both the European Union and Canada are seemingly up for a fight, with tit-for-tat retaliatory action against anything Trump throws at them.
As I say, there is nothing new in today’s world that hasn’t been seen before. The whole ghastly, divisive mess we see unfolding before us was perfectly foreseen by the British economist John Maynard Keynes, and is in a sense a direct consequence of the dollar’s global reserve currency status.
Without going into the precise mechanisms, this in effect requires the US to run big, compensating fiscal and trade deficits so as to supply the rest of the world with the dollars it demands.
Keynes’s solution was to establish a separate international reserve currency which he called the “bancor”, but it never flew.
And in any case, would Trump really want to give up the dollar’s “exorbitant privilege”? It’s a fair bet that he would not. Nor does he seem minded to run the balanced budgets that would help mitigate the trade deficit.
There’s no telling where this will end. Badly, would be a reasonable guess.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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No one has told me why I was fired. But the notice was delivered hours after I declined to recommend reinstating the gun rights of a famous friend of the president, the actor Mel Gibson, who has a history of violence against women. In 2011, Gibson pleaded guilty to battering his former romantic partner, who reported that he hit her while holding their baby and broke her teeth. Shortly after I informed the deputy attorney general's staff that I could not recommend rearming this particular bully, I received my termination notice.
On her first day in office, Bondi issued a memo putting the entire DOJ workforce on notice that we are all now the president’s lawyers.
We have since been warned, both explicitly and by example, that if we do not “faithfully” and “zealously” do the president’s bidding, we will be “rooted out” and silenced. -- Elizabeth Oyer
MARCH 14, 2025
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/trump-justi
ce-department-fired-mel-gibson-guns-1235296311/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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More Anti-America cheerleading from our two idiots today, I see.
Take the weekend off boys. You deserve a break.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:6ix, you deserve to be hit in the face with a shotgun blast, you goddamn Nazi who is hypnotized into believing he is not one. Same for RFK Jr:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
More Anti-America cheerleading from our two idiots today, I see.
Take the weekend off boys. You deserve a break.
Falsely Claiming Measles Vax Causes Deaths ‘Every Year’
Robert Kennedy spreading BS in an interview. This article does have a clip to it (MedPage Today on which you can listen to Mr. “irregardless” Robert Kennedy discuss his beliefs)
In this MedPage Today video, Paul Offit, MD, of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, responds to claims about measles and vaccines made by HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in recent interviews.
March 14, 2025 3:27 pm
https://angrybearblog.com/2025/03/falsely-claiming-measles-vax-causes-
deaths-every-year
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:6ix, you deserve to be hit in the face with a shotgun blast, you goddamn Nazi who is hypnotized into believing he is not one.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
More Anti-America cheerleading from our two idiots today, I see.
Take the weekend off boys. You deserve a break.
Added to the list.
You really need to take that break. You're losing your shit now that the Democratic Party is dead and the news doesn't tell you what you want to hear anymore.
Come and get me. Show me what a man you are with that shotgun in your hand, faggot.
And I wonder what Kevin Drum would think about your behavior as he looks up at you from hell.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:6ix, do you remember what happened to the Nazis? Execution. 6ix, add that to your list, Nazi who insists he is not.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Added to the list.
Elon Musk to CNN: "The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit," Musk said. "They're exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response."
Empathy, he said, has been "weaponized."
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/05/politics/elon-musk-rogan-interview-empa
thy-doge/index.html
G.M. Gilbert was the chief psychologist who interviewed Nazis on trial at Nuremberg. His words are as valid today: "I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I've come close to defining It: a lack of empathy. It's the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy."
https://www.tumblr.com/wilwheaton/710866275687120896/in-my-work-with-t
he-defendants-at-the-nuremberg
Sieg Heil Mein Führer Trump
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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SECOND, this is the definition of sociopathy, and describes you to a "T":
Quote:
I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I've come close to defining It: a lack of empathy. It's the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy."
Not once have I seen you express empathy for anybody.
SIX, you also fail to express empathy for anyone not like you. But at least you have empathy for your family and friends.
Being empathetic doesn't mean turning yourself inside out to help. But at least don't harm. That's why my statement "I believe in solving problems". I don't believe in "helping" people when their problems can, and should, be fixed.
-----------
"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 second:Quote:6ix, do you remember what happened to the Nazis? Execution. 6ix, add that to your list, Nazi who insists he is not.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Added to the list.
Elon Musk to CNN: "The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit," Musk said. "They're exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response."
Empathy, he said, has been "weaponized."
https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/05/politics/elon-musk-rogan-interview-empa
thy-doge/index.html
G.M. Gilbert was the chief psychologist who interviewed Nazis on trial at Nuremberg. His words are as valid today: "I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil. I think I've come close to defining It: a lack of empathy. It's the one characteristic that connects all the defendants. A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy."
https://www.tumblr.com/wilwheaton/710866275687120896/in-my-work-with-t
he-defendants-at-the-nuremberg
Sieg Heil Mein Führer Trump
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Thank you for continuing to document your daily descent into madness.
Endless source of laughs for me.
Might end up quite useful for others one day soon.
Sweet dreams.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:I know you misunderstood how WWII was won. German families were firebombed rather than gently persuaded by the most articulate American philosophers to reconsider peace as the answer to Germany's material and psychological needs.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, this is the definition of sociopathy, and describes you to a "T":
Germans were shocked, completely aghast, that the formerly admirable Americans would kill harmless women and tiny babies. Such a descent into barbarianism by the Americans! The United States Air Force must be full of nothing but psychopaths who care little about human suffering, death, and the sanctity of German culture.
Alternatively, the Germans should have realized that their own behavior was the cause of their suffering, not the psychopathy of American bomber crews. But the Germans never got that message. Until the end, the Germans saw themselves as good, not evil as they actually were. All the Germans could think about was their suffering. Germans had zero empathy for anyone but themselves. For being zeros, the Germans had to die.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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I want to remind Trumptards that you do NOT decide if you are evil. The people you are evil toward will decide for you. Sometimes they will decide that the evil-doers shall die for what they did. This always, without fail, surprises the evil-doers, who cannot always see themselves for what they are:
Republican Representative Chuck Edwards decided to hold a town hall meeting in his district Thursday, and it went so badly that he had to call for security to escort him out.
Edwards was bombarded with angry questions from his constituents in Asheville, North Carolina, over President Trump’s disastrous policy decisions. One constituent asked the congressman some blunt questions that got support from the raucous crowd.
“Do you support Trump on annexing Canada or Greenland, and do you like the way he treats the premier or the president of Canada, calling him ‘governor’? Is that the way you’d do as a diplomat? Is that, is that the way the United States should act to our closest neighbors?” the constituent asked, drawing applause from the audience. He followed up with more direct questions.
“Do you enjoy the way he’s tried to extort minerals from the Ukraine? Do you like bullying people that need your help? Do you go for kicking the guy when he’s down? Do you support Trump in these things? This is a yes or no,” he pressed further.
holy shit this question at the Rep. Chuck Edwards town hall https://pic.twitter.com/Sh1V1bKNtC
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 13, 2025
Edwards managed to muster up a response, replying, “The short answer to that is no, I do not,” drawing his own small amount of applause. But then he lost the crowd when he backed Trump’s stance on extracting Ukrainian resources in exchange for military aid . . .
https://newrepublic.com/post/192757/republican-congressman-edwards-esc
ort-town-hall
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:
I want to remind Trumptards that you do NOT decide if you are evil. The people you are evil toward will decide for you.
I've never done anything to you, you simple-minded fuck.
I've extended olive branches to you before. When I first came out of my drinking coma, I remember giving Sigs shit about attacking you and Ted and Nilbog, not yet realizing just how fucking awful the three of you are.
You get the full end of my blunt verbal wrath these days because you've earned it.
Short of that, I don't give one single fuck who it is you think I am or what it is you think I've done you little fucking worm.
You sure as fuck don't get to decide who is and who isn't evil.
You can't even keep an opinion the same from one day to the next because you believe whatever the media tells you and that requires constantly shifting your core values to keep right on believing them after they've lied to you time and time and time again for so many years.
You're brain dead. You're a cultist. And you are an EXTREMELY bad representative for your cult.
Keep making death threats and hope nobody important stumbles upon them here.
And on that topic, The Critical Drinker just made a video about Firefly yesterday that's got just under 700k views. I wonder if anybody found our site after watching that video and got a look at the local banter in 2025.
Maybe somebody at FOX said "Oh yeah. I remember that show." and came here and saw all of the pirated links to Disney and Fox movies you've plastered all over the place too. That could be just as fun to watch play out on my end.
I know who you are. It will be really funny to see your name in the news one day.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Was Lincoln’s Cabinet full of psychopaths when they unanimously disapproved of Lincoln’s peace plan? Or was Lincoln being naive for seeing good when the Confederates are utterly evil? You decide from this National Park Service story about the Hampton Roads Peace Conference:
Lincoln at the Hampton Roads Peace Conference, Fort Monroe, VA, February 3, 1865
https://www.nps.gov/foth/hampton-roads-peace-conference.htm
Lincoln pledged to the Confederates that he would be generous in restoring property taken under the Confiscation Act. Specifically, he was willing to “renumerate the southern people for their slaves.” He was revisiting compensated emancipation, an idea that he had long supported. He had unsuccessfully attempted to use offers of compensated emancipation to end the war in the summer of 1861. Lincoln was successful at ending slavery in Washington, DC though this very method. The Compensated Emancipation Act of 1862 paid enslavers around $300 for each enslaved person in the capital. To Lincoln, this was a dollars and cents move. The cost to pay for the freedom of each enslaved person, by buying them from their enslavers, would be less than the staggering cost of the war. The United States spent almost $3 million per day on the war effort by February 1865.
Seward openly disagreed with Lincoln's offer. He said that the United States “had already done enough in expending so much money on the war for the abolition of slavery.” Seward paced the floor in anxious disapproval, while Lincoln reasoned that both sides carried some responsibility for slavery. “If it was wrong in the South to hold slaves, it was wrong in the North to carry on the slave trade and sell them to the South, the president said.” Lincoln could give no assurances on this offer. He insisted, though, that he was not alone in the support of compensated emancipation. He said that there were others willing to do this “if the war shall now cease without further expense, and with the abolition of slavery as stated.”
Lincoln went on to add the details of his plan. The states in rebellion would receive half of a proposed $400 million package, distributed in proportion to their enslaved population by April 1 if all resistance to national authority had ceased. The other half would be payable by July 1, if the states ratified the 13th Amendment by then.
Lincoln pursued compensated emancipation again in a specially scheduled Cabinet meeting on the evening of February 5. He defended his plan as a “measure of strict and simple economy” and wanted to send it to Congress for consideration. After some discussion, the Cabinet voted against the idea. Lincoln's advisors believed the rebels would mistake the offer as a “sign of Northern weakness and war weariness” which could infuse a new energy into their war efforts. They felt strongly that the “only way to effectually end the war was by force of arms.”
Lincoln was disappointed, saying “you are all against me.” He noted later that he had drawn up papers that were “submitted to the Cabinet and unanimously disapproved by them.”
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:6ix, do you remember writing "Fuck Ukraine"? With only two words you revealed your depraved mind. Just like Trump with his and your millions of words, both of you have given a complete picture of how evil you are. The Trumptards harp upon the Second Amendment without realizing that it gives anybody, not exclusively Trumptards, the right to decide who is evil and do something to them without permission. The Fifth Amendment gives them the right not to explain why they used guns without the expressed permission of the person shot dead. The Future looks very dangerous for out-of-control Trumptards with predilections for evil and the belief that nobody can stop Trumptards. The Winds of Change will violently blow away Trumptards if they don't stop acting insane.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
I want to remind Trumptards that you do NOT decide if you are evil. The people you are evil toward will decide for you.
I've never done anything to you, you simple-minded fuck.
You sure as fuck don't get to decide who is and who isn't evil.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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'Madness swirls': Ex-GOP insider says 'Trump’s presidency is incoherence'
By David McAfee | March 15, 2025 4:01PM ET
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-presidency-already-state-collapse/
Political strategist Steve Schmidt on Saturday turned to Trump's recent Justice Department speech.
"He went to the Justice Department, and pissed all over the rule of law with fevered declarations about revenge, conspiracies, locking up his opponents, and the illegal media that are a threat to America because they don’t worship the king," according to the strategist. "What is the sin of America’s broken media? What is the failure?"
Schmidt also blasts those he sees as enabling Trump, such as Marco Rubio and the Democratic lawmakers who confirmed him. Rubio defended Trump’s 51st state rhetoric while on Canadian soil.
"How many Democratic votes did he get for confirmation? The correct answer was all 47 Democratic votes. This moment demands coherence and guts. It demands integrity and fierceness," he wrote. "Something terrible is happening in America, and there are too many anesthesiologists working in media and politics."
"Donald Trump’s presidency is already in a state of collapse and crisis," Schmidt wrote. "His incoherence, lack of discipline, focus, basic competence and connection to the grassroots can be excused by his winged monkeys like Laura Ingraham on Fox News."
In his conclusion, Schmidt said, "Each day, madness swirls from dawn to dusk as Donald Trump produces his masterpiece."
"He sits in the center ring with a whip in his hand behind the most powerful desk in the world, but somehow, for so many fools whose job it is to see him, he remains a mystery," he said.
Steve Schmidt’s full remarks at https://steveschmidt.substack.com/p/seeing-trump
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Donald Trump's Department of Justice stunned numerous experts on Saturday with a request in a court that some said is without precedent in the U.S.
"The DOJ is arguing that the President can unilaterally deport anyone he wants without ANY statutory authority, just on his inherent authority as President over national security."
Reichlin-Melnick added, "While of course deporting citizens is unlawful, I see nothing specific in the DOJ’s argument that would purport to limit that claim to noncitizens, since it's based on membership in a gang. But this is also a badly written brief with a stupid and unlawful argument at its core."
Authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat also flagged the appeal, writing on social media, "Everyone who thought he was joking about being a dictator, are you waking up now?"
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-brief-terrifying-court-deport/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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An article about euthanizing crazy pets. If your howling-mad local Trumptard can't be trained to NOT piss on your valuables, consider euthanizing them. The Trumptards act as badly as they do because they are mentally damaged beyond help.
https://slate.com/advice/2025/03/dog-young-euthanize-vet-issues-pet-ad
vice.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 claims tariffs will make the U.S. ‘rich again.’ But 5 undisputed facts about how they work throw cold water on that notion
By Shawn Tully | March 16, 2025 at 4:00 AM CDT
https://fortune.com/2025/03/16/trump-tariffs-how-they-work-economy-rec
ession-predictions/
Boarding Air Force One on March 12, President Donald Trump quipped, “We’re going to raise hundreds of billions in tariffs; we’re going to become so rich we’re not going to know where to spend that money.” Despite hand-wringing from CEOs, the stock market tanking, and widespread condemnation from our trading partners, the President is forging ahead with his trade war. In doing so, he’s counting on big windfalls from these import taxes, along with the savings he boasts will flow from Elon Musk’s DOGE campaign, to fulfill his promise of sharply reducing America’s yawning fiscal deficits. But in examining five facts about how tariffs actually work, it’s clear that they will have a huge effect on the economy—just not the one the President is projecting.
Fact 1: Tariffs are a tax that will be mainly, if not wholly, borne by U.S. consumers
Trump has always insisted that other nations or foreign companies will pay the full cost of the tariffs that the U.S. collects on imports. During campaign stops in September, he stated, “It’s not a tax on the middle class. It’s a tax on another country,” and “It’s not going to cost you, it’ going to be a cost to another country.”
As a first step, it’s important to understand who actually makes the payment. When a Chinese or Canadian exporter ships components or finished goods to one of the 328 US ports of entry, the U.S. importer purchasing the goods—not the exporter or another nation—pays the tariff, also called an “import tax,” to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Agency. The tariff is assessed as a fixed percentage of the price the exporter’s charges pre-tariff. That charge gets added to the price the U.S. importer pays.
The real cost of the tariff, however, can fall in part or whole on three parties. If the U.S. just increased tariffs on auto parts by 10%, the overseas producer could reduce its price by a like amount to maintain its sales to Ford or GM. Or, if the exporter tacks the 10% duty onto its selling price, the automakers could absorb the extra expense; they’d keep their car prices the same, and accept lower margins. In theory, if between them, the foreign exporter and the U.S. importer swallow the tariff, the cost won’t fall on the U.S. consumer. On the other hand, a U.S. importer shouldering the charge would be making a lot less money, and gain less earnings for building new plants and expanding its workforce.
But that’s not how it works in practice, according to studies of the real-world impact of past tariff increases. In a paper on the Trump tariff regime of 2018 and 2019 published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the four economist-authors analyzed the effect of the increase in tariffs during Trump’s first term from an average of 3.7% to 26.8% on almost 18,000 products including many types of steel, aluminum, and appliances, and covering $421 billion or over 18% of all U.S. imports. Their review found that for steel, exporters actually dropped their prices to U.S. importers—a group that would encompass builders, wholesalers, canners, and other customers, fully offsetting the tariffs—thereby ducking a big blow to their U.S. sales.
