Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Thursday, September 10, 2026 23:15
VIEWED: 188060
PAGE 16 of 48
He was stupid for joining Kaiser (the medical care model promoted by Bill and Hillary.)
They,and Medicare Advantage, practice what they call "capitation". That is, they only get so much $$ per patient. In Kaiser's case, whatever is left over is split among doctors, technically making it a non- profit but also encouraging doctors to cheap out on their patients. I know four people PERSONALLY whose cancer was diagnosed after a year or more delay, bc Kaiser gave them the 85% solution: take ibuprofen (spinal chord cancer, spinal chord cancer, prostate cancer), and "you're just depressed" (brain tumor).
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
He was stupid for joining Kaiser (the medical care model promoted by Bill and Hillary.)
They,and Medicare Advantage, practice what they call "capitation". That is, they only get so much $$ per patient. In Kaiser's case, whatever is left over is split among doctors, technically making it a non- profit but also encouraging doctors to cheap out on their patients. I know four people PERSONALLY whose cancer was diagnosed after a year or more delay, bc Kaiser gave them the 85% solution: take ibuprofen (spinal chord cancer, spinal chord cancer, prostate cancer), and "you're just depressed" (brain tumor).
See. It's stuff like this that I wish I could better explain to people. Everything I've heard online, most of it forgotten at this point, would lead me to believe that you're really screwing yourself over if you opt into an Advantage plan.
But my old man has it along with his VA benefits and my aunt fully intends to do it because that's what my grandma had. In the end, I can't argue the fact that they did pay for everything except for two ambulance bills. Not only with her end of life stuff, but I know she had hip surgery/therapy bills all paid for and she had cataract surgery at some point as well. All paid for.
She was not a complainer about anything though, and probably could have gone to the doctor much more than she did, which was basically never unless there was a problem. Worked for her for 90 years. But she never took regular medication her entire life and had no chronic illness (that we knew of) and the end was very swift. It should also be noted that she had very little income and easily qualified for the senior freeze on property taxes. The difference between choosing for or against an Advantage Plan may have a lot to do with what kind of retirement you've got going. Are you going on a yacht trip every year and still buying a new car every 2-5 years in retirement, or are you living on all the stuff you paid for and social security and a survivor's pension?
So I can't really compare her one example to how it would pan out for other people. It appears an Advantage plan was a great fit in her situation, but I'm worried my old man already made a mistake and my aunt is going to make one in the next few years.
As for Kevin Drum, that wasn't close to the point I was making. His 66 years of life were what led him to that ultimate end. Was it just really shitty luck? Could be. Bad things happen to people out of the blue all the time. But I don't see any reason not to assume that he wasn't chock full of vices like most of us are, or at that he didn't have him in his youth when most of us do.
Second would crawl through broken glass to prove that Trump is a bad guy.
But somebody whose opinion he agrees with automatically gets a pass from any irresponsible actions they had in the previous 66 years and the only reason that they died was because of incompetent and/or lazy doctors in the 11th hour.
There was nothing that Kevin Drum ever did that lead to his own death. Second knows this for a fact because Kevin Drum was a lifelong, loyal, straight-ticket Democratic Party voter.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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HMOs and Advantage plans work great if you've got what 85% of people get, but they are very slow to test for and diagnose bc that would mean expen$ive treatment. I've seen that over and over again in capitated plans (pancreatic cancer treated as acid stomach, nonfatal heart attack treated as muscle strain, infections overlooked. I bring up cancer bc they're the most consequential.)
Kaiser SF was caught limiting organ donors to within their own patient population bc otherwise they'd have to pay for donated organs, and quite a few of their patients died waiting for donated organs.
Also, I fully believe that if Kaiser had been more willing to do an emergency Caesarean dear daughter would never had had a catastrophic brain bleed at birth.
So Advantage works great 85% of the time, but if you're in the 15% and you can't aggressively and knowledgeably advocate for yourself in a capitated plan, you may not get effective healthcare.
BTW, all of my cancer treatment- chemo, monoclonal antibodies, surgery, and radiation - plus my treatment so far for GPA- multiple sinus surgeries and debridement plus oral immune suppressants (and possibly infusions) have been, or will be, covered almost 100%. The bills have been trivial. Where the savings come in is the insurance premiums, since you don't need Medicare A (hospital) and B (doctors), Medicare D (drugs), medigap (what is not covered by A,B, and D), dental, and vision. It adds up.
What surprises ppl is that you actually have to pay Medicare a premium for coverage. At our income level, the premium is significant.
One of these days I'll look to see if my doctors and hospitals accept Advantage.
But this is way off topic. Back to our regularly scheduled program.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
HMOs and Advantage plans work great if you've got what 85% of people get, but they are very slow to test for and diagnose bc that would mean expen$ive treatment. I've seen that over and over again in capitated plans (pancreatic cancer treated as acid stomach, nonfatal heart attack treated as muscle strain, infections overlooked. I bring up cancer bc they're the most consequential.)
Kaiser SF was caught limiting organ donors to within their own patient population bc otherwise they'd have to pay for donated organs, and quite a few of their patients died waiting for donated organs.
Also, I fully believe that if Kaiser had been more willing to do an emergency Caesarean dear daughter would never had had a catastrophic brain bleed at birth.
So Advantage works great 85% of the time, but if you're in the 15% and you can't aggressively and knowledgeably advocate for yourself in a capitated plan, you may not get effective healthcare.
BTW, all of my cancer treatment- chemo, monoclonal antibodies, surgery, and radiation - plus my treatment so far for GPA- multiple sinus surgeries and debridement plus oral immune suppressants (and possibly infusions) have been, or will be, covered almost 100%. The bills have been trivial. Where the savings come in is the insurance premiums, since you don't need Medicare A (hospital) and B (doctors), Medicare D (drugs), medigap (what is not covered by A,B, and D), dental, and vision. It adds up.
What surprises ppl is that you actually have to pay Medicare a premium for coverage. At our income level, the premium is significant.
One of these days I'll look to see if my doctors and hospitals accept Advantage.
But this is way off topic. Back to our regularly scheduled program.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
Great info. Thanks. And you jogged a memory there for me. My dad mentioned the premiums he's not paying, and I would imagine where he's sitting they wouldn't exactly be pretty either. I think he figures with the VA which he likes, he can get along fine on an Advantage plan. Hopefully he remains one of the 85%.
My aunt wouldn't be able to afford anything significant though. Even if I explained everything to her as you just did to me above, she'd still go with the Advantage plan. Not gonna lie, but I would be too, unless that gets way, way cheaper for those living on almost nothing. This explains why it was never a problem with my Grandma. I mean, I would strongly argue that they could have done more at the end and that the opioids they got my family to administer is what actually killed her in only 3 days, but up until that point they did everything she needed them to without any bills or monthly premiums.
I'm sorry about your daughter and the fact you've had to live with the feeling like things could have been different for so long. You can never know that for sure. I hope that you haven't been too hard on yourself about it.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:Have you ever wondered why Trumptards resent their betters (i.e. Kevin Drum)? Wondered why Trumptards celebrate their betters' death? University professors in the UK have an explanation based on "human nature":
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Oh. I see. Kevin Drum's death wasn't his fault. How could it be? He voted Democrat his entire life.
Shut the fuck up.
Rightwing populists will keep winning until we grasp this truth about human nature
Economic inequality breeds resentment and a desire to get even. That’s what fuels support for even incompetent regimes
By George Monbiot | Sun 13 Apr 2025 07.20 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/apr/13/trump-populists-
human-nature-economic-growth
“He’s really gone and done it this time. Now everyone can see what a disaster he is.” How many times have we heard this about Donald Trump? And how many times has it been proved wrong? Well, maybe this time he really has overstepped. After all, his clowning around with tariffs, sparking trade wars, then suddenly reversing his position, could provoke a global recession, perhaps even a depression. Surely his supporters will disown him? But I’m not banking on it, and this is why.
Already, Trump has waged war on everything that builds prosperity and wellbeing: democracy, healthy ecosystems, education, healthcare, science, the arts. Yet, amid the wreckage, and despite some slippage, his approval ratings still hold between 43 and 48%: far higher than those of many other leaders. Why? I believe part of the answer lies in a fundamental aspect of our humanity: the urge to destroy that from which you feel excluded.
This urge, I think, is crucial to understanding politics. Yet hardly anyone seems to recognise it. Hardly anyone, that is, except the far right, who see it all too well.
If you feel an urge to tear it all down, to burn the whole stinking, hypocritical, exclusive system to the ground, Trump is your man. Or so he claims. In reality his entire performance is both a distraction from and an accelerant of spiralling inequality. He can hardly lose: the more he exacerbates inequality, the more he triggers an urge for revenge against his scapegoats: immigrants, trans people, scientists, teachers, China.
But such killer clowns can’t pull this off by themselves. Their most effective recruiters are centrist parties paralysed in the face of economic power. In hock to rich funders, terrified of the billionaire media, for decades they have been unable even to name the problem, let alone address it. Hence the spectacular uselessness of the Democrats’ response to Trump. As the US journalist Hamilton Nolan remarks: “One party is out to kill, and the other is waiting for its leaders to die.”
In the UK, Labour, like the Democrats, has long assured itself that it doesn’t matter how wide economic disparities are, as long as the poorest are raised up. Now it has abandoned even that caveat: we can cut benefits, so long as GDP grows. But it does matter. It matters very much. A vast array of evidence, brought together in 2009 in The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett and updated in 2024, shows that inequality exerts a massive influence on social, economic, environmental and political outcomes, regardless of people’s absolute positions.
If there is a such a thing as Starmerism, it collapses in the face of a paper published by the political scientists Leonardo Baccini and Thomas Sattler last year, which finds that austerity increases support for the radical right in economically vulnerable regions. Austerity, they found, is the key variable: without it, less-educated people are no more likely to vote for rightwing demagogues than highly educated people are. In other words, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves are busily handing their core constituencies to Nigel Farage.
Of course, they deny they’re imposing austerity, using a technical definition that means nothing to those on the sharp end. Austerity is what the poor experience, while they
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Good jobs don’t have to be in manufacturing, and manufacturing jobs aren’t always good
By Paul Krugman | Apr 14, 2025
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/democrats-shouldnt-support-tariffs
“McDonald’s workers in Denmark are paid more than Honda workers in Alabama.” That claim has been showing up in my inbox, so I checked it out. And it’s true. McDonald’s workers in Denmark are paid more than $20 an hour, in addition to receiving substantial benefits. Indeed.com says that “production associates” at Honda’s Alabama plants are paid an average of $14 an hour.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/fact-check-hourly-pay-mcdonalds-140000799.h
tml
https://www.indeed.com/cmp/Honda/salaries/Production-Associate/Alabama
What this comparison tells us is that institutions that empower workers are more important in determining workers’ pay than what sector they work in. Two-thirds of Danish workers are represented by unions, while auto workers in Alabama aren’t unionized. Empowering service sector workers can make their jobs good; disempowering manufacturing workers can make their jobs bad.
There’s a lot of romanticism about what manufacturing jobs in America used to be like. It’s true that some industrial workers were well paid. But that was mainly because they had strong unions. Nonunionized workers in, say, South Carolina’s textile industry had low pay and terrible working conditions. Many came down with brown lung disease caused by breathing in lint. Why should we want to bring those jobs back?
And even in America, where many service-sector jobs pay poorly, there are also many jobs outside manufacturing that offer good wages. Employment in health care now greatly exceeds employment in manufacturing; well, according to Pew, 55 percent of health care jobs provide middle-class incomes. And policies that increase workers’ bargaining power could greatly expand the number of good jobs outside manufacturing.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1I79b
https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/11/jobs-with-the-largest-shares-of-middle
-class-earners.html
The point is that Democrats shouldn’t engage in Trumpian nostalgia for an industrial era that isn’t coming back. They should be pushing for policies that will make jobs better in the 21st century, not harken back to a rose-colored vision of America in 1955.
And they should never, ever say that Trump’s tariffs have a point. Because they don’t.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Governed By Confused Intuition
By Andrew Tobias | April 13, 2025
https://andrewtobias.com/governed-by-confused-intuition/
Wall Street Journal editorial board member Holman W. Jenkins Jr. — who in the middle of Trump’s first term was paraphrased as saying “Trump can do anything and I’ll support it” — now writes: Trump Wants to Be Impeached Again.
It’s already in the cards thanks to his ill-founded trade war, no matter how that war plays out.
. . . A future Trump impeachment seemed all but guaranteed by last Wednesday morning. It seems only slightly less likely now. It may even be desirable to restore America’s standing with creditors and trade partners.
. . . Mr. Trump’s great achievement was his 2024 re-election, a rebuke to the injustices and insults meted out to him and his fans since 2016, some of which were even real. However, no consensus or even significant coalition exists for trying to force into existence a new American “golden age” with tariffs, which anyway is like asking a chicken to give birth to a lioness. He invented this mission out of his own confused intuition.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Bond markets turmoil shows the world that ‘the U.S. government has no idea what it’s doing’
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/13/business/trump-risk-us-bonds.html
There are not many certainties in the world of money, but this traditionally has been one of them: When life turns scary, people take refuge in American government bonds.
Investors buy U.S. Treasuries on the assumption that, come what may — financial panic, war, natural disaster — the federal government will endure and stand by its debts, making its bonds the closest thing to a covenant with the heavens.
Yet turmoil in bond markets last week revealed the extent to which President Trump has shaken faith in that basic proposition, challenging the previously unimpeachable solidity of U.S. government debt. His trade war — now focused intently on China — has raised the prospect of a worldwide economic downturn while damaging American credibility as a responsible steward of peace and prosperity.
“The whole world has decided that the U.S. government has no idea what it’s doing,” said Mark Blyth, a political economist at Brown University and co-author of the forthcoming book “Inflation: A Guide for Users and Losers.”
An erosion of faith in the governance of the world’s largest economy appears at least in part responsible for the sharp sell-off in the bond market in recent days. When large numbers of investors sell bonds at once, that forces the government to offer higher interest rates to entice others to buy its debt. And that tends to push up interest rates throughout the economy, increasing payments for mortgages, car loans and credit card balances.
Last week, the yield on the closely watched 10-year Treasury bond soared to roughly 4.5 percent from just below 4 percent — the most pronounced spike in nearly a quarter century. At the same time, the value of the American dollar has been falling, even as tariffs would normally be expected to push it up.
Other elements also go into the explanation for the bond sell-off. Hedge funds and other financial players have sold holdings as they exit a complex trade that seeks to profit from the gap between existing prices for bonds and bets on their future values. Speculators have been unloading bonds in response to losses from plunging stock markets, seeking to amass cash to stave off insolvency.
Some fear that China’s central bank, which commands $3 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, including $761 billion in U.S. Treasury debt, could be selling as a form of retaliation for American tariffs.
Given the many factors playing out at once, the sharp increase in yields for government bonds registers as something similar to when medical patients learn that their red blood cell count is down: There may be many reasons for the drop, but none of them are good.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Trump Finally Met an Adversary Totally Immune to His Bullshit
And it’s not the Supreme Court.
The bond market is not like the Supreme Court, or Paul Weiss, or Columbia University, or any of the other institutions Trump has conquered, co-opted, or corrupted.
He cannot scare it into submission. He cannot bribe it.
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?
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
The entire atmosphere surrounding all of this is completely different than it was in 2016 and 2020.
Things just kind of feel normal again.
It's like all the loudest voices either screamed themselves out or they aren't being platformed anymore and/or we just finally, collectively tuned them out for a change.
It's kind of nice, innit?
Happy Inauguration Day!
Donald Trump warned the 'winds are moving' after EU makes huge China decision
Europe appears to be shifting its gaze eastward, seeking assistance from China rather than the US as leaders pursue trade agreements with the Asian giant instead of American President Donald Trump, whose stance towards the Chinese was roasted by US talk show host Jimmy Kimmel.
Euronews reveals that following President Trump's infamous "reciprocal tariffs" speech at the White House earlier this month, the first call made by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was to China, which has promised to "fight until the end" against Trump tariffs, as the superpower levied their own tariffs in response.
The European Commission - who recently issued Trump a stark warning over his economic policies - issued an official statement saying: "In response to the widespread disruption caused by the US tariffs, President von der Leyen stressed the responsibility of Europe and China, as two of the world's largest markets, to support a strong reformed trading system, free, fair and founded on a level playing field. The news comes as Trump's real height was revealed in his medical assessment, after doubts had previously been cast.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/donald-trump-warned-the-winds-are
-moving-after-eu-makes-huge-china-decision/ar-AA1CRGVq?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=31e50bdb4e8643a3aca41410d8d20601&ei=50
Yes stupid, the winds have shifted. The world is turning away from America and looking towards China going forward into the future. You stupid fucking MAGA moron.
T
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Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
The entire atmosphere surrounding all of this is completely different than it was in 2016 and 2020.
Things just kind of feel normal again.
It's like all the loudest voices either screamed themselves out or they aren't being platformed anymore and/or we just finally, collectively tuned them out for a change.
It's kind of nice, innit?
Happy Inauguration Day!
Donald Trump warned the 'winds are moving' after EU makes huge China decision
Europe appears to be shifting its gaze eastward, seeking assistance from China rather than the US as leaders pursue trade agreements with the Asian giant instead of American President Donald Trump, whose stance towards the Chinese was roasted by US talk show host Jimmy Kimmel.
Euronews reveals that following President Trump's infamous "reciprocal tariffs" speech at the White House earlier this month, the first call made by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was to China, which has promised to "fight until the end" against Trump tariffs, as the superpower levied their own tariffs in response.
The European Commission - who recently issued Trump a stark warning over his economic policies - issued an official statement saying: "In response to the widespread disruption caused by the US tariffs, President von der Leyen stressed the responsibility of Europe and China, as two of the world's largest markets, to support a strong reformed trading system, free, fair and founded on a level playing field. The news comes as Trump's real height was revealed in his medical assessment, after doubts had previously been cast.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/donald-trump-warned-the-winds-are
-moving-after-eu-makes-huge-china-decision/ar-AA1CRGVq?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=31e50bdb4e8643a3aca41410d8d20601&ei=50
Yes stupid, the winds have shifted. The world is turning away from America and looking towards China going forward into the future. You stupid fucking MAGA moron.
T
The ASSessment of the situation from the retard on these boards who doesn't understand any of these concepts is duly noted.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
The entire atmosphere surrounding all of this is completely different than it was in 2016 and 2020.
Things just kind of feel normal again.
It's like all the loudest voices either screamed themselves out or they aren't being platformed anymore and/or we just finally, collectively tuned them out for a change.
It's kind of nice, innit?
Happy Inauguration Day!
Donald Trump warned the 'winds are moving' after EU makes huge China decision
Europe appears to be shifting its gaze eastward, seeking assistance from China rather than the US as leaders pursue trade agreements with the Asian giant instead of American President Donald Trump, whose stance towards the Chinese was roasted by US talk show host Jimmy Kimmel.
