Real World Event Discussions

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

POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Thursday, September 10, 2026 23:15
VIEWED: 189828
PAGE 23 of 48

Friday, June 6, 2025 6:37 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Do you see what the Media is doing to him? Or possibly not even the media but just the clickbait farms that he's been watching?

His imagination is running wild with possibilities right now. The sky is the limit! Every asshole with an opinion he agrees with is out there speculating about all the possibilities under the sun of what might come of this.

The media is not at fault. Trumptards' bizarre lives are faulty:

Elon Musk says Donald Trump should be impeached

This just keeps getting more upside down.

Steve Bannon says he's advising Trump to cancel all of Elon's federal contracts and launch multiple investigations into the world's richest man.

His reason?

Bannon claims Elon Musk is "an illegal alien" and says the administration should formally investigate his immigration status and deport him immediately.

Yes, really. The billionaire who helped push some of the harshest anti-immigration policies in modern history... might now need an immigration lawyer.

So much crazy Trumptard behavior reported at https://www.thetimes.com/us/american-politics/article/trump-elon-fallo
ut-derangement-syndrome-bill-latest-news-bbqnw7x5p


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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Friday, June 6, 2025 6:53 AM (P)

Chris Hayes @chrislhayes.bsky.social

I'm just glad one of these men has the nuclear codes and the other has all our personal data.

June 5, 2025 at 3:24 PM

https://bsky.app/profile/chrislhayes.bsky.social/post/3lqv5nyg5yk2d

Monkey Knife Fight: Trump vs Musk



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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

THG
Friday, June 6, 2025 7:06 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:

Originally posted by THG:
Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Trump used Elon as a publicity stunt.

The reality is that while DOGE can dig around and find all kinds of waste,

1) Until departments and agencies follow normal accounting practices for a full fiscal year, nobody knows where the money is going, to whom, and for what , and ...

2) Only Congress can shut off the tap. And THAT is a political price that Trump can't, or won't, pay.

Trump has gotten squishy on foreign policy (letting Lindsay Graham negotiate with foreign governments, forwarding a neocon plan) and fraud and waste. Trump is acting like somebody has something on him.






Short version is, if Musk lawyers up and the courts find he went rouge while heading DOGE, which there is plenty of evidence for, given what we were told about how he was and how he wasn't by Trump, there is a very good chance the courts will rule Trump has to undue everything Musk did.
I'm so happy. Are you happy?

Just a couple more MAGA morons making my day.

T


It's rogue, not rouge. "Rouge" is French for "red" and refers to either the red powder that women put on their cheeks, or sometimes a red colored polishing compound (jeweler's rouge).

Also, it's undo, not undue. Undo means to take apart what was done, undue means excessive or beyond what is normal or justified.

Where is the articulate man who's in a bad mood, and what have you done with him?






I was hurrying. I had someplace else to be and the news was too good not to post. I can live with the mistakes. And I notice you didn't address what I wrote, just how I wrote it. That's a bit anal, don't ya think?

T

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Friday, June 6, 2025 7:29 AM (P)

When it comes to spending or saving money, there's a good chance that some actions will be found to be under administrative discretion. For example, letting everyone on probation go. It's well understood in public agencies that people on probation can be let go for any reason.

AFA government spending is concerned, there's a gray area between Congressional approval of expenditures and actually spending the money.
https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/can-a-president-refuse-to-spend-fu
nds-approved-by-congress

Very little of this AFAIK has to do with Musk, since he can't hire or fire anyone, or impound money. If anyone has the authority to do this, it's either top managers - like Cabinet level department heads - or Trump himself.


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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Friday, June 6, 2025 7:29 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Do you see what the Media is doing to him? Or possibly not even the media but just the clickbait farms that he's been watching?

His imagination is running wild with possibilities right now. The sky is the limit! Every asshole with an opinion he agrees with is out there speculating about all the possibilities under the sun of what might come of this.

The media is not at fault.



At the end of the day, you are correct.

It is your fault for allowing them to lose the trust of the entire country.

You should have held them to a higher standard.

Oops.



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

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Friday, June 6, 2025 5:32 PM (P)

Wake Up and Smell the Corruption
How far we've fallen, how fast

By Paul Krugman | Jun 06, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/wake-up-and-smell-the-corruption

Musk believes that he delivered the presidency to Trump, and may well be right. He gave Trump and his allies a lot of money; he helped Trump regain confidence after his disastrous debate; he brought in the bro vote.

And Musk clearly believes that this entitles him to receive special favors from the White House — not policies he likes in general, but contracts and specific actions that benefit him personally. He even seems to have imagined that he was effectively co-president. That is, he simply assumed that U.S. policy was for sale, and thought he had bought it.

Trump, for his part, hasn’t responded by saying “How dare you suggest such a thing?” Instead, he has threatened retaliation — again, not in the form of general policies Musk won’t like but in the form of specific actions aimed to hurt Musk’s bottom line. Steve Bannon is even calling for Musk’s deportation.

The point is that both men start from the presumption that the U.S. government is an entirely corrupt enterprise, with the president in a position to hand out personal favors or engage in personal acts of vengeance.

And everyone takes it for granted that both men are right. Musk’s only mistake was in underestimating the depths of Trump’s lack of principles, imagining that he was the kind of corrupt politician who stays bought, as opposed to a guy who always breaks his promises the moment it seems expedient to do so.

In short, we no longer have rule of law, just rule by the Leader’s whims. We have abandoned everything America was supposed to stand for.

I don’t blame either Trump or Musk for America’s degeneration. I blame their enablers, who have refused, again and again, to enforce the Constitution or place any restraints on Trump’s abuses. And yes, this means Republicans. You don’t have to love the Democratic Party to recognize that it does, in fact, expel politicians who engage in egregious corruption.

Oh, and anyone suggesting that Democrats should reach out to Musk is a fool. Yes, he’s currently Trump’s enemy, but he’s evil, and his brand is toxic. Better to see if there is anyone left in the G.O.P. who is finally ready to take a stand on behalf of democracy and law. But don’t get your hopes up.

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

THG
Friday, June 6, 2025 9:33 PM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Wake Up and Smell the Corruption
How far we've fallen, how fast

By Paul Krugman | Jun 06, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/wake-up-and-smell-the-corruption

Musk believes that he delivered the presidency to Trump, and may well be right. He gave Trump and his allies a lot of money; he helped Trump regain confidence after his disastrous debate; he brought in the bro vote.

And Musk clearly believes that this entitles him to receive special favors from the White House — not policies he likes in general, but contracts and specific actions that benefit him personally. He even seems to have imagined that he was effectively co-president. That is, he simply assumed that U.S. policy was for sale, and thought he had bought it.

Trump, for his part, hasn’t responded by saying “How dare you suggest such a thing?” Instead, he has threatened retaliation — again, not in the form of general policies Musk won’t like but in the form of specific actions aimed to hurt Musk’s bottom line. Steve Bannon is even calling for Musk’s deportation.

The point is that both men start from the presumption that the U.S. government is an entirely corrupt enterprise, with the president in a position to hand out personal favors or engage in personal acts of vengeance.

And everyone takes it for granted that both men are right. Musk’s only mistake was in underestimating the depths of Trump’s lack of principles, imagining that he was the kind of corrupt politician who stays bought, as opposed to a guy who always breaks his promises the moment it seems expedient to do so.

In short, we no longer have rule of law, just rule by the Leader’s whims. We have abandoned everything America was supposed to stand for.

I don’t blame either Trump or Musk for America’s degeneration. I blame their enablers, who have refused, again and again, to enforce the Constitution or place any restraints on Trump’s abuses. And yes, this means Republicans. You don’t have to love the Democratic Party to recognize that it does, in fact, expel politicians who engage in egregious corruption.

Oh, and anyone suggesting that Democrats should reach out to Musk is a fool. Yes, he’s currently Trump’s enemy, but he’s evil, and his brand is toxic. Better to see if there is anyone left in the G.O.P. who is finally ready to take a stand on behalf of democracy and law. But don’t get your hopes up.

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





I think Musk and Trump will back off. Both have too much to lose. However, the press is going to want Trump to answer for what he said. That the best way to cut spending is to cut off Mucks’ grants. He said they are a waste of money. Therefore, how can he now justify continuing them?

And Musk insinuated Trump is a pedophile. How can he make nice with Trump knowing that. What does that say about him that he wants to be friends with a pedophile? His best defense against Trump is that he is going to be around for 40 more years. Trump, not so much. So republicans have to consider that when they take sides. If they take sides.

T

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Friday, June 6, 2025 9:37 PM (P)

Paul Krugman has been fapping away all night in his basement to this one just like you two fags.