But that was an outlier. Overall, prices for the targeted goods rose 21.9% on average between the time the tariffs struck in 2018 and the close of 2019. The study found that, steel aside, “U.S. consumers have borne the entire incidence of U.S. tariffs.” Americans at the auto lots and supermarkets shouldered what’s known as a “one hundred percent pass-through” of the tariff tax. A second analysis of the first Trump wave from the National Bureau of Economic Research, “Who’s Paying for the Tariffs?” (2020), reached a similar conclusion, noting: “We have found that in most sectors, tariffs have been completely passed on to U.S. firms and consumers.” The a
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
An article about euthanizing crazy pets. If your howling-mad local Trumptard can't be trained to NOT piss on your valuables, consider euthanizing them. The Trumptards act as badly as they do because they are mentally damaged beyond help.
https://slate.com/advice/2025/03/dog-young-euthanize-vet-issues-pet-ad
vice.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Last time I checked, we're not the ones who start burning and looting every time we don't get our way.
Grow up.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:6ix, do you remember writing "Fuck Ukraine"?
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
I want to remind Trumptards that you do NOT decide if you are evil. The people you are evil toward will decide for you.
I've never done anything to you, you simple-minded fuck.
I've extended olive branches to you before. When I first came out of my drinking coma, I remember giving Sigs shit about attacking you and Ted and Nilbog, not yet realizing just how fucking awful the three of you are.
You get the full end of my blunt verbal wrath these days because you've earned it.
Short of that, I don't give one single fuck who it is you think I am or what it is you think I've done you little fucking worm.
You sure as fuck don't get to decide who is and who isn't evil.
You can't even keep an opinion the same from one day to the next because you believe whatever the media tells you and that requires constantly shifting your core values to keep right on believing them after they've lied to you time and time and time again for so many years.
You're brain dead. You're a cultist. And you are an EXTREMELY bad representative for your cult.
Keep making death threats and hope nobody important stumbles upon them here.
And on that topic, The Critical Drinker just made a video about Firefly yesterday that's got just under 700k views. I wonder if anybody found our site after watching that video and got a look at the local banter in 2025.
Maybe somebody at FOX said "Oh yeah. I remember that show." and came here and saw all of the pirated links to Disney and Fox movies you've plastered all over the place too. That could be just as fun to watch play out on my end.
I know who you are. It will be really funny to see your name in the news one day.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Absolutely.
Fuck Ukraine. Fuck you and your party's played-out appeal to stupid people's emotions. Fuck you.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:Yep. That attitude pretty much coincides with what I see from all Trumptards. I've seldom seen one of those Trump robots become conscious for a moment of what havoc their attitudes cause beyond their immediate vicinity. None of the following exists for a Trumptard because it is not happening to them, although they made it happen without being conscious:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Absolutely.
Fuck Ukraine. Fuck you and your party's played-out appeal to stupid people's emotions. Fuck you.
Hundreds of Thousands Will Die
The writer, surgeon, and former U.S.A.I.D. senior official Atul Gawande on the Trump Administration’s decimation of foreign aid and the consequences around the world.
By David Remnick | March 15, 2025
https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/atul-gawan
de-on-elon-musks-surgery-with-a-chainsaw
It is hard to calculate all the good that Atul Gawande has done in the world. After training as a surgeon at Harvard, he taught medicine inside the hospital and in the classroom. A contributor to The New Yorker since 1998, he has published widely on issues of public health. His 2007 article in the magazine and the book that emerged from it, “The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right,” have been sources of clarity and truth in the debate over health-care costs. In 2014, he published “Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End,” a vivid, poetic, compassionate narrative that presents unforgettable descriptions of the ways the body ages and our end-of-life choices.
Gawande’s work on public health was influential in the Clinton and Obama Administrations, and, starting in November, 2020, he served on President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 Advisory Board. In July, 2021, Biden nominated him as the assistant administrator for the Bureau of Global Health at the U.S. Agency for International Development, where he worked to limit disease outbreaks overseas. Gawande, who is fifty-nine, resigned the position on the day of Donald Trump’s return to the Presidency.
When we spoke recently for The New Yorker Radio Hour, Gawande, usually a wry, high-spirited presence, was in a grave mood. There were flashes of anger and despair in his voice. He was, after all, watching Trump and Elon Musk dismantle, gleefully, a global health agency that had only lately been for him a source of devotion and inspiration. As a surgeon, Gawande had long been in a position to save one life at a time. More recently, and all too briefly, he was part of a vast collective responsible for untold good around the world. And now, as he made plain, that collective has been deliberately cast into chaos, even ruins. The cost in human lives is sure to be immense. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and length.
President Biden appointed you as the assistant administrator for global health at U.S.A.I.D., a job that you’ve described as the greatest job in medicine. You stepped down on Trump’s Inauguration Day, and he immediately began targeting U.S.A.I.D. with an executive order that halted all foreign aid. Did you know, or did you intuit, that Trump would act the way he has?
I had no idea. In the previous Trump Administration, they had embraced what they themselves called the “normals.” They had a head of U.S.A.I.D. who was devoted to the idea of development and soft power in the world. They had their own wrinkle on it, which I didn’t disagree with. They called it “the journey to self-reliance,” and they wanted to invest in Africa, in Asia, in Latin America, to enable stronger economies, more capacity—and we weren’t doing enough of that. I actually continued much of the work that had occurred during that time.
Tell me a little bit about what you were in charge of and what good was being done in the world.
I had twenty-five hundred people, between D.C. and sixty-five countries around the world, working on advancing health and protecting Americans from diseases and outbreaks abroad. The aim was to work with countries to build their systems so that we protecte
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Quote:Libtards and Trumptards have got the same problem of not understanding the proper use of violence. Both can see a Hollywood movie where the bad guy dies in the end and good guy is triumphant but they fail to understand the message, which is so obvious: direct your fire at your enemy. Hollywood directors know this because to use violence in the incoherent way that rioters use it means the movie is incoherent.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
An article about euthanizing crazy pets. If your howling-mad local Trumptard can't be trained to NOT piss on your valuables, consider euthanizing them. The Trumptards act as badly as they do because they are mentally damaged beyond help.
https://slate.com/advice/2025/03/dog-young-euthanize-vet-issues-pet-ad
vice.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Last time I checked, we're not the ones who start burning and looting every time we don't get our way.
Grow up.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
I guess it is easy to understand when the movie is less than 3 hours and extraordinarily difficult to understand when the violence extends over months or years. The rioters lose the plot thread after only a few hours, which is why their violence fails to achieve a worthy goal, one that is so obvious in a movie. Real life wars lose the plot. See for examples the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the second Iraq War, the American war in Afghanistan.
For counterexamples, see WWII, except right at the end when FDR died and that damn fool Truman took over and nuked Nagasaki. Truman was too fucking stupid to see the inevitable nuclear arms race that would cause. If America would nuke undamaged cities full of civilians rather than exclusively target the Japanese Army, America would nuke anybody. Truman couldn't imagine that "anybody" might then want nukes because of what Truman did to Nagasaki. To repeat the lesson Truman couldn't understand from the movies, direct your fire at the enemy, not at random people who happen to be in the area.
If you read Oppenheimer, it is clear Truman was dumb as hell but he got the job as Vice-President because he was highly articulate. Apparently, FDR was not thinking about the consequences of a very talkative yet unsuitable VP making decisions. Same with Lincoln and his Vice President Andrew Johnson. There never was a worse choice for a successor to Lincoln. Andrew Johnson completely misunderstood the plot of the violent movie called The Civil War, causing the sequel, Reconstruction, to be an incoherent movie with poor ticket sales. The third movie in the trilogy, the one by President US Grant, was almost as bad and twice as long as the movie directed by Andrew Johnson.
In a Hollywood movie, the villains do NOT make a comeback, triumphant after the heroes leave, but in Reconstruction Part I and Part II, that is what happened because the Presidents for Part I and II forgot the plot from Civil War where the bad guys died and stay dead, not rebuild and rise again.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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How much will military sales shrink now that foreign governments know that America can’t be trusted? Given some time to find replacements, the likely answer is “a lot.”
Donald Trump imposed tariffs on Canada without any justification and demanded that Canada become the 51st state. Every time Trump or his minions repeat that demand, they strengthen Prime Minister Carney’s hand.
One of Carney’s first policy moves as PM was to order a review of Canada’s plan to buy a substantial number of U.S.-made F-35 fighter jets. This means that Canada is joining European nations that are similarly reconsidering their dependence on U.S. weapons.
This turn away from military dependence on the U.S. is understandable. America is no longer a reliable ally to the world’s democracies; indeed, between Trump’s turn toward Putin and his talk of annexing Canada and Greenland, we don’t look like an ally at all. Rumors that U.S. jets have a “kill switch” that would allow Trump to disable them at will are probably false, but sophisticated military equipment requires a lot of technical support, so you don’t want to buy it from a country you don’t trust.
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/teslafying-us-exports
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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U.S. debt owed to foreigners amounts to more than $18 trillion. A rise in borrowing costs, driven by talk of forced conversion of short-term into long-term debt, would significantly increase the cost of servicing that debt. Winds of Change, 6ixStringJack.
To be exact, $18.2972 trillion.
https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/intinv324.pdf#page=6
Wall Street can’t stop talking about the ‘Mar-a-Lago Accord.’
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/wall-street-cant-stop-talking-about-
the-mar-a-lago-accord-heres-how-the-currency-deal-would-work-f8fbbda0
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Trump says the economy ‘went to hell’ under Biden. The opposite is true
By standard measures such as job and GDP growth and the stock market, the US economy was in excellent shape
By Steven Greenhouse | Sun 16 Mar 2025 10.00 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/mar/16/trump-biden-economy
Donald Trump keeps saying he inherited a terrible economy from Joe Biden and many Americans believe him, even though that’s not true. During his White House marketing event for Tesla on Tuesday, Trump said the US and its economy “went to hell” under Biden. Last week, in his national address to Congress, Trump said: “We inherited from the last administration an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare.”
But the truth is that by standard economic measures, the US economy was in excellent shape when Biden turned over the White House keys to Trump, even though most Americans, upset about inflation, told pollsters the economy was in poor shape.
When Biden left office, the unemployment rate was a low 4.1%, and during Biden’s four years in office, the average jobless rate was lower than for any president since the 1960s. Trump has repeatedly railed against the high inflation under Biden, but the fact is that by the time Biden left office, the inflation rate had fallen to just 2.9% – down more than two-thirds from its peak and near the Federal Reserve’s inflation goal.
Not only that, the nation’s GDP growth has been impressive, rising at a solid 3.1% rate at the end of Biden’s term. Ever since the pandemic ended, economic growth in the US has been considerably stronger than in the UK, France, Germany and other G7 nations. Shortly before election day, the Economist magazine ran a story saying the US economy was “the envy of the world” and had “left other rich countries in the dust”.
Trump often says job growth under Biden was terrible, but the fact is that the US added 16.6m jobs during Biden’s presidency, more than during any four-year term of any previous US president. Under Trump, job growth was far worse – during his first four-year term, the nation lost 2.7m jobs overall, making Trump’s presidency the first since Herbert Hoover’s during which the nation suffered a net loss in jobs. The pandemic was largely responsible for this, but even during Trump’s first three years in office, before the pandemic hit, job growth was only half as fast as it was under Biden.
Recently, Trump has repeatedly boasted how his tariffs will bring back manufacturing. Trump fails to note, however, that Biden had considerable success in bringing bring back manufacturing and factory jobs. Under most recent presidents, the US lost manufacturing jobs, but under Biden, the nation gained an impressive 750,000 factory jobs, the most under any president since the 1970s. A big reason for this was that as a result of Biden’s green jobs legislation and the Chips Act to boost semiconductor production, manufacturing investment boomed, more than doubling during Biden’s four years in office.
Biden took considerable pride about how the economy performed under him, even though he failed to persuade most Americans that the it was doing well. In December, Biden wrote: “Incomes are up by nearly $4,000 adjusted for inflation [since he took office], and unions have won wage increases from 25% to 60% in industries like autos, ports, aerospace, and trucking. We’ve seen 20 million applications to start small businesses. Our economy has grown 3% per year on average the last four years – faster than any other advanced economy. Domestic energy production is at a record high.”
Many economists vigorously disagree with Trump’s claim that he inherited a poor economy. Paul Krugman wrote that in January, when Biden left office, the US had what was “very close to a Goldilocks economy, in which everything is more or less just right”. Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, had even more glowing words. “President Trump is inheriting an economy that is about as good as it ever gets,” he said. “The US economy is the envy of the rest of the wor
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How American Bureaucrats Became Public Enemy No. 1
The McCarthy era gave DOGE its blueprint for culture war.
By Clay Risen | March 17, 2025 5:40 AM
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/03/doge-elon-musk-trump-gover
nment-cuts-money.html
On April 28, 1948, a physicist named Edward U. Condon took the lectern at a meeting of the American Physical Society in Washington. Condon’s speech focused on a dark vision about America’s future.
“There is growing in this country a wave of anti-intellectualism which is violently opposed to free speech and free expression,” he said. Thousands of government scientists, economists, and other experts were being investigated, and in many cases fired, in the name of anti-communism and national security—a campaign that Condon compared to ideological purges by the Nazis in the early days of the Third Reich.
“The last decade alone provides for us too many examples of nations where the people ignored the symptoms of totalitarianism until it was too late,” he warned. “Anti-intellectualism precedes the totalitarian putsch, and anti-intellectualism is on the upswing here.”
As his audience undoubtedly knew, Condon spoke from painful personal experience. A year earlier, Rep. J. Parnell Thomas, the chairman of the House Un-American Activities Committee, had begun a sustained campaign against him, first in magazine articles, then in a March 1948 report that called him “one of the weakest links in our atomic security” and accused him of “knowingly or unknowingly” maintaining ties to Soviet spies. In Thomas’ telling, Condon was part of a cabal of liberal, technocratic elites who ran the inner workings of the federal government and, out of naivete or treachery, were now fatally undermining their country in the face of the Soviet threat.
Thomas’ attacks were baseless, and both Condon and his boss, Secretary of Commerce W. Averell Harriman, resisted them. But the assault continued, and in 1951 Condon decided he had had enough. He quit the Bureau of Standards to take a job in the private sector. Still the attacks came: In 1954, when his employer, Corning Glass Works, submitted a bid for him to work on a sensitive military project, the Navy revoked his security clearance. (This also reportedly came at the urging of Vice President Richard Nixon, who wanted to undermine Harriman, who was running for governor of New York.) Rather than continue fighting, Condon left his job at Corning and spent the rest of his career teaching.
The Condon Affair, as it was known, has been largely forgotten. But it bears all the hallmarks of the worst of the Red Scare era: knee-jerk anti-intellectualism; a baseless conviction that an elite, anti-American conspiracy was pulling the strings in Washington; and a willingness to abuse the levers of political power with little foresight about the unintended consequences. As Donald Trump and Elon Musk attempt to dismantle the federal government in the name of rooting out the so-called deep state and the supposed horrors of “woke,” they are drawing on a line of thinking that has long animated the Republican hard right. It goes back to the founding of the modern federal bureaucracy in the 1930s. Far from being a new phenomenon, paranoid anti-elitism in America has a long and surprising pedigree.
More at https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/03/doge-elon-musk-trump-gover
nment-cuts-money.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:Libtards and Trumptards have got the same problem of not understanding the proper use of violence. Both can see a Hollywood movie where the bad guy dies in the end and good guy is triumphant but they fail to understand the message, which is so obvious: direct your fire at your enemy. Hollywood directors know this because to use violence in the incoherent way that rioters use it means the movie is incoherent.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
An article about euthanizing crazy pets. If your howling-mad local Trumptard can't be trained to NOT piss on your valuables, consider euthanizing them. The Trumptards act as badly as they do because they are mentally damaged beyond help.
https://slate.com/advice/2025/03/dog-young-euthanize-vet-issues-pet-ad
vice.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Last time I checked, we're not the ones who start burning and looting every time we don't get our way.
Grow up.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
I guess it is easy to understand when the movie is less than 3 hours and extraordinarily difficult to understand when the violence extends over months or years. The rioters lose the plot thread after only a few hours, which is why their violence fails to achieve a worthy goal, one that is so obvious in a movie. Real life wars lose the plot. See for examples the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the second Iraq War, the American war in Afghanistan.
For counterexamples, see WWII, except right at the end when FDR died and that damn fool Truman took over and nuked Nagasaki. Truman was too fucking stupid to see the inevitable nuclear arms race that would cause. If America would nuke undamaged cities full of civilians rather than exclusively target the Japanese Army, America would nuke anybody. Truman couldn't imagine that "anybody" might then want nukes because of what Truman did to Nagasaki. To repeat the lesson Truman couldn't understand from the movies, direct your fire at the enemy, not at random people who happen to be in the area.
If you read Oppenheimer, it is clear Truman was dumb as hell but he got the job as Vice-President because he was highly articulate. Apparently, FDR was not thinking about the consequences of a very talkative yet unsuitable VP making decisions. Same with Lincoln and his Vice President Andrew Johnson. There never was a worse choice for a successor to Lincoln. Andrew Johnson completely misunderstood the plot of the violent movie called The Civil War, causing the sequel, Reconstruction, to be an incoherent movie with poor ticket sales. The third movie in the trilogy, the one by President US Grant, was almost as bad and twice as long as the movie directed by Andrew Johnson.
In a Hollywood movie, the villains do NOT make a comeback, triumphant after the heroes leave, but in Reconstruction Part I and Part II, that is what happened because the Presidents for Part I and II forgot the plot from Civil War where the bad guys died and stay dead, not rebuild and rise again.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Says SECOND, who threatens and defames ... and incites violence and civil war ... from behind a wall of anonymity.