Euronews reveals that following President Trump's infamous "reciprocal tariffs" speech at the White House earlier this month, the first call made by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was to China, which has promised to "fight until the end" against Trump tariffs, as the superpower levied their own tariffs in response.
The European Commission - who recently issued Trump a stark warning over his economic policies - issued an official statement saying: "In response to the widespread disruption caused by the US tariffs, President von der Leyen stressed the responsibility of Europe and China, as two of the world's largest markets, to support a strong reformed trading system, free, fair and founded on a level playing field. The news comes as Trump's real height was revealed in his medical assessment, after doubts had previously been cast.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/donald-trump-warned-the-winds-are
-moving-after-eu-makes-huge-china-decision/ar-AA1CRGVq?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=31e50bdb4e8643a3aca41410d8d20601&ei=50
Yes stupid, the winds have shifted. The world is turning away from America and looking towards China going forward into the future. You stupid fucking MAGA moron.
T
The ASSessment of the situation from the retard on these boards who doesn't understand any of these concepts is duly noted.
Another bit of news for you Jack. And Trust me, they don't like guys like you.
T
Two-thirds of US wealth is held by women | Melinda French Gates
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Quote:
Originally posted by THG:Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
The entire atmosphere surrounding all of this is completely different than it was in 2016 and 2020.
Things just kind of feel normal again.
It's like all the loudest voices either screamed themselves out or they aren't being platformed anymore and/or we just finally, collectively tuned them out for a change.
It's kind of nice, innit?
Happy Inauguration Day!
Donald Trump warned the 'winds are moving' after EU makes huge China decision
Europe appears to be shifting its gaze eastward, seeking assistance from China rather than the US as leaders pursue trade agreements with the Asian giant instead of American President Donald Trump, whose stance towards the Chinese was roasted by US talk show host Jimmy Kimmel.
Euronews reveals that following President Trump's infamous "reciprocal tariffs" speech at the White House earlier this month, the first call made by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen was to China, which has promised to "fight until the end" against Trump tariffs, as the superpower levied their own tariffs in response.
The European Commission - who recently issued Trump a stark warning over his economic policies - issued an official statement saying: "In response to the widespread disruption caused by the US tariffs, President von der Leyen stressed the responsibility of Europe and China, as two of the world's largest markets, to support a strong reformed trading system, free, fair and founded on a level playing field. The news comes as Trump's real height was revealed in his medical assessment, after doubts had previously been cast.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/donald-trump-warned-the-winds-are
-moving-after-eu-makes-huge-china-decision/ar-AA1CRGVq?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531&cvid=31e50bdb4e8643a3aca41410d8d20601&ei=50
Yes stupid, the winds have shifted. The world is turning away from America and looking towards China going forward into the future. You stupid fucking MAGA moron.
T
The ASSessment of the situation from the retard on these boards who doesn't understand any of these concepts is duly noted.
Another bit of news for you Jack. And Trust me, they don't like guys like you.
T
Two-thirds of US wealth is held by women | Melinda French Gates
Wow. Show me a picture of a wrinkly old ass woman and tell me she doesn't want me.
Oh no. My heart is broken dude.
I don't need money, and after 30 years old a woman has nothing to offer me.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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The Kleptocracy Presidency
Under Trump, conflicts of interest are just part of the system.
By Anne Applebaum | April 14, 2025, 6 AM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/04/trump-kleptocracy-au
tocracy-inc/682281/
As the stock markets crashed on Friday, April 4, Donald Trump left Washington, D.C. He did not go to New York to consult with Wall Street. He did not go to Dover, Delaware, to receive the bodies of four American servicemen, killed in an accident while serving in Lithuania. Instead, he went to Florida, where he visited his Doral golf resort, which was hosting the Saudi-backed LIV Golf tournament, and stayed at his Mar-a-Lago club, where many tournament fans and sponsors were staying too. His private businesses took precedence over the business of the nation.
Many of his guests were also interested in boosting Trump’s personal interests, as well as gaining the American president’s favor. One of them was Yasir al-Rumayyan, who runs the $925 billion Saudi sovereign-wealth fund and is also the chair of the LIV tournament. Other sponsors of the tournament included Riyadh Air, a Saudi airline; Aramco, the Saudi state oil company; and, startlingly, TikTok, the Chinese-owned social-media platform whose fate Trump will personally be deciding, even as he profits from its sponsorship and support.
Once upon a time (and not even that long ago), blatant conflicts of interest, especially involving foreign entities, were something presidents sought to avoid. No previous inhabitant of the White House would have wanted to be seen doing personal business with companies from countries that seek to influence American foreign policy. Such dealings risk violating the Constitution, which prohibits government officials from accepting “gifts, titles or emoluments from foreign governments.” But during Trump’s first term, the court system largely blew off his commercial entanglements. Now he not only does business with foreign as well as domestic companies that have a direct interest in his policies, he advertises and celebrates them. We know the identities of the golf-tournament sponsors not because investigative journalists burrowed deep into secret contracts, but because they appear on official websites and were displayed on a billboard, observed by The New York Times, at his golf course.
Both the website and the billboard would have been scandals in any previous administration. If they are hardly remarked upon now, that’s because Trump’s behavior is a symptom of something much larger. We are living through a revolutionary change, a broad shift away from the transparency and accountability mandated by most modern democracies, and toward the opaque habits and corrupt practices of the autocratic world. For the past decade, American government and business alike have slowly begun to adopt the kleptocratic model pioneered by countries such as Russia and China, where the rulers’ conflicts of interest are simply part of the fabric of the system.
The change began during Trump’s first term—Vice President Mike Pence once made a 180-mile-plus detour on a trip to Ireland, in order to stay at a Trump hotel—but Trump was constrained by his advisers and perhaps by what was then still his fear of legal consequences. This time around, he knows he got away with a series of crimes, including an attempt to overthrow an election. His advisers are supine; he feels no more constraints. New standards were already set in December, when the Trump Organization announced the construction of a Trump Tower in Saudi Arabia, an investment that posed a clear conflict of interest for the president-elect.
Trump’s family also created a cryptocurrency business, World Liberty Financial, that could, in practice, serve as a vehicle for anyone to pay him indirect bribes. Nobody around him objected. After Trump’s return to office, his administration, unbothered by appearances of impropriety, did indeed quickly suspend a civil investigation into Justin Sun, a Chinese entrepreneur and an adviser to World Liberty Financial, who had also inve
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Who the fuck wants to read neocon extraordinaire Anne Applebaum's criticisms after she and her gang drained the USA of money and weapons?
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissingerjh
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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Everything is unwinding, according to this guy ...
Quote:
"Things Are Breaking 'Out There'..."
Monday, Apr 14, 2025 - 01:20 PM
Authored by James Howard Kunstler,
Systemic Considerations
“Every western society is confronted by an internal cultural conflict between those who wish to distance society from its civilizational legacy and those who wish to renew it.”
- Frank Furedi on Substack
Whatever else you think is happening in our world, contraction is the reality-based order-of-the-day, and everything else is downstream of that. The world has to get by with less. Nothing is going to fix this for everybody, though any number of schemes for redistributing what’s left will preoccupy the political mojo.
Right now, it’s tariffs, which are an attempt to restore industry ceded to the formerly left-behind people elsewhere in the world — taking back what we used to do. You are correct to wonder if this is even possible. The wish is surely understandable, if a bit fuzzy and over-simplified: to be again a nation of people occupied purposefully in the service of a bright future. Redemption stories are deeply appealing.
Many of us are aware that the hour for this is late. We’ve already lived through our decades of pumping cheap oil out of American ground, extracting the ores, fashioning the metal into I-beams and rails, raising the skyscrapers, laying the asphalt ribbons of highway, and strewing the landscape with split-level houses and strip-malls. Let’s not try a re-run of that.
What have we got to work with?
An overly-complex matrix of systems and subsidiary systems operating on the verge of failure at excessive scale. For example, our cities and their asteroid belts of suburbs. The rot is already well-advanced in many of them from their centers outward, and we can see the process underway of strip-mining the remaining assets on-the-ground. Detroit, Cleveland, Baltimore. . . all occupy important geographically strategic sites. All are populated by dwindling societies of the cope-less, floundering their way out of existence. The geographies will abide without them. Others will come along and make something of these places’ virtues.
Agri-business is a method for strip-mining the value from what remains of our fruited plains. Everything about it is on an arc of failure, mortgaged to a futureless giantism. It seemed like a good idea at the time, and now that time has passed. The remaining soil itself can probably be rescued with heroic ant-like peasant labor over generations, which is to say a long and rather desperate project with no quick resolution. Even if Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., hadn’t come along to read America the riot act on food, anyone can see that the age of Froot Loops is drawing to a close.
Town and country, what human society at its best was composed of, has got to be rearranged. This is something that MAGA is not talking about. MAGA looks like it is seeking a reenactment of the years 1950 to 1964. That isn’t going to happen. What then? The tech broz propose something that looks like an A-I printed robotic future. They are drunk on their own Stanford University brand Kool-Aid, hallucinating a future that is little more than math dressed in spandex.
It is nearly impossible to grok the size of their vast fortunes, their billions. Thousands upon thousands of millions. From what? From marshaling squadrons of lawyers to draw up ownership documents for this and that venture enabling idiots with nose-rings to lecture each other about sexual etiquette on cell-phone screens? Warning: don’t become infatuated with singularities, journeys beyond biology and the ecology of planet earth. That’s a story for saps, cargo-cultists, the mentally ill.
Speaking of all that money, one thing you can surely depend on is a violent unwinding of global finance. The vast bottom of humanity already has plenty of nothing, and their abundance will abide. The hedge fund broz and related broz in the shared hallucinations of capital can make som
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Who the fuck wants to read neocon extraordinaire Anne Applebaum's criticisms after she and her gang drained the USA of money and weapons?
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissingerjh
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
The same people that side with NeoCons, race hustlers, foreign terrorist, etc., etc., etc....
Yanno... Democrats.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:America would be made great again if all Trumptards were dead. Trumptards are killing themselves, but not fast enough.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:And this is where you turn into SECOND and want to see a whole bunch of people wiped out.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Fuck Iran.
Fuck Muhammad and Allah.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul SimonQuote:http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=64887&mid=12165
6ixStringJack wrote:
And with my athletic-leaning-toward-muscular build, I used to break the BMI chart and they called me overweight before the Diabetes hit. And back in my power lifting days when I was built like a brick shithouse I was considered morbidly obese.
40#1216540
6ixStringJack has forgotten the illegal drugs he took for muscle growth harmed him in ways he has not yet learned. The price of Trumptard Freedom to be a jackass is ill health as they get older. I see illness in all old Trumptards caused by Trumptard drinking, smoking, libertine sex lives, drug taking, gluttony, etc. If all Trumptards would follow Rush Limbaugh's example and kill themselves quickly, America would be great this year.
I didn't take anything illegal. Although, I DID take stuff from GNC. Very possible that some Amino Acid or Creatine pills, or the copious amounts of shit tasting protein shakes on top of the 6,000 calories per day I ate for 2 years had some negative effect.
Let's just say that with all the stuff the FDA has approved that's made us the least healthy 1st world nation, even the FDA won't approve 90% of the stuff in a GNC once you leave the vitamin counter.
Although it might just be that nobody at GNC had powerful lobbyists.
It's actually shocking in retrospect to think there was anything the FDA didn't approve.
Speak of the devil... this was just up on RCP today...
This Is Your Brain on Creatine
Most commonly linked to muscle building, the supplement can actually encourage short-term memory and clear thinking, too
https://www.insidehook.com/longevity/creatine-supplement-brain-benefit
s
Maybe that's just one of the many, many, many reasons why I'm so much smarter than you and superior to you in every way, Second.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:Signym, you have written Fuck Ukraine about a hundred times. You would hate Anne Applebaum because she wrote The Gulag--a vast array of Soviet concentration camps that held millions of political and criminal prisoners--was a system of repression and punishment that terrorized the entire society, embodying the worst tendencies of Soviet communism. In this magisterial and acclaimed history, Anne Applebaum offers the first fully documented portrait of the Gulag, from its origins in the Russian Revolution, through its expansion under Stalin, to its collapse in the era of glasnost.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Who the fuck wants to read neocon extraordinaire Anne Applebaum's criticisms after she and her gang drained the USA of money and weapons?
Applebaum also wrote Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956. At the end of World War II, the Soviet Union to its surprise and delight found itself in control of a huge swath of territory in Eastern Europe. Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to Communism, a completely new political and moral system. In Iron Curtain, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Anne Applebaum describes how the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe were created and what daily life was like once they were complete. She draws on newly opened East European archives, interviews, and personal accounts translated for the first time to portray in devastating detail the dilemmas faced by millions of individuals trying to adjust to a way of life that challenged their every belief and took away everything they had accumulated. Today the Soviet Bloc is a lost civilization, one whose cruelty, paranoia, bizarre morality, and strange aesthetics Applebaum captures in the electrifying pages of Iron Curtain.
Applebaum also wrote Red Famine: Stalin’s War on Ukraine
In 1929 Stalin launched his policy of agricultural collectivization--in effect a second Russian revolution--which forced millions of peasants off their land and onto collective farms. The result was a catastrophic famine, the most lethal in European history. At least five million people died between 1931 and 1933 in the USSR. But instead of sending relief the Soviet state made use of the catastrophe to rid itself of a political problem. In Red Famine, Anne Applebaum argues that more than three million of those dead were Ukrainians who perished not because they were accidental victims of a bad policy but because the state deliberately set out to kill them. Applebaum proves what has long been suspected: after a series of rebellions unsettled the province, Stalin set out to destroy the Ukrainian peasantry. The state sealed the republic's borders and seized all available food. Starvation set in rapidly, and people ate anything: grass, tree bark, dogs, corpses. In some cases, they killed one another for food. Devastating and definitive, Red Famine captures the horror of ordinary people struggling to survive extraordinary evil. Today, Russia, the successor to the Soviet Union, has placed Ukrainian independence in its sights once more. Applebaum's compulsively readable narrative recalls one of the worst crimes of the twentieth century, and shows how it may foreshadow a new threat to the political order in the twenty-first.
Download Anne Applebaum's books for free from the mirrors at https://libgen.rs/search.php?&req=Anne+Applebaum
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:The strange link between Trump’s tariffs and incel ideology
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Wow. Show me a picture of a wrinkly old ass woman and tell me she doesn't want me.
Oh no. My heart is broken dude.
I don't need money, and after 30 years old a woman has nothing to offer me.
Meet the lonely men who think the tariffs will get them girlfriends.
By Constance Grady | Apr 14, 2025, 11:00 AM CDT
https://www.vox.com/culture/408578/trum-tariffs-incels-misogyny-email-
jobs
The “this” in question was a TikTok video from last summer in which the all-women executive team of an Australian skin care company playfully sang and danced around their office. Faced with the option of a woman joking about being a “Gen Z boss” and probable economic ruin: “Tariffs,” the X user concluded.
The apparent link between a group of Australian women having fun at their office and the historic economic fallout of Trump’s tariffs in the US may be obscure to a lot of people. But for a vocal contingent of incel-adjacent men on X, the link is self-evident.
“A lot of men (specifically, single and frustrated ones on the right who have a negative view of women) have a perplexingly reverse-SJW attitude toward women in the workplace,” explained Substack writer Cartoons Hate Her in March in the midst of the DOGE shutdowns. “They believe women are part of an oppressor class, who has for some reason been granted unfair degrees of privilege in the form of being hired for fun, pretend jobs.” In this reading, the Australian skin care executives are callously celebrating their oppressive privilege by filming themselves dancing.
In this worldview, the fun, pretend jobs include federally funded government jobs. These men further believe that because DEI initiatives mandate that women get these fun, pretend jobs — usually described as “email jobs” — women have achieved unnatural degrees of self-sufficiency. No longer do they have to rely on marrying a good provider for economic stability. With that impetus gone, women’s standards for romantic partners have skyrocketed, leaving these hapless men unable to get a girlfriend.
Cartoons Hate Her quotes an X user who berated her for arguing that single women can be happy living by themselves. “Your ‘happy life alone’ only exists because the state funnels taxpayer money into your independence LARP,” he wrote. “I call it ‘negative prostitution’ because it takes men’s money away to ensure women don’t have sex with them.”
These men read Trump’s economic policy as a project of redistributing money and jobs away from women and back to men, ultimately for men’s sexual gain. DOGE slashed away the email jobs in the government, they argue, while tariffs will force a recession that will ultimately kill the email jobs of the private sector. Meanwhile, tariffs will bring manufacturing jobs, which are understood to be the rightful domain of men, back to the US. By the time the process ends, they believe, men will be gainfully employed and now-destitute women incentivized to sleep with them, and the world will be restored to its proper order.
To be clear, this worldview is deeply deluded. Even if you agree it’s bad that women have the ability to make their own money and thus don’t need to settle for subpar romantic partners (personally, I take the radical position that this is good), the economics don’t work. While it’s true that women make up the majority of office workers, it’s not true that they only work pretend email jobs. They also make up the majority of workers in the leisure and hospitality industry (selling on the floor of a retail store, waiting tables, etc.) and in education and health services (home health aids, nurses, teachers, etc.).
Finally, perhaps most crucially, even if a tariff-led recession may mean layoffs from office jobs, the tariffs are highly unlikely to bring manufacturing jobs back to America. They are far more likely to raise prices and make everyone’s quality of life worse.
What’s
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Quote:
SECOND
Signym, you have written Fuck Ukraine about a hundred times
No, I have not.
And since you keep accusing me, I challenge you to link where I posted that.
You'll be a long time looking, but maybe that'll keep you from posting so many lies.
-----------
"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 spend an awful lot of time mind-reading... badly.
What Trump feels.
How Trumptards think.
What drives ("incel- adjacent" ... WTF is THAT??) right- wingers.
How they're all secretly Nazis.
Or misogynists.
Or unreformed Confederates.
Or dog- haters.
Or ... something!
If you have to resort to ad hominens, you really don't have much in your arsenal, do you?
-----------
"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:The strange link between Trump’s tariffs and incel ideology
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Wow. Show me a picture of a wrinkly old ass woman and tell me she doesn't want me.
Oh no. My heart is broken dude.
I don't need money, and after 30 years old a woman has nothing to offer me.
Who do you think you're trying to shame?
Very much a v-cel over here.
I get to do whatever I want whenever I want because I didn't put myself into a one-sided financial contract for life.
Because I'm a lot smarter than you are.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
SECOND
Signym, you have written Fuck Ukraine about a hundred times
No, I have not.
And since you keep accusing me, I challenge you to link where I posted that.
You'll be a long time looking, but maybe that'll keep you from posting so many lies.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
It's never too late for me to say it for the thousandth time.
Fuck Ukraine.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:There is consensus on Trump supporters being unable to understand anything about unobservable mental states or even what it would mean to understand the concept of a 'mental state'.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
You spend an awful lot of time mind-reading... badly.
What Trump feels.
How Trumptards think.
What drives ("incel- adjacent" ... WTF is THAT??) right- wingers.