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

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

THG
Friday, June 6, 2025 10:28 PM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Paul Krugman has been fapping away all night in his basement to this one just like you two fags.





Poor Gilligan, if he can’t say something in two sentences of less his brain shuts down. And even then, what he says is mostly childish.

T

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Friday, June 6, 2025 11:09 PM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by THG:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Paul Krugman has been fapping away all night in his basement to this one just like you two fags.





Poor Gilligan, if he can’t say something in two sentences of less his brain shuts down. And even then, what he says is mostly childish.

T





I don't have any desire to bother wasting time "debating" with mindless headline readers.

I have written pages upon pages of thoughtful things, but whenever I do I end the thread because neither of you two have anything to argue once I've shut you down. This site is riddled with dead threads that I've ended on the both of you.

You have nothing to say that I can't get by skimming the headlines on news aggregate sites.

Meanwhile, in reality, I have quite the long record of correct predictions that gets bolstered every week that passes and you've just got another 100 clickbait videos and trash articles clogging up your 12 tick tock threads to nowhere.



So... yeah. Why bother writing out the reasons why I always end up right and you always end up wondering why you were wrong again and you never learn anything, when I can just call you a fag and a loser and we all end up with the same end result?



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

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

THG
Saturday, June 7, 2025 12:41 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:

Originally posted by THG:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Paul Krugman has been fapping away all night in his basement to this one just like you two fags.





Poor Gilligan, if he can’t say something in two sentences of less his brain shuts down. And even then, what he says is mostly childish.

T





I don't have any desire to bother wasting time "debating" with mindless headline readers.

I have written pages upon pages of thoughtful things, but whenever I do I end the thread because neither of you two have anything to argue once I've shut you down. This site is riddled with dead threads that I've ended on the both of you.

You have nothing to say that I can't get by skimming the headlines on news aggregate sites.

Meanwhile, in reality, I have quite the long record of correct predictions that gets bolstered every week that passes and you've just got another 100 clickbait videos and trash articles clogging up your 12 tick tock threads to nowhere.



So... yeah. Why bother writing out the reasons why I always end up right and you always end up wondering why you were wrong again and you never learn anything, when I can just call you a fag and a loser and we all end up with the same end result?








Quote:



“I have written pages upon pages of thoughtful things, but whenever I do I end the thread because neither of you two have anything to argue once I've shut you down. This site is riddled with dead threads that I've ended on the both of you.”



I have quoted you here. Your entire post comes off much the same way. What way is that, you ask? As you being a sick narcissist.

What could I, with a lesser IQ than you possibly say to show you are an idiot? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe I can point out you are posting to SECOND and I thousands of times in dozens of threads. All of which continued for us until we chose not to post there. Then whatever happens to them happens.

You like to comment when I go back and refresh a thread because I believe it is still relevant. It pisses you off when I wake a bunch of them. Other threads I let go. You, moron have nothing to do with what I chose to do.

So, I guess aside from being a narcissist, you’re full of shit.

A challenge, post something so brilliant I stop posting. Do it in all my threads Gilligan.

T

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Saturday, June 7, 2025 1:18 AM (P)

Quit licking your own asshole, mutt.



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

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Saturday, June 7, 2025 5:00 AM (P)

The Real Reason for the Trump-Musk Feud is Uglier Than You Think

Strip away the ego contest, and what you really see here is a competition about how to screw over poor and working people more effectively.

By Greg Sargent | June 6, 2025

https://newrepublic.com/article/196246/real-reason-trump-musk-feud-ugl
ier


As the war between Donald Trump and Elon Musk worsens, what’s truly odd about this whole spectacle is that the actual substantive disagreement between them seems to be of little interest to media observers. And when you strip away the trolling and shitposting, here’s what becomes clear: This is really a battle over how comprehensively to screw over poor and working people, largely to the benefit of the wealthy.

The superficial argument between them, of course, is over Musk’s opposition to the “big, beautiful bill” that the House passed and that Trump wants the Senate to adopt. That opposition is rooted in Musk’s claim that the bill is loaded with “pork” and will explode the deficit. Trump, meanwhile, is infuriated by Musk because he can’t brook criticism and wants the bill to pass to notch a victory.

But the respective positions underlying those stances are mysteriously missing from the whole Trump-Musk discourse. Flush them into the open, and it helps illuminate the true spectrum of the MAGA movement’s ideological goals—and why its “pro-worker populist” pretensions are so thoroughly phony.

The House GOP bill would entail a large upward transfer of resources. The bill, which would continue Trump’s 2017 tax law and add new tax giveaways for wealthy investors, heirs, and others, would deliver a big tax cut to those in the highest income brackets. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the tax cuts enjoyed by those in the bottom 20 percent in 2027 would be one seven-hundredth the size of those reaped by the top 1 percent.

Worse, those relative table scraps for the bottom could be erased by other changes. The bill’s massive cuts to Medicaid and other health care changes would result in over 10 million people losing health insurance. Add in other cuts to the safety net, and you see why the bill ultimately would lower household resources for the bottom 10 percent while raising them for the top 10 percent—a sizable redistribution upward. As Paul Krugman notes, the bill’s “cruelty is exceptional even by right wing standards.”

Musk is angry about the $2.4 trillion those changes would add to the debt. But, crucially, he’s said little—if anything—about the role that those tax cuts for the rich would have in that outcome. He is primarily obsessed with the bill’s “pork,” meaning that he wants the bill to cut more spending—much, much more.

Where would that money come from? Musk’s cuts via his Department of Government Efficiency have already decimated foreign aid and other programs, producing more starvation, disease, and death among the global poor. Given that DOGE searched for “waste, fraud, and abuse” and found very little, if Musk wants massive additional cuts, by definition they would fall more heavily on important government programs, almost certainly ones that low-income Americans rely upon.

Another way to say this is that their real difference is over how far to push the “waste, fraud, and abuse” scam. Trump, who’s mindful of the MAGA-GOP’s image as a “working-class party,” has insisted the GOP won’t cut Medicaid and will target only fraud. That’s a lie—even some MAGA Republicans warn that the bill’s deep Medicaid cuts will hammer Trump’s working-class base and, in so doing, expose how Trump is betraying MAGA’s “populist” aura. Indeed, Trump is actively deceiving his base by pretending those cuts only target fraud. Musk, similarly, would use the “waste, fraud, and abuse” canard to absolutely annihilate the state if he could.

Which leads to an argument we keep hearing: The Trump-Musk feud reveals the deep, possibly irreconcilable strains in the MAGA alliance between the tech-bro oligarchs and the Trumpist populists. Yes, Trump and Musk do differ on things like tariffs and

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Saturday, June 7, 2025 5:17 AM (P)

I'm going to laugh when it turns out to be performative art and they make all of your so-called intellectuals all pondering the worst way to frame this expose themselves as the assholes they are.



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

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Saturday, June 7, 2025 5:30 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I'm going to laugh when it turns out to be performative art and they make all of your so-called intellectuals all pondering the worst way to frame this expose themselves as the assholes they are.

Ponder this Trump project from last month:

What would the Golden Dome cost?

June 06, 2025

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Military/2025/0606/trump-golden-dome-mis
sile-defense


A recent Congressional Budget Office report says that though top estimates for building such a program have decreased by a third – from $831 billion to about $542 billion – over the past 20 years, due mainly to lower space-launch expenses – threats have simultaneously grown “in ways that could increase the overall size and cost” of a Star Wars-style defense system. Costs could also be higher due to increased sophistication and the number of ICBMs from potential adversaries, such as North Korea.

The Golden Dome system, which Mr. Trump says will cost $175 billion – a figure at the lowest end of the CBO estimate – has already been allocated $25 billion. That’s 2.5% of the total Defense Department budget’s $1 trillion request this year – for its initial phase. But final costs are unclear, as the initiative is currently in the conceptual stage.

As such, the proposed project is seen by many defense analysts, in Pentagon parlance, as an “exquisite” system – a term used to imply doubts about a weapon’s technological feasibility and cost-effectiveness.

Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, has called it “essentially a slush fund.”

Even supporters are quick to concede how costs are often low-balled. “I’m 34 years in this business,” Gen. Chance Saltzman, commander of U.S. Space Force, said at a Politico event last month. “I’ve never seen an early estimate that was too high.”

The Golden Dome project would also require defense budget tradeoffs, most notably around the size of the U.S. Army, including troop strength. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth warned in an April memo that the Army must “streamline its force structure” to prioritize air and missile defense through the Golden Dome.

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Saturday, June 7, 2025 7:23 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I'm going to laugh when it turns out to be performative art and they make all of your so-called intellectuals all pondering the worst way to frame this expose themselves as the assholes they are.