Dox yourself.
*****
Oh, and I see you're gaslighting us again about the economy.
Quote:whuch went to illegals
By standard measures such as job [growth]
Quote:Unequally shared
and GDP growth
Quote:Same problem
and the stock market,
Quote:For some.
the US economy was in excellent shape
Yeah, the economy under Biden*. It was great. /snark
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy
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What does the Library Institute do?
Quote:Provide grants for libraries to buy computers, DVD players, connect to the internet, or make available books, movies, magazines and reference publications in digital (DVD) or other (microfiche) format
Expand services for learning and access to information and educational resources in a variety of formats (including new and emerging technology), in all types of libraries, for individuals of all ages... ;
Quote:Grants to help libraries find and request books and other resources from other libraries. This requires libraries to digitize their "card catalogs" and place that information on a central server in a standard format
Establish or enhance electronic and other linkages and improved coordination among and between libraries and entities, as described in 20 U.S.C. § 9134(b)(6), for the purpose of improving the quality of and access to library and information services;
Quote:Train librarians in electronic recordkeeping, computer maintenance and digital security (We can skip Part B)
(A) Provide training and professional development, including continuing education, to enhance the skills of the current library workforce and leadership, and advance the delivery of library and information services; and (B) Enhance efforts to recruit future professionals, including those from diverse and underrepresented backgrounds, to the field of library and information services;
Quote:Help libraries find funding
Develop public and private partnerships with other agencies, tribes, and community-based organizations;
Quote:Make entryways and aisleways wheelchair or scooter accessible, provide audio resources for the blind or semi-literate etc.
Target library services to individuals of diverse geographic, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds, to individuals with disabilities, and to individuals with limited functional literacy or information skills;
Quote:Those who need libraries most are usually poor, rural, and/or those who don't have access to things like office software, printers (for resumes and formal letters, legal notices etc, for example) and the internet.
Target library and information services to persons having difficulty using a library and to underserved urban and rural communities, including children (from birth through age 17) from families with incomes below the poverty line (as defined by the Office of Management and Budget and revised annually in accordance with section 9902(2) of title 42) applicable to a family of the size involved;
Run mobile libraries.
Where libraries are needed most is where they are least-funded. National-level funding helps.
Quote:Nationwide resource sharing.
Develop library services that provide all users access to information through local, State, regional, national, and international collaborations and networks; and
Carry out other activities consistent with the purposes set forth in 20 U.S.C. § 9121, as described in the State library administrative agency's plan.
https://www.imls.gov/find-funding/funding-opportunities/grants-to-stat
es/purpose-and-priorities-of-lsta
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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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I doubt very much that libraries are going anywhere. 1/4 of Team Trump's messaging is how stupid we've become as a nation because the Department of Education made everyone retarded. I don't see how closing all the libraries down two weeks later is going to help that messaging. I believe this is just more Legacy Media fearmongering.
My prediction, and though I've been wrong before but I'm usually not, is that they're just unearthing everything right now and when they put the pieces back there will be a new agency in charge of this or it will be in the purview of a new or already existing agency where those systems and money will be streamlined and all the waste will be cut out.
This is SixSigma. This is what our government has needed for generations.
It sucks when you're on the receiving end of it, I know. But I don't feel sorry about it when we've been employing people for decades that we can't afford to employ. We're $37 trillion in debt and it now costs us nearly $75,000 in debt per second to keep up this illusory world we're living in.
Our government spends nearly 10 times per second in debt that it costs me to pay for everything I need to live in a year.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Our debt didn't accrue from Federal workers or libraries. You're being distracted by chaff being thrown into the air.
Maybe Trump and Elon are working on big-ticket items in the background (military, Medicare, Social Security, ACA etc) and just tossing out meaningless red meat "victories" to keep rabid antiDems happy. But so far, the only meaningful victories are
Closing the southern border (deportation needs more $$$ to be effective)
Closing USAID
Ending DEI policies
Dismissing and revoking security clearances of high level deep state operatives
NONE OF THAT IS DIRECTLY BUDGETARY.
The amount of $ being saved right now is trivial. I expect that, in future, once peple are required to start filling out those forms about who they're paying, and why, they'll be a lot less willing to splash money around.
Stop being so rabidly pro-Trump. Not everything that he does is golden, and some of the stupid stuff is to satisfy people like you, who expect to see Big Things every day.
BTW, Trump (or Elon, hard to tell) is deliberately targeting unions. But in my experience as an upper level supervisor in a government agency, dysfunction was a MANAGEMENT and POLITICAL problem (we were run by a Board of politicians)..
You read any agency contract, and the first thing spelled out is MANAGEMENT RIGHTS, including the right to determine programs, budget, and hire and fire.
We all knew who was pulling their weight, and who wasn't.
We all knew which manager was padding their staff budgets.
We all knew which programs were doomed to fail, set by political agendas that had nothing to do with our essential mission. (Pollution trading comes to mind.)
I think that we could have run the place better than management.
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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:
Our debt didn't accrue from Federal workers or libraries. You're being distracted by chaff being thrown into the air.
It absolutely did. Not the libraries, but the Federal workers. There are 10 times as many people working for the government than we need to be employing. Employee pay is one of the largest shares of government waste because of the sheer number of people that are on the payroll. They are all paid twice as much for the work they'd get in the public sector, they have the absolute best benefits packages on the planet, and they have retirement plans that we can't pay for.
That ends now.
They'll be fine. They can come work with us plebs and downsize they way they live.
We get laid off all the time in the private sector, so 90% or more of us under 50 years old have already been laid off at least once if not many times. This is just the way nearly everyone who isn't a government employee lives in America.
Ain't nobody going to shed any tears for them no matter what they choose to do now.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:Signym, you and 6ix, Trump and Putin, don't stop lying. I know how people like you came to be this way because Trumptards are common in Texas and I watched many grow from obnoxious children into untrustworthy and dishonest adults. (Many with money problems because they are untrustworthy and dishonest . . . They can't see the connection between what they are and what happens to them.)
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Says SECOND, who threatens and defames ... and incites violence and civil war ... from behind a wall of anonymity.
Dox yourself.
*****
Oh, and I see you're gaslighting us again about the economy.Quote:whuch went to illegals
By standard measures such as job [growth]Quote:Unequally shared
and GDP growthQuote:Same problem
and the stock market,Quote:For some.
the US economy was in excellent shape
Yeah, the economy under Biden*. It was great. /snark
Trump’s mentor, Roy Cohn, never feared for his life while ripping off the IRS or, earlier in his destructive life, working with Senator Joe McCarthy to wreck the government. But what if an anonymous killer had hit Cohn with a shotgun blast for being a horrible person? Fast-talking Trump would not have a real-life example to emulate that in America you can say and do whatever you want if your lawyers are glib.
The small-fry Trumptards I know are like Roy Cohn and Trump, misbehaving because they do not fear society’s disapproval or the law. If Anonymous could help these depraved souls to see a connection between their bad behavior and their one fear, they wouldn’t defecate on decency as openly as they do. They might stop embezzling. They might stop cheating on taxes. They might not be as horrible as their habit. But it would require gut-gnawing fear to civilize them, the kind of fear that deer have of anonymous hunters.
Roy Cohn’s Disbarment and Death (Trump learned nothing from two impeachments because his relatives were on the jury. He won’t be inhibited by Libtards’ legal maneuvers. What method does that leave?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Cohn#Disbarment_and_death
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:6ixStringJack is calling for the firing of 90% of Federal employees. If you want to fire 90% of government employees, start with the local government, then move to fire state employees.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Our debt didn't accrue from Federal workers or libraries. You're being distracted by chaff being thrown into the air.
It absolutely did. Not the libraries, but the Federal workers. There are 10 times as many people working for the government than we need to be employing. Employee pay is one of the largest shares of government waste because of the sheer number of people that are on the payroll. They are all paid twice as much for the work they'd get in the public sector, they have the absolute best benefits packages on the planet, and they have retirement plans that we can't pay for.
That ends now.
They'll be fine. They can come work with us plebs and downsize they way they live.
We get laid off all the time in the private sector, so 90% or more of us under 50 years old have already been laid off at least once if not many times. This is just the way nearly everyone who isn't a government employee lives in America.
Ain't nobody going to shed any tears for them no matter what they choose to do now.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
State and local governments employ 19.6 million people nationally, with the majority (14.2 million) working in local government. The U.S. federal government employs around 3 million people in total, with workers in departments like the Armed Forces, Postal Service, and the Department of Justice.
https://www.ringover.com/blog/largest-employers-us
How many people work for the federal government?
The federal government employs around 3 million people, making it the nation's 15th largest workforce.
Updated December 19, 2024 by the USAFacts team
As of November 2024, the federal government employed just over 3 million people. The number of federal employees has topped 3 million since September 2024. The last time the government could claim that many employees was in September 1994.
Federal employment numbers peaked at 3.4 million in 1990 and the most recent low was in 2014, with 2.7 million.
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-people-work-for-the-federal-gov
ernment/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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We’ve Officially Entered the Next Phase of Trump’s Dictatorship Era
By Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern | March 17, 2025 1:04 PM
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/03/king-donald-trump-dictator
ship-deportations-court-orders.html
The Trump administration pushed forward into a new phase of the rolling national constitutional crisis over the weekend, reportedly defying two different federal court orders imposing limits on its deportation of immigrants without due process. First, immigrant authorities deported Rasha Alawieh, a kidney transplant specialist at Brown University, despite a judge’s Friday order halting her removal. Second, authorities deported about 250 Venezuelan migrants, flouting another judge’s explicit directive to turn around American planes that hadn’t yet landed in El Salvador, where the migrants were being sent. The Justice Department claimed that it could not comply with the order barring Alawieh’s removal because it arrived too late. But the White House defended its defiance of the order prohibiting deportations of Venezuelans, insisting that the judge had no jurisdiction over the migrants—and that Trump holds absolute, unreviewable constitutional authority to expel noncitizens.
Another novel late-night claim of presidential power: On Monday, Donald Trump purported to reverse President Joe Biden’s pardons of Jan. 6 committee members. In a Truth Social post that came just after midnight, Trump claimed the pardons are now “VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT,” asserting the power to undo their clemency because Biden allegedly signed it “by Autopen.” (It is the official position of the executive branch, unchallenged by the courts, that autopen qualifies as a valid presidential signature.)
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:6ixStringJack is calling for the firing of 90% of Federal employees. If you want to fire 90% of government employees, start with the local government, then move to fire state employees.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Our debt didn't accrue from Federal workers or libraries. You're being distracted by chaff being thrown into the air.
It absolutely did. Not the libraries, but the Federal workers. There are 10 times as many people working for the government than we need to be employing. Employee pay is one of the largest shares of government waste because of the sheer number of people that are on the payroll. They are all paid twice as much for the work they'd get in the public sector, they have the absolute best benefits packages on the planet, and they have retirement plans that we can't pay for.
That ends now.
They'll be fine. They can come work with us plebs and downsize they way they live.
We get laid off all the time in the private sector, so 90% or more of us under 50 years old have already been laid off at least once if not many times. This is just the way nearly everyone who isn't a government employee lives in America.
Ain't nobody going to shed any tears for them no matter what they choose to do now.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
State and local governments employ 19.6 million people nationally, with the majority (14.2 million) working in local government. The U.S. federal government employs around 3 million people in total, with workers in departments like the Armed Forces, Postal Service, and the Department of Justice.
https://www.ringover.com/blog/largest-employers-us
How many people work for the federal government?
The federal government employs around 3 million people, making it the nation's 15th largest workforce.
Updated December 19, 2024 by the USAFacts team
As of November 2024, the federal government employed just over 3 million people. The number of federal employees has topped 3 million since September 2024. The last time the government could claim that many employees was in September 1994.
Federal employment numbers peaked at 3.4 million in 1990 and the most recent low was in 2014, with 2.7 million.
https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-people-work-for-the-federal-gov
ernment/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Great idea.
We can do both. Let's do it.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
We’ve Officially Entered the Next Phase of Trump’s Dictatorship Era
By Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern | March 17, 2025 1:04 PM
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/03/king-donald-trump-dictator
ship-deportations-court-orders.html
The Trump administration pushed forward into a new phase of the rolling national constitutional crisis over the weekend, reportedly defying two different federal court orders imposing limits on its deportation of immigrants without due process. First, immigrant authorities deported Rasha Alawieh, a kidney transplant specialist at Brown University, despite a judge’s Friday order halting her removal. Second, authorities deported about 250 Venezuelan migrants, flouting another judge’s explicit directive to turn around American planes that hadn’t yet landed in El Salvador, where the migrants were being sent. The Justice Department claimed that it could not comply with the order barring Alawieh’s removal because it arrived too late. But the White House defended its defiance of the order prohibiting deportations of Venezuelans, insisting that the judge had no jurisdiction over the migrants—and that Trump holds absolute, unreviewable constitutional authority to expel noncitizens.
Another novel late-night claim of presidential power: On Monday, Donald Trump purported to reverse President Joe Biden’s pardons of Jan. 6 committee members. In a Truth Social post that came just after midnight, Trump claimed the pardons are now “VOID, VACANT, AND OF NO FURTHER FORCE OR EFFECT,” asserting the power to undo their clemency because Biden allegedly signed it “by Autopen.” (It is the official position of the executive branch, unchallenged by the courts, that autopen qualifies as a valid presidential signature.)
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Yes. We are going to put Fauci in prison.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:There really is no reliable way to get through to Trumptards without being brutal: hit them in the face with a shotgun blast. Or firing them. Or canceling their contracts. Or their wives kicking them out. Trumptards can only weakly understand and more words seldom bring fuller enlightenment to a Trumptard. But someone else wrote the words for me. Maybe this time 6ix will comprehend.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Great idea.
We can do both. Let's do it.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Park Service Employees at White House Were Exempted from Mass Firings
Park rangers for me, but not for thee
By Jimmy Tobias | Mar 17, 2025
https://www.publicdomain.media/p/park-service-employees-at-white-house
As the Trump administration fired hundreds of probationary Park Service employees in February, it spared a special subset from the purge — it exempted from the mass firings National Park Service staffers that help manage the White House and President’s Park.
Records viewed by Public Domain show that at least three NPS probationary employees at the White House, including park guides, received exemptions from the mass firings specifically on the grounds that they worked at the White House. The records were corroborated by an Interior Department source familiar with the matter, but who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.
The National Park Service maintains the White House property and President’s Park. The NPS workforce there includes gardeners, guides, painters and maintenance staff. The Park Service, in a statement, said it does not comment on personnel matters. It did note, however, that NPS employees at the White House have security clearances.
In mid-February, in what has come to be known as the Valentine’s Day massacre, the Trump administration eliminated roughly 1,000 NPS probationary employees across the country. These employees served as rangers, guides, visitor center staffers, scientists, and more. The firings spanned the nation, from Valley Forge in Pennsylvania to California’s Yosemite. Particularly hit hard were places like Everglades National Park, Great Smoky Mountains National Park and Rocky Mountain National Park, all supremely popular destinations that reportedly lost a dozen or more employees each. These firings were part of the broader effort, driven by Elon Musk’s DOGE, to decimate staffing at federal agencies in all parts of government.
But while the general American public was witnessing the sudden loss of large numbers of staff members at their favorite Park Service locations, the President and his visitors were spared the same experience at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The directive to exempt the NPS probationary staff at the White House came down to NPS from higher up in the Interior Department, according to the source.
The DOGE-driven mass firings may have been illegal. A federal judge in Northern California last Thursday ordered the Trump administration to immediately reinstate thousands of probationary employees across government, calling the administration’s justification for the terminations a “sham.” The Trump administration is appealing the order.
“It is a sad, sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie,” wrote U.S. District Judge William Alsup of President Trump’s actions. “That should not have been done in our country.” Among those to be reinstated are Park Service probationary staff.
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:There really is no reliable way to get through to Trumptards without being brutal: hit them in the face with a shotgun blast.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Great idea.
We can do both. Let's do it.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
I can't figure out why you still haven't figured out who I am or where I live. All I used to hear about back in the day was you hiring private detectives to find out who Kiki and maybe others were. I've known who you are and where you live for probably 4 years now.
If ever you figure that one out, big scary tough dude guy man, come on over and we'll sort this out in person.
I'd say BYOB, but I don't reckon you'll be needing it where you're going.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:
SIX
.. absolutely did. Not the libraries, but the Federal workers. There are 10 times as many people working for the government than we need to be employing.[THAT'S SIX, PULLING NUMBERS OUT OF HIS ASS] Employee pay is one of the largest shares of government waste because of the sheer number of people that are on the payroll.[MORE ASS-GENERATED NUMBERS] They are all paid twice as much for the work they'd get in the public sector, they have the absolute best benefits packages on the planet, and they have retirement plans that we can't pay for.
That ends now.
They'll be fine. They can come work with us plebs and downsize they way they live.
We get laid off all the time in the private sector, so 90% or more of us under 50 years old have already been laid off at least once if not many times. This is just the way nearly everyone who isn't a government employee lives in America.
Ain't nobody going to shed any tears for them no matter what they choose to do now.
Wow. Instead of wanting meaningful, stable, fairly administered jobs for Americans you want everyone to be just as miserable, uncertain, and angry as you?
That's fucked up.
I reiterate: if there is waste in Federal employment, it's a MANAGEMENT problem. You have an ignorant view of government employment.
You think that government employees can't be laid off? When our agency faced a serious budget crunch, it laid off 300 of 1,000 employees.