How they're all secretly Nazis.
Or misogynists.
Or unreformed Confederates.
Or dog- haters.
Or ... something!
If you have to resort to ad hominens, you really don't have much in your arsenal, do you?
Theory of mind in animals
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind_in_animals
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:Trump Will Never Betray Putin (Again)
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
SECOND
Signym, you have written Fuck Ukraine about a hundred times
No, I have not.
And since you keep accusing me, I challenge you to link where I posted that.
You'll be a long time looking, but maybe that'll keep you from posting so many lies.
Phillips P. Obrien | Apr 13, 2025
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/i/161218499/trump-will-never-betr
ay-putin-again
It's in many ways rather bizarre that Trump feels the need to go through the motions, pretending that he is irritated with Putin and will come down hard on the Russian dictator for not agreeing to a cease-fire. Having said two weeks ago that he was really “pissed-off” at Putin for being recalcitrant, Trump showed how angry he really was by leaving Russia off the list of states to receive extra sanctions during his truly destructive sanctions fiasco of the last 10 days.
Ahh, but I hear MAGA say that they have justified this lack of Russia being on the sanctions list because they are doing almost no business with Russia due to the existing sanctions regime. The fact that this is taken seriously by MAGA shows how desperate they are to pretend that Trump is not completely in the bag with Putin. Trump’s great tariff list contained, for instance, the completely non-human populated, but penguin-filled, Heard and MacDonald Antarctic islands that do no trade with the USA.
The whole tariff performance was mostly performative—and even then, Trump could not bring himself to do anything to offend Putin.
So this week, in what can only be called the Groundhog-Day phase of the war, Trump once again expressed irritation with Russia (he never expresses anger at Putin).
Quote:Of course he quickly backed off—no new sanctions have been announced, and almost immediately after this, Trump’s personal envoy, Steve Witkoff, showed up at a meeting in St Petersburg and in a sign of devotion/fealty put his hand over his heart when he saw Putin.
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
Russia has to get moving. Too many people are DYING, thousands a week, in a terrible and senseless war - A war that should have never happened, and wouldn't have happened, if I were President!!!
Apr 11, 2025, 2:35 PM
I released a piece yesterday pointing out that we need to adjust our language to understand these ridiculous pantomimes. Trump does not want “peace”—he wants to help Putin win. He is a pro-war president, and is maneuvering on Russia’s side.
Trump Is A War President. He Is Working For Putin's Victory And Using The Right Language Is Crucial
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/trump-is-a-war-president
I just really hope I don’t have to keep saying this every two weeks (which is about the cycle we are in for these performative moments.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Trump’s Obsession With “Manly Jobs” Ignores the Most Obvious One
Trump Is Actually Killing the Best Way to Bring Back Blue-Collar Jobs
If Americans must work with their hands, we could at least build something we need.
By Henry Grabar | April 14, 2025 12:24 PM
https://slate.com/business/2025/04/trump-news-blue-collar-jobs-housing
-construction-tariffs.html
What is the point of the Donald Trump Tariff Show? No one seems to know, not least the man himself. Are we trying to raise a bunch of new tax revenue? Reshore manufacturing? Are tariffs simply a pretense to negotiate better trade deals? Or must we treat the spiritual malaise that comes from dependence on an endless stream of disposable consumer goods? These aims are contradictory, but that hasn’t stopped Trump and his supporters from claiming all these justifications and more.
The closest thing to a through line is the GOP’s fixation on the righteousness of a certain type of old-fashioned factory work, the sort of thing that might be represented in the popular imagination by Rosie the Riveter, if she hadn’t been flagged for removal by the Pentagon’s anti-DEI team. Who are we kidding: Trump’s hard worker is a man. The work should be dirty, difficult, and dangerous. “They wanna mine,” POTUS said last week of coal miners, whose job is one of the country’s most dangerous, marred by both on-site injuries and lifelong health problems. “You give them a penthouse on Fifth Avenue and a different kind of job, and they’d be unhappy. They want to mine coal. That’s what they love to do.” Or as Elon Musk said this weekend, “We need to shift people from low- to negative-productivity jobs in government to high-productivity jobs in manufacturing (as well as mining and refining of materials).” Make America shower after work again.
Beneath all this A.I.-generated policymaking and culture-war posturing lies a real labor-market quandary: Men without college degrees have struggled to find good jobs or hold down any job at all, a phenomenon with some big downstream effects on politics and culture, up to and including the election of Donald Trump. Addressing this has become a cause célèbre on the right, though liberals have also recognized the problem. But it’s unlikely that Trump’s chaotic tariff moves will reindustrialize the United States in any meaningful way or put men back to work.
It’s all the sillier because—to risk taking the president’s goals at face value—there is a way to put lots of American men to work with their hands. It’s a field the president should know well: construction. A giant trade, made up mostly of men, doing work that can’t be outsourced, creating housing that the country desperately needs. Instead, the president is doing his best to crush construction—even as he tries to put the country to work in toaster factories.
Trump’s yearning for manual labor is fueled mostly by the nostalgia that constitutes his entire political reason for being, but there’s a reason people like the idea. Manufacturing jobs, though far outnumbered by hospitality jobs, still pay much more—in spite of the GOP’s efforts to crush unions, worker protections, and so on. Still, they’re distant enough from most Americans’ reality in 2025 that when Ron DeSantis ran for president, he identified not as the son of a steelworker but as the grandson of a steelworker. Surveys show everyone wants more factory jobs; few people want to give up their own job to work in a factory. (Like the old Onion headline: “98 Percent of U.S. Commuters Favor Public Transportation for Others.”)
In the Washington Post this week, Rotimi Adeoye referred to Trump’s tariff philosophy as “MAGA Maoism”:
Like the Chinese Cultural Revolution, it glorifies physical labor as moral purification, only now the purification is from the supposed “wokeness” of desk work, filtered through TikTok, X and Twitch. It’s not about creating jobs. It’s about creating vibes: strong men doing hard things, reshared until they become ideology. As one MAGA influencer put it, “Men in America don’t need therapy
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Trump Is Running Economic Development In Reverse
The combination of tariffs and cuts to scientific research seems designed to move America down the value chain.
Jonathan Chait | April 14, 2025, 3:02 PM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/04/trump-tariffs-econ
omic-vision/682433/
The markets are going haywire, and consumer confidence is nosediving. You might be wondering why the Trump administration decided to burn down the healthy economy it inherited. Is it pure incompetence? Or is there a plan?
The answer to both questions appears to be yes. The incompetence is undeniable. But the administration does have a plan, or at least a vision, for what will spring up from the ashes. The trouble is that the long-term economic program is even worse than the short-term one.
The clearest picture of the new America that is meant to arise from the crash was provided by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent in an interview last week with Tucker Carlson. Bessent acknowledged some short-term discomfort—the stock market plunged as he spoke—but in the service of something grand. “On one side, the president is reordering trade,” he said. “On the other side, we are shedding excess labor in the federal government and bringing down federal borrowings. And then on the other side of that, we will have the labor we need for new manufacturing.” Elon Musk shared the same idea on X: “We need to shift people from low to negative productivity jobs in government to high productivity jobs in manufacturing (as well as mining and refining of materials).” Think of the plan as a classic economic-development strategy, but run backwards.
The typical pattern for economic development involves moving a nation’s economy up the value chain. A poor country develops export markets by specializing in low-wage manufacturing. Eventually, these industries develop higher levels of sophistication, adding more intellectual value—first they build toasters and cameras, then cars, then robots. These industries generate tax revenue that can support better schools and other forms of public investment, feeding back into the developmental cycle. That’s how the “Asian tigers” (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan) enjoyed rapid economic growth over the past two generations, and it’s the pattern other developing countries are hoping to follow.
Donald Trump is basically running this play in reverse.
The tariffs, while putatively intended to promote industrialization, have the more direct impact of directing American production back into industrial inputs. Trump has raised tariffs on metals, which makes building things more expensive but creates an incentive to reshore the production of steel and aluminum. This moves the industrial economy down the value chain, rather than up, which makes sense only if the objective is to have an economy with more guys wearing hard hats.
Meanwhile, Trump is laying waste to basic scientific research. The administration has frozen or canceled billions of dollars in funds to the National Institutes of Health, slashed National Science Foundation grants, and canceled or threatened to cancel billions of dollars in research funding to elite universities (putatively in response to their handling of anti-Semitism).
This has had a catastrophic effect on a wide array of high-tech fields. A group of medical-innovation investors took the immense risk of putting their names on a letter to the administration warning that the research cuts “are an assault on the foundation of biomedical and technological progress.”
The cuts to the bureaucracy imposed by the Department of Government Efficiency have likewise targeted the government’s most specialized experts, whose work maintains the economy’s place at the technological frontier. Trump and Musk are slashing staff at the FDA, a regulatory body that allows new drugs to enter the market, and are reportedly planning to fire half of the Energy Department’s loan officers, who are needed to approve nuclear facilities.
The combination of tariffs and the mass cancellat
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Happy Tax Evasion Day!
DOGE is stealing your tax revenue and giving it to rich cheaters
By Paul Krugman | Apr 15, 2025
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/happy-tax-evasion-day
One agency that has been singled out for especially severe cuts is the Internal Revenue Service, which has already laid off thousands of employees. And that’s just the beginning: The Trump administration is reportedly seeking to cut the IRS workforce in half. This would cripple the agency’s ability to conduct audits and discover fraud.
And preliminary indications are that widespread belief that a damaged IRS won’t be able to police tax evasion is already undermining federal revenue.
Last month the Washington Post reported that
Quote:That’s a gigantic number. If it’s right, surging tax evasion may do as much or more to add to the national debt as the huge tax cuts Republicans are trying to ram through Congress.
Senior tax officials are bracing for a sharp drop in revenue collected this spring, as an increasing number of individuals and businesses spurn filing their taxes or attempt to skip paying balances owed to the Internal Revenue Service, according to three people with knowledge of tax projections.
Treasury Department and IRS officials are predicting a decrease of more than 10 percent in tax receipts by the April 15 deadline compared with 2024, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share nonpublic data. That would amount to more than $500 billion in lost federal revenue.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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(Trump is murdering civilians and gloating about it)
Pete Hegseth Is Gutting Pentagon Programs to Reduce Civilian Casualties
The defense secretary’s focus on “lethality” could lead to “wanton killing and wholesale destruction and disregard for law,” one Pentagon official said.
By Nick Turse | April 15 2025, 7:00 a.m.
https://theintercept.com/2025/04/15/pete-hegseth-pentagon-civilian-cas
ualties-harm/
The Pentagon had been slowly dedicating more resources to killing fewer civilians in recent years, following a long drumbeat of damning investigations of civilian casualties by the press, nongovernmental organizations, government-supported think tanks, and even the U.S. military itself.
But now, under the control of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the Department of Defense is reversing course.
The Intercept spoke with five current and former Defense Department officials familiar with its Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response, or CHMR, efforts, who say that the Pentagon is in the process of eliminating or downsizing offices, programs, and positions focused on preventing civilian casualties during U.S. combat operations.
On the chopping block are the Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response office, which handles policies that reduce dangers to noncombatants, and the Civilian Protection Center of Excellence, which is focused on training and tools for preventing civilian casualties.
The Army also recently announced it will make law of war training — which covers basic battlefield ethics, prohibited acts, and rules of engagement — optional, in an effort to remove “unnecessary distractions” and increase focus on “decisive action in combat.”
This comes as Hegseth trumpets an overwhelming emphasis on “lethality” and cuts to programs that run afoul of Trump administration priorities. Hegseth also reportedly plans to overhaul the entire JAG Corps, which is essential to ensuring adherence to the rule of law and upholding the Uniform Code of Military Justice, after firing the judge advocates general of the Army, Navy, and Air Force.
Trump has also rolled back constraints on American commanders to authorize airstrikes and Special Operations raids outside conventional battlefields, broadening the range of people who can be targeted. After Trump relaxed targeting principles during his first term, attacks and reports of civilian casualties in war zones like Somalia and Yemen spiked.
“There is an overt and ongoing effort to completely shut the Center down and to remove CHMR across all the commands,” said Wes Bryant, who until recently served as the chief of civilian harm assessments and senior analyst and adviser on precision warfare, targeting, and civilian harm mitigation at the Pentagon’s Civilian Protection Center of Excellence. “Basically, they are wiping DoD of anything related to Civilian Harm Mitigation and Response.”
The four other officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution or to preserve their ability to lobby behind the scenes, expressed varying levels of concern over how the demise of CHMR would affect combat operations and what Hegseth’s priorities might mean for the world. One of them mused that “lethality” might prove to be only meaningless jargon, but worried that it could indicate something far worse: eschewing military professionalism in favor of “wanton killing and wholesale destruction and disregard for law.”
CHMR-oriented personnel at combatant commands around the world will be shuffled into new roles, according to some of the officials. Central Command, or CENTCOM, which oversees military operations across the Middle East, pushed back on this when contacted by The Intercept, stating that the “CHMR team at CENTCOM will continue to provide civilian harm mitigation and assessment support to the command for the foreseeable future.”
Several officials were hopeful that a concerted effort by advocates to preserve some CHMR work at the Pentagon and at combatant commands would allow harm mitigation efforts to endure within different structures and under
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We'll see.
You've been wrong about literally everything so far up to this point. Maybe you're right this time.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:6ix, I will never know for certain the origin of your erratic behavior and goofy misunderstanding but today I did discover a big clue hidden beneath 3 bags of pine bark mulch in the pickup bed of another Trumptard. There were eight 1.75L bottles of Platinum 7X vodka. Yep, you Trumptards have problems with addictive substances addling your brains and skewing your judgment.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
We'll see.
You've been wrong about literally everything so far up to this point. Maybe you're right this time.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
P.S. - Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth pledged to stop drinking, but he is the guy who changed the rules about killing civilians. I wonder if Pete did stop drinking? Doubtful.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Pete+Hegseth+pledged+to+stop+drinking
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Keep crying because you're losing everyday, bitch.
You'd better get used to it.
Your party is dead.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
6ix, I will never know for certain the origin of your erratic behavior and goofy misunderstanding but today I did discover a big clue hidden beneath 3 bags of pine bark mulch in the pickup bed of another Trumptard.
What are you doing digging thru stuff in somebody else's pickup?
I always knew you would stoop to snooping.
You just can't help yourself, can you?
-----------
"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:One of the country's leading Alzheimer's projects is in jeopardy
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Keep crying because you're losing everyday, bitch.
You'd better get used to it.
Your party is dead.
A pause to NIH funding has researchers scrambling for contingency plans at the University of Washington’s Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center.
By Evan Bush | April 13, 2025, 5:00 AM CDT
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/one-countrys-leading-alzhei
mers-projects-jeopardy-rcna199788
“It’s going to go one way or another. I’m not taking it with me,” Andrea Gilbert, 79, said from a hospital bed as she received an infusion of a drug designed to prevent the disease from worsening. “I hope it gets used well. But, you know, you can’t guarantee anything.”
Thousands of grants, including many at public universities and on topics as politically benign as Alzheimer’s, have been caught in what critics say is an unprecedented slowdown of the American research system that is threatening to upend universities and halt progress toward medical innovations, treatments and cures.
Even the temporary slowdown threatens to hamper or scuttle programs that have been decades in the making — and some of which are also actively treating patients.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:The thing is that Trumptards live by the hippy rule: You can do whatever you want as long as you don't hurt others or yourself. Except the "don't hurt" part of the hippy rule isn't enforced by anybody, not even themselves. The result is shown constantly with Trumptards I know to be one goddamn stupid crisis after another. Their lives lack meaning, purpose, and direction. And the Trumptards know it, which is why they are very concerned about privacy. Anybody who lives that way would want to keep all of their lamebrain life a big secret from the family, neighbors, the entire world.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
6ix, I will never know for certain the origin of your erratic behavior and goofy misunderstanding but today I did discover a big clue hidden beneath 3 bags of pine bark mulch in the pickup bed of another Trumptard.
What are you doing digging thru stuff in somebody else's pickup?
I always knew you would stoop to snooping.
You just can't help yourself, can you?
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:
6ix, I will never know for certain the origin of your erratic behavior and goofy misunderstanding but today I did discover a big clue hidden beneath 3 bags of pine bark mulch in the pickup bed of another Trumptard.
SIGNY:
What are you doing digging thru stuff in somebody else's pickup?
I always knew you would stoop to snooping.
You just can't help yourself, can you?
SECOND: The thing is that Trumptards live by the hippy rule: You can do whatever you want as long as you don't hurt others or yourself. Except the "don't hurt" part of the hippy rule isn't enforced by anybody
Oh, so you think it's entirely appropriate to dig thru people's stuff to ... what? Digging up coroner's reports in order to ... what?
I know what you're doing.
Your fascist ways are showing.
Like I said, you just can't help yourself, can you?
-----------
"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:The coroner's report unraveled a long-running criminal mystery involving a Trumptard.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
6ix, I will never know for certain the origin of your erratic behavior and goofy misunderstanding but today I did discover a big clue hidden beneath 3 bags of pine bark mulch in the pickup bed of another Trumptard.
SIGNY:
What are you doing digging thru stuff in somebody else's pickup?
I always knew you would stoop to snooping.
You just can't help yourself, can you?
SECOND: The thing is that Trumptards live by the hippy rule: You can do whatever you want as long as you don't hurt others or yourself. Except the "don't hurt" part of the hippy rule isn't enforced by anybody
Oh, so you think it's entirely appropriate to dig thru people's stuff to ... what? Digging up coroner's reports in order to ... what?
I know what you're doing.
Your fascist ways are showing.
Like I said, you just can't help yourself, can you?
With Trumptards, whenever I look at their lives, I find a crime they are hiding. Now that we're on the topic of secrets, I found the vodka secret at work by lifting a bag of pine bark mulch from an open pickup truck bed, yesterday.
There are more secrets! Trump has kept his income tax returns a secret, unlike previous Presidents. Also, unlike previous Presidents, Trump has been convicted of crimes related to unpaid taxes.
Signym, or any other Trumptard, can look up the crimes Trump is suspected to have been committing. He has even been convicted of some, but that doesn't bother Trumptards because they have done the same or worse.
Trump tax crime:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Trump+tax+crime
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Scenes from the trade war:
• In response to Donald Trump’s huge tariffs on Chinese exports, China’s government has suspended exports of rare earth minerals and magnets, both critical to many modern industries and the military
• Trade talks between the United States and the European Union appear to have gone nowhere, with Maros Sefcovic, the EU’s top trade official, reportedly having “struggled to determine America’s aims.”
In other words, the Chinese, unlike the Trump administration, understand what trade and trade wars are about. And the Trumpers, in addition to not knowing what they’re doing, don’t even know what they want.
More at "Why Trump Will Lose His Trade War"
His people don’t know what they’re doing or what they want
By Paul Krugman | Apr 16, 2025
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/why-trump-will-lose-his-trade-war
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:Trump is silly.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Keep crying because you're losing everyday, bitch.