Ponder this Trump project from last month:



Nah

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

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Saturday, June 7, 2025 4:10 PM (P)

Inside the Billion-Dollar Effort to Make Trump Feel Good About Himself

Trump’s administration is marshaling vast public resources and more than $1 billion worth of taxpayer money to flatter the president

By Ryan Bort, Asawin Suebsaeng, Andrew Perez | June 6, 2025

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/donald-trump-d
ear-leader-bondi-noem-republican-propaganda-1235356187
/

Pam Bondi seemed a little nervous during Donald Trump’s Cabinet meeting on April 30, the week the administration celebrated his first 100 days in office. Vice President J.D. Vance was seated directly across from the president, and she was seated immediately to Vance’s left — meaning Trump would practically be looking right at her as she delivered her report on the state of the Justice Department.

Bondi, the nation’s attorney general, is one of more than two dozen billionaires, conspiracy theorists, television hosts, and otherwise die-hard MAGA personalities that Republicans allowed Trump to install in the most important positions in government. As such, they were provided a seat at this Cabinet meeting, which featured “Gulf of America” hats set up in alternating colors around the table. Trump did not choose them to oversee America’s federal agencies because of their qualifications, of which most of them possess very little (though Bondi was a state attorney general). They were selected for their ability to flatter Trump, of which all of them possess a great deal. These televised Cabinet meetings are a prime way for them to showcase their fealty and devotion.

Trump sat with his arms under the table, calling on his deputies one by one. They thanked him effusively. They touted his leadership and fearlessness. They laughed along as he joked about the federal judges blocking his administration’s agenda, including his efforts to send immigrants to foreign jails without due process. Bondi was ready to perform after Vance calmly explained to the assembled media that they should be reporting on Trump’s historic accomplishments rather than “fake BS.” Bondi wasn’t so calm. She cleared her throat.

“Mr. President, your first 100 days has far exceeded that of any other presidency in this country ever … ever,” she said, awkwardly emphatic. “Never seen anything like it. Thank you. Your directive to me was very simple: Make America safe. And, despite that, we’ve still been defending over 200 civil lawsuits filed against you.”

Bondi read some statistics about the government’s fentanyl seizures, “which saved — are you ready for this, media?” She turned to the camera. “258 million lives.” She turned back to Trump. “Kids are dying every day because they’re taking this junk,” she said. “They’re dropping dead, and no longer, because of you, what you’ve done.”

It’s unclear what kind of math Bondi used to determine that Trump saved the lives of 258 million Americans, equal to around 75 percent of the nation’s population. She had said the previous day that Trump had saved a comparatively modest “119 million lives.” A source with knowledge of the matter says Bondi intentionally inflated the number at the Cabinet meeting not just to flatter Trump, but to troll the media. Regardless, the exaggeration was so absurd that even White House officials were howling with laughter about it later.

According to two other sources, several Trump aides responded to Bondi’s boast by actively scouring the internet for evidence that Democrats and media figures were, in the words of one of these sources, “flipping the fuck out.” This was, in part, so they could compile a dossier of the reactions, print them out, and show them to Trump, knowing he would delight in the outrage. The Cabinet meeting was a success.

The way Trump is handling these meetings with his top lieutenants “definitely gives off Dear Leader vibes, like what you would see with Kim Jong Un or [Vladimir] Putin,” says Virginia Canter, the chief counsel for ­ethics and anti-corruption at Democracy Defenders Fund. She says it shows the president “constantly needs to be reassured of l

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Saturday, June 7, 2025 4:32 PM (P)

'Jesus warned about hypocrites': Baptist minister slams Mike Johnson in scathing op-ed

By Adam Lynch | June 06, 2025 10:23AM ET

https://www.alternet.org/mike-johnson-prayer/

Baptist minister and author Brian Kaylor is taking House Speaker and evangelical Christian Mike Johnson to task for parading his religion to the press.

The “way he has sought to publicize his faith … violates the founding spirit of a sacred space in the United States Capitol,” writes Kaylor in Religion News.

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

Mike Johnson violates spirit of congressional chapel

(RNS) — When Jesus said to go pray in a closet, he didn’t mean you should then show it off to Fox News or The Associated Press.

By Brian Kaylor | June 5, 2025

https://religionnews.com/2025/06/05/mike-johnson-violates-spirit-of-co
ngressional-chapel
/

As a Baptist minister, I would warn my fellow Baptist serving as speaker that it also goes against Jesus’ teachings about prayer. Jesus warned about hypocrites who love to pray where they can be seen by others.

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Saturday, June 7, 2025 9:37 PM (P)

Just another 12 stories out of you today.

*yawn*

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

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Sunday, June 8, 2025 12:20 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Just another 12 stories out of you today.

*yawn*

Trumptards can't stop yawing at stories about Trump. They disbelieve everything.

Yawn for Trump opening a death camp, when he wants. Call the death camp Presidential and special, different from regular federal prisons. The prison guards and executioners have the same immunity from prosecution that the President has. Trump could build an Auschwitz with only a few highly dangerous prisoners, then expand based on the polling of Trumptards’ opinions. I think they would approve of the right kind of prisoners being killed. If Trump keeps it secret and defends strongly what he is doing in secret, his polling numbers won’t be hurt. Big Yawn from the Trumptards. Winds of Change are blowing, 6ixStringJack . . .

The Biden Investigation Is a Path to Even Greater Lawlessness

The president is not just abusing the immunity that the Supreme Court granted him. He might be seeking to expand it.

By Paul Rosenzweig | June 7, 2025, 7 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/biden-cognitive-decl
ine-investigation/683060
/

President Donald Trump’s presidential memorandum ordering an investigation of Joe Biden’s cognitive decline and his use of the autopen is just the most recent step in Trump’s hostile takeover of the Department of Justice. It is also nonsensical fan service, amplifying addled MAGA conspiracy theories that contend, with a straight face, that Biden was really a robotic clone. In these senses, the investigative order was a sign of just another Wednesday in the chaotic, topsy-turvy world of Trump.

On a legal level, one thing is striking about the text of the memo: The order does not explicitly target Biden himself, at least not directly—only the aides who supposedly facilitated Biden’s use of the autopen and suppressed evidence of his decline. Biden’s absence as a direct target is almost certainly the result of last summer’s Supreme Court decision in Trump v. United States granting presidents immunity for “official” acts. That decision was intended to stanch a cycle of retribution. The Biden administration’s investigation of Trump, the argument goes, would beget the vengeful Trump investigation of Biden. And so on, the Court feared, ad infinitum, with each successive turn of the political wheel. By this logic, the decision is what is now protecting Biden from just the sort of retribution the Court hoped to avoid.

But although the decision will have occasional positive impact, its flaws are manifested almost every day. Even on its own terms, the Trump opinion evidently failed to achieve its objective. Far from preventing retaliatory and escalatory criminal investigations, it has enabled them. And now, with this new memo, Trump’s team may be setting the country on a path to further expand the immunity bubble, to protect not just the president but his aides as well—enabling yet more lawlessness.

To begin with, the absurd investigation of Biden’s cognitive decline was almost certainly encouraged by the immunity decision itself—in the sense that the grant of presidential immunity frees Trump from any personal responsibility for his own “creative” use of the law. In a rational world, Trump might face legal consequences for his illicit abuse of the criminal-justice system—in the form, say, of a civil suit for malicious prosecution. But thanks to Trump v. United States, Trump is free to undertake any plausibly official act with complete impunity, including ordering nonsensical investigations of those who worked for his predecessor. Even if Biden is protected, the Court’s immunity calculus failed to account for Trump’s obsession and left open the possibility that an opponent’s aides would be targeted.

Which brings us to the final and, perhaps, most insidious aspect of Trump’s order: a possible further expansion of presidential immunity. Following the Trump decision, some defenders of the Court contended that the adverse impact of granting presidents criminal immunity would be minimal.

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Sunday, June 8, 2025 4:48 PM (P)

DOGE Developed Error-Prone AI Tool to “Munch” Veterans Affairs Contracts

We obtained records showing how a Department of Government Efficiency staffer with no medical experience used artificial intelligence to identify which VA contracts to kill. “AI is absolutely the wrong tool for this,” one expert said.

By Brandon Roberts, Vernal Coleman and Eric Umansky | June 6, 2025, 5 a.m. EDT

https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-doge-veterans-affairs-ai-cont
racts-health-care


As the Trump administration prepared to cancel contracts at the Department of Veteran Affairs this year, officials turned to a software engineer with no health care or government experience to guide them.

The engineer, working for the Department of Government Efficiency, quickly built an artificial intelligence tool to identify which services from private companies were not essential. He labeled those contracts “MUNCHABLE.”