If there is one flaw in government employment, it's the difficulty of firing employees. You have to prove you're firing for cause. It's a huge multi-step process that requires reams of documentation.
But, strangely, you won't find that requirement in any union-negotiated contract. It's an HR requirement... once again, a management problem.
*****
But if you want to know where REAL waste comes from....
https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/reports-statements/financial-report/st
atement-of-net-cost.html
What does HHS (RFK's new bailiwick) do with its $1.9 trillion budget? I dunno... you tell me
https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/fy2024/index.html
Waste comes from Medicare ($1.4 trillion) being prohibited from bargaining for best prices for prescription medicine.
https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/fy-2024-budget-in-brief.pdf
Social Security ($1.5 trillion)
Raise the threshold so that wealthy people pay more into the system. Social Security payments ... they're not extravagant. But the database seriously needs to be cleaned up.
DoD ($1.1 trillion)
The F35, for example, cost $400 billion... and counting. The DoD has failed every one of its last 7 audits. Thats $ to the MIC, not soldiers or staff.
Interest ($1 trillion)
Anyway, poke thru the budget. I'm sure you'll see a lot of pork.
-----------
"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:Why would I bother with you? 6ix, there are ten times worse Trumptards than you living next door to me. I know the DIRTY SECRETs of dozens of Trumptards who are modern-day manifestations of all the wickedness of the worst Confederates from the 1860s.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I can't figure out why you still haven't figured out who I am or where I live. All I used to hear about back in the day was you hiring private detectives to find out who Kiki and maybe others were. I've known who you are and where you live for probably 4 years now.
If ever you figure that one out, big scary tough dude guy man, come on over and we'll sort this out in person.
I'd say BYOB, but I don't reckon you'll be needing it where you're going.
What is more interesting is why these Trumptards sincerely believe with their whole hearts that they are "good" people, wholesome and pure on the outside, despite being nothing but evil on the inside, just like slave-owning Confederates once believed themselves to be righteous and deserving to ascend to the Kingdom of Heaven. Here is a little explanation in the abstract:
Heather Cox Richardson | Feb 15, 2025
https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/february-15-2025
After World War II, the vast majority of Americans—Democrats and Republicans alike—agreed that the federal government should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, promote infrastructure, and protect civil rights. But not everyone was on board. Some big businessmen hated regulations and the taxes necessary for social welfare programs and infrastructure, and racists and religious traditionalists who opposed women’s rights wanted to tear that “liberal consensus” apart.
They had no luck convincing voters to abandon the government that was overseeing unprecedented prosperity until the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision permitted them to turn back to an old American trope. That ruling, which declared segregation in the public schools unconstitutional, enabled opponents of the liberal consensus to resurrect the post–Civil War argument of former Confederates that a government protecting Black rights was simply redistributing wealth from hardworking white taxpayers to undeserving Black Americans.
That argument began to take hold, and in 1980, Republican president Ronald Reagan rode it to the White House with the story of the “welfare queen,” identified as a Cadillac-driving, unemployed moocher from Chicago’s South Side (to signal that the woman was Black). “She has 80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards and is collecting veteran’s benefits on four non-existing deceased husbands,” Reagan claimed. “And she is collecting Social Security on her cards. She’s got Medicaid, getting food stamps, and she is collecting welfare under each of her names.” The woman was real, but not typical—she was a dangerous criminal rather than a representative welfare recipient—but the story illustrated perfectly the idea that government involvement in the economy bled individual enterprise and handed tax dollars to undeserving Black Americans.
Republicans expanded that trope to denigrate all “liberals” of both parties, who supported an active government, claiming they were all wasting government monies. Deregulation and tax cuts meant that between 1981, when Reagan took office, and 2021, when Democratic president Joe Biden did, about $50 trillion moved from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%. But rather than convincing Republican voters to return to a robust system of business regulation and restoring taxes on the wealthy and corporations, that transfer of wealth seemed to make them hate the government even more, as they apparently were convinced it benefited only nonwhite Americans and women.
That hatred has led to a skewed idea of the actions and the size of the federal government. For example, Americans think the U.S. spends too much on foreign aid because they think it spends about 25% of t
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
SIX
.. absolutely did. Not the libraries, but the Federal workers. There are 10 times as many people working for the government than we need to be employing.[THAT'S SIX, PULLING NUMBERS OUT OF HIS ASS] Employee pay is one of the largest shares of government waste because of the sheer number of people that are on the payroll.[MORE ASS-GENERATED NUMBERS] They are all paid twice as much for the work they'd get in the public sector, they have the absolute best benefits packages on the planet, and they have retirement plans that we can't pay for.
That ends now.
They'll be fine. They can come work with us plebs and downsize they way they live.
We get laid off all the time in the private sector, so 90% or more of us under 50 years old have already been laid off at least once if not many times. This is just the way nearly everyone who isn't a government employee lives in America.
Ain't nobody going to shed any tears for them no matter what they choose to do now.
Wow. Instead of wanting meaningful, stable, fairly administered jobs for Americans you want everyone to be just as miserable, uncertain, and angry as you?
That's fucked up.
I reiterate: if there is waste in Federal employment, it's a MANAGEMENT problem. You have an ignorant view of government employment.
You think that government employees can't be laid off? When our agency faced a serious budget crunch, it laid off 300 of 1,000 employees.
If there is one flaw in government employment, it's the difficulty of firing employees. You have to prove you're firing for cause. It's a huge multi-step process that requires reams of documentation.
But, strangely, you won't find that requirement in any union-negotiated contract. It's an HR requirement... once again, a management problem.
*****
But if you want to know where REAL waste comes from....
https://www.fiscal.treasury.gov/reports-statements/financial-report/st
atement-of-net-cost.html
What does HHS (RFK's new bailiwick) do with its $1.9 trillion budget? I dunno... you tell me
https://www.hhs.gov/about/budget/fy2024/index.html
Waste comes from Medicare ($1.4 trillion) being prohibited from bargaining for best prices for prescription medicine.
https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/fy-2024-budget-in-brief.pdf
Social Security ($1.5 trillion)
Raise the threshold so that wealthy people pay more into the system. Social Security payments ... they're not extravagant. But the database seriously needs to be cleaned up.
DoD ($1.1 trillion)
The F35, for example, cost $400 billion... and counting. The DoD has failed every one of its last 7 audits. Thats $ to the MIC, not soldiers or staff.
Interest ($1 trillion)
Anyway, poke thru the budget. I'm sure you'll see a lot of pork.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
I never said that government employees can't be laid off.
Just that a vast majority of them are unnecessary and work in departments that are unnecessary.
They will now simply be removed. Like it or don't like it.
And if the media didn't talk about it every day, I have very little doubt that you wouldn't even be aware it was happening because it wouldn't impact your life in the slightest.
And yeah. You're goddamned right. They can come down here with me and work for shit wages and zero benefits like the rest of us do. Nobody inside our government gave one single fuck when all of this happened to us, and some of them were even partially responsible for it.
Reality sucks. Like it or don't like it.
But don't ever ask me to shed tears for somebody else who gets their livelihood taken away in America. That shit is just your average Tuesday for the vast majority, after the American Baby Boomers had a real nice ride via the greatest standard of
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Quote:
SIX
yeah. You're goddamned right. They can come down here with me and work for shit wages and zero benefits like the rest of us do. Nobody inside our government gave one single fuck when all of this happened to us,
Wow, you pretend to mind-read all of those government employees??? You want everyone to be miserable?
That's stupid, and you're fucked up.
Stop pretending to be “righteous“. You're just petty and vindictive.
Quote:Politicians, son. Politicians of both parties. They're not "government employees". They're elected officials. Know the difference.
and some of them were even partially responsible for it.
-----------
"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:
SIX
yeah. You're goddamned right. They can come down here with me and work for shit wages and zero benefits like the rest of us do. Nobody inside our government gave one single fuck when all of this happened to us,
Wow, you pretend to mind-read all of those government employees??? You want everyone to be miserable?
I want everyone to be on the same playing field. Nothing more. Nothing less.
It sucks that the playing field not funded by $37 Trillion worth of debt is SHIT.
I didn't fucking make it that way.
Tough titty for everyone.
Anybody who hasn't already been through it once or ten times by now is in for some shit.
Buckle up.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:Life is hard for tens of millions of Trumptards because they are mentally unstable. Stephen Miller should be fired because he is ill, but his boss is even more sick, so Miller stays:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Reality sucks. Like it or don't like it.
But don't ever ask me to shed tears for somebody else who gets their livelihood taken away in America. That shit is just your average Tuesday for the vast majority, after the American Baby Boomers had a real nice ride via the greatest standard of living that any race or nationality of people in the history or future of the world will ever know.
Stephen Miller Loses His Cool on Fox News
Miller is a key architect of Trump’s hardline immigration policies.
Miller threw around insults after being challenged on Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which is intended for wartime.
By Erkki Forster | Mar. 17 2025 6:05PM EDT
https://www.thedailybeast.com/stephen-miller-loses-his-cool-on-fox-new
s-absolute-moron/
Stephen Miller threw a veritable hissy fit on Fox News Monday after a host questioned whether Donald Trump’s invocation of wartime authority to deport migrants would hold up legally.
During an interview with The Story host Martha MacCallum on Monday, Miller was asked about MSNBC pundit Andrew Weissmann’s argument that the president should not be allowed to invoke an 18th-century law to deport migrants because it was intended for wartime use. Instead of addressing the point, Miller launched into a tirade.
“First of all, Andrew Weissmann is an absolute moron,” Miller fumed. “He is a moron, and he is a fool, and he’s a degenerate. Andrew Weissmann has devoted his career to putting innocent Americans in jail, taking away their civil liberties.”
Stephen Miller is a key architect of Trump’s hardline immigration policies.
Forgetting the original question, Miller fixated on Weissmann’s record as a former prosecutor who worked on Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
“He was involved in the Mueller coup against a democratically elected president, Donald J. Trump,” Miller said, before shouting, “Weissmann should never be on TV anywhere! He should hang his head in eternal shame for what he’s done to this country!”
As MacCallum attempted to regain control of the conversation, Miller—a key architect of Trump’s hardline immigration policies—continued railing against Weissmann and defending Trump’s legally questionable use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport Venezuelan migrants over the weekend.
“You can call Weissmann names, and he can call you names, and that’s what’s great about living in America,” MacCallum interjected with an exasperated smirk, only for Miller to cut her off again.
“This is a tip for Weissmann!” Miller yelled. “I will defend American lives working for President Trump, and Andrew Weissmann can defend illegal alien rapists, terrorists, and predators! I’ve chosen my side!”
It’s the second time in a month that a TV anchor has grappled with an out-of-control Miller.
Last month, CNN host Brianna Keilar had to ask a hysterical Miller to “calm down” in a live interview after he blew up while trying to defend Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
On Monday, a federal judge ordered the White House to explain why it defied a court order by deporting the Venezuelan migrants, whom Trump claims are violent members of the Tren de Aragua gang.
In a direct challenge to the judiciary, the administration argued Monday afternoon that the judge’s orders were “not enforceable.”
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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March 17, 2025 in PC Magazine
The $42.5 billion Broadband Equity Access and Deployment (BEAD) program is being shifted from fiber to Musk’s Starlink, which is a slower service at a higher price to the customers, but Elon Musk benefits so it is great.
Lawmakers have raised alarm bells about the revamp after The Wall Street Journal reported that Starlink could receive as much as $20 billion in subsidies, up from a mere $4 billion.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/us-official-blasts-trumps-broadband-funding
-shift-from-fiber-to-starlink
The Winds of Change are filling Musk’s bank account.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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SIX, going after Federal workers is penny ante shit.
There are roughly 3 million Federal workers. Roughly half of them make appx $75,000 a year. A lot of those are nurses, technicians, doctors and so forth associated with VA.
Those are not astonishingly high wages for nurses, doctors, techs, and so forth.
By Department, the largest employer is VA, with about 486,000 employees. But the figures are misleading, bc if you combine the Army, Navy, Air Force, and DoD, which are listed individually, you get a total of appx 763,000 employees. Between obligations to past servicemembers and current servicemembers and military programs, the military takes up a whopping 38% of employees.
Total in wages and salaries is about $450 billion. Sounds like a lot, but not compared to the current $6.8 TRILLION budget. Thats 6.6% of the total budget, if I have my figures correct.
Quote:I agree that Dept Education has done a piss-poor job, and should be abolished.
The smallest Cabinet-level department, with 4,245 workers, is the Department of Education.
But going after that, and not DoD ... that's penny ante shit. Low hanging fruit. The real savings are elsewhere.
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/01/07/what-the-data-says-
about-federal-workers/#which-federal-departments-and-agencies-employ-the-most-people
Seeing as you're getting FREE MEDICAL CARE that my taxes pay for, you can hardly complain about poor benefits.
My advice, SIX, is that if you want to climb out of the low-wage/ no wage hole that you're in? Become a certified EMT, respiratory therapist, nurse, or something like that. Or medical IT.
But better brush up on your people skills.
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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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You're not paying for shit.
The $37 Trillion dollar lie you want to keep funding is paying for it all.
I'm just getting my property taxes and all the other taxes I've ever paid back before I die.
Get fucked Sigs.
They're all getting laid off.
Boo hoo.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Yeah.
Thanks for doing your part in adding to the debt. You're more expensive than the average govt employee. AND we don't even get any work out of you.
Time to kick you off the rolls.
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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:
Yeah.
Thanks for doing your part in adding to the debt. You're more expensive than the average govt employee. AND we don't even get any work out of you.
Time to kick you off the rolls.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
You won't hear me bitching when it happens.
I'm nothing if not adaptable when ya need to be.
Not really worried that he's going to kick 71 Million people off of medicaid though either. Unless somehow everything else under the sun gets fixed in America and we suddenly find ourselves in a new Golden Age, ending Medicaid would be immediate political suicide and the nearly dead Democratic Party would suddenly have 80/20 support on the very same day that it happens.
There's 330 Million or so people in the country. With 71 Million of them on Medicaid, that's at least 1 in 5 people on it. If you aren't on Medicaid, chances are very good that somebody you love is. And if you can actually sit back and say that you don't know anybody on it well... good on you and your rich family and your rich friends in your rich neighborhoods.
And if that's really the case, then I don't give a single fuck about your judgement of my healthcare situation.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Another thing comes to mind while we're on the topic of healthcare...
"Hey Siri! How much would health insurance cost me out of pocket through the ACA if I were making $25,000 per year but I wasn't getting health insurance offered through my employer?"
Quote:
Income Eligibility:
To qualify for these subsidies, your income must fall within a certain range, generally between 100% and 400% of the federal poverty level.
Subsidy Calculation:
The amount of the subsidy is determined by your income and the cost of the second-lowest-cost Silver plan in your area.
Income Limits:
For a single individual, the 2025 federal poverty level is $15,060, and the 400% of the federal poverty level is $60,240.
Subsidy Impact:
With a $25,000 income, you're likely to qualify for a significant subsidy, potentially reducing your monthly premium to a small percentage of your income (e.g., 2-4%).
"Hey Siri! How much is 2-4% of $25,000?"
Quote:
2-4% of $25,000 is $500 to $1000.
"Thank you Siri. You've been most helpful today."
Anybody telling me that I'm costing them more than useless federal employees do can go right ahead and get fucked.
There's no job I can get that wouldn't end up with me going through the ACA and paying in the vicinity of $500 to $1,500 out of pocket per year for insurance, and whatever the cost of the rest of that would be was already being fucking paid for everybody who was working and needed health insurance too.
My yearly cost for health insurance that is being paid above and beyond what a sub-contractor earning $30k per year and on the ACA is almost nothing. Even after fighting my property taxes, the last increase made those cost more per year than what I would be paying for health insurance if I was working.
You don't get to have these kinds of arguments with people who have a very deep understanding of things you've been privileged enough in life to never have to think about.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:You get all huffy about gummint employees suckin' on the gummint teat, but you get plenty defensive when the shoe's on the othe foot, don't you?
SIX
and if that's really the case, then I don't give a single fuck about your judgement of my healthcare situation.
How about this, SIX ... instead of bitching and whining about poor little ole you, why don't you take that ginormous IQ you claim that you have, and DO something with it?
I know, it's not fair that you can climb out of the hole that youre in and others ... for lack of IQ ... can't. But instead of advocating for a better life for everyone, you insist that everybody be dragged down into the hole you insist on living in?
You remind me of a fable. There were two farmers, living side by side. One, by dint of hard work and a little good fortune, managed to scrape together enough to buy a cow.
The second farmer slowly grew consumed about his neighbor's good fortune.
One day, he heard a rustling in the leaves and came across a tiny creature trapped in a spider's web. So he carefully freed the little thing. The little creature, in a tiny voice, told him in return he would grant the farmer anything he wanted. Anything at all.
So the farmer thought about what he wanted more than anything in the whole world.
Select to view spoiler:
SO HE WISHED HIS NEIGHBOR'S COW WAS DEAD.
-----------
"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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dumbass Mayor says to the State and Nation how dare you say Emperor has no clothes
you must always cheer 'Greatest Ally'
maybe that works in Israel but in seems he never heard of 'The Streisand effect' in the USA?
Miami Beach cinema draws mayor's ire after showing controversial documentary "No Other Land"
https://www.cbsnews.com/miami/news/miami-beach-mayor-vs-o-cinema-no-ot
her-land-oscar-winning-documentary/
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Lawyers Can Slow a Trump Dictatorship. But They Have to Do Something Uncomfortable First.