You'd better get used to it.
Your party is dead.
Proud Trump:
The day after the physician’s report was shared with the public, the president seemed eager to focus on one detail in particular.
“I took my cognitive exam as part of my physical exam, and I got the highest mark, and one of the doctors said, ‘Sir, I’ve never seen anybody get that kind of — that was the highest mark,’” Trump said at an Oval Office event.
Yes, we’re back to this again.
In case anyone needs a refresher, Trump had an annual physical in early 2018 when his then-physician administered the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA), which led his doctor to conclude that Trump had no cognitive or mental deficiencies. The trouble, of course, was that the Republican celebrated the results in such a way that suggested he didn’t fully appreciate what the test was all about.
“If you look at the test, it’s pretty hard to see how you could not score a 30 [out of 30],” a Washington Post piece explained in early 2018, adding, “Yes, Trump passed with flying colors, as any adult with normal cognitive function probably would.”
We’re talking about an exam that’s used to identify evidence of dementia, mental deterioration and neurodegenerative diseases. Those who take it may be asked, for example, to draw a clock or describe the similarities between oranges and bananas.
Trump somehow convinced himself, however, that it was akin to a Mensa exam and that his ability to get a perfect score was proof of his genius.
It was not. While the precise wording of different MoCA tests can vary, and the final questions are marginally more difficult, one sample test asked respondents to name words that begin with the letter F — with the expectation that people could list at least 11 in a minute. Another final question asked respondents to recite a three-digit number backwards.
Nevertheless, in the months and years that followed, Trump bragged about this as if he’d been declared the smartest person on earth. In one especially memorable instance, during his ill-fated re-election campaign, he tried to convince an audience that the test was difficult by claiming that an administrator read him a list of five random words, which he was expected to read back.
In this case, the Republican listed five nouns, which became infamous: "Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV." (These weren’t the actual words on the test, of course. They were the five words that came to Trump’s mind -- which isn’t altogether surprising, given his preoccupation with cameras and televisions.)
In case that weren’t quite pitiful enough, however, the president went a step further five years later with his claim that a physician told him, “Sir, I’ve never seen anybody get that kind of” score — which once again suggested that Trump still doesn’t realize everyone who isn’t suffering with dementia, mental deterioration or neurodegenerative diseases gets the same score.
If recent history is any guide, the Republican will nevertheless reference this in many of his public appearances for the foreseeable future.
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:The coroner's report unraveled a long-running criminal mystery involving a Trumptard.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
6ix, I will never know for certain the origin of your erratic behavior and goofy misunderstanding but today I did discover a big clue hidden beneath 3 bags of pine bark mulch in the pickup bed of another Trumptard.
SIGNY:
What are you doing digging thru stuff in somebody else's pickup?
I always knew you would stoop to snooping.
You just can't help yourself, can you?
SECOND: The thing is that Trumptards live by the hippy rule: You can do whatever you want as long as you don't hurt others or yourself. Except the "don't hurt" part of the hippy rule isn't enforced by anybody
Oh, so you think it's entirely appropriate to dig thru people's stuff to ... what? Digging up coroner's reports in order to ... what?
I know what you're doing.
Your fascist ways are showing.
Like I said, you just can't help yourself, can you?
With Trumptards, whenever I look at their lives, I find a crime they are hiding. Now that we're on the topic of secrets, I found the vodka secret at work by lifting a bag of pine bark mulch from an open pickup truck bed, yesterday.
There are more secrets! Trump has kept his income tax returns a secret, unlike previous Presidents. Also, unlike previous Presidents, Trump has been convicted of crimes related to unpaid taxes.
Signym, or any other Trumptard, can look up the crimes Trump is suspected to have been committing. He has even been convicted of some, but that doesn't bother Trumptards because they have done the same or worse.
Trump tax crime:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Trump+tax+crime
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
It is such a shame that all there is left here is you and Ted.
You just get more pathetic every day.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:The world is split in two. Trumptards and those who hate Trump. Everyone who knows Trump hates him, except for those who are as despicable in their own right as he is in his.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
It is such a shame that all there is left here is you and Ted.
You just get more pathetic every day.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Trump’s Bad Poker Hand
An interview with Ontario Premier Doug Ford
By David Frum | April 16, 2025, 10 AM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2025/04/david-frum-show-t
rumps-bad-poker-hand/682477/
Hello, and welcome back to The David Frum Show. I’m David Frum, a staff writer at The Atlantic, and I’m grateful that you would join us again this second week of the program.
This week, my guest will be Ontario Premier Doug Ford. Now, I should make clear, if anyone doesn’t know it: I, too, am a Canadian and an Ontarian by birth, and I still spend a lot of time there.
I’m going to be speaking to the premier about the sense of shock and dismay that Canadians have felt about Donald Trump’s threats, not only to the trade arrangement between Canada and the United States, but his demands that Canada be annexed to the United States.
You know, the Trump people, when they’re trying to justify the economic policy that sent world financial markets into such chaos over the past weeks, they try to present this as some kind of confrontation with China alone, because they don’t like to admit to Americans that they are waging a trade war against the entire planet. This is not an anti-China campaign; this is an anti-everybody campaign. And it’s a campaign in which America has almost literally no allies, except maybe El Salvador.
The trade war began with attacks on Canada, supposedly and historically America’s closest neighbor and ally. You would think if you were trying to build an anti-China coalition, you would start by consolidating the North American heartland, especially the U.S.-Canada relationship. That’s exactly the opposite of what has happened.
I’ll be talking to the premier about that, how Canadians feel about it—not so much the facts and figures of the relationship, enormous as it is, but what it has been like for Canadians to be on the receiving end of threats of annexation, threats of violence, and this unrelenting campaign of tariffs and harassment, which has not been paused. The tariffs against China paused and unpaused. But those against Canada have remained consistently in place from the very beginning of the Trump administration. It’s bizarre. It’s shocking. It’s upsetting. And that’s what we’re going to talk about this week on The David Frum Show.
Much more at https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2025/04/david-frum-show-t
rumps-bad-poker-hand/682477/
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:The world is split in two. Trumptards and those who hate Trump. Everyone who knows Trump hates him, except for those who are as despicable in their own right as he is in his.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
It is such a shame that all there is left here is you and Ted.
You just get more pathetic every day.
No. There are normal people and then there are retards like you and Ted.
Democrats can't even crack 30% approval on a CNN poll, so looks like there are a whole lot more normal people than there are retards.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:6ix, you and Trumptards in general are NOT successful people. Trump will be unsuccessful. Here is why:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:The world is split in two. Trumptards and those who hate Trump. Everyone who knows Trump hates him, except for those who are as despicable in their own right as he is in his.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
It is such a shame that all there is left here is you and Ted.
You just get more pathetic every day.
No. There are normal people and then there are retards like you and Ted.
Democrats can't even crack 30% approval on a CNN poll, so looks like there are a whole lot more normal people than there are retards.
Let’s just take Donald Trump seriously for a moment. Supposing a president of the United States came to office and said, You know what? My top priority is going to be reshoring manufacturing in the United States. That’s what Donald Trump says he wants to do. How would you go about it?
Well, first you admit to yourself, if to no one else, that you are proposing a very ambitious and expensive task, one that will involve a lot of dislocation. So you’d face up to that. You would try to build some kind of political consensus in favor of the bumpy, difficult path you were proposing for the nation. You would maximize your friends at home. You would reach out to other parties. You would not behave in an arrogant way that had a lot of people hoping for your failure, and you would not start committing all kinds of other offenses—and even crimes—that put you in all kinds of precarious positions, where anything went wrong, and your whole program would come a cropper.
You would understand you were doing something that was not easy, was not going to be fast, was going to be costly, was going to impose significant hardship on many people. You’d work with allies. You’d build a large coalition because even if as you’re shrinking your supply chains to move things away from China, you’re still going to need various kinds of inputs from other countries—raw materials, if nothing else. And you’d want to make sure that as many countries as possible were sympathetic to what you were doing, rather than wishing that you would fail and fearing your aggression. You certainly wouldn’t open campaigns of territorial aggression against neighbors and allies. You wouldn’t say, We’re going to annex Greenland from Denmark, and we’re going to try to conquer Canada and make it a 51st state. You wouldn’t do any of those things.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Trump’s victim-shaming of Ukraine is ugly and symptomatic of something more dangerous, writes world affairs editor Sam Kiley
Tuesday 15 April 2025 23:37 EDT
https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/europe/trump-ukraine-russia
-zelensky-putin-sumy-b2734069.html
What could possess Donald Trump to victim-shame Ukraine’s president and endorse the actions of an indicted war criminal by backing Vladimir Putin? Personal hatred of Volodymyr Zelensky? A near-demented obsession with personal slight? A radical strategic vision that’s upended world affairs? Something worse?
Probably.
Soon after the massacre in Sumy, where two Iskander missiles slammed into the provincial Ukrainian capital killing 35 people, including two children, Trump sloughed off the atrocity by claiming it had been a Russian mistake. Shocking, but not surprising, as Trump has consistently taken the Russian side at every opportunity this year.
Before most of the bodies could be collected from the city morgue, though, he had gone on the offensive by doubling down on his efforts to pin Ukraine’s suffering on its president.
“When you start a war, you got to know you can win,” he said of Ukraine’s leader.
Zelensky was not president when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014. He was elected by a landslide in 2019. Russia launched its attempt to kill him, capture Kyiv, and colonise Ukraine in February 2022.
He didn’t start the war with Russia – and wasn’t president when Ukraine enshrined the goal of Nato membership in its 2018 constitution.
Zelensky did, however, earn Trump’s anger by being a disloyal recipient of America’s largesse, mostly financial aid, for failing to open an investigation into Hunter Biden’s business deals in Ukraine in July 2019. Joe Biden was the likely Democrat candidate in the election of 2020.
Back then, Trump was impeached by Congress over his alleged threat to withhold $400m in US military aid to Ukraine unless Zelensky helped with the campaign against Biden and other anti-Democrat operations.
Trump was cleared by the Senate but the damage had been done. He bears a deep grudge against Zelensky.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Fuck Ukraine. Literally nobody cares. Just like I told you for the last 3 fucking years and nearly $1 Trillion pissed away.
Fuck you. Fuck the corpse of the Democratic Party. Fuck Ukraine 10 times.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:6ix, you and Trumptards in general are NOT successful people.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:The world is split in two. Trumptards and those who hate Trump. Everyone who knows Trump hates him, except for those who are as despicable in their own right as he is in his.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
It is such a shame that all there is left here is you and Ted.
You just get more pathetic every day.
No. There are normal people and then there are retards like you and Ted.
Democrats can't even crack 30% approval on a CNN poll, so looks like there are a whole lot more normal people than there are retards.
You will never provide any statistics for this because you're making up bullshit again.
Say hi to your mom for me and try to not be such a worthless beatoff for her sake. She's lived a tough life, and most of her problems stemmed from not aborting your fetus when she had a chance.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:6ix, you have all the data necessary to judge Trump as unsuccessful. He prefers to describe the books, journalism, and the movie The Apprentice about him as Fake News, but it is Real News.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
You will never provide any statistics for this because you're making up bullshit again.
Say hi to your mom for me and try to not be such a worthless beatoff for her sake. She's lived a tough life, and most of her problems stemmed from not aborting your fetus when she had a chance.
6ix, even your life would be self-judged as unsuccessful if someone turned it into a movie and played it for your edification. For an immediate example, 6ix, you know that the two-line story you just wrote is a lie, but you didn't hesitate. You felt no shame, 6ix. That is why you are unsuccessful.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Why Authoritarians Attack Universities First
A Yale professor and expert on fascism talks about why he’s leaving the United States under Trump.
By John Haltiwanger | April 16, 2025, 2:09 PM
https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/04/16/trump-authoritarians-universities
-fascism-jason-stanley/
One of the leading U.S. experts on fascism is so unsettled by the political climate under President Donald Trump that he’s packing up and leaving the country. Jason Stanley, a philosophy professor at Yale University and the author of books including How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, has accepted a position at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy that will begin in the fall. Free Download at https://libgen.rs/search.php?&req=Jason+Stanley
Stanley is not the only prominent Yale professor leaving the Ivy League university amid Trump 2.0. He’ll be joined at Munk by two colleagues, historians Timothy Snyder and Marci Shore, in one of many signs that the United States is in the midst of a Trump-induced brain drain as the new administration threatens university funding, among many other unfriendly steps toward the world of academia.
In a wide-ranging interview with Foreign Policy, Stanley, who has raised alarm bells about Trump’s authoritarian tendencies for years and unequivocally calls the president a fascist, discussed his reasons for leaving the United States and Trump’s controversial Monday meeting with Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele—who styles himself the “world’s coolest dictator”—among other topics.
During the Bukele meeting, which Stanley described as a “horrifying moment,” Trump again floated sending U.S. citizens to be imprisoned in the Central American country—which legal experts warn would likely be unconstitutional. This came as the Trump administration continues to defy a Supreme Court order to facilitate the return of a Maryland man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongly deported to El Salvador.
Though Stanley has faced some criticism over his impending exodus from the United States, he’s making no apologies as he continues to warn people against assuming they’re not at risk of being targeted in Trump’s America.
“We need to call out the naivete of people who think that this will stop at noncitizens,” Stanley said.
“I am unwillingly going because I don’t want to leave the United States. It’s my home and always will be my home,” Stanley said.
Stanley said the well-being of his children is the primary reason for his decision. “I have two Black sons,” Stanley said. “I’m scared for the safety of my sons. And the explicit anti-Blackness of the moment is more frightening to me than it would be for someone without two Black sons.”
Trump has a long history of espousing white nationalist viewpoints and conspiracy theories, and his administration’s recent aggressive effort to eradicate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives from virtually every aspect of American life has been widely decried as racist.
Stanley, who is Jewish and the son of Holocaust survivors, said his family history also contributed to his choice to leave the United States. There are “obvious parallels” between the climate in 1930s Nazi Germany and what we’re seeing in the United States today, Stanley said.
“Plenty of intellectuals left Germany in ’32 to ’34, when it was unclear what was going to happen,” he said, adding, “The United States might be fine. But in the case where it’s not fine, you want to leave early for better positions.”
How the president’s crackdown on higher education fits into his broader political program.
But the Trump administration’s assault on academia also played a big role in this. Stanley said he “impulsively” accepted the job at the University of Toronto after Columbia University caved to demands from the Trump administration in order to receive $400 million in federal funding. The university agreed to major changes, including overhauling its rules for protests and new supervision over the Middle Eastern studies department.
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Texas Trumptards are feeling confident in their power
Texas GOP Introduces Bill to Test Waste Water For Abortion Pill Byproducts
The bill also requires testing water for the pregnancy hormone
By Troy Matthews | April 16, 2025
https://meidasnews.com/news/texas-gop-introduces-bill-to-test-waste-wa
ter-for-abortion-pill-byproducts
In one of the most bizarre moves from any Republican state government yet, Texas GOP have introduced a bill that would require water utilities to test waste water for chemical byproducts in urine related to the use of the abortion pill and birth control. SB 1976 would gather data on abortion pill and birth control urinary metabolites in water by area, but the bill also, strangely, requires testing for pregnanediol, the hormone that appears in urine when a person is pregnant.
Why is the Texas GOP trying to require water testing for pregnancy and abortion pill usage in municipalities? They say it is for environmental protection. Anti-choice extremists have long argued, without scientific evidence, that chemicals in the abortion pill mifepristone are harmful to water. However; Republicans, and especially Texas Republicans, are not known for their tough stances on protecting the environment.
It is also serves to back the talking point that abortion pills need to be banned because they are dangerous to women, which the medical community roundly rejects. This same disinformation campaign led to Louisiana classifying abortion pills as dangerous addictive substances, like Xanax and Ambien, which led to requirements that they be locked away in hospitals out of reach, when they are commonly used to treat dangerous miscarriages. No, people don't get addicted to abortion pills.
"This is a growing concern around the country, and it’s not a left or right issue—it’s a health issue," said State Senator Bryan Hughes, the author of the bill.
The bill also calls for testing for estrone and testosterone; spikes of which could be used to determine if people are utilizing gender affirming care in an area.
From the bill:
"(b) In accordance with Subsection (a), the commission shall conduct testing for the following urinary metabolites in the form of gluconates:
(1) benzophenone;
(2) bisphenol A;
(3) estrone;
(4) ethinyl estradiol;
(5) musk ketone;
(6) pregnanediol;
(7) testosterone;
(8) tonalide (AHTN);
(9) mifepristone; and
(10) any other organic substance required to be tested or by the commission.
The commission shall maintain detailed records of all testing conducted under this section and publish the records on the commission's Internet website. The records must include:
(1) the date on which each sample was collected;
(2) the location from which each sample was collected;
(3) the date on which each sample was tested for the presence of the urinary metabolites listed in Subsection (b); and
(4) the results of the test for each urinary metabolite listed in Subsection (b) in parts per trillion."
Whatever their purpose is, Texas republicans having access to urinary testing from entire regions is off putting to say the least. This seems like the next level in government intrusion from the state with one of the most restrictive abortion bans in the country, which also does not provide exceptions for rape or incest.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Fire Government Employees and Hire Crooks to do the same work, incompetently
https://theintercept.com/2025/04/17/ice-deportation-contracts-us-advis
ors/
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement just signed a contract worth $73 million with a firm whose executives are accused of taking part in a scheme to manufacture evidence against a co-worker during their time working at the Department of Homeland Security.
According to a contract document reviewed by The Intercept, federal contractor Universal Strategic Advisors will provide services pertaining to ICE’s “non-detained docket,” a master list of millions of noncitizens believed to be removable from the United States but not yet in the agency’s custody.
The contract cites President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency on the U.S.-Mexico border, an overwhelming glut of potential deportees, and a shortage of officers to process them all as justification for hiring a private vendor to assist with the collection of biometric data, coordinating removals, and monitoring immigrant populations.
The document says that with a fleet of new outsourced employees, ICE can reassign hundreds of officers to tasks that better align with Trump’s recent executive orders aimed at maximizing the agency’s detention and deportation operations. With the contractors onboard, the document says at least 675 ICE officers “will be able to take all appropriate actions to comply with the EO’s by prioritizing conducting at-large arrests, removals, and detention related activities.”
A former ICE official, who spoke to The Intercept on the condition of anonymity, said they were concerned by this plan to further privatize the agency’s operations at the same time as the Trump administration has dramatically slashed its workforce and gutted important oversight bodies like the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, as well as the Office of the Immigration Detention Ombudsman. “I certainly take issue with them firing career feds and demolishing whole offices, just to hire contractors to do the same work, many of them who are former ICE employees now retired,” the official said.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The Pardon-to-Prison Pipeline
Trump granted clemency to people who keep ending up back in trouble with the law.