The code, using outdated and inexpensive AI models, produced results with glaring mistakes. For instance, it hallucinated the size of contracts, frequently misreading them and inflating their value. It concluded more than a thousand were each worth $34 million, when in fact some were for as little as $35,000.

************

Inside the AI Prompts DOGE Used to “Munch” Contracts Related to Veterans’ Health

Experts who reviewed the code for ProPublica found numerous and troubling flaws in the system, providing a disturbing glimpse into how the Trump administration is allowing artificial intelligence to guide critical cuts in services.

by Brandon Roberts and Vernal Coleman

June 6, 2025, 5:05 a.m. EDT

https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-ai-tool-doge-veterans-affair
s-contracts-sahil-lavingia


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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Sunday, June 8, 2025 5:19 PM (P)

If Trump would say “I’ll drop bombs on Musk’s businesses” it would be clear Trump is threatening to do what no President has done, but Trump is too smart to make it clear how crazy he is because Congress would impeach him, as it has done twice, already. Knowing how Republican Senators react, even if Trump did bomb Musk’s businesses, only half of the Senate would vote to convict Trump in a trial.

Trump threatens ‘very serious consequences’ if Musk backs Democrats

Trump warns his former ally against backing Democratic candidates to challenge Republicans, as a messy feud between the two escalates.

By Amy B Wang | June 7, 2025 at 2:55 p.m. EDT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/06/07/trump-musk-feud-dem
ocrats
/

President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened “very serious consequences” against Elon Musk if the tech billionaire and former adviser were to fund any Democratic candidates, the latest escalation in rhetoric in the messy breakup between the two former allies.

Since their spectacular falling-out, Musk has floated the idea of launching a new political party and continued to criticize a massive tax and immigration bill that Trump is urging congressional Republicans to pass.

In an interview with NBC News on Saturday, Trump said Musk would “pay the consequences” if he were to start funding Democratic candidates to challenge Republicans who support that bill but would not describe what those consequences would be.

“If he does, he’ll have to pay the consequences for that,” Trump said in the phone interview, later repeating: “He’ll have to pay very serious consequences if he does that.”

Trump told the network that he assumed his relationship with Musk was over and also continued to insist, as he did in several interviews with media outlets Friday, that he was too busy to reach out to Musk.

“I gave him a lot of breaks, long before this happened. I gave him breaks in my first administration and saved his life in my first administration,” Trump told NBC News, without elaborating on what those interventions were. “I have no intention of speaking to him.”

Trump also claimed he had not given any further thought to terminating government contracts with Starlink or SpaceX, two of Musk’s companies, an idea the president had first suggested on social media Thursday.

“I think it’s a very bad thing, because he’s very disrespectful. You could not disrespect the office of the president,” Trump told NBC News on Saturday.

Trump ended his interview with the network by suggesting that Musk was “so depressed and so heartbroken,” though it’s unclear if he thought that was a result of their feud or the driving force behind Musk’s sudden public attacks on the Trump White House three days ago.

Little more than a week ago, Musk amicably left his formal role as a special government employee overseeing the U.S. DOGE Service. Trump lavished praise on Musk, saying he was “really not leaving” and hinting that he would actually shuttle back and forth between his tech companies — Musk also owns Tesla and the social media site X — and advising the White House.

However, shortly after he departed, Musk began publicly criticizing Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill legislation that Musk highlighted would drastically increase the national debt.

The rift escalated rapidly. By Thursday, the two were engaged in a full-blown tit-for-tat on their respective social media platforms. After Trump suggested the federal government terminate contracts with SpaceX, Musk said his space company would begin decommissioning its Dragon spacecraft “immediately.”

Musk also appeared to support the idea that Trump be impeached and replaced by Vice President JD Vance and warned that Trump’s tariffs would “cause a recession in the second half of this year.”

On Saturday, Trump also said it was the Justice Department’s decision, not his, to bring Kilmar Abrego García back to the United States and charge him with human smuggling. The Supreme Court ordered Trump officials in April to facilitate Abrego García’s return fro

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Sunday, June 8, 2025 6:02 PM (P)

The Trump White House Is a Giant National Security Red Flag

A damning new report alleges DOGE and Trump allies dismissed warnings that Starlink posed serious security links.

By Inae Oh, Senior News and Engagement Editor | June 7, 2025

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/06/starlink-doge-trump-white
-house
/

Imagine working as a White House communications expert when, on a brisk February morning, you look up to see a crew of unannounced Elon Musk associates climbing the roof of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building. You squint and quickly learn that this unit belongs to Starlink, the very company you had identified as posing serious security concerns. But there they are, scaling the roof to install internet service for the White House.

That’s essentially the scenario outlined in a stunning new report from the Washington Post today, alleging that DOGE and Trump administration officials outright dismissed concerns from the White House’s communications team that Musk’s Starlink internet service was rampant with security risks. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/06/07/starlink-white-ho
use-security-doge-musk
/ That reportedly included an exceedingly flimsy WiFi network that could rival your own personal setup:

A “Starlink Guest” WiFi network appeared on White House phones in February, prompting users only for a password, not a username or a second form of authentication, according to the people. That WiFi network was still appearing on White House visitors’ phones this week.

The government’s reliance on Starlink is not new. On the contrary, the US depends on Musk’s business heavily, throughout vast corners of our military and national security apparatus. But the Post‘s reporting once again demonstrates the stunning authority with which DOGE and Musk, at least before his spectacular blowup with the president this week, have been able to wield within the Trump administration. This latest revelation is just the latest national security red flag to come from the Trump administration: the Qatar plane, Pete Hegseth’s entire personality, confirmed hackers, etc.

Starlink is now one of several government contracts that could be on the chopping block now that President Trump and Musk are on the outs. (This, regardless of what you think of Musk, would pull the feud into blatantly lawless territory.) But regardless of the fate of Musk and Starlink, the core stupidity of Trump’s White House remains intact. Don’t be too surprised to see unannounced workers have started climbing the rooftop once again.

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Sunday, June 8, 2025 7:25 PM (P)

June 08, 2025

Trump can’t stand to be humiliated — as he has been in the last two weeks. By senate Republicans refusal to quickly enact his so-called One Big Beautiful Bill. By Xi Jinping’s refusal to back down on trade (and restrict shipments of China’s rare earths, which American industry depends on). By Putin’s refusal to end the war in Ukraine. By the federal courts pushing back against his immigration policy. And, now, by insults and smears from the richest person in the world, who has a larger social media following than does Trump.

So what does Trump do when he’s humiliated? He deflects public attention. Like any bully, he tries to find another way to display his power . . .

More on the mental illnesses of Trump and his Trumptards at

https://www.alternet.org/trump-california/

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Sunday, June 8, 2025 8:29 PM (P)

Shut up fag.

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

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Sunday, June 8, 2025 11:15 PM (P)

Trump could have left five criminals in jail for 18 years.
Instead, Trump pardoned them and will probably pay them $100 million.
The Winds of Change are blowing away $100 million in exchange for nothing.

Proud Boys' $100 Million Lawsuit Puts Trump In A Lose-Lose Position

Five members of the violent extremist group are suing the federal government after President Donald Trump pardoned them over Jan. 6.

By Lydia O'Connor | Jun 6, 2025, 07:46 PM EDT

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/proud-boys-jan-6-trump-lawsuit_n_684361
9ce4b043146daacef8


Five members of the Proud Boys pardoned by President Donald Trump for orchestrating the Capitol insurrection have turned around and sued the federal government, forcing Trump’s administration into an awkward position.

The lawsuit from members of the neofascist group — all of whom were convicted and given lengthy sentences for the key roles they played in the riot on Jan. 6, 2021 — claims they were the victims of “egregious and systemic abuse of the legal system and the United States Constitution to punish and oppress political allies of President Trump.”

The complaint, which seeks $100 million in restitution, compares their punishment to “placing one’s enemies’ heads on a spike outside the town wall as a warning to any who would think to challenge the status quo.”

Their lawsuit effectively leaves Trump’s administration with two politically unappetizing options: Defend the Biden administration’s prosecution after Trump pardoned them and nearly all other Jan. 6 offenders, or force American taxpayers to shell out for a settlement with them.

The plaintiffs include Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, who was convicted of plotting the attack on the Capitol and sentenced to 22 years in prison, the longest sentence handed down to anyone tried over Jan. 6.

At a press conference Friday, Tarrio called the lawsuit a chance for Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, to rectify the Biden administration’s errors.

“Today, we call on her to honor her commitment to the American people, to right the wrongs of her predecessor and to hold accountable those who violated our rights,” he said. “We trust President Trump’s judgment. He doesn’t make mistakes.”