By Frank Bowman | March 17, 2025 5:36 PM
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/03/dictator-trump-lawyers-doj
-emil-bove.html
. . . Ho and his judicial colleagues confronting analogous cases need to stop thinking like single judges dealing with a single awkward case. Rather, they need to recognize that they are representatives of the justice system and the legal profession confronted with an unapologetic attack on the rule of law. When government lawyers misbehave, federal judges must be more assertive in the exercise of their powers as members of the judicial branch and as integral players in disciplinary mechanisms of the legal profession.
If confronted by apparent government attorney misconduct or apparent defiance of court orders, judges should first do the very thing Clement rejects—insist on determining the facts. Do not accept vague unsworn platitudes. Put the relevant witnesses, including lawyers, on the stand under oath. Let counsel adverse to the government ask questions. If the case is one like the Adams matter, where the government may be improperly colluding with the other side, judges should ask questions themselves. They should make factual findings. This alone would serve the immensely valuable purpose of advising the public of the judicial view of government misbehavior.
Second, when appropriate, judges should use their civil contempt powers promptly and sternly. As I have written elsewhere, there is, distressingly, some doubt that the Marshals Service would enforce contempt remedies against executive branch officials. But the test must be conducted. At the worst, direct executive branch defiance of judicial contempt orders will clarify for the public the true nature of the Trump regime.
Finally, if a reasonable basis exists to believe that government lawyers have misrepresented facts to the court or otherwise behaved unethically, judges should promptly refer offenders to disciplinary authorities of the court or the relevant state bar. As the Supreme Court held in Imbler v. Pachtman, the government lawyer “stands perhaps unique, among officials whose acts could deprive persons of constitutional rights, in his amenability to professional discipline by an association of his peers.” The organized bar should address judicial referrals of misbehaving government lawyers without hesitation and, when merited, with stringent punishment. Even amoral or timorous lawyers will hesitate to misbehave if it becomes clear that doing so endangers their livelihood.
The rule of law in America is in peril. The formal institutions created by the Constitution to ensure the survival of the rule of law are wavering. But the idea that law, not one man, should rule is older than the Constitution. That idea is, or should be, the bedrock commitment of the legal profession. Indeed, we lawyers tout it all the time, at least when our professed devotion has no cost. The question now is whether the legal profession will use its power over its own members to ensure that law survives.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Trump administration pulls US out of body investigating Ukraine invasion — essentially a unilateral concession to Russia with no Russian concessions in return because Trump is a giant asshole
Russia and allies were target of International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine
By Robert Tait | Mon 17 Mar 2025 10.49 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/17/trump-russia-ukraine
The Trump administration is withdrawing from an international body formed to investigate responsibility for the invasion of Ukraine in the latest sign that the White House is adopting a posture favouring Vladimir Putin.
The Department of Justice said it was pulling out of the International Centre for the Prosecution of the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine (ICPA) two years after the Biden administration joined it with a commitment to hold Putin, Russia’s president, to account for the 2022 invasion and subsequent crimes committed by Russian forces.
An announcement by the justice department was expected later on Monday.
The centre was established to hold the leaders of Russia and its allies in Belarus, North Korea and Iran accountable for a category of crimes listed as aggression under international law for undertaking and supporting the attack.
That is not all the giant asshole Trump did for Putin:
The justice department also said it was reducing the work of its war crimes accountability team (WarCat), set up by Garland in 2022 to hold Russia accountable for atrocities committed following its invasion of Ukraine.
Garland said at the time that “there is no hiding place for war criminals” and vowed that the department would “pursue every avenue of accountability for those who commit war crimes and other atrocities in Ukraine”.
The unit provided logistical help, training and direct assistance to overburdened Ukrainian prosecutors, who are investigating more than 150,000 possible war crimes, including the summary execution of prisoners, the targeted bombing of civilians and torture.
It is the Winds of Change Blowing from Hell, 6ixStringJack and Signym
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too? Blew in an opportunity to cheat small-time shareholders:
Texas Republicans want to curb shareholder lawsuits, like the one that blocked Elon Musk's $50B check
By Benjamin Wermund, Austin Bureau | March 17, 2025
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/politics/texas/article/musk-sharehold
er-lawsuit-texas-legislature-20220446.php
Elon Musk began moving his companies to Texas after a Delaware judge blocked a more than $50 billion pay package for the Tesla CEO last year.
Now Texas Republicans, who have welcomed the billionaire with open arms, are pushing legislation that business law experts say would make that court outcome next to impossible here.
Their proposal, a priority of House Speaker Dustin Burrows, would make it significantly harder for shareholders to file lawsuits in Texas against publicly traded companies, like the one that spurred Musk to ditch Delaware and urge other companies to follow suit.
Shareholders could only bring so-called derivative claims that allege wrongdoing by executives if they held a 3% stake in the company, which for Tesla, would shrink the eligible pool to only a handful of big financial firms.
Brian JM Quinn, a business law professor at Boston College, said if the proposal becomes law, there would be “no lawsuit against Elon Musk for anything in Texas.”
But the legislation would go far beyond the billionaire Tesla, SpaceX and X CEO. It would insulate all corporate directors and officers from most shareholder claims brought in the state’s new business courts, unless it could be proven that they committed fraud or knowingly broke the law. And the changes would shield executive’s emails, texts and other communications from shareholder inspection in most cases.
The bill would mark a significant expansion of protections for corporations in the state’s new court system that launched just last year and is a key piece of Gov. Greg Abbott’s effort to convince more businesses to incorporate in the state. The Republican governor has yet to comment on the proposal.
State Rep. Morgan Meyer, a Dallas Republican who authored the bill, told a House judicial committee this month that the changes will shield businesses from “meritless, distracting lawsuits” and allow companies to “flourish, create new Texas jobs and contribute to Texas' soaring economy.”
The changes would only apply to publicly traded corporations or companies that opt into the new rules via the court.
Democrats fear the bill will open the door to political cronyism because of the close control the governor wields over the courts. Unlike most judges in the state, who are elected, Abbott appoints the 10 business court judges every two years. It’s a far shorter term than similar circuits in other states and a pace that experts have said could put political pressure on judges who want to keep their seats.
State Rep. Ann Johnson, a Houston Democrat, said she opposed the business courts when they were created, not because she didn’t support the idea of having a specialized system for corporations, but because the judicial appointments took the courts out of the voters’ control. She said it is too soon to add fresh protections for those companies.
“We haven’t even gotten to see if this plays out,” she said. “We just did this, and now they want to expand the authority of it to bring more businesses into that fold of potential political protection. And that scares me.”
But business leaders say the legislation is not about appeasing politically active CEOs like Musk, who spent heavily to help President Donald Trump win the White House and is now carrying out aggressive cuts to the federal government. They say it will create a legal system in the state that is attractive to companies looking to relocate.
“This is well beyond SpaceX,” Glenn Hamer, the president and CEO of the Texas Association of Businesses, said during a hearing on the bill this month. “I guarantee there will be a lot of companies with directors and CEOs that have
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Quote:So, lets circle back to the original source of the dispute, SIX. It's not government employees.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:You get all huffy about gummint employees suckin' on the gummint teat, but you get plenty defensive when the shoe's on the othe foot, don't you?
SIX
and if that's really the case, then I don't give a single fuck about your judgement of my healthcare situation.
How about this, SIX ... instead of bitching and whining about poor little ole you, why don't you take that ginormous IQ you claim that you have, and DO something with it?
I know, it's not fair that you can climb out of the hole that youre in and others ... for lack of IQ ... can't. But instead of advocating for a better life for everyone, you insist that everybody be dragged down into the hole you insist on living in?
You remind me of a fable. There were two farmers, living side by side. One, by dint of hard work and a little good fortune, managed to scrape together enough to buy a cow.
The second farmer slowly grew consumed about his neighbor's good fortune.
One day, he heard a rustling in the leaves and came across a tiny creature trapped in a spider's web. So he carefully freed the little thing. The little creature, in a tiny voice, told him in return he would grant the farmer anything he wanted. Anything at all.
So the farmer thought about what he wanted more than anything in the whole world.Select to view spoiler:
SO HE WISHED HIS NEIGHBOR'S COW WAS DEAD.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
It's your vengeful attitude.
If your REAL concern was the deficit, you'd be focusing on big ticket items, things that could make a REAL difference. But you're not. You want to grind government employees under your heel because they have job protections and bettrr pay and benefits than yiu.
Trump and Elon dismantling unions? Trump and Elon dismantling worker protections that unions fought for, and won, 100 years ago? Protections that YOU enjoyed? Believe me, without them, your jobs ... they could have been much, much woorse.
So far, that's what they're doing. They hobbled the National Labor Relations Board, dismantled the TSA union, and did away with Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. Their belief is that unions are the problem, when in reality its management. They could have achieved greater efficiency and savings by corralling the bureacracy of chiefs and directors and deputy executive officers and human resources departments, NOT the people who simply work in the conditions set for them. They could have fired inefficient, nonproductive workers and everyone would gave been happier, including the rest of the workforce who have to work extra hard to pick up the slack.
So, when did you start taking big business' side?
Your vengeful attitude is putting you on the wrong side. You think that all the low-wage employees that you worked with want to see a future low-wage America, with no unions and no way up? Everyone working towards Making American (Business) Great Again?
I'm all for reducing the deficit. I'm all for getting rid of programs and departments that aren't part of the government's core mission. I'm all for firing unproductive employees, and ineffective, wasteful bureaucrats who like to pad their budgets bc it makes them feel more powerful.
But I'm not for union busting.
-----------
"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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Here comes the pushback
Quote:
Obama Judge Rules Against DOGE Shutdown Of USAID, Orders Employee Access Reinstated
Tuesday, Mar 18, 2025 - 12:27 PM
In the latest legal turn of events - since the United States is now governed by activist judges, an Obama-appointed federal judge on Tuesday found that Elon Musk and DOGE likely violated the constitution when it shut down deep state slush fund USAID, and has ordered them to restore access for current (remaining) employees.
US District Judge Theodore Chuang ruled in favor of more than two dozen unnamed current and former USAID employees and contractors who challenged the Trump administration's efforts to shutter the organization.
In a 68-page decision, Chuang granted in part their request for a preliminary injunction, ruling that DOGE and Musk likely violated the Constitution's Appointments Clause and separation of powers.
Musk has been ordered to reinstate access to email, payment and other electronic systems for all current USAID employees and personal services contractors, while the Trump administration is now prevented from taking any further actions related to the shutdown of USAID - including placing employees on administrative leave, firing USAID workers, closing buildings, bureaus or offices, and deleting the contents of its websites or collections.
Of note - the order does not currently require the reinstatement of fired employees, after roughly 83% of USAID programs have been officially canceled according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
"After a six-week review, 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, and even harmed the core national interests of the United States," he said.
This latest judicial move to block the Trump administration comes days after DC District Court judge James Boasberg (who was in charge of the FISA court when the Obama administration was spying on Trump), issued a two-week halt on deporting illegal immigrant gang members. On Tuesday Trump called for Boasberg's impeachment, drawing a sharp rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who said it was "not an appropriate response."
The Trump administration is also in the process of reinstating over 24,000 federal workers after a different Obama judge, US District Judge James Bredar, ordered the mass reinstatement of employees at 18 federal agencies last week, determining that the administration’s justification for the firings—poor performance—was not supported by evidence. The ruling follows another decision by a federal judge in San Francisco, who also found terminations at six agencies to be illegal.
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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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“This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Tuesday.
Chief Justice John Roberts pushed back against President Donald Trump and his allies’ calls to impeach judges who’ve ruled against the administration.
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” Roberts said Tuesday in a rare and brief statement issued just hours after Trump publicly joined demands by his supporters to remove judges he called “crooked.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/18/john-roberts-donald-trump-imp
each-federal-judges-00235742
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Louisiana v. Callais, a case about whether Louisiana’s congressional maps are an illegal racial gerrymander, should be one of the easiest cases the justices have heard in many years. That’s because less than two years ago, the Supreme Court decided another gerrymandering case, known as Allen v. Milligan (2023), which by Louisiana’s lawyers’ own admission “presents the same question” as Callais.
The Court will hear oral arguments in Callais on March 24.
In Milligan, the Court — normally quite hostile to plaintiffs alleging violations of the Voting Rights Act, which is meant to protect minority ballot access — surprised most Court-watchers by reaffirming longstanding legal principles, first established in Thornburg v. Gingles (1986), which are intended to prevent states from drawing legislative maps that weaken the influence of voters of color. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, both Republicans, joined with all three of the Court’s Democrats in Milligan.
The dispute in Callais began with a Louisiana congressional map that included only one Black-majority district (out of six total), despite the fact that Black Americans make up about a third of Louisiana voters. In Milligan, the Supreme Court ordered Alabama to redraw a similarly gerrymandered map to include a second Black-majority district.
That similarity means there’s really no question how the Callais case should be decided. Nevertheless, this case is complicated because it forces the Supreme Court to resolve a conflict between two different federal courts, each of which has weighed in on Louisiana’s maps. One faithfully applied precedents like Milligan, ruling the state’s original maps needed to be redrawn; the other outright defied precedents requiring new maps.
Also complicating matters is that this Court’s Voting Rights Act decisions often depart from the text of the law, they frequently are at odds with established precedents, and they almost always seek to narrow the scope of this landmark statute. Moreover, while Kavanaugh provided the fifth vote to retain preexisting law in Milligan, he also penned a brief concurring opinion suggesting that Congress’s power to enact laws that sometimes require “race-based redistricting cannot extend indefinitely into the future.”
These factors make every racial gerrymandering case that reaches the Supreme Court an alarming event for voting rights lawyers, because each case provides an opportunity for the Court to do great damage to the Voting Rights Act.
And that means though this should be an open-and-shut case, there is still uncertainty about whether the Court will maintain the status quo, or if it will choose to radically reshape the country’s voting rights protections.
https://www.vox.com/scotus/403144/supreme-court-voting-rights-louisian
a-callais-gerrymandering
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Donald Trump apparently left one big point out of the readout of his call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has demanded that the United States and its allies end military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine in order for hostilities to end.
Putin reportedly made this point during his phone call with President Trump on Tuesday, and the detail was conveniently not mentioned in the White House’s readout of the call.
Regardless of why Russia would want military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine to end, it’s telling that the White House didn’t mention this demand.
Perhaps they thought it would be hashed out in negotiations, or that Russia wouldn’t mention it again. Either way, it doesn’t speak well of Russia’s intentions for a postwar Ukraine, and no one outside of the White House or Kremlin is going to like it.
https://newrepublic.com/post/192885/putin-demand-ukraine-intel-trump-c
all
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Thanks to Trump, Germany Is Re-Arming For War With Russia. Here’s What Hundreds Of Billions Of Dollars Will Buy.
Mar 18, 2025, 05:52pm EDT
Berlin wants to add 20,000 people to its current military payroll. The extra billets will help the German army stand up a mechanized brigade it plans to permanently station in Lithuania as a deterrent against further Russian aggression.
If Russia defeats Ukraine — possibly as a consequence of Trump fully abandoning Ukraine or even actively siding with Russia — this brigade and other European forces might be the only thing standing between a battle-hardened Russian army and the free countries of Europe.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/03/18/germany-is-re-arming-
for-war-with-russia-heres-what-hundreds-of-billions-of-dollars-will-buy/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Germany is incapable of rearming. It doesn't have cheap energy and it doesn't have the basic resources (except coal), so it can't reindustrialize.
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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:Signym, what you just wrote is equivalent to claiming that Germany can't build nukes to hit Russia because Russia won't allow it. If Germany doesn't rearm, or doesn't build nukes, it is because Germans choose to lounge around as cheese-eating surrender monkeys would. In America, the typical Trumptard is an angry, hungry surrender monkey who blames Democrats for not giving them enough cheese. It is imaginable that Germans would have the same screwed up mental picture of reality that Trumptards have. Look at 6ixStringJack. He could have everything but he has almost nothing because of his poor behavior. Look at Trump's terrible personal behavior that he and his followers deny he did. So it is with Trumptards all around me. They don't get what they want because the amount of self-control, discipline and personal energy is higher than they have.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Germany is incapable of rearming. It doesn't have cheap energy and it doesn't have the basic resources (except coal), so it can't reindustrialize.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Smears, Sadism and Social Security
Why Elon Musk wants to make seniors suffer
By Paul Krugman | Mar 19, 2025
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/smears-sadism-and-social-security
We often think of Social Security as a retirement program, which it is; most Social Security beneficiaries achieve that status simply by reaching retirement age. But the program also helps Americans with disabilities that prevent them from working or limit their ability to work, and for millions of people these benefits are a crucial lifeline.
Now the Social Security Administration, following orders from Elon Musk’s DOGE, appears set to subject disabled Americans to immense hardship. And everything we know indicates that this act of cruelty is mainly motivated by a combination of ego and spite.
The story so far: On March 12 the Washington Post reported that the Social Security Administration was considering ending phone service for Americans filing retirement or disability claims. The SSA quickly backed off that idea — sort of. The day after the Post report, however, the agency circulated an internal memo — acquired by the newsletter Popular Information — laying out a plan that would be almost equally destructive.
Under this plan, beneficiaries would still be able to call the SSA. But they would have to verify their identity either over the internet or through in-person visits to field offices.