By David A. Graham | April 16, 2025, 6:55 PM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/04/january-6-pard
on-prison-trump/682485/
Late last month, Jonathan Braun was arrested on allegations of shoving a 3-year-old, “causing a red mark on his back and substantial pain.” This is only his latest brush with the law over the past four years. He was banned by federal and New York State judges from working in debt collection; fined $20 million; and accused of punching his wife and father-in-law, groping a nanny, and attacking a nurse with an IV-bag holder. He also allegedly threatened a man at his synagogue who asked him to pipe down during services.
This crime spree is stunning, but what makes it national news is that it has all happened since 2021, when President Donald Trump commuted Braun’s 10-year prison sentence for smuggling marijuana. Braun, granted clemency during the last hours of Trump’s first term as president, is one of many recipients of a Trump pardon who has found himself back in trouble with the law. Some of them are people convicted of serious offenses on January 6, 2021, and then pardoned at the outset of Trump’s second term in office. Despite Trump’s depiction of the rioters as peace-loving patriots, more than a few of them have proved to be repeat offenders.
Braun, who is now back in prison, is not the only first-term recipient of clemency to be rearrested. Eli Weinstein, a convicted Ponzi schemer who received a last-minute 2021 commutation, was convicted on March 31 in a $41 million fraud case. Philip Esformes, whose sentence for his role in a $1.3 billion Medicare fraud was commuted in 2020, was arrested last year on domestic-violence-related charges, but the state dropped them a month later. The rapper Kodak Black has also been repeatedly arrested since receiving a commutation.
But the group of people convicted in connection with January 6 has been particularly likely to have found more trouble. Former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who was sentenced to 22 years for seditious conspiracy and other crimes, was arrested for assault just a month after being pardoned—at the Capitol, no less. (D.C. prosecutors declined to pursue charges.) He also tried unsuccessfully to stir up conflict at a conference of Trump critics in February. Matthew Huttle, an Indiana man who received a pardon for entering the Capitol on January 6, was fatally shot by a deputy on January 27 after reaching for a gun. Emily Hernandez, a Missouri woman, was convicted for causing a fatal drunk-driving crash in 2022; the sentencing came days after her pardon for January 6 offenses. Andrew Taake of Texas was pardoned in January, then arrested in February on an outstanding charge for allegedly sending explicit messages to an undercover cop he believed was an underage girl.
It’s not just that clemency recipients have been accused of crimes since their pardons; they’ve also tried to use the pardons to get off for other offenses. Edward Kelley argued that his pardon from Trump for January 6 also covered his plot to kill the FBI agents who investigated him; a judge disagreed. Daniel Ball said that charges of illegally possessing a gun should be thrown out because the weapon was discovered in a search related to now-pardoned January 6 charges, and the acting U.S. attorney agreed, but Dan Wilson, a pardoned Capitol rioter who made a similar argument, had less luck with a federal appeals court. (Other defendants have made similar claims, with varying results.) David Daniel, who was charged with producing and possessing child pornography, also argued that a search that turned up the material was invalid because of his January 6 pardon, but the U.S. attorney in the case disagreed. (Daniel has pleaded not guilty to the charges.)
Seeing so many people who received pardons get back in tr
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Anyone who looked either at Donald Trump’s personal history or the history of authoritarian regimes in general would have realized that there’s no such thing as a deal with this administration. Whatever you think Trump and co. have agreed to, they feel free to make new demands whenever it suits them.
Sure enough, yesterday the New York Times published an article with the headline “Law Firms Made Deals With Trump. Now He Wants More From Them.”
Big Law has just discovered what it should have known all along: Giving Trump what he wants doesn’t buy you lenient treatment. All it does is signal weakness, which leads to even more onerous demands.
And the fact that Trump never, ever keeps his promises is why he will lose his trade war, why the dollar may lose its status as a global currency, and why America may eventually face a debt crisis.
U.S. efforts to build an anti-China trade alliance are doomed to failure. Why? Because nobody with any sense trusts the Trump administration to honor the terms of any deals it makes, whether they’re deals about pro bono work with law firms or tariff deals with other governments.
And as more and more people realize that Trump and his minions can’t be trusted, the damage will spread from trade to finance. The international role of the dollar and, eventually, America’s ability to service its debt are very much at risk.
Why can’t Donald Trump be trusted? Partly because he’s Donald Trump. But even if he weren’t, absolute monarchs — which is what Trump is trying to become — are fundamentally untrustworthy. The ruler may sometimes choose to honor his promises, but it’s always his choice — a choice that can be changed at any moment.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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TDS is just flowing through you today.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:This is NOT about Trump and has bigger consequences than all the things put together by Trump and Project 2025:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
TDS is just flowing through you today.
Don't ignore Republicans' awful budget
More debt, big Medicaid cuts, and trillions in regressive tax cuts
By Matthew Yglesias | Apr 17, 2025
https://www.slowboring.com/p/dont-ignore-republicans-awful-budget
To start with some self-criticism: Back when the American Rescue Plan was coming together, I thought that if American fiscal policy “overshot” somewhat on the demand side, that would have positive consequences for American politics. Interest rates would rise to contain inflation (this happened) and people would find the higher interest rates annoying (this also happened), and then, as a result, the political system would return to being worried about debt and deficits.
I thought that this would be good, because it would force us into a more real politics, one that wasn’t so dominated by pure symbolism — we would be dealing with hard fiscal tradeoffs and less culture war nonsense.
This did not happen, at all.
Joe Biden and the Democrats surprised me by not returning to the classic Obama/Clinton message of balanced deficit reduction. I found this incredibly annoying, because when Obama was president, the conventional wisdom among pure political hacks was so strongly in favor of a deficit reduction message that the White House ran with it, even though it was inappropriate to the economic circumstances and Obama’s economic team was mixed on the substance of it. But just a few short years later, the conventional wisdom among political operatives had pivoted so hard against deficit reduction that they weren’t focused on it even when it was substantively warranted. Then came the debate, the candidate swap, and what I hoped would be a chance for Kamala Harris to shake the etch-a-sketch and ditch Biden’s extensive set of proposals for new spending in favor of a “reduce the deficit and bring down interest rates” message.
She declined to go down that road. Trump won. And now, while a million crazy things are happening in the executive branch, congressional Republicans are moving forward with a fiscal agenda that is incredibly irresponsible and will add trillions in debt, despite DOGE’s efforts to saves pennies through measures like refusing to help Milwaukee address unsafe levels of lead in their public schools’ drinking water.
Republicans are telling some people that there will be trillions of cuts to social safety net programs while promising other people that there won’t. But all possible versions of the GOP fiscal agenda result in huge increases to the budget deficit. In some, those increases are partially offset by cuts to programs for the poor; other times the deficits are just really large. But every version involves the opposite of sound Obama-style deficit reduction.
What we should be doing is aiming for balanced fiscal consolidation: higher revenue and lower spending, while trying to shelter the most vulnerable from the impact of cuts.
But Republicans want to reduce revenue, raise the deficit, and ensure that the pain of budget cuts falls on the vulnerable.
Republicans’ confusing budget moves
This has all been a bit hard to keep track of, but the first mover in Republican budget drama this year was the House of Representatives, which passed a resolution calling for $4.5 trillion in tax cuts partially offset by big cuts to Medicaid and SNAP.
This ultimately amounted to roughly $2.8 trillion in deficit increases that they chose to pretend would actually reduce the deficit via magical levels of economic growth.
The way this was written, the biggest spending cut by far is TBD but needs to come from the House Energy and Commerce Committee. This is the committee that is
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Universities Told Students to Leave the Country. ICE Just Said They Didn’t Actually Have To.
By Natasha Lennard / Apr 17, 2025 at 1:10 PM
https://theintercept.com/2025/04/17/international-student-visas-deport
-dhs-ice/
The Department of Homeland Security said this week in a Michigan court that the agency does not have the authority to terminate students’ immigration statuses by terminating their records in the Student Exchange and Visitor Information System. Known as SEVIS, the database allows both universities and authorities to track information about international students on visas in U.S.
Homeland Security’s changes to SEVIS, the Trump administration said, have no bearing on a student’s lawful nonimmigrant status.
“Terminating a record in SEVIS does not terminate an individual’s nonimmigrant status in the United States,” said Andre Watson, assistant director of the national security division for Homeland Security Investigations, in the filing. Watson added that existing laws and regulations “do not provide” the DHS-run Student Exchange and Visitor Program “the authority to terminate nonimmigrant status by terminating a SEVIS record.”
This will be news to many hundreds of students who have had their SEVIS records terminated by DHS in recent weeks — and were then told by their schools or the government that they have thus lost their immigration status and must immediately leave the country.
“Under pressure from ICE, schools have been advising students they are out of status after SEVIS record termination, and in many cases disenrolling them as a result,” said Nathan Yaffe, an attorney representing international students facing deportation in other cases. “Now ICE has submitted sworn declarations that SEVIS record termination has no legal effect on the student whatsoever.”
“Disenrolling students was already a blatant capitulation, and now it is a wholly inexcusable one.”
Based on school officials checking their SEVIS records, hundreds of students have been led to believe that they had lost their student immigration status because a terminated record in the database is broadly taken to mean a student has fallen out of status.
The DHS’s latest claims to the contrary in court are sure to only sow further confusion, but they are strong grounds, Yaffe said, for schools to immediately stop disenrolling students believed to be out of status due to SEVIS record checks.
“Any school that continues to disenroll (and refuses to re-enroll) students is voluntarily punishing students to align itself with the Trump administration’s agenda,” Yaffe said. “Disenrolling students was already a blatant capitulation, and now it is a wholly inexcusable one.”
What Schools Told Students
The DHS declaration was filed in response to a lawsuit brought by four Michigan students, who are suing the Trump administration over the reported loss of their F-1 student statuses. In response, the government argued that the case should be thrown out, since DHS did not remove the students’ statuses when it terminated their SEVIS records.
According to Inside Higher Ed, 16 lawsuits from at least 50 students have challenged the Trump administration over visa revocations and deportation threats. A number of the suits have challenged DHS’s authority to summarily change students’ statuses on SEVIS. It was only for the first time in the Michigan case, however, that the government said that its SEVIS interventions had no bearing on a student’s status.
The admission was an apparent effort by the government to dodge legal challenges. The students are suing to have their legal student immigration status restored, and the government is suggesting that their SEVIS terminations never changed the students’ statuses, so the agency cannot be sued for its actions. Communications from government agencies and school administrations, however, have up until this point taken a SEVIS termination to mean that a student’s status is terminated too.
In an email sent by a school official at the University of Michigan to one of the Mi
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There’s Only One Real Way to Reverse Big Law’s Capitulation to Trump
By Kevin Cope and Rachel Cohen | April 17, 2025 2:47 PM
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/04/big-law-school-trump-excec
utive-order-skadden.html
Shortly after taking office, President Donald Trump began issuing a series of executive orders targeting law firms, penalizing firms that employ—or previously employed—attorneys who have challenged him in court. The orders are plainly retaliatory and amount to state-imposed punishment for speech on matters of public concern—violating the First Amendment’s protections for free speech and free association. And they’re having their intended effect: People and businesses with possible legal claims against the administration are increasingly unable to find representation, as are pro bono clients the president disfavors. Although several firms have resisted the orders and multiple lawsuits are ongoing, other firms continue to concede.
A new approach is needed. We are both former attorneys of the law firm Skadden, Arps. One of us recently resigned her position specifically over Skadden’s capitulation to a threatened executive order; the other of us is now a law professor. Our recent experiences show that law students and junior lawyers have the power to counteract and end the crisis—but only if they act collectively.
One might expect the most powerful law firms in the world to be both well-equipped and deeply motivated to resist such attacks on their independence. And indeed, some firms have mounted legal challenges, prevailing at the initial stages. But others, including Paul, Weiss; Skadden; and Kirkland & Ellis have quickly acquiesced, cutting widely reported-on “settlements” with the administration—not necessarily because the law required it, but because resistance apparently seemed too costly.
Commentators across the political spectrum have criticized the deal-cutters, some calling them “cowards” or “craven.” Former federal appellate judge J. Michael Luttig, a noted conservative appointed by President George W. Bush, lambasted Paul, Weiss for choosing to “cower before the powerful and sell out its firm and the nation’s legal profession to the President.”
Such critiques on principle are well-intentioned, and possibly justified. But if firms see their primary duty as serving their clients and preserving their business—rather than safeguarding legal institutions and constitutional norms—shaming won’t ultimately change behavior. Thus far, it seems that most firms take the former view. Moral appeals, without more, therefore won’t change their incentives. What we’re witnessing is a textbook coordination failure—a form of what political economists call a prisoner’s dilemma. Firms that push back against the administration risk losing clients, lawyers, and revenue to those that don’t. As Paul, Weiss chair Brad Karp put it, the executive order represented “an unprecedented threat” that “could have destroyed [the] firm” had it refused to comply. At first blush, it’s difficult to see how the administration’s unlawful threats could cripple a firm with $7.5 million in profit per equity partner. But in light of reports that peer firms Kirkland & Ellis and Sullivan & Cromwell promptly began pursuing Paul, Weiss’ clients and rainmaker partners, its concerns may seem more understandable.
The threat of an executive order is powerful—but it works only because firms act alone and even in conflict. A failure of collective action makes things worse for everyone. Consider that weeks after trying to poach Paul, Weiss clients, Kirkland & Ellis in turn found itself in the president’s crosshairs. If no firm had conceded, and all had refused to poach Paul, Weiss’ departing lawyers or clients under these conditions, much of the harm might have been avoided. Firms choosing to fight the administration have quickly secured court orders halting enforcement of their executive orders; Paul, Weiss could have done the same. But by defecting individually, Paul, Weiss and
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Trump Is Helping Putin Kill Ukrainians
Trump refuses to sell Patriot missiles for Ukrainian Air Defense
By Phillips P. Obrien | Apr 16, 2025
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/trump-is-helping-putin-kill-ukr
ainians
When I wrote in early March, “The Week The USA Started Killing Ukrainians”, some people said it went too far. They said that the US not aiding Ukraine was not the same as killing Ukrainians, that Trump still wanted a deal, etc, etc. Well, it turns out that I did not go far enough.
Just in the last few days we have incontrovertible proof of how Trump is helping Putin kill Ukrainians—both some now and many more in the future. Its the combination of what the US will not sell Ukraine (even though Ukraine has the money to buy them), the Russian missile campaign against Ukrainian civilians, and how the two come together. Let’s start with what came out in the last few days.
Ukraine is desperate to purchase Patriot anti-air missiles, as the Ukrainians are running out of this vital system. These were provided (too late) by the Biden Administration in 2023. From the moment they appeared, however, they revealed themselves to be the most effective air-defense weapons in Ukraine’s arsenal. The Ukrainians have used them to great effect—shooting down some of Russia’s most advanced aircraft and, crucially, some of Russia’s most difficult to shoot down missiles that have been fired against Ukrainian cities. Indeed, the Patriots have proven quite effective against Russian Kinzhal missiles, which the Kremlin used to boast could not be intercepted.
Having Patriots allowed the Ukrainians to keep the power on during the Russian Winter attacks in 2023-2024 and 2024-2025. However, they are very expensive to use. Zelensky claimed in February that 10 Patriot missiles were fired to bring down 6 Russian ballistic missiles—and that the cost of the Patriots was around $30 million.
In sum, these are a very effective but expensive system. They have made Ukraine much safer than it would be otherwise.
And the very effectiveness of the Patriots has provided Trump with a weapon to help kill Ukrainians. Even being sparing in their usage, Ukraine is running out. Patriots are an American system and the USA has been the source of most of the missiles. Right now there is no new US aid on its way to Ukraine. All we have had in 2025 is the left-over amounts of Biden Administration aid, whereas Trump and the GOP Congress have made no efforts to get any more aid for Ukraine—and that reality is not changing.
Russia understands this and is trying to make Ukraine use up all of its Patriots missiles. In the last few weeks the Russians have been using some of their advanced ballistic missiles against Ukrainian civilian targets, from Sumy last week (see picture above) to Kryvyi Rih the week before, to Dobropillia a little before that.
This seems very much to be a deliberate, targeted campaign to terrorize Ukrainian civilians and force the Ukrainians to use up their dwindling stock of Patriot missiles.
And it is working. The Ukrainians are desperately trying to get their hands on more Patriots—and its reached the stage that they are willing to pay whatever it takes to get more. Zelensky told CBS news that he wanted to buy up to 10 new Patriot systems and their missiles, which would be a major win for the US defense economy. Zelensky said he wanted to buy 10 U.S.-made Patriot systems — worth $1.5 billion each — to shield Ukrainian cities from relentless Russian missile and drone strikes.
"We will find the money and pay for everything," Zelensky said, stressing that Ukraine is prepared to purchase, not request for free, the $15 billion package.
Trump is refusing to sell them—even though that would benefit US workers and help the US economy. Indeed, in the last few days he has started boasting about the fact that Ukraine is desperate to buy more Patriots, and he is refusing to make a deal. Two days ago he told an Oval Office press conference:
Quote:
"He
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How America Can Avoid Becoming Russia
Political pressure must be brought to bear—through the courts, the press, and the states, but also applied to legislators while they still have any power left.
By Garry Kasparov | April 17, 2025, 6 AM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/04/america-russ
ia-trump-putin/682473/
Based on polls, election results, and the markets, Americans seem to be awakening, if only slowly, to the magnitude and nature of the threat they face. President Donald Trump and his allies in power are trying to erect an authoritarian Mafia state like the one Vladimir Putin and his cronies established in Russia. The American opposition talks of “undermining democracy” and “constitutional crisis”—but for the most part, its legislators, activists, and political strategists are pursuing politics as usual. They shouldn’t be.
If this sounds alarmist, forgive me for not caring. Exactly 20 years ago, I retired from professional chess to help Russia resist Putin’s budding dictatorship. People were slow to grasp what was happening there too: Putin’s bad, but surely he’ll stop short of — and you can fill in the blank with a dozen things he did to destroy Russia’s fragile democracy and civil society, many of which Trump is doing or attempting to do in America today.
Attacking the press as fake news and the enemy of the state? Check. Delegitimizing the judiciary, the last constitutional brake when the legislature is co-opted and feckless? Check. Expanding influence over the economy by threatening businesses and using tariffs to introduce a crisis and a spoils system? Check. Creating a culture of fear by persecuting unpopular individuals and groups? Been there, done all of that.
Putin is still in the Kremlin, and I’m writing this from New York City—my family has made its home there, as well as in Croatia, since we were forced to leave Russia in 2013. America’s institutions and democratic sentiment are far stronger than in the flawed, fragile state Putin took over from Boris Yeltsin 25 years ago. Russia was a mere eight years removed from Soviet totalitarianism when it elected a KGB lieutenant colonel who restored the Soviet anthem and called the fall of the U.S.S.R. the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the 20th century.