Three of the other men - Ethan Nordean, Joe Biggs and Zachary Rehl - were found guilty of spearheading the attack in the absence of Tarrio, who couldn’t enter Washington, D.C., due to a prior arrest. They were sentenced to 18, 17 and 15 years in prison, respectively.

The final Proud Boy in the lawsuit is Dominic Pezzola, who was captured on video using police equipment to break through glass at the entrance of the building. He was given 10 years in prison.

The White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the lawsuit, which refers to the Proud Boys as a “patriotic activist organization for young men.”

The complaint says the men suffered greatly during their time in detention, where some of them endured “solitary confinement under deplorable and unsanitary conditions” and were denied access to visits from their families and lawyers. Trump referred to them as “hostages” when he signed his executive order pardoning riot participants in January.

The Proud Boys lawsuit comes the same day Shane Lamond, the former leader of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department’s intelligence division, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for leaking information to Tarrio ahead of the Jan. 6 attack.

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Sunday, June 8, 2025 11:54 PM (P)

Shut up, fag.

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

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, June 9, 2025 4:10 PM (P)

Trump’s Words vs Reality

Trump - “The doctor says I’m a beast.”

Doctor - “Sir, you’re obese.”

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, June 9, 2025 5:02 PM (P)

The Trump administration is hostile to science and intellectual endeavor in general. Fossil fuel interests don’t want anyone studying climate change. Conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones make much of their money selling quack medical remedies, which makes them hostile to conventional medicine. (And partisan orientation became a key factor determining whether people were willing to be vaccinated against Covid.) Practitioners of voodoo economics don’t want anyone looking into the actual results of cutting taxes on the rich. Nativists proclaiming an immigrant crime wave don’t want anyone examining who commits violent crimes. And so on.

American scientific leadership and research universities are key pillars of U.S. power and prosperity. Corporate America certainly understands that our scientific and educational institutions contribute to its bottom line. So you might have expected even MAGA enthusiasts to be a bit cautious about killing this particular golden-egg-laying goose.

You would have been wrong. Everything points to an effort to effectively destroy U.S. science — not gradually as part of a long-term plan, but over the next year or two. Start with the money. The preliminary budget the Trump administration released last month called for a cut of almost 40 percent in funding for the National Institutes of Health, more than 50 percent in the budget of the National Science Foundation, the virtual elimination of federal spending on climate and ecological research and a drastic cut in NASA’s research budget. All of this was for fiscal 2026, which begins in October — that is, something like half the federal government’s financial support for science would be eliminated within a few months.

There’s what clearly looks like an attempt to politicize whatever scientific funding remains. Medical journals have received threatening letters from the Justice Department. An executive order issued May 23, titled “Restoring Gold Standard Science,” purports to be about restoring “scientific integrity,” but would give political appointees the right to “correct scientific information” and to “forward potential violations to the relevant human resources officials for discipline.”

And can you trust Trump and his people to “correct” science?

Restoring Gold Standard Science
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/05/restoring-gold
-standard-science
/

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, June 9, 2025 5:13 PM (P)

Keep preaching to the 10% of people who no longer matter in 2025.

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

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, June 9, 2025 5:24 PM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Keep preaching to the 10% of people who no longer matter in 2025.

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

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

6ix, I'm certain from a vast amount of experience with Trumptards either dropping dead or vanishing from the workforce because of alcoholism/drug use/illness that no Trumptard matters. Once a Trumptard is gone, things go smoother. It is weird how Trumptards think of themselves as indispensable while complaining that the truly important people, none of them Trumptards, aren't necessary.

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, June 9, 2025 5:55 PM (P)

We’ve Saved Democracy Before. FDR’s First 100 Days Made It Possible.

By Elizabeth Wilkins | April 29, 2025

https://rooseveltinstitute.org/blog/weve-saved-democracy-before/

Let’s set the scene: Millions of people live paycheck to paycheck at best, inequality is rampant, and the nation’s richest are calling the shots. Trust in financial markets is cratering, and chaos and uncertainty reign. Feeling burnt by capitalism, working people across the globe are flirting with authoritarianism, lured by the promise that it can deliver for them more quickly and effectively than democracy can.

The scene I’m describing is not—or not just—America on President Trump’s 100th day in office. It’s March 1933, the height of the Great Depression, and Franklin D. Roosevelt has just taken office. Amid a devastating economic crisis and after years of hands-off, imagination-limited governance, the American people are questioning the very viability of capitalism, and the ability of democracy to manage it. The rapacious plutocrats who defined the Roaring Twenties seem too powerful to be curbed by our weak institutions, and Americans are increasingly looking to fascist Italy and communist Soviet Union for solutions.

One hundred headline-dominating days into his presidency, some have compared Trump to FDR, the first president to use the “first 100 days” framework. The comparison couldn’t be more wrong. One is choosing chaos, cruelty, and corruption. The other brought the competence to contain instability, answer the uncertainties of unchecked capitalism, and rein in grift. One man is undermining democracy. The other sought to preserve it. And in this moment, FDR has a lot to teach those of us who seek to preserve.

Much more at https://rooseveltinstitute.org/blog/weve-saved-democracy-before/

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, June 9, 2025 7:08 PM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Keep preaching to the 10% of people who no longer matter in 2025.

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

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

Because they are maladjusted to life in America, I don't tell Trumptards this, but they are evil people, which is the reason their lives don't proceed smoothly and serenely.

Really, Secretary Rubio? I’m lying about the kids dying under Trump?

Commentary seeks to pierce U.S. denial of fatal impacts of aid freeze

June 7, 2025

https://76crimes.com/2025/06/07/commentary-aimed-at-marco-rubio/

Columnist Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times on May 31 presented examples of children dying of AIDS because the United States has halted deliveries of life-saving medications. He could just as well have used examples of any HIV+ people.

One study, published in The Lancet HIV, predicts up to 2.9 million additional HIV-related deaths by 2030 if the U.S. aid isn’t restored. The UN’s anti-AIDS agency projects more than 6.3 million deaths by then.

In his column, reprinted below, Kristof cites the examples of two children’s deaths from HIV to make the point:

By Nicholas Kristof

COMMENTARY

I see Secretary of State Marco Rubio as a good man doing bad things, but perhaps he thinks even worse of me: He recently suggested that I was a liar.

While testifying before Congress, Rubio claimed that the Trump administration’s dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development had not cost any lives.

“No children are dying on my watch,” he asserted. At another point in the hearing, he broadened his statement to include adults as well: “No one has died because of U.S.A.I.D.”

This is ludicrous: The only debate is whether to measure the dead in the thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands. So Representative Brad Sherman, a California Democrat, challenged Rubio, citing reporting overseas by me and by Reuters of individuals who died as a result of the shutdown of American humanitarian aid.

“That’s a lie,” Rubio said. “False.”

So let me help Rubio with the truth. Meet Evan Anzoo, a 5-year-old boy who was born with H.I.V. in South Sudan:

I mentioned Evan in a column in March from South Sudan. This was a child as precious as yours or mine. Evan’s life was in our hands, and for five years America kept him alive with antiretroviral medicines costing less than 12 cents a day, through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR. This was a program started by President George W. Bush that has saved more than 26 million lives so far, and it turned the tide of AIDS around the world and built enormous good will toward the United States.

Then along came President Trump and his freeze on most humanitarian aid in January. How could a 5-year-old orphan possibly obtain medicine on his own? Evan weakened and soon died of an opportunistic infection.

If Rubio needs further reminder of the human toll, this little girl is Achol Deng, 8, who likewise died when she lost access to antiretrovirals because of the U.S.A.I.D. freeze.

I share these photos of Evan and Achol because it strikes me as doubly offensive not only to cause unnecessary deaths of such children but also to deny these deaths and call them lies. The denials erase these children and dodge all responsibility.

It was Elon Musk who first insisted that “no one has died.” Now Rubio has doubled down.

Rubio is smarter than this and better than this; over the years he has shown himself knowledgeable about foreign affairs and has demonstrated compassion. I was relieved when he became secretary of state, for I want smart, experienced people around Trump.

When I reached out to Rubio to ask about the “lies” comment and the suggestion that no one had died, he declined to be interviewed. But he seemed to back off and presented a more sensible response — albeit a complete evasion.

“America is the most generous nation in the world, and we urge other nations t

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, June 9, 2025 8:52 PM (P)

Does a president need to uphold the Constitution? Trump says 'I don't know'

June 9, 2025

The United States is currently dealing with multiple emergencies at once, according to President Trump's administration. There's a national emergency at the southern border, an energy emergency and an economic emergency, to name a few — and the president has used these to enact some of his most wide-reaching policies, from pushing fossil fuel production to seeking to complete the border wall with Mexico and setting steep and sweeping tariffs.

Trump invoked emergency powers eight times in his first 100 days in office.