Bear in mind that we’re talking about older and/or disabled Americans, many of whom are unable to access the internet and physically unable to visit SSA offices — which would in any case be overwhelmed by the increased traffic, given that the agency is already facing large staffing cuts. So this would be a move of almost cartoonish cruelty and a nightmare for millions of Americans.
Why do this? The alleged justification is to combat fraud. But ProPublica has acquired audio of a closed meeting held with Leland Dudek, the Social Security Administration’s acting administrator, in which he acknowledged that fraudulent benefit claims are not, in fact, a serious problem.
So what the Musk is going on here? This plan would save some money, not by eliminating fraud, but by effectively cutting off aid to Americans who are legally entitled to that aid, and specifically those who need it most. But I don’t think the savings are the point.
My guess, instead, is that it’s an ego thing, that Social Security has become to Musk what Canada has become to Donald Trump. Both men at one point said something stupid, something that would have turned them into laughingstocks if there weren’t so much fear in the air. But both men have been unable to let go, doubling down in what amounts to an attempt to redeem their initial foolishness.
In case you’ve forgotten, back in December, when Justin Trudeau visited Mar-a-Lago, Trump taunted him by suggesting that Canada become a U.S. state, calling him “Governor Trudeau.” Some people suggested that it was meant as a joke, but it would be more accurate to call it a dominance display.
But once Trump realized how ridiculous the performance made him look, he refused to let go. Instead, annexing Canada seems to have become a fundamental plank of Trump’s foreign policy, with his demands getting ever more insistent the more obvious it becomes that Canadians loathe the idea.
Musk’s big blooper was his claim that millions of dead people are receiving Social Security checks. This claim probably reflected the failure of young Musk staffers — what Dudek called the “DOGE kids” — to understand how the SSA’s databases work, combined with a complete lack of common sense. I mean, if there really were huge numbers of dead people receiving Social Security payments, don’t you think someone else would have noticed?
In a normal political environment, getting something that big that wrong would have destroyed Musk’s credibility and led to his permanent exile from any role in setting policy. But this is America in 2025, so Trump amplified the already-refuted claim when addressing Congress, and Musk seems more powerful
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WHAT HAPPENED TODAY THAT YOU SHOULD KNOW - #47
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
https://govbrief.today/daily-posts/
1. Trump pledged during his campaign to end the Ukraine war within 24 hours, now admits achieving a ceasefire is "tough," after Putin agrees only to halt energy attacks.
2. No New Revelations Yet in JFK Files Trump Calls 'Fully Declassified’
3. Second judge blocks Trump's transgender military ban, final order Friday.
4. Judge rules Musk's USAID purge violated Constitution, restores computer access but agency remains gutted.
5. Chief Justice Roberts rebukes calls for judge's impeachment; Trump claims statement wasn’t directed at him.
6. Social Security tightens ID rules, forcing millions into offices as closures worsen rural access.
7. Judge blocks Trump’s EPA from seizing $14B in climate grants-Citibank holds the funds in limbo.
8. White House torches France over a single MEP's Statue of Liberty comment, botches history in the process: "It's only because of the U.S. that the French aren't speaking German."
9. Trump fires FTC's only two Democrats, violating Supreme Court precedent, ex-commissioners say.
10. Minnesota senator behind 'Trump derangement syndrome' bill arrested for child solicitation. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/03/18/minnesota-sena
tor-justin-eichorn-trump-derangement-syndrome/82523535007/
11. Trump's EPA moves to eliminate science research office, cut 1,000+ experts, critics call it illegal.
12. Trump administration shuts down war crimes database, blocks transfer of records on kidnapped Ukrainian children.
13. AG Bondi calls Tesla vandalism 'domestic terrorism,' vows severe penalties as left-wing protesters target showrooms.
14. Trump administration threatens NYC commuter funding over subway crime, despite 40% drop since 2020.
15. Trump administration considers drastic cuts to HIV prevention funding, CDC reorganization looms.
16. Trump guts DHS unit credited with disrupting 1,000+ domestic terror plots.
17. Trump's FTC erases four years of consumer protection blogs, scrubbing Al and privacy guidance for Amazon, Microsoft, and Big Tech.
18. Trump administration considers giving up permanent U.S. command of NATO forces, seen as step toward exit from alliance. - https://govbrief.today/daily-headlines/trump-administration-considers-
giving-up-permanent-u-s-command-of-nato-forces-seen-as-step-toward-exit-from-alliance/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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As part of its evisceration of US international aid, the Trump administration is ending funding for its global TB programs.
More than 1 million people die of tuberculosis every year. They don’t have to.
By Dylan Scott / Mar 19, 2025 at 6:36 AM
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/404861/john-green-tuberculosis-trum
p-aid-cuts
Tuberculosis is no longer the threat it once was in the US and Europe, but the disease is still killing more than 1 million people worldwide every year.
Humanity’s battle against tuberculosis has been one of slow and imperfect progress. The disease no longer kills one in seven people in the US, as it did in the 19th century. But look elsewhere and its burden is still terrible: TB killed more than 1.2 million people in 2023, likely making it once again the deadliest infection on Earth, after it was briefly supplanted by Covid-19 during the pandemic.
And as John Green, the YA author, YouTuber, and author of the new book Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection, told me in an interview: “That number is about to go up.”
As part of its evisceration of US international aid, the Trump administration is ending funding for its global TB programs. The US is the world’s largest single funder of tuberculosis treatment, and the spending cuts quickly interrupted medical care for TB victims. And any delay in treatment can lead to worse outcomes for patients and makes it more likely the bacteria will evolve to resist antibiotics.
“All of this is a direct result of the decisions made by the US government,” Green told me. “Allowing tuberculosis to spread unchecked throughout the world is bad news for all humans.”
There may be as many as 10 million additional TB cases by 2030 because of the cuts, depending on how deep they ultimately are, according to one initial estimate. An additional 2.2 million people could die in that worst-case scenario.
It’s difficult to know what’s happening on the ground, as ongoing lawsuits try force aid funding to resume and the Trump administration itself has given conflicting information at times. One TB program director told The Guardian last week their funding had still not resumed despite receiving a reassurance from the administration that it would.
The funding freeze is not only a threat to people in the developing world who live with tuberculosis as an ever-present threat, Green told me — it also poses a risk to the US itself. Right now, Kansas has 68 active TB cases, one of the largest US outbreaks in recent history. One estimate from the Center for Global Development finds that US TB cases will rise in parallel with cases in the rest of the world. That won’t just increase health care costs — it will increase the risk that TB will become more drug-resistant and therefore deadlier to people around the world, including in the US.
I spoke with Green about the history of one of humanity’s oldest infectious diseases, the threat posed by the Trump administration’s cuts, and what concerned people can do in response.
Our conversation is below, edited for clarity and length.
What is the state of tuberculosis right now? Why do people in the US and other wealthy countries often think of it as a disease of the past, a problem that has been solved?
I used to think of it as a disease of the past as well. I thought of TB primarily as the disease that killed John Keats, and then we figured out a solution to it, so now it’s not a threat anymore.
But in fact, tuberculosis is still the world’s deadliest infectious disease. It kills over 1.2 million people per year. That number is about to go up. It sickens about 10 million people per year. Around a quarter of all living humans have experienced a TB infection.
Now, the vast majority of those people will never become sick. They’ll have what we call latent TB, where these clumps of white blood cells form what are called tubercles to surround the bacteria and keep it in check. But in about 10 percent of people who experience a TB infection, they will become sick
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‘It’s a Heist’: Real Federal Auditors Are Horrified by DOGE
By Vittoria Elliott | Mar 18, 2025 4:04 PM
https://www.wired.com/story/federal-auditors-doge-elon-musk/
Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has spent the first six weeks of the new Trump administration turning the federal government upside down. It has moved from agency to agency, accessing sensitive data and payment systems, all on a supposed crusade to audit the government and stop fraud, waste, and abuse. DOGE has posted some of its “findings” on its website, many of which have been revealed to be errors.
But two federal auditors with years of experience, who have both worked on financial and technical audits for the government, say that DOGE’s actions are the furthest thing from what an actual audit looks like. Both asked to speak on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t permitted to speak to the press.
“Honestly, comparing real auditing to what DOGE is doing, there’s no comparison,” says one of the auditors who spoke to WIRED. “None of them are auditors.”
In September, in a speech during the presidential campaign, then candidate Donald Trump said that he would create a government efficiency task force, headed by Musk, which would do a “complete financial and performance audit of the entire federal government.” Musk initially said that he wanted to cut $2 trillion from the federal budget, more than the entire 2023 discretionary budget of $1.7 trillion. Musk has since tempered his ambitions, saying he’d aim to cut $1 trillion in government spending. Still, he has alleged that much of this money can be cut by identifying waste, fraud, and abuse, and has continued to claim DOGE’s cuts of agency staff and resources are all part of an audit.
While there are certainly instances of government money siphoned off to fraud—a Government Accountability Office study published in 2024 estimated that the government loses between $233 billion and $521 billion to fraud each year—even recovering all that spending wouldn’t amount to the $1 trillion Musk hopes to cut from the budget.
The auditors who spoke to WIRED allege that not only is Musk’s claim not true, but also that DOGE appears to have completely eschewed the existing processes for actually rooting out waste, fraud, and abuse.
“An audit that follows Generally Accepted Government Auditing Standards (GAGAS), also known as a Yellow Book audit, is conducted in accordance with the standards issued by the US Government Accountability Office,” says the first auditor. Audits can focus on the finances, compliance, or performance of an agency. “That is the gold standard for how you audit the government.”
There are generally five phases of a GAGAS audit, the auditors tell WIRED: planning, evidence gathering, evaluation, reporting, and follow up. Auditors work to define the scope of an audit, identify all the applicable laws and standards, and come up with an audit plan. Next, auditors conduct interviews with staff, review financial records, and comb through data, reports, and transactions, documenting all the way. From there, auditors will assess that information against policies or procedures to figure out if there’s been some kind of alleged waste, fraud, or abuse and issue a report detailing their findings and offering recommendations. Often, those reports are made available to the public. After an audit, the auditors can follow up with the agency to ensure changes are being made.
There are also very technical definitions for what constitutes waste, fraud, or abuse. Waste could mean that there are inefficiencies in a program that might lead to purchasing more of something that goes unused, or paying more for a service than is necessary. Fraud involves intentional deception—for instance, bribery or falsifying business records. Abuse means doing things that aren’t necessarily illegal, but that are unethical. This could look like nepotism or favoritism in hiring, or spending excessively on travel.
In a recent interview with podcaster Joe Rogan, Musk said
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Putin Trolls Trump with Power Station Strike After ‘Ceasefire’
The Russian president agreed to halt the targeting of Ukrainian energy infrastructure in a Tuesday call with Trump. That apparently didn’t last long.
By Julia Ornedo | Mar. 19 2025 9:34 AM EDT
https://www.thedailybeast.com/putin-trolls-trump-with-power-station-st
rike-after-ceasefire/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The Common Genius of Lincoln and Einstein
The president and the physicist teach us a lesson about Moral Genius. Like high-achieving individuals in science or the arts, moral geniuses are willing to stand against conventional opinion. Trump and Musk are also willing to stand against conventional opinion about morality and seek to overthrow it, making them Immoral Geniuses.
By Andrew O’Hehir | October 2, 2014
https://nautil.us/the-common-genius-of-lincoln-and-einstein-235125/
Abraham Lincoln would still be remembered today as a self-taught prairie prodigy and an astute political operator who crushed the Confederate uprising, even without the Gettysburg Address, the Emancipation Proclamation, and the end of slavery. Albert Einstein would still be the most famous physicist of the 20th century, and the author of the most famous equation in history, had he not called on his fellow scientists to address the moral consequences of their discoveries, speaking out against war and nuclear weapons. But both men possessed a quality that went beyond their immense talents in politics and science and elevated them to world-historical stature: an ambiguous but distinctive quality that scientists, historians, and philosophers have begun to call moral genius. By suggesting that morality can, like math or chemistry or musical composition, admit of genius-level contributions, the phrase challenges us to reconsider the nature of genius itself.
Columbia University philosopher Elliot Paul observes that at first glance a great moral leader does not appear “creative” in the same sense as a revolutionary artist or a brilliant scientist. The ideas represented by Lincoln or Einstein or Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King Jr., in their capacity as moral leaders, were not necessarily new. A great many 19th century Americans were deeply uncomfortable with slavery and understood that it conflicted with the nation’s alleged ideals on a fundamental level. Einstein was hardly the only person, or the only physicist, to notice that the immense scientific advance of splitting the atom threatened the human race with extinction. King and Gandhi personally experienced racial discrimination and saw it as a corrosive moral wrong that sickened entire societies, but they were certainly not alone.
What these people did that was creative and distinctive was to seize the moment—to recognize a great moral wrong and embrace the idea that they had a unique responsibility, and ability, to do something about it. Psychological theory on the subject of unusual creativity has often focused on the idea that genius is a self-created phenomenon. In the words of the late psychologist Howard Gruber, genius is best understood as “an organization that was constructed by the person himself in the course of his life, in the course of his work, as needed in order to meet the tasks that he encountered.” (Gruber’s gendered pronouns reflected standard usage at the time, highlighting the fact that women have historically been excluded from the category.)
Like high-achieving individuals in science or the arts, Paul suggests, moral geniuses are willing to stand against conventional opinion, often within their own nation or community, and seek to overthrow it. That kind of individual courage, we might say, becomes the subject or the text of the moral genius’s greatness. While the specifics vary greatly, we could describe a moral genius as someone who rejects the innate caution and the hypocritical compromises of normative social morality. (King’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” his most sustained accomplishment in rhetorical prose, addresses precisely this issue.) “To become a moral leader is a demanding and inherently risky thing to do,” says William B. Irvine, a professor of philosophy at Wright State University and author of the forthcoming book Aha! The Moments of Insight That Shape Our World. “And moral leadership is most important in a situation where everybody is going to look down on you as a social traitor.” Gandhi opposed not just British imperialism but also H
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Navajo Code Talkers disappear from military websites after Trump DEI order
By Erin Alberty | Mar 17, 2025
https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2025/03/17/navajo-code-talk
ers-trump-dei-military-websites-wwii
Articles about the renowned Native American Code Talkers have disappeared from some military websites, with several broken URLs now labeled "DEI."
Why it matters: From 1942 to 1945, the Navajo Code Talkers were instrumental in every major Marine Corps operation in the Pacific Theater of World War II.
They were critical to securing America's victory at Iwo Jima.
Driving the news: Axios identified at least 10 articles mentioning the Code Talkers that had disappeared from the U.S. Army and Department of Defense websites as of Monday.
How it works: The Defense department's URLs were amended with the letters DEI, suggesting they were removed following President Trump's executive order ending federal diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
The Internet Archive shows the deleted Army pages were live as recently as November, with many visible until February or March. None are shown with error messages until Trump took office.
The other side: Asked about the missing pages, Pentagon Press Secretary John Ullyot replied in a statement: "As Secretary [Pete] Hegseth has said, DEI is dead at the Defense Department. ... We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the Department with the directive removing DEI content from all platforms."
The statement did not address whether the Code Talkers are considered divisive DEI figures that "erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution." Indigenous Americans have enlisted in the U.S. military at a rate five times the national average, per Trump's own proclamation in 2018. That proclamation has also been removed.
More at https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2025/03/17/navajo-code-talk
ers-trump-dei-military-websites-wwii
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:So?
It’s bad for farmers who provide food aid.
Quote:Our TB cases are mostly imported. If we control our borders this won't be a problem.
It’s bad for overall human health in the United States. We’re seeing our own numbers of tuberculosis cases go up every year, and that will accelerate now.
-----------
"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:
If Einstein looks like a universally revered figure in the rear-view mirror, it did not always seem so during his life: He was the subject of extensive FBI surveillance and harassment, and consistently depicted as a traitorous or unpatriotic Communist sympathizer by right-wing critics.
So, I guess when I'm called a Russian troll Einstein is right beside me.
-----------
"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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For all the "auditing" that's been done, the Federal government is $35 trillion in debt.
The government needs more than an audit. It needs a severe trimming, with an eye to furthering our core missions but eliminating non-essential spending i.e. spending that doesn't help America and Americans.
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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:Did I tell you that Trumptards can't tell the difference between reality and imagination? At least all the ones I know can't and it causes endless trouble for them, troubles that they don't blame on their mental handicaps. They never blame themselves for the crappy lives they live.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:So?
It’s bad for farmers who provide food aid.Quote:Our TB cases are mostly imported. If we control our borders this won't be a problem.
It’s bad for overall human health in the United States. We’re seeing our own numbers of tuberculosis cases go up every year, and that will accelerate now.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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How Oklahoma’s superintendent set off a holy war in classrooms
Even for the devout, Ryan Walters’ mandate requiring that public school students learn from the Bible goes too far
By Linda K. Wertheimer | March 17, 2025
Walters’s pitch is a play for national attention, given his abundance of social media posts praising Donald Trump, who campaigned on returning prayer to schools and as president has established a White House Faith Office and a task force to root out “anti-Christian bias.” In September, Walters proposed spending $3 million to buy 55,000 copies of the Bible that has been endorsed by the president and for which he receives royalties.
But beyond Walter’s national aspirations, the Bible mandate also seems like an attempt at one-upmanship, with other states angling to infuse Christianity into public schools. Louisiana, for instance, is in a court battle over its push for Ten Commandments posters in schools. Texas fought off Democratic opposition to approve an optional Bible-infused curriculum and financial incentives for school districts that use the materials. A slew of states have passed or promoted similar measures, including ones allowing chaplains to act as counselors in schools. Unsurprisingly, Walters, too, has advocated for displaying the Ten Commandments in every classroom.