Americans, by contrast, have a well-stocked toolbox with which to defend their democratic institutions, if only they would use it. The press is still free; its only limitations are self-imposed. The economy is strong, even though Trump is working hard to put a stop to that. (People who feel economically insecure, or who depend on the government for their daily bread, don’t often rise up against it. Instilling a feeling of helplessness, a lack of control, is a key ingredient of authoritarianism. For example, the uncertainty created by Trump’s tariff flip-flops are anathema to consumer and business confidence, but uncertain citizens are more likely to follow a strongman.) American federalism and the separation of powers are not trivial for a would-be autocrat to overcome. Political pressure must be brought to bear—through the courts, the press, and the states, but also applied to legislators while they still have any power left.
The American opposition should spend less time criticizing the content of the administration’s executive actions—eliciting sympathy for a deported individual, say, or decrying the impact of Trump’s tariffs on 401(k) plans—than focusing on its suspect methods. The real crisis is the lack of due process in the deportations, to take the first example, and the president’s assumption of Congress’s power to levy taxes, to take the second. Sure, Trump loves tariffs, in other words—but he mostly loves exercising power, and his slate of arbitrary levies, unilaterally imposed by the executive, is a power grab.
Never lose sight of the fact that the Trump administration’s aim is to weaken and devalue the machinery of government, on one hand, and privatize the levers of power on the other.
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Trump Needs Someone to Blame
The Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome Powell, is that someone.
By David Frum | April 17, 2025, 11:15 AM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/04/trump-federal-reserv
e-jerome-powell/682489/
Trump’s all-purpose remedy for economic trouble is cheaper money. When Trump’s first-term trade war crashed the stock market in the fall of 2018, Trump demanded interest-rate cuts to rescue him from his own mistake. In a November 2018 interview with The Washington Post, Trump complained:
Quote:The numbers and the syntax in that quote are gibberish, but the emotion is real. Just in case anybody missed the point, Trump made it personal, saying he was “not even a little bit happy” with his selection of Powell for Fed chairman.
I am not at all happy with the Fed. I am not at all happy with my choice. I think we have to let it go. You know, if you look at—China is being accommodative. The euro and Europe is being accommodative. We’re not getting any accommodation, and we’re also paying $50 billion, we’re paying down our liquidity, is—you can make the case it’s a positive thing in one way, but another thing, it snaps your liquidity. So I’m doing deals, and I’m not being accommodated by the Fed. I’m not happy with the Fed. They’re making a mistake because I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me.
As a businessman, Trump spent a lot of his career profoundly in debt. His bankers often bailed him out, and he seems to believe that the Federal Reserve should do the same for his presidency.
But the Fed has a mandate to preserve price stability. Trump’s trade war threatens enormous price increases for American businesses and consumers. The trade war is also scaring investors into dumping dollar-denominated assets. U.S. bond prices are falling, and the value of the dollar itself is tumbling. Trump has thrust the Fed into a terrible dilemma, one last encountered during the stagflation that occurred in the 1970s. The Federal Reserve can control only short-term rates; a short-term cut during a period of inflation will frighten investors into expecting even higher inflation in the future, and drive up long-term rates. The Fed can change the price of overnight lending, but the markets decide the price of 30-year mortgages. And if the Fed presses down too hard on the lever it does control, that will force an upward surge by the lever it does not control.
The rescue that the economy needs is a change not in monetary policy but in Trump’s economic aggression against trading partners. End the tariffs, let trade recover, and then the Fed can do its convalescent work. But intelligent policy begins by admitting that Trump’s policy was stupid—and Trump will not soon admit that. So Powell must be fingered as the fall guy instead.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Why You Should Fear a Trumpified Fed
Don’t give an abuser power that’s easy to abuse
By Paul Krugman | Apr 18, 2025
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/why-you-should-fear-a-trumpified
Sometimes the Federal Reserve has extraordinary power over the economy.
Consider what happened from 1982 to 1984. For most of 1982 the U.S. economy was in grim shape. Employment had plunged, especially in manufacturing. The unemployment rate hit 10.8 percent in December (it was 4.2 percent last month.) And economic pain helped Democrats make major gains in the 1982 midterms.
But everything was about to change, thanks to the Fed. In the summer of 1982 the Fed decided to ease monetary policy. Interest rates plunged, and about 6 months later the economy began a stunning rebound, growing 4.6 percent in 1983 and 7.2 percent in 1984. Ronald Reagan claimed credit for “Morning in America,” but actually it was the Fed that did it.
This episode illustrates the Fed’s power — power that must be insulated from abuse by politicians, especially politicians like Donald Trump.
Over the past few days Trump has been demanding that the Fed cut interest rates and calling for the Fed chairman’s “termination.” It’s worth looking at what he posted on Truth Social to get a sense of how, to use the technical term, batshit crazy he is on this subject:
Quote:And we really, really don’t want someone that crazy dictating monetary policy.
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
The ECB is expected to cut interest rates for the 7th time, and yet, "Too Late" Jerome Powell of the Fed, who is always TOO LATE AND WRONG, yesterday issued a report which was another, and typical, complete "mess!" Oil prices are down, groceries (even eggs!) are down, and the USA is getting RICH ON TARIFFS. Too Late should have lowered Interest Rates, like the ECB, long ago, but he should certainly lower them now. Powell’s termination cannot come fast enough!
8.96k ReTruths 38.2k Likes
Apr 17, 2025,12:12 PM
The reason we don’t want politicians in direct control of monetary policy is that it’s so easy to use. After all, what does it mean to “ease” monetary policy? It’s an incredibly frictionless process. Normally the Federal Open Market Committee tells the New York Fed to buy U.S. government debt from private banks, which it does with money conjured out of thin air. There’s no need to pass legislation, place bids with contractors, deal with any of the hassles usually associated with changes in government policy. Basically the Fed can create an economic boom with a phone call.
It's obvious that this kind of power could be abused by an irresponsible leader who wants to preside over an economic boom and doesn’t want to hear about the risks. This isn’t a hypothetical scenario. Consider what happened in Turkey, whose Trump-like president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, recently arrested the leader of the opposition. When the global post-Covid inflation shock hit, Erdogan embraced crank economic theories. He forced Turkey’s central bank, its equivalent of the Fed, to cut interest rates in the belief, contrary to standard economics, that doing so would reduce, not increase inflation. You can see the results in the chart:
How can we guard against that kind of policy irresponsibility? After the stagflation of the 1970s many countries delegated monetary policy to technocrats at independent central banks. Can the technocrats get it wrong? Of course they can and often have. But they’re less likely to engage in wishful thinking and motivated reasoning than typical politicians, let alone politicians like Trump.
What makes Trump’s attempt to bully the Fed especially ominous is the fact that the Fed will soon have to cope with the stagflationary crisis Trump has created. Trump’s massive tariff increase will lead to a major inflationary shock:
http
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18 more TDS posts out of you today, huh?
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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A sizable group of Americans agrees with the phrase ‘I think society should be burned to the ground.’
https://theconversation.com/a-need-for-chaos-powers-some-americans-sup
port-for-elon-musk-taking-a-chainsaw-to-the-us-government-253420
April 15, 2025 8:30am EDT
. . . in our data, those higher in need for chaos report holding more trust in Musk, DOGE and Trump than people who score lower in the need for chaos measure.
Who wants to burn it down?
We are political psychologists who study the link between psychological traits and political beliefs. Last month, the University of Delaware’s Center for Political Communication ran a national survey that we designed to understand where the public stands on various political issues and how those beliefs relate to psychological traits, including need for chaos.
In our national study of 1,600 Americans conducted between Feb. 27-March 5, 2025, by YouGov, we asked respondents how much they agreed or disagreed with the following statements:
• “I fantasize about a natural disaster wiping out most of humanity such that a small group of people can start all over”
• “I think society should be burned to the ground”
• “We cannot fix the problems in our social institutions; we need to tear them down and start over”
• “I need chaos around me – it is too boring if nothing is going on”
Similar to prior work by author Kevin Arceneaux and his colleagues, our data shows that fewer than 20% of the sample agree strongly or agree somewhat with each item.
However, looking at the need for chaos among groups of varying ages, education levels and media habits, we find the highest need for chaos scores among people under age 40, those with less education, and those who pay the least attention to politics.
Burning it down through government policy
Our new data also shows that while people highest in need for chaos report having more trust in Musk, DOGE, and President Trump, these chaos-seeking folks report having less trust in “people in general,” journalists or the federal government. These findings hold even when statistically accounting for other factors, among them party, race, gender, education and ideology.
Musk’s penchant for wielding chainsaws as a symbol of DOGE’s work provides some insight into why chaos seekers may like what they see in Musk.
It’s not clear exactly what Musk’s aim is with his work at DOGE, as he eliminates the jobs of hundreds of thousands of government workers.
What is clear, however, is that by many accounts, the mass firings and the gutting of agencies, like the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Institute for Peace, are sowing chaos. And a significant portion of Americans want just that.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Steve Bannon, Trump’s first-term whisperer, once described himself as a Leninist because “Lenin … wanted to destroy the state and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” Trump was apparently listening and learning.
https://nonsite.org/the-man-who-would-be-king-method-in-trumps-madness
-contradictions-in-trumps-method/
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:
Steve Bannon, Trump’s first-term whisperer, once described himself as a Leninist because “Lenin … wanted to destroy the state and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” Trump was apparently listening and learning.
https://nonsite.org/the-man-who-would-be-king-method-in-trumps-madness
-contradictions-in-trumps-method/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
With $37 Trillion in debt, an illusion that currently costs another $100k per second just to keep up, and everyone around you miserable all the time...
I'm just wondering what it is exactly that you're even defending at this point.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:Has there ever existed a Trumptard who realized he was bad? Nope. Any Nazis who realized they were bad? Nope. Maybe Confederate slave-owners who realized they were bad? Nope. Ku Klux Klansmen who realized lynching was evil? Nope, nope, nope.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Steve Bannon, Trump’s first-term whisperer, once described himself as a Leninist because “Lenin … wanted to destroy the state and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” Trump was apparently listening and learning.
https://nonsite.org/the-man-who-would-be-king-method-in-trumps-madness
-contradictions-in-trumps-method/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
With $37 Trillion in debt, an illusion that currently costs another $100k per second just to keep up, and everyone around you miserable all the time...
I'm just wondering what it is exactly that you're even defending at this point.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Trump supporters 'must be ostracized' for America to survive: ex-megachurch pastor
By Brad Reed | April 18, 2025 9:27AM ET
https://www.rawstory.com/trump-supporters-2671799614/
Former megachurch pastor John Pavlovitz has written a new piece on his Substack page that takes a distinctly Old Testament attitude toward supporters of President Donald Trump. https://johnpavlovitz.substack.com/p/for-americas-survival-his-support
ers
In his piece, Pavlovitz makes the case that Trump supporters "must be ostracized" going forward due to their complicity in what he sees as the president's ruinous second-term policies.
"The people we love, live alongside; those we work and study shoulder to shoulder with; those we have invited into our hearts and homes. They are as responsible for all of this as he is , as those in his Cabinet are," he writes.
Pavlovitz argues that Trump supporters have had all sorts of chances to correct course over the years despite seeing the president's cruelty and his authoritarian aspirations up close.
"They shunned their responsibility as Americans, they rejected the teachings of their faith tradition, and they abandoned any kind of moral footing by enabling the ascension of a felon-rapist-scumbag mobster who lacks a single noble impulse," he contends. "Through whatever combination of racism, misogyny, prejudice, intellectual ignorance, and plain old hatred, they willfully coronated him."
He then goes on to advise his followers to simply cut any Trump-supporting friends or relatives out of their lives.
"If we truly believe in bending the arc of the moral universe toward justice at this place and time, his supporters need to become pariahs," he writes. "They should not be welcome where good people gather. They need to be held accountable for unleashing this hell on the rest of us."
Pavlovitz does make an exception for Trump supporters who have "come to their senses" and he advises treating them with a spirit of forgiveness and charity.
"But as far as his cheerleaders, champions, kindred spirits, sycophants, and disciples—they are proving themselves unreachable with reason, impervious to compassion, and mortally allergic to anything that reasonable human beings value," he adds.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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For America's Survival, His Supporters Must Be Ostracized
By John Pavlovitz | Apr 17, 2025
https://johnpavlovitz.substack.com/p/for-americas-survival-his-support
ers
His absolute disregard for the Constitution, throwing our nation into perpetual chaos;
his rejection of the rule of Law, stripping elemental rights from tens of millions of Americans;
his unthinkable, unspeakable treatment of human beings rounded up like animals and jailed without probable cause; his capricious and violent crusade against federal workers, universities, law firms, public school teachers, medical professionals, and journalists.
The people we love, live alongside; those we work and study shoulder to shoulder with; those we have invited into our hearts and homes. They are as responsible for all of this as he is, as those in his Cabinet are.
The war crimes in Gaza and Ukraine.
The medical relief, ripped from the poorest of the world.
The scalding panic felt by immigrants, both documented and undocumented.
They are culpable for all of it.
The literal and figurative blood is on their hands.
They may as well be smashing the car windows of a migrant family waiting for their lawyer to ensure due process, joyously ripping the lunches from children living in poverty, unceremoniously terminating federal employees after decades of faithful service, terrorizing transgender students in their school hallways, accosting pregnant women in emergency rooms.
They could have so easily stopped this.
They could have allowed their humanity to come to bear back in the fall, when it was clear that he was cognitively shattered, that his singular goal was a fascist dictatorship, that his agenda would consist solely of retribution against those who sought legal and moral accountability for him.
Instead, our childhood friends, our favorite uncles, and our next-door neighbors ignored revered journalists, Constitutional scholars, renowned economists, and past presidents.
They shunned their responsibility as Americans, they rejected the teachings of their faith tradition, and they abandoned any kind of moral footing by enabling the ascension of a felon-rapist-scumbag mobster who lacks a single noble impulse. Through whatever combination of racism, misogyny, prejudice, intellectual ignorance, and plain old hatred, they willfully coronated him.
And now, they either fully endorse this most vicious and vile season in our nation’s history, or enable it by their cowardice and silence.
And as a result, this senseless waste of life, this asinine global trade war, this stupid squandering of prosperity, this sociopathic predation against citizens and immigrants—they are collaborators on all of it.
And in light of this, they do not deserve proximity with those of us who are hourly pushing back against the criminality, exposing the atrocities, caring for those under duress. They are nothing but barriers to healing and obstacles to justice.
I’m not sure America can even survive the damage we’ve sustained in such a short time. Despite our best efforts, it may not be possible (at least in our lifetimes) to stop the bleeding, reverse course, and repair all that has been damaged since January 20th.
But if any of this is going to happen: if we are going to salvage our Republic from this massive wrecking ball of cruelty, it is going to be necessary for the good people of this nation to sever ties with those still loyal to him. We need to withhold our friendship, exclude them from our holiday gatherings, cut personal and professional ties, and practically speaking, marginalize them.
If we truly believe in bending the arc of the moral universe toward justice at this place and time, his supporters need to become pariahs. They should not be welcome where good people gather. They need to be held accountable for unleashing this hell on the rest of us.
I’m not speaking about those who have or will come to their senses; those with the humility and empathy to admit their errors; those who will be visible and vocal in their resistance to th
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Has there ever existed a Trumptard who realized he was bad?
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Steve Bannon, Trump’s first-term whisperer, once described himself as a Leninist because “Lenin … wanted to destroy the state and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” Trump was apparently listening and learning.
https://nonsite.org/the-man-who-would-be-king-method-in-trumps-madness
-contradictions-in-trumps-method/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
With $37 Trillion in debt, an illusion that currently costs another $100k per second just to keep up, and everyone around you miserable all the time...
I'm just wondering what it is exactly that you're even defending at this point.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
You are brain damaged.
There is something seriously wrong with you.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Blah blah blah...
I have never seen a megachurch pastor think he was bad. And SECOND doesn't think he's evil either. But he is.
-----------
"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:
Congress Is Looking at Medicaid—What to Know
https://www.theepochtimes.com/article/congress-is-looking-at-medicaid-
what-to-know-5840010
-----------
"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’ve read many “news analyses” discussing what they say is the deep thinking behind Donald Trump’s tariff policy. Now, thanks to the Wall Street Journal, we have a scoop on how Trump, having announced a radical tariff plan on April 2, replaced it with an equally radical but completely different plan on April 9:
Quote:When I read the headline I assumed that Bessent and Lutnick had pushed for a total revision of Trump’s trade policy while Navarro was out of town for a few days. But no. They rushed in to see Trump while Navarro was having a meeting elsewhere in the White House.
Trump Advisers Took Advantage of Navarro’s Absence to Push for Tariff Pause
Peter Navarro, an adviser to Trump in favor of wide-ranging tariffs, had been a fixture on the president's side after 'Liberation Day'
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-tariff-pause-navarro-bessent
-lutnick-b9e864fb?mod=hp_lead_pos2
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Like Turkey’s Erdogan, Trump has embraced crank economic doctrines to justify his policies, in Trump’s case the ludicrous claim that tariffs won’t raise consumer prices. Does anyone doubt that when inflation rises, he’ll dismiss it as “fake news”? A few hours later:
https://bsky.app/profile/thebulwark.bsky.social/post/3ln46ymsdqe2p
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Trump Worker Reportedly Sent Harvard Letter by Mistake
Published Apr 19, 2025 at 6:25 AM EDT
https://www.newsweek.com/sean-keveney-donald-trump-harvard-letter-2061
699
Sean Keveney, the acting general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services, reportedly sent the list of demands that prompted Harvard to openly defy the Trump administration.
In response, the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in the college's federal grants, with Trump threatening to abolish the college's tax-exempt status for supporting "political, ideological, and terrorist inspired sickness."
Harvard President Alan Garber said in an open letter on Monday: "The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights. No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue."
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Trump Worker Reportedly Sent Harvard Letter by Mistake
Published Apr 19, 2025 at 6:25 AM EDT
https://www.newsweek.com/sean-keveney-donald-trump-harvard-letter-2061
699
Sean Keveney, the acting general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services, reportedly sent the list of demands that prompted Harvard to openly defy the Trump administration.
In response, the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in the college's federal grants, with Trump threatening to abolish the college's tax-exempt status for supporting "political, ideological, and terrorist inspired sickness."
Harvard President Alan Garber said in an open letter on Monday: "The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights. No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue."
I'm glad you agree that schools should be able to teach what they want to teach. That's the exact opposite of what has happened the last 50 years because of the Department of Education that no longer exists.
As for you...
You are constitutionally free to teach whatever the hell it is you want to teach and whoever it is you want to teach it to.
Just not on our dime anymore.
Good luck. You'll need it.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:Does the Department of Education control curriculum? No. Curriculum decisions are made at the state and local levels. So, where did you get the idea it did, 6ix?
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I'm glad you agree that schools should be able to teach what they want to teach. That's the exact opposite of what has happened the last 50 years because of the Department of Education that no longer exists.
https://www.google.com/search?q=does+department+of+education+control+c
urriculum
State and Local Responsibility:
Education in the U.S. is primarily a state and local responsibility. States and local school districts are responsible for establishing schools, developing curricula, and setting requirements for enrollment and graduation.