Challenges to Trump's emergency orders have yet to reach the Supreme Court, but legal experts worry his use of them could lead to an upending of the constitutional balance of power if the Supreme Court sides with the administration, essentially giving the president free rein to do more without congressional approval.

"This is pedal to the metal on executive power," says Kim Lane Scheppele, a professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton University who is a scholar on the use of emergency powers.

Some courts have ruled that Trump is exceeding his power, particularly in regard to tariffs, and appeals are ongoing. But Scheppele says the Trump administration expects a friendly reception if a legal challenge to the president's emergency powers reaches the Supreme Court — and it seems likely that it will.

"The point of it is to get the case to the Supreme Court when he thinks he's got a majority, to give him unlimited power," she says. "I mostly study the fall of democracies in other places, and it's through this expansion of unlimited executive power. I'm worried that's the path we're on."

More at https://www.npr.org/2025/06/09/nx-s1-5424666/trump-national-emergencie
s-democracy-supreme-court-constitution


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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, June 9, 2025 9:22 PM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Keep preaching to the 10% of people who no longer matter in 2025.

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

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

Because



Go fuck yourself, idiot.

You are finished.

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

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, June 9, 2025 9:48 PM (P)

SECOND is spewing again bc he realizes that this ...








... is wrong-footing the DNC with most of America.

Yanno, when you wave a flag over a piece of land, it means you've occupied it. Our soldiers do it, Russians do that in Ukraine, and illegals do it here.

And does anyone think that a bunch of homies and wannabes flashing gang signs, and burning cars is is gonna bring people to their side?

People aren't gonna put up with that nonsense anymore, having been innoculated by the St George Floyd riots. And anything Trump does to restore order is going to make him a hero.

The media, as expected, are portraying this as "peaceful". Fortunately, we have X.

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, June 9, 2025 10:41 PM (P)

Joe Walsh @WalshFreedom

If Zelensky had told the Trump administration about their surprise attack, Putin would have immediately known about it. Because Trump is on Putin’s side. And thankfully, Zelensky knows that. And rightly, he doesn’t trust Trump at all.

Just think about that for a moment.
9:35 AM · Jun 2, 2025

https://x.com/WalshFreedom/status/1929547450315948337

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Monday, June 9, 2025 11:02 PM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND is spewing again bc he realizes that this ...

. . . anything Trump does to restore order is going to make him a hero.

Signym, do you remember the Kent State Shootings? The National Guard did it in 1970, sent in by James Allen Rhodes, a Republican governor.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kent_State_shootings#Aftermath_and_long-
term_effects


I remember the Texans who, along with Nixon, were siding with the National Guard for bringing “peace” via bullets. Those people were the worst people I knew in Texas, up to that time. Since then, I have known a lot more people. And their eventual deaths.

Nowadays, the worst people I know are taking Trump’s side, as the worst took Nixon’s. Good riddance to evil people. May they all die in a fire, screaming in agony for what they are. I find it satisfying that many did die horribly and deservedly. I look forward to more evil people dying, to 6ixStringJack’s death from lung cancer, for example.

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 1:18 AM (P)

Well, that's not gonna happen. National Guard are not about to take up sniper positions and start shooting down on a crowd.

But aren't you the one who's always hoping "someone" will kill the "evil people"? Now you're all tweaked about the thought?

Stupid.

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 3:44 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Well, that's not gonna happen. National Guard are not about to take up sniper positions and start shooting down on a crowd.

But aren't you the one who's always hoping "someone" will kill the "evil people"? Now you're all tweaked about the thought?

Stupid.

The local police, numbering about 70,000, can do far more than 2,000 National Guard.

Evil people don't know the difference between good and evil. Oh, they have opinions, but they don't know. I have tested them at work on the difference, and they failed the tests consistently.

Good people have their complementary disability: they fail to confront evil because your average good person thinks it is evil to confront evil. Live and let live is a low-energy, low-conflict way for so-called good people to co-exist with evil people.

But not deciding what is evil also causes families, organizations, businesses and governments to operate very close to failure, where if things get a little difficult, the family falls apart, the business goes bankrupt, and the legislature is an absurd mess of conflict between good and evil.

Think of how Congress couldn't face the good vs evil problem of slavery for a period of "four score and seven years". Even during the Civil War, Congress couldn't decide if slavery was good or evil. Congress couldn't even decide that slavery caused the Civil War. Instead, the debate was about States' Rights. The absurdity of live and let live around the question of slavery caused endless trouble before, during, and for 160 years after the Civil War was over.

The trouble did not go away with the end of slavery. How much do you pay a worker today? Right now, most people don't have a problem paying as little as possible, the same attitude as during slavery, where the pay was the least food, the shabbiest clothing, and the minimum shelter allowed by law. On the worker's side, how crappy a job can I do for what little I get? Same attitude as the Antebellum slaves. And if the richest 1% don't want to pay taxes and want to hog the majority of the wealth, evil people don't see that as evil. It is just smart behavior for evil people.

There are places in America not controlled by Trumptards and, my goodness, those places prosper mightily compared to what the Trumptards are doing with their lives. Easy to understand why Trump attacks such places and Trumptards bitterly resent those places. Trumptards wish to bring their personal failures to everything in America.

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 3:47 AM (P)

For Trump, This Is a Dress Rehearsal

Ordering the National Guard to deploy in Los Angeles is a warning of what to expect when his hold on power is threatened.

By David Frum | June 8, 2025, 10 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/los-angeles-dress-re
hearsal-trump/683078
/

Yesterday, President Donald Trump ordered the National Guard to quell disorderly protests against immigration-enforcement personnel in Los Angeles. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth declared his readiness to obey Trump by mobilizing the U.S. Marines as well. These threats look theatrical and pointless. The state, counties, and cities of California employ more than 75,000 uniformed law-enforcement personnel with arrest powers. The Los Angeles Police Department alone numbers nearly 9,000 uniformed officers. They can surely handle some dozens of agitators throwing rocks, shooting fireworks, and impeding vehicular traffic.

If and when those 75,000 uniformed personnel feel overmatched by the agitators, California can request federal help of its own volition. When California has asked for needed federal help—during the wildfires earlier this year, for example—Trump has begrudged that help and played politics with it. Trump is now forcing help that the city and state do not need and do not want, not to restore law but to assert his personal dominance over the normal procedures to enforce the law.

But if the Trump-Hegseth threats have little purpose as law enforcement, they signify great purpose as political strategy. Since Trump’s reelection, close observers of his presidency have feared a specific sequence of events that could play out ahead of midterm voting in 2026:

Step 1: Use federal powers in ways to provoke some kind of made-for-TV disturbance—flames, smoke, loud noises, waving of foreign flags.

Step 2: Invoke the disturbance to declare a state of emergency and deploy federal troops.

Step 3: Seize control of local operations of government—policing in June 2025; voting in November 2026.

Some of Trump’s most fervent supporters urged him to follow this plan in November 2020. But in 2020, they waited too long—until after the votes were cast. Using the military to overturn an election already completed was too extreme a step for a Department of Defense headed by a law-respecting Cabinet secretary such as Mark Esper. Trump looked to the courts instead. Only after the courts disappointed him did Trump attempt violence, and then the only available tool of violence was the lightly armed mob he summoned to Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021. Harrowing as those events were, they never stood much chance of success: Without the support of any element of the military, Trump’s rioters could not impose the outcome Trump wanted.

But the methods Trump threatened in Los Angeles this weekend could be much more effective in November 2026 than the attempted civilian coup of January 2021.

If Trump can incite disturbances in blue states before the midterm elections, he can assert emergency powers to impose federal control over the voting process, which is to say his control. Or he might suspend voting until, in his opinion, order has been restored. Either way, blue-state seats could be rendered vacant for some time.

Precedents do exist for such action. In autumn 1871, President Ulysses S. Grant imposed martial law on counties in South Carolina to suppress Ku Klux Klan disturbances that were interfering with legal voting. More recently, the governor of the U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands delayed elections, including the election of the islands’ nonvoting delegate in the United States House of Representatives, after Saipan was struck by a super-typhoon in October 2018. In that same month, Trump himself claimed that a caravan of undocumented immigrants heading north toward the U.S. constituted a “national emergency” that would justify suspending civil authority and deploying the military in border states.

In his first term, Trump repeatedly talked more radically than he acted. He was usually constraine

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 4:01 AM (P)

Quote:

Evil people don't know the difference between good and evil

Yep!

We notice that about you pretty much every time you post!


Yanno the difference between me and you, stupid? The thing that makes me NOT EVIL?

I don't judge people as "evil" by my opinion of their opinion, I don't judge people categorically, and I don't wish to kill people by category.