“He’s saying you can’t be a good American citizen if you don’t understand the Bible. It’s this merger of American and Christian identities, the idea that only Christians are true Americans.”
More at https://hechingerreport.org/how-oklahomas-superintendent-set-off-a-hol
y-war-in-classrooms/
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:Did I tell you that Trumptards can't tell the difference between reality and imagination? At least all the ones I know can't and it causes endless trouble for them, troubles that they don't blame on their mental handicaps. They never blame themselves for the crappy lives they live.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:So?
It’s bad for farmers who provide food aid.Quote:Our TB cases are mostly imported. If we control our borders this won't be a problem.
It’s bad for overall human health in the United States. We’re seeing our own numbers of tuberculosis cases go up every year, and that will accelerate now.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
REALITY:
Quote:
* Nationally, 76 percent of TB cases in 2023 occurred in foreign-born patients.[4]
* Counties, states and metropolitan areas with high foreign-born populations have higher TB rates than those with lower foreign-born populations.[5]
* Some countries of origin for both legal and illegal aliens have TB rates as high as 60 times the U.S. rate.[6]
* The government’s health screening for TB in potential immigrants is deficient; some categories of aliens do not undergo health screening at all.[7]
* Latent TB is not grounds for inadmissibility, even though the progression of latent TB accounts for over 80 percent of active TB cases in the U.S.[8]
* Some U.S. border counties have TB rates exceeding rates in high-risk countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Lebanon.[9]
* The cost of treating each case of TB is over $20,000, and can reach over $500,000 if the case is extensively drug-resistant.[10]
https://www.fairus.org/issue/tuberculosis-mass-migration-drives-its-pr
evalence-united-states
-----------
"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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FWIW ... you won't find me 100% for everything that Trump is doing. You won't find me 100% against, either. I'm not trying to take a "middle road", I'm trying to be realistic about how we can improve America FOR AMERICANS.
-----------
"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 second:
Navajo Code Talkers disappear from military websites after Trump DEI order
By Erin Alberty | Mar 17, 2025
https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2025/03/17/navajo-code-talk
ers-trump-dei-military-websites-wwii
Articles about the renowned Native American Code Talkers have disappeared from some military websites, with several broken URLs now labeled "DEI."
Why it matters: From 1942 to 1945, the Navajo Code Talkers were instrumental in every major Marine Corps operation in the Pacific Theater of World War II.
They were critical to securing America's victory at Iwo Jima.
Driving the news: Axios identified at least 10 articles mentioning the Code Talkers that had disappeared from the U.S. Army and Department of Defense websites as of Monday.
How it works: The Defense department's URLs were amended with the letters DEI, suggesting they were removed following President Trump's executive order ending federal diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
The Internet Archive shows the deleted Army pages were live as recently as November, with many visible until February or March. None are shown with error messages until Trump took office.
The other side: Asked about the missing pages, Pentagon Press Secretary John Ullyot replied in a statement: "As Secretary [Pete] Hegseth has said, DEI is dead at the Defense Department. ... We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the Department with the directive removing DEI content from all platforms."
The statement did not address whether the Code Talkers are considered divisive DEI figures that "erode camaraderie and threaten mission execution." Indigenous Americans have enlisted in the U.S. military at a rate five times the national average, per Trump's own proclamation in 2018. That proclamation has also been removed.
More at https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2025/03/17/navajo-code-talk
ers-trump-dei-military-websites-wwii
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
No surprise the code talkers are being erased. I saw this coming. Many historical Indigenous figures I am sure will be erased as well.
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Quote:The Trumptards I know in Texas are all depraved racists who insist they are not racists, claiming they are the REAL Americans, and people who aren't precisely like them are not:
Originally posted by Brenda:
No surprise the code talkers are being erased. I saw this coming. Many historical Indigenous figures I am sure will be erased as well.
Jackie Robinson’s Army career wiped from military website in DEI purge
By Curtis Bunn | March 19, 2025, 3:24 PM CDT
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/jackie-robinson-army-history-dei-m
ilitary-department-defense-rcna197067
The military story of Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball after serving as a 2nd lieutenant in the Army, no longer exists on the Department of Defense’s website as part of the Trump administration’s wiping out of diversity, equity and inclusion within the federal government.
The Pentagon was ordered by Trump to scan federal websites for articles, social media posts, photos, news articles and videos to remove any web pages that “promote diversity, equity and inclusion.”
Several websites under Pentagon jurisdiction have removed thousands of pages documenting the history of people of color, LGBTQ people, women and others from marginalized backgrounds and their contributions to the American military. Multiple pages about Robinson were taken down, including a page about Negro League players talking about serving in the military. But as of Wednesday afternoon, at least one page about Robinson, in a series about athletes who served in the military, was reinstated.
“As Secretary Hegseth has said, DEI is dead at the Defense Department," Pentagon Press Secretary John Ullyot said Wednesday in a statement to NBC News. "Discriminatory Equity Ideology is a form of Woke cultural Marxism that has no place in our military. It Divides the force, Erodes unit cohesion and Interferes with the services’ core warfighting mission. We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the Department with the directive removing DEI content from all platforms. In the rare cases that content is removed -- either deliberately or by mistake -- that is out of the clearly outlined scope of the directive, we instruct the components and they correct the content accordingly.”
Robinson trained as an officer and was assigned to a tank regiment, but he still had to deal with harassment and the overall policy of segregation in the U.S. military. He faced a court-martial for refusing to sit in the back of a bus while at Fort Hood in Texas, according to Military.com. Though he was found not guilty of the six counts, including insubordination, the court-martial prevented him from deploying to fight in Europe with his battalion.
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:Quote:You get all huffy about gummint employees suckin' on the gummint teat, but you get plenty defensive when the shoe's on the othe foot, don't you?
SIX
and if that's really the case, then I don't give a single fuck about your judgement of my healthcare situation.
How about this, SIX ... instead of bitching and whining about poor little ole you, why don't you take that ginormous IQ you claim that you have, and DO something with it?
I know, it's not fair that you can climb out of the hole that youre in and others ... for lack of IQ ... can't. But instead of advocating for a better life for everyone, you insist that everybody be dragged down into the hole you insist on living in?
You remind me of a fable. There were two farmers, living side by side. One, by dint of hard work and a little good fortune, managed to scrape together enough to buy a cow.
The second farmer slowly grew consumed about his neighbor's good fortune.
One day, he heard a rustling in the leaves and came across a tiny creature trapped in a spider's web. So he carefully freed the little thing. The little creature, in a tiny voice, told him in return he would grant the farmer anything he wanted. Anything at all.
So the farmer thought about what he wanted more than anything in the whole world.Select to view spoiler:
SO HE WISHED HIS NEIGHBOR'S COW WAS DEAD.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
I don't bother trying anymore because hard work and intellect amount to nothing in this country. Especially if you're a white male.
They've fucked me over all my life, and I'm going to get by the rest of my life doing as little as I possibly can for money to exist.
I feel no sympathy for anybody else in the same position. Especially when they were overpaid, they were hired based off of inherited traits we have no control over, and their job doesn't even need to exist in the first place.
The difference between me and them is that they HAVE to go find another job now. They were the same people bitching the last 4 years that they can't even live on 6 figures anymore.
Boo Hoo
Better figure it out quick.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Next stop. The shuttering of the Department of Education.
Trump to Sign Order Shuttering the Department of Education Tomorrow
https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2025/03/19/trump-will-official
ly-sign-executive-order-closing-the-department-of-education-tomorrow-n2654109
You won't be missed.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:The Trumptards I know in Texas are all depraved racists who insist they are not racists, claiming they are the REAL Americans, and people who aren't precisely like them are not:
Originally posted by Brenda:
No surprise the code talkers are being erased. I saw this coming. Many historical Indigenous figures I am sure will be erased as well.
Jackie Robinson’s Army career wiped from military website in DEI purge
By Curtis Bunn | March 19, 2025, 3:24 PM CDT
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/jackie-robinson-army-history-dei-m
ilitary-department-defense-rcna197067
The military story of Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball after serving as a 2nd lieutenant in the Army, no longer exists on the Department of Defense’s website as part of the Trump administration’s wiping out of diversity, equity and inclusion within the federal government.
The Pentagon was ordered by Trump to scan federal websites for articles, social media posts, photos, news articles and videos to remove any web pages that “promote diversity, equity and inclusion.”
Several websites under Pentagon jurisdiction have removed thousands of pages documenting the history of people of color, LGBTQ people, women and others from marginalized backgrounds and their contributions to the American military. Multiple pages about Robinson were taken down, including a page about Negro League players talking about serving in the military. But as of Wednesday afternoon, at least one page about Robinson, in a series about athletes who served in the military, was reinstated.
“As Secretary Hegseth has said, DEI is dead at the Defense Department," Pentagon Press Secretary John Ullyot said Wednesday in a statement to NBC News. "Discriminatory Equity Ideology is a form of Woke cultural Marxism that has no place in our military. It Divides the force, Erodes unit cohesion and Interferes with the services’ core warfighting mission. We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the Department with the directive removing DEI content from all platforms. In the rare cases that content is removed -- either deliberately or by mistake -- that is out of the clearly outlined scope of the directive, we instruct the components and they correct the content accordingly.”
Robinson trained as an officer and was assigned to a tank regiment, but he still had to deal with harassment and the overall policy of segregation in the U.S. military. He faced a court-martial for refusing to sit in the back of a bus while at Fort Hood in Texas, according to Military.com. Though he was found not guilty of the six counts, including insubordination, the court-martial prevented him from deploying to fight in Europe with his battalion.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
It usually is people who have to declare that they aren't racists are the ones who are.
I am not surprised by this either and I should have seen this coming too.
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I hate to break it to everyone, but everybody is at least a little racist.
It's part of your genetic code.
And if you pretend that you aren't instinctively racist, than you are lying to yourself and everyone else around you, and you shouldn't be taken seriously.
You don't just wave a magic wand and remove that with ad campaigns and guilt.
Maybe one day if we all live in a true utopia and there is no more such thing as a scarcity of goods, it could eventually be bred out of people. But we don't seem to be going that way right now.
Prepare to see a lot of "racist" shit in the future. Not just here, but everywhere in the Western world. We're booting everyone out who doesn't belong. Not just here, but everywhere. And there's nothing anybody can do about it.
We're in a new age of Nationalism. Globalism is dead.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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You think you've been shit on because you're a white male?
Seriously??
Yanno what I think?
I think you've been propelled by Trump's candidacy. Now that he's been elected, you're in a SERIOUS slump. (Also, check that your blood sugar isn't averaging too low.)
Your life wasn't perfect, but it could have been worse. Hubby immigrated at 10 not knowing a word of English, but since nobody knew Hungarian he had to learn on his own. His dad was so abusive his mom had a breakdown and became catatonic for a while. He attended University for a couple of years but had to drop out for lack of money, and lived in an abandoned barn while he worked as a mason's helper and paid back his college debt. Got a job doing soldering for General Dynamics and got laid off. Self taught motorcycle mechanic. Self taught electronics designer. Self taught computer designer and programmer. Worked his way up from repair to designing and building research equipment for a major university.
But then, walking thru a minefield at 8 y/o kind of prepares you for doing what you have to do to stay alive, and indulging in emotion isn't it.
So try to get out of that rut that you seem to be in. Get out and see your friends. Take a class in something that interests you. Handyman. EMT (IDK why but I can see you in that role. It's very hands on and often exciting.) Welding. Programming. If classes boggle you, get some counseling to figure out why, bc you're certainly bright enough to learn the material.
But wallowing in that slump isn't gonna do you any good. Ya gotta deal with those highs and lows like a serious issue, because from this angle it looks like they are.
-----------
"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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Re: racism.
People who grow up among people of different colors are inherently less racist than people who didn't. One of our daughters caregivers was black, and as part of her employment her two daughters were at our house after school. Dear daughter is less racist than I am, bc I grew up in such a lilly-white neighborhood there were no black kids in junior high and two in a high school of 2000.
AFA taking down info about the contributions of women or minorities ... as long as their achievements are at the same level or better as white males who merit attention, they should be noticed. Code talkers did something that even white males couldn't: their language was, for WWII Japanese, an unbreakable code. They deserve attention.
-----------
"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:"everybody is at least a little racist." - 6ix
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I hate to break it to everyone, but everybody is at least a little racist.
It's part of your genetic code.
And if you pretend that you aren't instinctively racist, than you are lying to yourself and everyone else around you, and you shouldn't be taken seriously.
You don't just wave a magic wand and remove that with ad campaigns and guilt.
Maybe one day if we all live in a true utopia and there is no more such thing as a scarcity of goods, it could eventually be bred out of people. But we don't seem to be going that way right now.
Prepare to see a lot of "racist" shit in the future. Not just here, but everywhere in the Western world. We're booting everyone out who doesn't belong. Not just here, but everywhere. And there's nothing anybody can do about it.
We're in a new age of Nationalism. Globalism is dead.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Everybody poops, but if you do it on the floor in front of others, you are fired. Trump takes an enormous dump on the White House floor in front of cameras several times per day.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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WHAT HAPPENED TODAY THAT YOU SHOULD KNOW - #48
Wednesday, March 19, 2025 https://govbrief.today/
Full links at https://imgur.com/gallery/what-happened-today-48-SdVkkKd
1. Trump pushes Ukraine to hand over nuclear plant in ceasefire talks.
2. White House fact sheet confirms Trump’s plan to eliminate Department of Education.
3. Pentagon calls removal of Navajo Code Talker content a mistake, vows to restore it.
4. Fed Chair Powell says Trump's tariffs driving price increases as rates hold steady.
5. Judge orders transfer of two transgender women back to women’s prisons after Trump's order moved them to men’s facilities where they faced abuse.
6. Trump administration drops lawsuit against Texas law letting police arrest migrants, following similar moves in Iowa and Oklahoma.
7. Musk ally who helped slash programs at USAID & CFPB appointed to lead USAID role.
8. Texas Senate advances bills mandating Ten Commandments in classrooms and allowing school prayer.
9. AP publishes list of 26 Social Security offices to close this year, with closure dates.
10. For-profit prison company GEO Group fights to keep paying ICE detainees only $1 a day as profits soar under Trump.
11. Judge denies emergency request to stop Musk’s DOGE Service from dismantling U.S. Institute of Peace after law enforcement-assisted raid.
12. Trump's JFK files dump exposes Social Security numbers of over 200 people, including his former attorney and a CIA agent’s file.
13. Trump administration considers using active-duty military to detain migrants in buffer zone at southern border.
14. DHS arrests Indian-born Georgetown fellow Monday night, moves him to ICE facility in Louisiana over alleged views on U.S.-lsrael policy.
15. Trump administration freezes $175M in federal funding to UPenn over transgender athlete policy, despite school following NCAA rules.
16. Judge warns of "consequences" as Trump administration resists disclosing deportation flight details, while AG Bondi attacks court's authority.
17. Trump vows to 'annihilate' Iran-backed Houthis as U.S. escalates airstrikes in Yemen.
18. Musk donates legal max to GOP lawmakers backing Trump's push to impeach judges.
19. ICC president warns Trump’s sanctions are crippling court: staff quitting, payments blocked, and war crimes cases at risk.
20. French scientist denied U.S. entry after CBP flagged private messages criticizing Trump’s science cuts.
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:"everybody is at least a little racist." - 6ix
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I hate to break it to everyone, but everybody is at least a little racist.
It's part of your genetic code.
And if you pretend that you aren't instinctively racist, than you are lying to yourself and everyone else around you, and you shouldn't be taken seriously.
You don't just wave a magic wand and remove that with ad campaigns and guilt.
Maybe one day if we all live in a true utopia and there is no more such thing as a scarcity of goods, it could eventually be bred out of people. But we don't seem to be going that way right now.
Prepare to see a lot of "racist" shit in the future. Not just here, but everywhere in the Western world. We're booting everyone out who doesn't belong. Not just here, but everywhere. And there's nothing anybody can do about it.
We're in a new age of Nationalism. Globalism is dead.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Yeah. Everybody. That inlcudes you.
You think you hide your racism through the racism of low-expectations, but it's still there. Democratic party racism is all about maintaining the ability to cheat by telling everybody that we can't have voter ids because black people are too stupid and lazy to go out and get one. Meanwhile, every black person I've ever known has a driver's license.
Democratic Party racism is putting up signs all over Gary, IN that just say "Vote Democrat" with voting day on it. I've never seen "Vote Republican" signs in white neighborhoods.
Democratic Party racism is bussing black and other minority kids into white schools and then dumbing down the cirriculm and test scoring so far that the valedictorian of the school doesn't even know she couldn't read until she got to college.
The Democratic Party is cancer.
Quote:
Everybody poops, but if you do it on the floor in front of others, you are fired. Trump takes an enormous dump on the White House floor in front of cameras several times per day.
Trump has done far more in 7 weeks than Biden* would have done in 8 years. 70% of that so far has just been undoing the damage that your party did over the last 8 years.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:6ix, you don't read Krugman and never heard of Adam Tooze, but Krugman and Tooze carefully showed that Trump is an ignoramus about the economy.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Yeah. Everybody. That includes you.
You think you hide your racism through the racism of low-expectations, but it's still there. Democratic party racism is all about maintaining the ability to cheat by telling everybody that we can't have voter ids because black people are too stupid and lazy to go out and get one. Meanwhile, every black person I've ever known has a driver's license.