Federal Role:
The Department of Education's role is primarily to support states and local districts in achieving their education goals. This includes providing funding, collecting and analyzing data, and identifying best practices.
No Federal Control over Curriculum:
While the federal government has a role in education, it does not dictate the specific content of what is taught in schools. States and local districts have the authority to determine what students learn.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The Next Terrorist Attack
And What Comes After
By Timothy Snyder | Apr 19, 2025
https://snyder.substack.com/p/the-next-terrorist-attack
As I will try to show, the present government invites a terror attack. Most of the people directing the relevant agencies are incompetent; the next few layers down have been purged in culture wars; much the remaining personnel have resigned, been fired, or are demoralized; resources have been diverted away from terror prevention; Americans has been distracted by fiction and chaos; and potential attackers have been encouraged.
And so we have to think — now — about what would follow such an attack. Musk, Trump, Vance, and the rest would try to exploit the moment to undo remaining American freedoms. Let me cite Lesson 18 of On Tyranny.
18. Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of opposition parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. Do not fall for it.
In just three months, the Trump people have made the unthinkable much more likely. They have created the conditions for terrorism, and thus for terror management. This is true at several levels.
Most obviously, they have debilitated the services that detect terrorist threats and prevent attacks: the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and the National Security Agency (NSA). The CIA is a foreign intelligence service. The FBI is the federal police force. The NSA, which specializes in cryptography and foreign signals intelligence, is part of the Department of Defense. Homeland Security is a cabinet-level department that amalgamates a number of functions from immigration control through disaster relief and anti-terrorism.
Overall guidance over the intelligence agencies is exercised by Tulsi Gabbard, who is known as an apologist for the now-overthrown Assad regime in Syria and the Putin regime in Russia. The director of the FBI is Kash Patel, an author of children's books that promote conspiracy theories, and a recipient of payments from sources linked to Russia. Patel plans to run the agency from Las Vegas, where he resides in the home of a Republican megadonor. The deputy director of the FBI is Dan Bongino, a right-wing entertainer who has called the FBI "irredeemable corrupt" and indulged in conspiracy theories about its special agents. He now draws FBI special agents away from their usual duties to serve as a personal bodyguard. The director of Homeland Security is Kristi Noem, who lacks relevant expertise.
Noem has distinguished herself by posing in front of a cell full of prisoners in El Salvador. Homeland Security is focused on spectacular abductions at the expense of its other missions. Its programs to prevent terrorism have been defunded, and it is no longer keeping up its database on domestic terrorism. As one insider put it: “The vibe is: How to use DHS to go after migrants, immigrants. That is the vibe, that is the only vibe, there is no other vibe. It’s wild — it’s as if the rest of the department doesn’t exist.” The obsession with migrants means that local law enforcement, all across the country, is being in effect federalized in the service of an objective that is essentially irrelevant to core missions. That, too, makes life easier for aspiring terrorists.
The National Security Agency sits within the Department of Defense, which is run by Pete Hegseth, a right-wing entertainer and culture warrior. He has fired people who were qualified, and is unable to keep even his own people at work — he just lost four staffers in one day. The “meltdown” at the top of the Pentagon bodes ill.
The leadership of the NSA itself was recently changed, under bizarre and troubling circumstances. After a meeti
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Since its peak in mid-January the greenback has fallen by over 9% against a basket of major currencies. Two-fifths of that fall has happened since April 1st, even as the yield on ten-year Treasuries has crept up by 0.2 percentage points. That mix of rising yields and a falling currency is a warning sign: if investors are fleeing even though returns are up, it must be because they think America has become more risky.
A currency is only as good as the government that backs it.
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/04/16/how-a-dollar-crisis-would
-unfold
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Rumours are rife that big foreign asset managers are dumping greenbacks.
For decades investors have counted on the stability of American assets, making them the keystones of global finance. The depth of a $27trn market helps make Treasuries a haven; the dollar dominates trade in everything from goods and commodities to derivatives. The system is buttressed by the Federal Reserve, which promises low inflation, and by America’s sturdy governance, under which foreigners and their money have been welcome and secure. In just a few weeks President Donald Trump has replaced these ironclad assumptions with stomach-churning doubts.
This crisis-in-the-making was created in the White House. Mr Trump’s reckless trade war has raised tariffs by roughly a factor of ten and created economic uncertainty. Once the envy of the world, America’s economy is now courting recession, as tariffs rupture supply chains, boost inflation and punish consumers.
What makes this economic downturn and the loss of fiscal discipline so explosive is the fact that markets are starting to doubt whether Mr Trump can govern America competently or consistently. The shambolic, incoherent way the tariffs were calculated, unveiled and delayed was a mockery of policymaking. On-again, off-again exemptions and sectoral tariffs promote lobbying. For decades America has carefully signalled its dedication to a strong dollar. Today some White House advisers are talking about the reserve currency as if it were a burden to be shared—using coercion if necessary.
As America dithered, the shock could spread from Treasuries to the rest of the financial system, bringing defaults and hedge-fund blow-ups. That is the sort of behaviour you would expect in an emerging market.
A currency is only as good as the government that backs it. The longer America’s political system fails to grapple with its deficits or flirts with chaotic or discriminatory rules, the more likely will be a once-in-a-generation upheaval that pushes the global financial system into the unknown. Wherever things settled, the greenback’s diminished role would be a tragedy for America.
https://attentiontotheunseen.com/2025/04/18/the-risk-of-a-dollar-crisi
s-a-currency-is-only-as-good-as-the-government-that-backs-it/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The Supreme Court’s Late-Night Rebuke to Trump Is Extraordinary in More Ways Than One
The court didn’t even wait to let Alito write his dissent.
By Mark Joseph Stern | April 19, 2025 2:07 PM
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/04/supreme-court-blocks-depor
tations-donald-trump-alito-dissent.html
Shortly before 1 AM on Saturday, the Supreme Court issued an emergency order halting the Trump administration’s reported efforts to fly Venezuelan migrants to an El Salvador prison before they could challenge their deportation.
A majority of justices signaled that they no longer trust the administration to comply with the law, including the court’s own rulings. We are likely careening toward a head-on conflict between the president and the court, with foundational principles of constitutional democracy hanging in the balance.
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:Does the Department of Education control curriculum? No. Curriculum decisions are made at the state and local levels. So, where did you get the idea it did, 6ix?
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Trump Worker Reportedly Sent Harvard Letter by Mistake
Published Apr 19, 2025 at 6:25 AM EDT
https://www.newsweek.com/sean-keveney-donald-trump-harvard-letter-2061
699
Sean Keveney, the acting general counsel of the Department of Health and Human Services, reportedly sent the list of demands that prompted Harvard to openly defy the Trump administration.
In response, the Trump administration froze $2.2 billion in the college's federal grants, with Trump threatening to abolish the college's tax-exempt status for supporting "political, ideological, and terrorist inspired sickness."
Harvard President Alan Garber said in an open letter on Monday: "The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights. No government—regardless of which party is in power—should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue."
I'm glad you agree that schools should be able to teach what they want to teach. That's the exact opposite of what has happened the last 50 years because of the Department of Education that no longer exists.
As for you...
You are constitutionally free to teach whatever the hell it is you want to teach and whoever it is you want to teach it to.
Just not on our dime anymore.
Good luck. You'll need it.
https://www.google.com/search?q=does+department+of+education+control+c
urriculum
State and Local Responsibility:
Education in the U.S. is primarily a state and local responsibility. States and local school districts are responsible for establishing schools, developing curricula, and setting requirements for enrollment and graduation.
Federal Role:
The Department of Education's role is primarily to support states and local districts in achieving their education goals. This includes providing funding, collecting and analyzing data, and identifying best practices.
No Federal Control over Curriculum:
While the federal government has a role in education, it does not dictate the specific content of what is taught in schools. States and local districts have the authority to determine what students learn.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
So what? You got a Google A.I. Response of 3 paragraphs for what is doubtless tens or even hundreds of thousands of pages of legalese regarding this topic.
Nothing you posted here discounts that the Federal Government absolutely forbids a long list of things being taught in schools, while heavily incentivizing them to stick to what they've determined to be the ideal curriculum, and it punishes them the further they deviate from it.
There's plenty of ways for the Government to bully compliance without needing to put any laws on the books. Money is the number one way to do that.
If you were bright enough to understand any of what I just said, you'd be bright enough to see that Trump is only doing to schools exactly what has been done to them this whole time.
You're only noticing it today because he's enforcing compliance with things you don't agree with after decades of schools propagandizing the youth with your favorite talking points.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:If you are so certain about that, show the list, give examples of punishment.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Nothing you posted here discounts that the Federal Government absolutely forbids a long list of things being taught in schools, while heavily incentivizing them to stick to what they've determined to be the ideal curriculum, and it punishes them the further they deviate from it.
There's plenty of ways for the Government to bully compliance without needing to put any laws on the books. Money is the number one way to do that.
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:If you are so certain about that, show the list, give examples of punishment.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Nothing you posted here discounts that the Federal Government absolutely forbids a long list of things being taught in schools, while heavily incentivizing them to stick to what they've determined to be the ideal curriculum, and it punishes them the further they deviate from it.
There's plenty of ways for the Government to bully compliance without needing to put any laws on the books. Money is the number one way to do that.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
You're witnessing it happening right now, and you're only noticing it because you don't like what's now being enforced by the threat of withholding federal dollars.
This is how EVERYTHING works when it comes to the relationship between the states and the Federal Government.
Where they can't litigate a solution because the Constitution prevents it, they force compliance by withholding of the printing presses. Not just in education either.
Everybody in power was on board with how that all went down until January. You only discovered this is the way things get done now because your propaganda stations talk about it every day today.
I don't have to prove shit to you. If you want to disprove that this just the way it is, then that's incumbent upon you.
Good luck. You're not going to find the proof you're looking for because it doesn't exist.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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I've got an example of a court case that had a direct impact on my life that nobody was talking about except for 2 articles that were written over a few years apart in the Indy Star.
In the State of Indiana, the constitution specifically says that no law shall be enacted that impacts any citizen that does not impact all citizens.
But that didn't prevent a judge who allowed this to be held up in court for YEARS by a REPUBLICAN governor uphold how we go about doing emissions testing in the state. There are only two counties in the entire state that do it. Nobody else in the entire state is forced to comply with vehicle emissions testing, making this a clear victory against the testing, but we're still doing it anyway.
So why would a REPUBLICAN governor fight for this issue and win against DEMOCRATS that were fighting against it?
Seems pretty ass-backward on the face, doesn't it?
It's because all of the Federal Funding to the State of Indiana is predicated on having that program in place. If we said we weren't doing it anymore, that's the end of Federal Funding for Indiana's highway. At least under whatever the current agreement it is.
And why would the Democrats be the ones fighting against vehicle emissions testing in Indiana? Because the people who are most hurt by it in the entire state are the poorest and those least likely to be able to buy a better car in the first place. These emissions tests very disproportionately harm the poorest people in the state. That's why.
And so Asshole Holcumb wins this one and the poor people lose. All so we can keep tearing up the highway every summer and put a new one down and keep the union people working.
Good job everyone. Well Done.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:I get that Trumptards hallucinate that the Federal government is oppressing them. But what I see is Trumptards screwing up their own lives and denying it is their own fault. Blame it all on the Democrats, do not blame yourself and certainly do not change your own habits. Believe only Trump can fix it.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Good luck. You're not going to find the proof you're looking for because it doesn't exist.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:I have no idea what you are talking about here because you didn't cite anything. I bet if there was an article, I'd see that you don't have any correct idea, either. That is my experience at work: an overly articulate Trumptard describes with complete confidence what he thinks is wrong with a machine but the Trumptard understood nothing, completely misdiagnosing the situation. If Trumptards can constantly be that absurdly wrong with straightforward mechanical problems, they can be even worse with abstractions. But does that make the overly articulate Trumptard more modest about his claimed abilities in the future? Never! I don't have to speculate why Trumptards suffer and don't prosper. They show me why but they can't see the why.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I've got an example of a court case that had a direct impact on my life that nobody was talking about except for 2 articles that were written over a few years apart in the Indy Star.
In the State of Indiana, the constitution specifically says that no law shall be enacted that impacts any citizen that does not impact all citizens.
But that didn't prevent a judge who allowed this to be held up in court for YEARS by a REPUBLICAN governor uphold how we go about doing emissions testing in the state. There are only two counties in the entire state that do it. Nobody else in the entire state is forced to comply with vehicle emissions testing, making this a clear victory against the testing, but we're still doing it anyway.
So why would a REPUBLICAN governor fight for this issue and win against DEMOCRATS that were fighting against it?
Seems pretty ass-backward on the face, doesn't it?
It's because all of the Federal Funding to the State of Indiana is predicated on having that program in place. If we said we weren't doing it anymore, that's the end of Federal Funding for Indiana's highway. At least under whatever the current agreement it is.
And why would the Democrats be the ones fighting against vehicle emissions testing in Indiana? Because the people who are most hurt by it in the entire state are the poorest and those least likely to be able to buy a better car in the first place. These emissions tests very disproportionately harm the poorest people in the state. That's why.
And so Asshole Holcumb wins this one and the poor people lose. All so we can keep tearing up the highway every summer and put a new one down and keep the union people working.
Good job everyone. Well Done.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The MAGA cinematic universe has gone into full meltdown after the Supreme Court temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s latest deportation push — targeting a group of Venezuelan men in Texas — to allow an ongoing ACLU lawsuit against the deportations to play out.
“Generations of lawyers and judges, on both sides of the aisle, have been infected with a parasitical ideology that denies reason and common sense,” the Trump-appointed Department of Homeland Security liaison Paul Ingrassia wrote.
That the justices Trump appointed — Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett — appeared to side against him is an especially bitter pill for the MAGA faithful.
MAGA fury has not been solely reserved for the high court however, as judges across the country are demanding Trump follow proper legal procedures.
“We live in a society where foreign alien terrorists have unlimited free legal representation,” White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and Homeland Security Stephen Miller posted.
Rep. Mary Miller (R-IL) circulated a clip of Miller telling NewsMax the reason America no longer has a “functioning public school system” is because of “open borders.” “Who will compensate the American people for the lasting damage caused by mass illegal migration?!” she wrote, echoing Miller’s suggestion that “reparations” should be paid.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/maga-goes-into-full-meltdown-mode-over-s
cotus-ruling-on-trumps-deportations/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The DOGE leader is offering the Republican Party a very different vision of fatherhood.
According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, Musk is constantly scanning the horizon for new potential mothers for his children, using everything from X interactions and DMs to huge cash incentives to entice would-be incubators, whom he requires to sign legally binding payment agreements with nondisclosure clauses. As a result, Musk has an undisclosed number of children that is likely well above the 14 already publicly known, and he’s shown no obvious intention to stop sowing his seed. But perhaps more interesting than the presence of contracts between Musk and his harem of mothers is the apparent absence of traditional family ties. He appears to acknowledge few, if any, bonds of genuine duty and responsibility among family members, much less bonds of care or love. Musk seems to have reduced traditional family relationships to mere financial arrangements, undermining longtime conservative agreement around the importance of family.
There is a difference, after all, between being pro-natalist and being pro-family. Musk is by now infamous for his interest in raising the birth rate, which appears to be driven by his belief that a catastrophic global population collapse is imminent, as well as by his view that intelligent people in particular ought to be breeding more. (“He really wants smart people to have kids,” Shivon Zilis, Musk’s most favored concubine, told a biographer.)
Musk is especially well positioned to use money to fund and structure his preferred familial arrangements, effectively reducing those relationships to a vulgar cash nexus. Musk’s latest consort, the conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair, told The Wall Street Journal’s Dana Mattioli that Musk had offered her a $15 million lump sum, as well as $100,000 per month for living expenses—if she was willing to sign a contract that would require her to keep their arrangement secret. People familiar with Musk’s habits, Mattioli reported, said that this is a well-established practice for the billionaire, who threatens women financially if they hire an attorney or go public: In St. Clair’s case, Musk terminated his proposed $15 million payment and lowered her recurring payments to $40,000 a month (which, it’s fair to note, is still a lavish income) as the two went to court over paternity testing for their child.
“The timing of the reduction in payments from him are timed with disagreements on testing and gag orders,” Dror Bikel, one of St. Clair’s attorneys, told Mattioli, adding that “the only conclusion we can make is that money is being weaponized.” Money appears to be the only means by which Musk can persuade people who are not actually intimate with him and whose preferences and needs are not of much concern to him. Fatherhood, for Musk, ends with conception, except for lingering payouts. There is no discernible sense of mutual duty or responsibility between Musk and his children or between Musk and his children’s mothers, and no expectation of growth in such bonds or fulfillment in them either: A Musk aide told St. Clair that Zilis “goes in and out of finding contentment,” and that Grimes, another mother of Musk’s children, isn’t “ever going to find true happiness.”
That isn’t surprising—Musk’s family values seem similarly detached from the usual ties of familial love. According to Mattioli, Musk instigates what St. Clair called “harem drama” by lending some of his babies’ mothers, such as Zilis, special status both financially and socially, while others, such as St. Clair, struggle to get so much as responses to their texts, or, in Grimes’s case, their desperate X posts. Likewise, he takes an active interest in some of his children—such as X Æ A-Xii, his toddler son with Grimes, whom he totes to public appearances and state events—more than others. He refused to have his name on the birth certificate of St. Clair’s son, and is estranged from his daughter Vivian altogether. Although past generations of conservatives have hailed family as a “have
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Trump’s pick for U.S. attorney, Ed Martin, is a Russian-state-TV darling
April 19, 2025 From https://attentiontotheunseen.com/2025/04/19/trumps-pick-for-u-s-attorn
ey-ed-martin-is-a-russian-state-tv-darling/
Tom Nichols writes:
The United States of America is still a free country, and every private citizen has the right to speak to anyone, anywhere in the world, about anything. If the propaganda arm of an avowed enemy of the West calls and invites you to bash your own nation in public, you are free to do so. It might not be the most patriotic or sensible choice, but it’s your privilege.
If you also would like to join the Department of Justice as a United States attorney, however, you should expect that appearing on the state television outlet of a neofascist dictatorship and engaging in conspiracy-laden anti-American rants might attract some attention—especially if it seems like you’ve tried to hide those appearances from the U.S. Senate committee responsible for voting on your nomination. And if you’re an ordinary American citizen, you should certainly be wary of any aspiring Justice Department official who gladly contributes to Russian propaganda efforts.
Ed Martin is the Trump administration’s nominee to be the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. A failed political candidate and former chairman of the Missouri Republican Party, he is now a right-wing podcaster and social-media figure—and a January 6 truther who believes that Justice Department lawyers are the president’s personal consiglieri. He has also, however, been a regular commentator on RT America, the English-language flagship for the Kremlin’s propaganda efforts until it was dropped by major content providers after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It has since gone off the air, but in its time, it featured Larry King, among some lesser American lights. (For example, have you been wondering whatever happened to Scottie Nell Hughes, who years ago shilled for Donald Trump on CNN? Me neither, but in watching Martin’s segments, I learned that she ended up at RT.)