I judge them by what they do, individually.

I just don't have that much hate and sociopathy in me to waste on whole groups ... political parties ... nations ... continents!

Yanno, I think you got a taste for killing people and you just can't let it go.

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 5:01 AM (P)

All of the violence. All of the destruction.

Everything the Left and the Media has been accusing the right of for over a decade.

We're seeing it play out 10 times worse and all by the hands of Democrats the tens of millions of criminal illegal invaders they let in, their college "educated" idiot white kids and their paid activists.

This is the final acts of the dead Democratic Party.

R.I.P.

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

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

THG
Tuesday, June 10, 2025 6:52 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:


Evil people don't know the difference between good and evil


Yep!

We notice that about you pretty much every time you post!


Yanno the difference between me and you, stupid? The thing that makes me NOT EVIL?

I don't judge people as "evil" by my opinion of their opinion, I don't judge people categorically, and I don't wish to kill people by category.

I judge them by what they do, individually.

I just don't have that much hate and sociopathy in me to waste on whole groups ... political parties ... nations ... continents!

Yanno, I think you got a taste for killing people and you just can't let it go.






Really, you judge people by what they do. Then why do you constantly deny Putin is a butcher comrade? How he bombs civilian targets more than military targets.

Now remember, the civilized world agrees he does this.

Wait for it, folks.

T

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 7:00 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:

Evil people don't know the difference between good and evil

Yep!

We notice that about you pretty much every time you post!


Yanno the difference between me and you, stupid? The thing that makes me NOT EVIL?

I don't judge people as "evil" by my opinion of their opinion, I don't judge people categorically, and I don't wish to kill people by category.

I judge them by what they do, individually.

I just don't have that much hate and sociopathy in me to waste on whole groups ... political parties ... nations ... continents!

Yanno, I think you got a taste for killing people and you just can't let it go.

I'm guessing you, and Libtards, only read the New Testament, which is all peace and love, except in the last book in the Bible where all the evil people die brutally during Armageddon. In the Old Testament, God can NOT help people like you. There is no individuality. You drown in the story of Noah's Ark. You are burned alive, women and children included, in Sodom and Gomorrah. You are crushed by stones when Samson pulls down the Temple on the Philistines. Trump is the biggest Philistine in history. If God does not do subtlety, despite having infinite time and patience for legalisms, neither should humans be merciful with Trumptards, who demonstrate every day in every way that being evil is their core value.

Old Testament Style Obliteration of Trumptards: Samson Dies with the Philistines
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Judges%2016%3A23-30&v
ersion=NKJV


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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 7:02 AM (P)

Trump and his Trumptards Invent New Ways To Be Evil Every Day

Trump asks the Supreme Court to neutralize the Convention Against Torture

Trump’s lawyers claim they’ve found a loophole that will allow Trump to ship immigrants overseas to be tortured.

By Ian Millhiser | Jun 9, 2025, 5:45 PM CDT

Millhiser received a JD, magna cum laude, from Duke University, where he served as senior note editor on the Duke Law Journal. He is the author of two books on the Supreme Court: Injustices: The Supreme Court’s History of Comforting the Comfortable and Afflicting the Afflicted and The Agenda: How a Republican Supreme Court Is Reshaping America. Download the free books from the mirrors at https://libgen.rs/search.php?req=Ian+Millhiser

https://www.vox.com/scotus/416163/trump-supreme-court-deport-immigrati
on-convention-torture


Federal law states that the United States shall not “expel, extradite, or otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” This law implements a treaty, known as the Convention Against Torture, which the United States ratified more than three decades ago.

Federal regulations, moreover, provide that even after an immigration judge has determined that a noncitizen may be deported to another country, that judge’s order “shall not be executed in circumstances that would violate Article 3 of the United Nations Convention Against Torture.” And those regulations also establish a process that immigrants can use to raise concerns with an immigration judge that they may be tortured if sent to a specific country.

The Trump administration, however, claims it has discovered a loophole that renders all of these legal protections worthless, and is now asking the Supreme Court to explicitly give it the authority to make use of that loophole in order to enact its immigration policies.

According to President Donald Trump’s lawyers, the administration can simply wait until after an immigration judge has conducted the proceeding that ordinarily would determine whether a particular noncitizen may be deported to a particular country, and then, if that noncitizen is allowed to be deported, announce that the immigrant will be deported to some previously unmentioned country — even if that immigrant reasonably fears they will be tortured in that nation.

Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D., the case where the Trump administration asks the justices to neutralize the Convention Against Torture, is unlike some of the more high-profile deportation cases that reached the Supreme Court — such as the unlawful deportation of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to El Salvador — in that no one really questions that the immigrants at the heart of this case may be deported somewhere.

D.V.D. involves immigrants who have gone through the ordinary process to determine whether they can be removed from the country. The Trump administration even claims that some of them were convicted of very serious crimes. According to the administration, “all were adjudicated removable.”

But the Convention Against Torture and the federal law implementing it forbid the government from deporting anyone to a country where there is good reason to believe they will be tortured. And federal immigration law and regulations lay out the process that should be used to determine if an immigrant may be deported to a particular country.

How immigration hearings are supposed to work

As the district judge who heard this case explained in his opinion ruling that Trump must comply with the Convention Against Torture, when the government wishes to deport a noncitizen, that individual is typically entitled to a hearing before an immigration judge. That hearing determines “not only whether an individual may be removed from the United States but also to where he may be removed.”

In these proceedings, the immigrant is given an opportunity to name where they want to be deported to, if the immigration judge

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 8:32 AM (P)

They're ALL going the fuck home. Cry about it, dummy.

This is all your fault too. If you had ever reigned your party in when they went full retard, the over-correction you're about to witness would never have occurred.


The Democratic Party is dead.



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

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 8:47 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:

Evil people don't know the difference between good and evil

Yep!

We notice that about you pretty much every time you post!


Yanno the difference between me and you, stupid? The thing that makes me NOT EVIL?

I don't judge people as "evil" by my opinion of their opinion, I don't judge people categorically, and I don't wish to kill people by category.

I judge them by what they do, individually.

I just don't have that much hate and sociopathy in me to waste on whole groups ... political parties ... nations ... continents!

Yanno, I think you got a taste for killing people and you just can't let it go.

I'm guessing you, and Libtards, only read the New Testament, which is all peace and love, except in the last book in the Bible where all the evil people die brutally during Armageddon. In the Old Testament, God can NOT help people like you. There is no individuality. You drown in the story of Noah's Ark. You are burned alive, women and children included, in Sodom and Gomorrah. You are crushed by stones when Samson pulls down the Temple on the Philistines. Trump is the biggest Philistine in history. If God does not do subtlety, despite having infinite time and patience for legalisms, neither should humans be merciful with Trumptards, who demonstrate every day in every way that being evil is their core value.

Old Testament Style Obliteration of Trumptards: Samson Dies with the Philistines
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Judges%2016%3A23-30&v
ersion=NKJV


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

Well then, I guess you die with the rest of the Philistines, then, no matter HOW "righteous" you feel!
Unless you think you're So Special that God will make an exception for you??


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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 12:20 PM (P)

Oh, wait, I get it SECOND ... you think YOU'RE God!
Here to sort good from evil!


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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 1:32 PM (P)





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

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 1:34 PM (P)

Hey...

Did you notice that Second called a group of people he doesn't agree with "Libtards" in that last post?

I find that interesting.

We should delve deeper into that.

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

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 4:28 PM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Well then, I guess you die with the rest of the Philistines, then, no matter HOW "righteous" you feel!
Unless you think you're So Special that God will make an exception for you??

I noticed that the polarity of words switches backwards when a Trumptard hears or sees them. It is a learning disorder that makes prospering in America difficult for Trumptards. Since Trumptards are certain there is little wrong with themselves, it must be the fault of Libtards why a Trumptard's life is disappointing and prone to fall into chaos. Trump's learning disorder is why his life has been in turmoil for decades, especially recently, when so many can see that he is getting things backwards and upside down, but he can't admit his mistakes. He is not even aware of his misunderstanding.

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 4:35 PM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Oh, wait, I get it SECOND ... you think YOU'RE God!
Here to sort good from evil!

I am burdened with the ability, calling it a sensitive inner ear, to tell up from down, or in engineering terms, I can hear and feel with finger tips when a machine is out of balance and not on the level. I've got the same ability with people; I can tell when they are malfunctioning, even when they insist they are doing their best. I have seen what the best really is, and Trump and Trumptards have no idea what that is. They think, however little they feel like doing is the best that can be done. I suspect that God hates lazy, stupid people who won't correct their mistakes. Mistakes, unacknowledged, are a trait of Trump and his Trumptards.