Democratic Party racism is putting up signs all over Gary, IN that just say "Vote Democrat" with voting day on it. I've never seen "Vote Republican" signs in white neighborhoods.
Democratic Party racism is bussing black and other minority kids into white schools and then dumbing down the cirriculm and test scoring so far that the valedictorian of the school doesn't even know she couldn't read until she got to college.
The Democratic Party is cancer.Quote:
Everybody poops, but if you do it on the floor in front of others, you are fired. Trump takes an enormous dump on the White House floor in front of cameras several times per day.
Trump has done far more in 7 weeks than Biden* would have done in 8 years. 70% of that so far has just been undoing the damage that your party did over the last 8 years.
The Emperor’s New Philosophy
Of drunkards, lampposts and economic doctrines
By Paul Krugman | Mar 20, 2025
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-emperors-new-philosophy
Today’s post will be short, because I’m on the road — actually at a conference in Belgium — with very little free time. But I thought I might weigh in to support and enlarge upon an exceptionally clear post by the always very good Adam Tooze about the commentariat’s sanewashing of Trumpian economic policy. I especially enjoyed seeing the normally calm Tooze come across as a bit angry. https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-363-stockholm-syndrome
What got Tooze going were multiple news analyses that tried to portray the vague concept of a “Mar-a-Lago Accord,” an attempt by the U.S. government to restructure the world financial system supposedly to its advantage, as reflecting a serious rethinking of international economic policy. If the plan, or maybe concept of a plan, or whatever doesn’t seem to make sense, that must be because Trump officials are playing some kind of deep game.
But why would you think that? Everything we know about the Trumpists’ approach to economic policy, or policy in general, suggests both that Trump himself has no understanding of economics — that he has prejudices rather than ideas — and that he surrounds himself with people who cater to his prejudices, that as Tooze puts it, the policy visions we’re getting from Trumpland have more in common with “a facelift pandering to the ignorant vanity of an old man than with economic policy as we have hitherto known it.”
Look, I understand that it’s more fun to write an article about the supposed emergence of a new economic philosophy than to write yet another article about how ignorant men are, once again, saying stupid things. And I guess some journalists are uncomfortable at the thought that people with great power to shape policy have no idea (or rather nothing but false ideas) what they’re doing.
But trying to put an intellectual gloss on Trumpist international economic policy is sanewashing that misinforms readers rather than helping their understanding.
We actually know what Trump and the people around him — people selected because they agreed, or pretended to agree, with his prejudices — believe about international economic policy. Before Trump first took office, Wilbur Ross and Peter Navarro — who is still, as far as we can tell, the single most influential figure setting trade policy — put out a “white paper” centered on one simple fallacy. This was the claim that you can take this:
G
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:6ix, you don't read Krugman and never heard of Adam Tooze, but Krugman and Tooze carefully showed that Trump is an ignoramus about the economy.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Yeah. Everybody. That includes you.
You think you hide your racism through the racism of low-expectations, but it's still there. Democratic party racism is all about maintaining the ability to cheat by telling everybody that we can't have voter ids because black people are too stupid and lazy to go out and get one. Meanwhile, every black person I've ever known has a driver's license.
Democratic Party racism is putting up signs all over Gary, IN that just say "Vote Democrat" with voting day on it. I've never seen "Vote Republican" signs in white neighborhoods.
Democratic Party racism is bussing black and other minority kids into white schools and then dumbing down the cirriculm and test scoring so far that the valedictorian of the school doesn't even know she couldn't read until she got to college.
The Democratic Party is cancer.Quote:
Everybody poops, but if you do it on the floor in front of others, you are fired. Trump takes an enormous dump on the White House floor in front of cameras several times per day.
Trump has done far more in 7 weeks than Biden* would have done in 8 years. 70% of that so far has just been undoing the damage that your party did over the last 8 years.
Krugman is an idiot who's predictions never come true.
I never said I didn't read him though.
I read a lot of your lefty bullshit. In fact, I read far more lefty shit than anything else.
I'm sure Tooze is another grifter loser if you're a fan.
In the meantime, I'm enjoying watching Globalism die and watching your overpaid shills lose their shit about it.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:Trump has a specific plan to kill Globalism. The Mar-a-Lago Accord is, on its face, a far-fetched policy proposal and it is easy to pick holes in it.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I read a lot of your lefty bullshit. In fact, I read far more lefty shit than anything else.
I'm sure Tooze is another grifter loser if you're a fan.
In the meantime, I'm enjoying watching Globalism die and watching your overpaid shills lose their shit about it.
By Adam Tooze | Mar 19, 2025
https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-363-stockholm-syndrome
What is the Mar-a-Lago Accord?
The US gives the rest of the world:
1. Security
2. Access to US markets/US consumers
The US gets from the rest of the world:
1. A weaker dollar
2. A bigger manufacturing sector
3. Existing US Treasury debt swapped to new Treasury century bonds (100 year maturity. The longest maturity for U.S. Treasury bonds currently available to investors is 30 years.)
Two tools to achieve such an outcome:
1. Tariffs to exert pressure on countries to sign the Mar-a-Lago Accord and to grow the US manufacturing sector
2. A US sovereign wealth fund that can be used to buy foreign currencies to depreciate the dollar
Q1: Why is a Mar-a-Lago Accord in the news?
President Trump aims to restructure global trade by addressing the overvalued dollar, seen as the root cause of U.S. trade deficits. Inspired by an essay by Stephen Miran (Trump’s economic advisor), the Accord proposes weakening the dollar, similar to the 1985 Plaza Accord.
Q2: Key observations of the essay?
The U.S. trade deficit stems from dollar overvaluation driven by inelastic demand for U.S. Treasuries and Foreign Exchange interventions by trading partners. No viable alternative reserve currencies (e.g., eurozone fragmentation, China’s capital controls) exacerbate the issue.
Q3: Key recommendations?
Two paths: 1) Multilateral “Mar-a-Lago Accord” with allies to weaken the dollar via coordinated policies.
2) Unilateral measures (tariffs, security threats) if partners resist
Q4: How would the Accord work?
Key nations (eurozone, China, Japan) would sell dollars/Treasuries from reserves. Incentives include lower tariffs; challenges include reluctance from China/eurozone and market instability from reserve managers selling Treasuries.
Q5: Unilateral approach?
1) Impose a “user fee” on foreign Treasury holdings to drive out reserve managers. 2) Expand the U.S. Exchange Stabilization Fund or sell gold reserves. Risks include inflation and market dislocation.
Q6: Impact on Treasuries?
Forced swaps to century bonds could trigger defaults and rating downgrades. Voluntary swaps avoid default but face market skepticism. Treasury yields could rise, losing benchmark status to corporate debt
Q7: Sequencing of the blueprint?
Tariffs and security threats first to create leverage. Reciprocal tariffs in April 2025 signal intent Fed cooperation (post-2026 leadership change) may mitigate bond market fallout
Q8: Implications for the dollar?
Short-term dollar strength (to offset tariff-driven inflation), followed by long-term decline post-Accord. JPY (Japanese yen) could surge 20-25% due to undervaluation and safe-haven demand.
Q9: Opportunities for Europe?
Euro could gain reserve status if the dollar weakens. Requires eurozone joint debt issuance and Capital Markets Union to address fragmentation.
Q10: Other takeaways?
Higher financial volatility, reassessment of sovereign risk premia, and shifts to non-U.S. assets. Risks include destabilizing Treasury markets and counterproductive dollar strength.
More at https://adamtooze.substack.com/p/chartbook-363-stockholm-syndrome
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:Lie. And stupid. Ukraine can't "hand over" what it doesn't control.
Originally posted by second:
WHAT HAPPENED TODAY THAT YOU SHOULD KNOW - #48
Wednesday, March 19, 2025 https://govbrief.today/
Full links at https://imgur.com/gallery/what-happened-today-48-SdVkkKd
1.Trump pushes Ukraine to hand over nuclear plant in ceasefire talks.
Quote:Please justify its existence, based on the current srate of education.
2.White House fact sheet confirms Trump’s plan to eliminate Department of Education.
Quote:Good. Navajo Code Talkers were important and unique contributors to the WWII effort.
3.Pentagon calls removal of Navajo Code Talker content a mistake, vows to restore it.
Quote:Looking for prices increases and not seeing any yet. Wish he had been more specific.
4. Fed Chair Powell says Trump's tariffs driving price increases as rates hold steady.
Quote:I hate to tell people this, but men's prisons are abusive, period.
5.Judge orders transfer of two transgender women back to women’s prisons after Trump's order moved them to men’s facilities where they faced abuse.
Just OOC what happens to gays, and prisoners convicated of child abuse?
Quote:Good.
6.Trump administration drops lawsuit against Texas law letting police arrest migrants, following similar moves in Iowa and Oklahoma.
Quote:I assume this means he won't expand USAID programs to "regime change" operations? If so, good.
7 Musk ally who helped slash programs at USAID & CFPB appointed to lead USAID role.
Quote:Unconstitutional.
8. Texas Senate advances bills mandating Ten Commandments in classrooms and allowing school prayer.
It's Texas. What can I say?
Quote:one office, every other state? Doesn't seem like much.
9.AP publishes list of 26 Social Security offices to close this year, with closure dates.
Quote:Why are we paying ICE detainees anything?
10.For-profit prison company GEO Group fights to keep paying ICE detainees only $1 a day as profits soar under Trump.
Quote:It hasn't done much good, has it?
11.Judge denies emergency request to stop Musk’s DOGE Service from dismantling U.S. Institute of Peace after law enforcement-assisted raid.
Quote:Are those people alive? If they were 33 in 1963, that would make them 93 y/o now.
12.Trump's JFK files dump exposes Social Security numbers of over 200 people, including his former attorney and a CIA agent’s file.
Quote:I know there is a law forbidding active duty in the USA to enforce state law and keep the peace, but that seems to conflict with the military's essential role, which is to DEFEND THE BORDERS OF THE USA, The writers of the law never seemed to have considered the idea that the USA might actually be invaded.
13. Trump administration considers using active-duty military to detain migrants in buffer zone at southern border.
Quote:Is he a citizen or legal permanent resident? What is his status?
14.DHS arrests Indian-born Georgetown fellow Monday night, moves him to ICE facility in Louisiana over alleged views on U.S.-lsrael policy.
Quote:If you get Federal funding, you have to follow Federal rules. It's been that way for ages, and was used to enforce DEI policies. I've seen the contracts. You weren't complaining then.
15. Trump administration freezes $175M in federal funding to UPenn over transgender athlete policy, despite school following NCAA rules.
Deal with it.
Quote:Judge is out of bounds.
16.Judge warns of "consequences" as Trump administration resists disclosing deportation flight details, while AG Bondi attacks court's authority.
Quote:Trump's mideast policies are dysfunctional and don't represent American interests.
17.Trump vows to 'annihilate' Iran-backed Houthis as U.S. escalates airstrikes in Yemen.
Quote:
18.Musk donates legal max to GOP lawmakers backing
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Quote:“This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post Tuesday.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:Judge is out of bounds.
16.Judge warns of "consequences" as Trump administration resists disclosing deportation flight details, while AG Bondi attacks court's authority.
Chief Justice John Roberts pushed back against President Donald Trump and his allies’ calls to impeach judges who’ve ruled against the administration.
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” Roberts said Tuesday in a rare and brief statement issued just hours after Trump publicly joined demands by his supporters to remove judges he called “crooked.”
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/03/18/john-roberts-donald-trump-imp
each-federal-judges-00235742
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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I Worked Myself to the Bone My Whole Life. Under Trump, Everything I’ve Saved Is Slowly Slipping Away.
Work Till You Die
Unlike many in my family, I have a small retirement fund. Now I might never be able to stop working.
By Bobbi Dempsey | March 20, 2025 5:45 AM
https://slate.com/life/2025/03/stock-market-401k-news-today-donald-tru
mp-elon-musk-social-security.html
I come from a line of poverty that goes back several generations. Many of my relatives—including my mother—lived in poverty for their entire lives. They could only focus on day-to-day survival and worrying about how they would get their next meal. For us, this meant that retirement planning was never something we discussed. In fact, I don’t ever recall hearing the word retirement mentioned at all. The idea of having a nest egg or a financial safety net felt like a totally foreign concept.
Now, because of recent economic developments in the United States, coupled with the potential threat to Social Security, I’m starting to worry that I might never be able to retire at all.
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:
I Worked Myself to the Bone My Whole Life. Under Trump, Everything I’ve Saved Is Slowly Slipping Away.
Biden* already did that to all of us.
This guy must have had just enough money to only run out right now.
I lived off of $7k last year. I don't want to hear anybody bitching about money right now. Especially not those who denied that Biden* destroyed us.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Trump has a specific plan to kill Globalism.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I read a lot of your lefty bullshit. In fact, I read far more lefty shit than anything else.
I'm sure Tooze is another grifter loser if you're a fan.
In the meantime, I'm enjoying watching Globalism die and watching your overpaid shills lose their shit about it.
Excellent.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:Trump has a specific plan to kill Globalism.
Originally posted by second:Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I read a lot of your lefty bullshit. In fact, I read far more lefty shit than anything else.
I'm sure Tooze is another grifter loser if you're a fan.
In the meantime, I'm enjoying watching Globalism die and watching your overpaid shills lose their shit about it.
Excellent.
The plan will work great if Trump conquers Canada, Mexico, Europe, Japan, South Korea and China. He can do one at a time or all of them simultaneously. If Trump doesn't invade, the plan fails but Trump does not yet realize he has to use force to make the plan work. Except, the US couldn't pacify Vietnam. Or any other place, so Trump's plan is gonna fail hard, just like Vietnam did. The White House will spend many years declaring success after success until the whole stupid Trumptard plan collapses once a new President (such as Gerald Ford replacing Richard Nixon) arrives.
Pulling this altogether, here is my point:
None of us really knows where this clown car is headed and what drives it on its crazy course. It seems like a mystery even to many on board. Quite reasonably we look for elements of rationality. We ask: who inside MAGA 2.0 is thinking and what are their thoughts? We then relate that to our own efforts to diagnose America’s history and the history of the world economy. At the very least we need to explain how Trump 2.0 happened. Sometimes we will find a match between a strand of policy from inside MAGA and our own analysis and it is tempting to label that as “MAGA for thinking people” and to look for continuities with the Biden team etc. That mode of analysis is reasonable. To historically minded people it is appealing for obvious reasons. But it puts us at risk of is underestimating the radicalism of the break marked by the Trump administration. In search of historical context we miss what is most historically significant. We avoid facing the conclusion that the vision of a Mar-a-Lago Accord may have more in common with grift, a protection racket or a facelift pandering to the ignorant vanity of an old man than with economic policy as we have hitherto known it. Faced with Trump, the risk is that conventional realism is a form of escapism.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Why It’s So Outrageous That Trump Is Invoking This Obscure 200-Year-Old Wartime Law
By Shirin Ali | March 20, 2025 11:49 AM
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/03/immigration-trump-news-ali
en-enemies-act-mass-deportations.html
The Alien Enemies Act was for a true all-out war. This meant that if Congress declared war, or France sent a ground invasion, that the native citizens, denizens, and subjects of France—people who were from France, who were born in France, who notionally owed allegiance to France in wartime—could be regulated, be put into internment camps, or be expelled or deported. One of the reasons that Congress felt this was appropriate is that there was basically no criminal or immigration law that existed at the federal level. There was very little national security law that existed at the federal level.
Obviously, that is very, very different today, where we have a proliferation of criminal and immigration and national security authorities. The other thing that’s worth noting about the context of 1798 is that the law of war, under the law of nations, allowed these noncitizens from the foreign belligerent to be treated as though they were prisoners of war. That is a legal artifact that is no longer true after the adoption of the Geneva Conventions. Today, under the law of war, civilians are supposed to have protections, including against citizenship- or identity-based detentions or internment, as well as against forced repatriation.
How many times has the Alien Enemies Act been invoked since its passage?
It’s been used in only three major conflicts.
1. In the War of 1812, which was fought with the British, the Alien Enemies Act was used to regulate British subjects who were not allowed to live within 40 miles of the coast. A U.S. marshal told them that they had to relocate to an inland residence.
2. Then, in World War I, this law was used to heavily regulate noncitizens from the foreign belligerent, which was Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. People from those backgrounds were subject to very intense regulation, ranging from limiting travel to preventing them from living in certain places. For example, if you were a German noncitizen, you could not live in Washington—so if you had lived in D.C. for decades but were simply not a U.S. citizen and were born in Germany, you had to get out, subject to internment.
3. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, we see another invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. That same day, President Roosevelt invoked the Alien Enemies Act and imposed draconian regulations on noncitizens of Japanese descent and, the following day, noncitizens of German and Italian descent. Those regulations controlled whether noncitizens could own flashlights, maps, certain books, and firearms. On top of that, they allowed the president or the attorney general to intern anyone who was deemed “dangerous.”
People are more familiar with the incarceration of Japanese Americans, including U.S. citizens, but we still do remember the Alien Enemies Act internments as a shameful part of our history. In fact, some of the internees from the act, those of Japanese descent, received monetary reparations, and Congress even passed an apology bill.
The only reason to use the wartime authority is to bypass due process and try to target Venezuelans more broadly when you know you can’t prove that they’re actually gang members. I think that that is a major threat to civil liberties and to our Constitution.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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