Martin, according to The Washington Post, was a guest some 150 times on RT America and its sister outlet, Sputnik, from 2016 to 2024. Now, everyone can make a mistake; public commentators sometimes find themselves on outlets that turn out to be wifty venues, or unexpectedly paired with guests they might otherwise avoid. But to appear 150 times—occasionally partnered up for friendly banter with unsavory characters such as George Galloway, a pro-Putin British politician who was kicked out of the Labour Party more than 20 years ago for, among other things, encouraging Arabs to fight British soldiers, and who has long been accused of various extremist views—suggests a genuinely comfortable relationship with the outlet. (For the record, over the course of my academic career as a professor of national-security affairs, I was occasionally invited to appear on RT America. I always declined.)
Perhaps, one might hope, Martin agreed to appear so that he could be a voice of probity and reason in the face of Russian disinformation, exactly the qualities one would appreciate in a U.S. attorney. Not a chance: He was more often the source of conspiracy theories and anti-American accusations, all delivered with the kind of cheerful confidence that always translates well on television.
I watched several of his appearances, which are still available on RT’s website. One major theme emerges: Russia is usually right and America (at least when led by anyone other than Donald Trump) is usually wrong.
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:
The MAGA cinematic universe has gone into full meltdown after the Supreme Court temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s latest deportation push — targeting a group of Venezuelan men in Texas — to allow an ongoing ACLU lawsuit against the deportations to play out.
“Generations of lawyers and judges, on both sides of the aisle, have been infected with a parasitical ideology that denies reason and common sense,” the Trump-appointed Department of Homeland Security liaison Paul Ingrassia wrote.
That the justices Trump appointed — Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett — appeared to side against him is an especially bitter pill for the MAGA faithful.
That's not what happened here.
We're creating lasting precedent that you dumb mongoloids aren't going to be able to reverse with a simple executive order the next time you get power, if you ever get power again.
There's a method to this. We can't just throw a court case on their laps if it hasn't gone up through the proper channels.
Thankfully, you dumb assholes have no idea what you're doing and in your panic you're fast-tracking cases you should have left for when you were in power, and the media is goading them into doing it everyday with articles just like this.
This will officially be before the Supreme Court soon enough and you're going to lose everything on this issue. Forever.
We can wait a month or two for that.
In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed your cheap hit of dopamine from the headline.
Tick Tock
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:Perhaps Trump will see that Ted Kaczynski is an intellectual Trumptard and pardon him, posthumously:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The MAGA cinematic universe has gone into full meltdown after the Supreme Court temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s latest deportation push — targeting a group of Venezuelan men in Texas — to allow an ongoing ACLU lawsuit against the deportations to play out.
“Generations of lawyers and judges, on both sides of the aisle, have been infected with a parasitical ideology that denies reason and common sense,” the Trump-appointed Department of Homeland Security liaison Paul Ingrassia wrote.
That the justices Trump appointed — Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett — appeared to side against him is an especially bitter pill for the MAGA faithful.
That's not what happened here.
We're creating lasting precedent that you dumb mongoloids aren't going to be able to reverse with a simple executive order the next time you get power, if you ever get power again.
There's a method to this. We can't just throw a court case on their laps if it hasn't gone up through the proper channels.
Thankfully, you dumb assholes have no idea what you're doing and in your panic you're fast-tracking cases you should have left for when you were in power, and the media is goading them into doing it everyday with articles just like this.
This will officially be before the Supreme Court soon enough and you're going to lose everything on this issue. Forever.
We can wait a month or two for that.
In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed your cheap hit of dopamine from the headline.
Tick Tock
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Question: Kaczynski writes that “There is good reason to believe that primitive man suffered from less stress and frustration and was better satisfied with his way of life than modern man is.” I think a lot of people could find some truth in that statement. What was he trying to get across with this manifesto?
In the passage, you’ve just quoted, what he’s arguing is basically that human beings are biologically maladapted to the modern world. This is a big claim from evolutionary psychology. The argument is that, biologically speaking, we’re still Stone Age hunter-gatherers. We evolved hunting large animals on the savannah and in the span of just 10,000 years — the blink of an eye in evolutionary terms — we’ve constructed this world of concrete, steel, and screens. So Kaczynski argues that because of this, we suffer from depression, anxiety, eating disorders, substance abuse, and so many other psychological pathologies that so-called primitive human beings do not.
Q: And what’s his solution?
His solution is to destroy all modern technology and return ourselves to a more primitive condition, to crash out of the modern world. What he envisions is a group of anti-tech revolutionaries sabotaging the electric grid, blowing up the gas pipelines, and attacking the nervous system, so to speak, of modern society. He wanted to plunge us back into, if not the Stone Age, then something like small-scale agriculture and a shepherd society.
Q: How was this manifesto received in the ’90s when it was published by the Washington Post and delivered to front porches around the country? And how has his reputation changed over time?
Well, there was a lot of debate about it. Many journalists treated Kaczynski as a serious intellectual, and many members of the public, in letters to the editor and on talk radio shows, hailed him as a folk hero. He was often described as a modern-day Thoreau.
Q: Who are the types of people who are glomming on to this manifesto?
During the Unabomber mania of the mid-1990s, Kaczynski gained a following on the radical left, especially among green anarchists. But he’s returned to cultural prominence with the
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Perhaps Trump
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The MAGA cinematic universe has gone into full meltdown after the Supreme Court temporarily blocked the Trump administration’s latest deportation push — targeting a group of Venezuelan men in Texas — to allow an ongoing ACLU lawsuit against the deportations to play out.
“Generations of lawyers and judges, on both sides of the aisle, have been infected with a parasitical ideology that denies reason and common sense,” the Trump-appointed Department of Homeland Security liaison Paul Ingrassia wrote.
That the justices Trump appointed — Brett Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett — appeared to side against him is an especially bitter pill for the MAGA faithful.
That's not what happened here.
We're creating lasting precedent that you dumb mongoloids aren't going to be able to reverse with a simple executive order the next time you get power, if you ever get power again.
There's a method to this. We can't just throw a court case on their laps if it hasn't gone up through the proper channels.
Thankfully, you dumb assholes have no idea what you're doing and in your panic you're fast-tracking cases you should have left for when you were in power, and the media is goading them into doing it everyday with articles just like this.
This will officially be before the Supreme Court soon enough and you're going to lose everything on this issue. Forever.
We can wait a month or two for that.
In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed your cheap hit of dopamine from the headline.
Tick Tock
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Do not reply to anything I post with a trash Vox article.
Ted Kaczynski has nothing to do with the fact that Democrats are going to lose this issue in the supreme court, and swiftly. And they could have prevented setting this precedent forever, if they weren't in full-blown panic mode and desperate for a win anywhere.
SPOILER ALERT: They're not going to get it here.
Tick Tock
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:“It would be better to dump the whole stinking system and take the consequences.” — Ted Kaczynski, Industrial Society and Its Future
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Do not reply to anything I post with a trash Vox article.
Ted Kaczynski has nothing to do with the fact that Democrats are going to lose this issue in the supreme court, and swiftly. And they could have prevented setting this precedent forever, if they weren't in full-blown panic mode and desperate for a win anywhere.
SPOILER ALERT: They're not going to get it here.
Tick Tock
Trump has said the same, but in far more words.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Why not cancel SmartPay's contract and give the contract to a startup with no reputation, but you own the startup and can keep the profits for yourself?
Trump Team Eyes Politically Connected Startup to Overhaul $700 Billion Government Payments Program
A little-known firm with investors linked to JD Vance, Elon Musk and Trump could get a piece of the federal expense card system — and its hundreds of millions in fees. “This goes against all the normal contracting safeguards,” one expert said.
By Christopher Bing and Avi Asher-Schapiro | April 17, 2025, 10:30 a.m. EDT
https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-peter-thiel-ramp-gsa-smartpay
-expense-payment-system
Four days before Donald Trump’s inauguration, financial technology startup Ramp published a pitch for how to tackle wasteful government spending. In a 4,000-word blog post titled “The Efficiency Formula,” Ramp’s CEO and one of its investors echoed ideas similar to those promoted by Trump and his billionaire ally Elon Musk: Federal programs were overrun by fraud, and commonsense business techniques could provide a quick fix.
It didn’t take long for Ramp to find a willing audience. Within Trump’s first three months in office, its executives scored at least four private meetings with the president’s appointees at the General Services Administration, which oversees major federal contracting. Some of the meetings were organized by the nation’s top procurement officer, Josh Gruenbaum, commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service.
The special attention Gruenbaum paid to Ramp raised flags inside and outside the agency. “This goes against all the normal contracting safeguards that are set up to prevent contracts from being awarded based on who you know,” said Scott Amey, the general counsel with the bipartisan Project on Government Oversight. He said career civil servants should lead the process to pick the best choice for taxpayers.
The high level attention Ramp received was unusual, especially before a bid had been made public. “You don’t want to give this impression that leadership has already decided the winner somehow.”
Ramp’s meetings with Gruenbaum — who comes from private equity firm KKR and has no prior government experience — came at an opportune moment. GSA will decide by year’s end whether to extend the SmartPay contract, and preparations are afoot for the next generation of the program. SmartPay has been worth hundreds of millions of dollars in fees for the financial institutions that currently operate it, U.S. Bank and Citibank.
Gruenbaum and acting GSA administrator Stephen Ehikian entered the agency with a strong belief that SmartPay and other government payment programs were rife with fraud or waste, causing huge losses, sources within GSA say — an idea echoed in Ramp’s January memo.
Yet both GOP and Democratic budget experts, as well as former GSA officials, describe that view as ill-informed. SmartPay, which provides Visa and Mastercard charge cards to government employees, enables the federal workforce to purchase office supplies and equipment, book travel and pay for gas.
The cards typically are used to fund travel and purchases up to $10,000.
“SmartPay is the lifeblood of the government,” said former GSA commissioner Sonny Hashmi, who oversaw the program. “It’s a well-run program that solves real world problems … with exceptional levels of oversight and fraud prevention already baked in.”
Jessica Riedl, a GOP budget expert at the conservative Manhattan Institute think tank, said the notion that there was significant fraud in the charge card technology was far-fetched. She had criticized waste in government credit card programs before the latest SmartPay system was implemented in 2018.
“This was a huge problem about 20-25 years ago,” she said. “In the past 15 years, there have been new controls put into government credit card purchases.”
A 2017 audit of the program by the Government Accountability Office concluded there was “little evidence of potential fraud” in SmartPay small purchases.
GSA’s ne
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What If China Wins the Trade War?
The United States could still prevail if it does everything right. The problem is that the Trump administration is doing everything wrong.
By Rogé Karma | April 20, 2025, 7:30 AM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/economy/archive/2025/04/china-trump-trade-
war/682524/
If Donald Trump were trying to lose his trade war with China, it’s hard to see what he would be doing differently. The president’s gambit is likely to strengthen China’s geopolitical position, embolden Beijing militarily, and diminish both the United States’ global standing and its economy.
Earlier this month, Trump increased tariffs on all goods from China to 145 percent. China, in turn, responded with 125 percent tariffs on American goods, plus more targeted measures. This is a classic trade war: two countries engaged in a tit-for-tat escalation of trade barriers, each with the goal of forcing the other country to back down and, at least in theory, agree to certain concessions.
The Trump administration believes that it has the upper hand in this fight. “We export one-fifth to them of what they export to us,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently remarked, “so that is a losing hand for them.” That view has things backwards. The fact that the American economy is hooked on Chinese goods is a massive weakness for the U.S., not an advantage. For many categories of goods, China is not only America’s top supplier but also the world’s dominant supplier, meaning that the U.S. can’t simply get them from other countries. According to data gathered by Jason Miller, a professor at Michigan State University who specializes in supply-chain management, China produces more than 70 percent of the world’s lithium-ion batteries, air conditioners, and cookware; more than 80 percent of the world’s smartphones, kitchen appliances, and toys; and about 90 percent of the world’s solar panels and processed rare earth minerals, the latter of which are crucial inputs to cars, phones, and several key military technologies.
Pivoting to producing these goods at home would take years, if not decades: It would involve forming new companies, building new factories, creating supply chains from scratch, and training fleets of workers. For it to happen at all, companies would have to be confident that the tariffs would be in place for the long term. China, meanwhile, is only heavily dependent on the U.S. for a small fraction of its imports, and most of those items, such as soybeans and sorghum, can be imported from elsewhere.
Chinese businesses will be hurt by losing access to the American market, but that is an easier problem to solve. China can redirect some of its exports to countries in Europe and East Asia, whose citizens also need phones, toys, and toasters. Beijing could also give money to its own citizens to create more demand for its products at home and provide subsidies to its businesses to help them remain solvent. This asymmetry gives China what the economist Adam Posen calls “escalation dominance”: the ability to inflict disproportionate harm on its economic enemy.
China’s advantage has been bolstered by years of meticulous preparation. Multiple China watchers told me that Trump’s 2018 trade war—in which, at its height, the U.S. imposed an average tariff of about 20 percent on Chinese goods—convinced Beijing that it had to be ready to engage in economic combat at a moment’s notice. Since then, China has invested heavily in such industries as energy, agriculture, and semiconductor production to reduce its dependence on American imports, while pursuing a concerted strategy to consume more goods at home and find new non-U.S. export markets. The goal of these efforts, in the words of Chinese President Xi Jinping, is to “ensure the normal operation of the national economy under extreme circumstances.”
Beijing has also built an arsenal of offensive economic weapons. Already, China has responded to Trump’s tra
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Quote:
FDA Removing Pharmaceutical Representatives From Advisory Panels
MORE AT https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/fda-removing-pharmaceutical-represen
tatives-advisory-panels
Woohoo!
Quote:
Fact Sheet: President Donald J. Trump Announces Actions to Lower Prescription Drug Prices
...
It delivers lower drug prices for Medicare and the seniors who rely on it by:
Improving the Medicare Drug Pricing Negotiation Program in order to eclipse the 22% in savings achieved in the program’s first year.
Aligning Medicare payment for certain prescription drugs with the cost by which hospitals actually acquire them, which can be 35% lower than what the government currently pays.
Standardizing Medicare payments for prescription drugs, such as cancer treatments, regardless of where the patient receives care, which can lower prices by as much as 60%.
...
The Order helps states reduce drug prices by:
Facilitating importation programs that could save states millions in prescription drug costs. [but doesn't that run headlong into tariffs?]
MORE AT https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2025/04/fact-sheet-president-do
nald-j-trump-announces-actions-to-lower-prescription-drug-prices/
More yay!
Quote:
HHS Stops Funding For Next-Generation COVID-19 Vaccine
An official with HHS told The Epoch Times in an email, “The COVID-19 pandemic is over, and HHS will no longer waste billions of taxpayer dollars responding to a non-existent pandemic that Americans moved on from years ago when there are other emerging public health threats that we can better prioritize resources for.”
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/hhs-stops-funding-next-generation-
covid-19-vaccine
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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 second:Quote:“It would be better to dump the whole stinking system and take the consequences.” — Ted Kaczynski, Industrial Society and Its Future
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Do not reply to anything I post with a trash Vox article.
Ted Kaczynski has nothing to do with the fact that Democrats are going to lose this issue in the supreme court, and swiftly. And they could have prevented setting this precedent forever, if they weren't in full-blown panic mode and desperate for a win anywhere.
SPOILER ALERT: They're not going to get it here.
Tick Tock
Trump has said the same, but in far more words.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Shut the fuck up. Stupid.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:
“It would be better to dump the whole stinking system and take the consequences.” — Ted Kaczynski, Industrial Society and Its Future
Trump has said the same, but in far more words.
Only SECOND would try to conflate Trump ... who's trying to reindustrialize America... with Kaczynski, who wanted to destroy industry.
Next thing you know, SECOND will conflate Trump with Hitler! Or Putin! Ot slave owning Confederates!
Oh, wait...
-----------
"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:
US Housing Market May Finally See Relief As Foreign Buyers, Illegals And Airbnbs Disappear
https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/us-housing-market-may-finally-see-re
lief-foreign-buyers-illegals-and-airbnbs-disappear
Homes for living in, not as investments?
-----------
"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:It is common for Trumptards to deny they are racists, but Trump’s Power Feeds on White Demographic Fears. Paranoid about losing their majority status and the power it confers, white Americans keep backing Trump’s racist anti-immigrant policies.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:
“It would be better to dump the whole stinking system and take the consequences.” — Ted Kaczynski, Industrial Society and Its Future
Trump has said the same, but in far more words.
Only SECOND would try to conflate Trump ... who's trying to reindustrialize America... with Kaczynski, who wanted to destroy industry.
Next thing you know, SECOND will conflate Trump with Hitler! Or Putin! Ot slave owning Confederates!
Oh, wait...
James Risen | April 20 2025, 7:00 a.m.
https://theintercept.com/2025/04/20/trump-racism-white-demographic-fea
rs-immigration/
GETTYSBURG — This is the most American of towns. It is where Robert E. Lee tried to destroy the nation, where Abraham Lincoln tried to heal it, and where William Faulkner revealed a century later that the country was still irretrievably racist and broken.
Even though much of its bloody Civil War past is hidden behind McDonald’s and Burger King and Dairy Queen and Walmart, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, today is still the symbolic capital of the endless American fight over the nation’s history.
Inevitably, that fight always comes down to race.
And so that means that this is the town that best explains Donald Trump.
Once you understand that Trump’s rise is all about white fears and white power — the same motivations that triggered the Civil War — the Trump agenda begins to make sense.
Gettysburg is where the Confederates invaded the North to make their ultimate bid to protect slavery and white supremacy. Pickett’s Charge, on July 3, 1863, the final day of the Battle of Gettysburg, lives on in Southern mythology as the so-called “high tide of the Confederacy,” the closest that Southerners believe they came to winning the Civil War.
But it really wasn’t that close. Pickett’s Charge was a disaster for the Confederates, a bloody massacre of thousands of rebel troops. After Gettysburg, it was just a matter of time before the Confederacy’s ultimate defeat.
Lincoln recognized Gettysburg’s real significance as the beginning of the end and so came here to give his most iconic speech to explain what the war was about. When he said in his Gettysburg Address that “this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth,” Americans at the time understood what he meant: an oligarchic slavocracy could not be allowed to run the nation.
But after Lee surrendered at Appomattox and the war ended in 1865, there were still millions of white people in the South who refused to accept the death of the slavocracy, while many more of their descendants have never accepted that white people and Black people can truly live as equals.
In his Yoknapatawpha County masterpiece, “Intruder in the Dust,” Faulkner revealed in 1948 what Southern white people really thought about race and American history. If only they could try Pickett’s Charge again:
“For every Southern boy fourteen years old … there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods … it’s all in the balance … we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think this time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory.”
What even Faulkner couldn’t imagine was that white people all across the nation would eventually come to sympathize with and perhaps even share that Confederate fantasy.
It is white hysteria, the same phenomenon that gripped the ant
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