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 4:36 PM (P)

California Governor Newsom didn't request the National Guard be deployed to his state.

Trump sent them anyway.

Trump's goal isn't to keep Californians safe.

His goal is to cause chaos because he wants wartime powers.

Like his breakup with Elon Musk last week, his deploying the military against protesters could not have been more foreseeable. The only uncertainty was about timing and pretext.

Every time a protester hurls a rock or smashes a window, the protester ceases to be a lawful demonstrator and becomes a rioter. And contrary to a lot of left-wing romantic nonsense, rioting is not only wrong and illegal, it’s politically unpopular. In 1968, Richard Nixon used the riots after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination to win the presidency on a promise of restoring law and order.

The fringe left has a long love affair with the “propaganda of the deed,” a stupid concept holding that direct or revolutionary action persuades the masses to align with their cause. In America, it never works. Donald Trump subscribes to his own theory of the propaganda of the deed. In a 1990, he expressed admiration for the Chinese Communist Party’s willingness to display “the power of strength” in crushing the Tiananmen protests. His administration has been pushing claims that he should be granted wartime powers. Those claims are largely sinister nonsense as a matter of law, facts and those pesky democratic norms. But when rioters are setting Waymo cabs on fire, the debate is exactly where he wants it.

No doubt that there will be enough people willing to give Trump wartime powers. And portentously, unlike during his first term, the enablers are in the White House. Various Cabinet secretaries, White House officials and the vice president are all trying to one-up each other with talk of invasion, insurrection and “liberate Los Angeles.”

Given the cowardice of Congress and the limitations of the courts, this is leading, perhaps inexorably, to a contest of competing theories of the propaganda of the deed. That may or may not end well for Trump but it will certainly end poorly for the United States.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/column-trump-deploys-protesters
-respond-this-will-not-end-well/ar-AA1GoyQ9


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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 4:54 PM (P)

America is on the brink of becoming a failed democracy

Cultural Decline in the U.S. Is a Threat to Democracy

By Jonathan Sumption | June 2, 2025

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/02/opinion/united-states-democracy-cul
ture.html


Mr. Sumption, a former justice of the Supreme Court of Britain, is the author of “The Challenges of Democracy and the Rule of Law.” Download his books for free from https://annas-archive.org/search?q=Jonathan+Sumption

As an observer of democracies and a constitutional lawyer in Britain, I have watched with rising alarm as many Western nations threaten to become failed democracies.

They may not yet be like Venezuela, Peru, Hungary, Turkey or Russia. But these countries show what can happen when a democracy dies with a whimper, not with a bang. There may not be tanks on the lawns or mobs in the streets, but slowly, they are drained of everything that once made them democratic, often with substantial public support.

These countries have elections, legislatures, courts and so on. The institutional framework is still there. But they are no longer democracies because the political culture on which democracy depends has failed.

Now the United States is in danger of being added to this list. There are tensions among its institutions, though they are still largely functioning. But the deterioration of its political culture is striking — and alarming. The country resembles other Western democracies in buckling under the weight of increasingly unrealistic expectations of the state from its electorate.

Democracy is a constitutional mechanism for collective self-government and a way of entrusting decision-making to people acceptable to the majority, whose power is defined and limited, and whose mandate is revocable. That is the institutional framework.

A democratic culture depends on something more than institutions. It depends on the instincts of politicians and citizens. It calls for a willingness to choose solutions that the greatest number of people can live with. It requires conventions about how even lawful powers will be exercised so as to avoid capricious, vindictive or oppressive decisions. Above all, it requires people to treat political opponents as fellow citizens with whom they disagree — and not as enemies to be smashed.

Hence the significance of President Trump, who exhibits the three classic symptoms of totalitarianism: a charismatic leader surrounded by a personal cult, the identification of the state with himself and a refusal to accept the legitimacy of opposition or dissent. The result is a regime of discretionary government in place of the government of laws that the founders saw as the chief defense against tyranny.

Mr. Trump has used public powers to pursue private grudges: for example, against law firms that represented his political opponents; public figures for whom he has removed security protection; or cultural institutions, from Harvard to the Kennedy Center, that do not share his personal agenda.

Article 2 of the Constitution requires the president to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Yet this, too, has become dependent on the president’s personal discretion. Mr. Trump has directed the Justice Department not to enforce laws passed by Congress such as the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, has reduced or wound up programs for which Congress has appropriated funds and has threatened governors and other authorities with cutting off federal funds unless they submit to his wishes.

Foreign observers like myself have the luxury of watching these developments from a distance, but we need to look at the vulnerability of our own democracies. What is happening in the United States is essentially a crisis of expectations that is common to other advanced democracies as well. A respected polling organization in Britain in 2019 found that a majority of people (54 percent) agreed with the statement that “Britain needs a strong leader willing to break the rules.”

Continent

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 5:03 PM (P)

We Finally Know What “American Carnage” Was About

By Paul Krugman / Jun 10, 2025 at 5:37 AM

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/we-finally-know-what-american-carna
ge


Does anyone remember “American carnage”? In his 2017 inaugural address Donald Trump portrayed a collapsing society, emphasizing in particular the “crime and gangs and drugs” destroying America’s cities. https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/the-inaugura
l-address
/

It was a peculiar and disturbing speech, in part because it bore no relationship to reality. Then as now, America had many problems. But runaway urban crime wasn’t one of them. In fact, Trump chose to proclaim urban carnage after a remarkable generation-long run of plunging crime in our major cities. New York, for example, had only 335 murders in 2016, down from 2,262 in 1990.

So what was that about?

At the time, I thought it was mostly about sadism. Trump clearly loves punishing people, so he was eager to portray a nation full of people who needed punishing. And it remains true, as Adam Serwer pointed out back in 2018, that for Trump and many of his supporters cruelty is a goal in itself, that they rejoice in the suffering of those they hate and fear.

But the events unfolding in Los Angeles as you read this and, I fear, the events likely to unfold across much of America soon, quite possibly this weekend, suggest that the motivations of Trump and his cronies go deeper than mere (mere!) sadism. They want to use false claims of chaos to justify a power grab that, if successful, would mark the end of the American experiment.

As I assume everyone knows by now, on Friday heavily armed — and masked — ICE agents began raiding workplaces in and around Los Angeles, seeking to arrest people they claimed were illegal immigrants. Crowds quickly gathered to protest. After all, ICE wasn’t rounding up members of violent gangs. It was scooping up ordinary people doing ordinary jobs, many of whom had friends and relatives in the neighborhood.

The protests were relatively peaceful, although there were some scuffles, objects thrown and vandalism. Los Angeles has experienced real riots in the past. This didn’t even come close. But ICE and some other law enforcement personnel responded with heavy application of force — not lethal weapons, at least not yet, but lots of tear gas, rubber bullets, and so on.

Until ICE moved in Los Angeles was, in fact, remarkably peaceful. Like other major American cities, LA experienced a significant but not huge crime wave in the aftermath of Covid but has since seen that wave more than completely recede:

Source: Real Time Crime Index.

Los Angeles right now is probably as safe as it has ever been.

But if you read Trump, which you should to get past the sanewashing, the City of Angels sounds like a scene from Fallout:

And Noem has called LA a “city of criminals.”

As a New Yorker, I’m accustomed to seeing my quite livable city portrayed as a hellscape. Still, there are 13 million people living in Greater Los Angeles who can testify that it has not, in fact, been invaded and occupied, let alone taken over by insurrectionist mobs.

Oh, and let’s not forget that an actual insurrectionist mob tried to overturn the 2020 election — and Trump has pardoned its members.

But no matter. Trump wanted an excuse to mobilize the National Guard, even though the governor of California not only didn’t request it, but has sued Trump to demand that he rescind the order.

When did a president last federalize the Guard against a governor’s wishes? Sixty years ago, when Lyndon Johnson mobilized the Alabama National Guard against

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 5:13 PM (P)

Still listening to those fags, huh fag?

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

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 5:35 PM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Still listening to those fags, huh fag?

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

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

6ix, do you realize that you, Trump and Senator Tuberville are full of shit? I see it dribbling from your mouths. Trumptards have their digestive systems running backwards, waste exits from where it is embarrassing to point out. Why don't Trumptards notice and wash their mouths with soap?

Trump endorses arrest of Governor Gavin Newsom

When pressed by reporters about what crime Newsom has committed to warrant a potential arrest, Trump said, “I think his primary crime is running for governor, because he’s done such a bad job.”

Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who has also announced his candidacy for the state’s governorship, is among the highest profile Trump allies to publicly echo the calls for Newsom’s arrest.

In a post to X, Tuberville wrote: “LA looks like a third world country — anarchists are in charge, law enforcement is being attacked, and the rule of law is nonexistent. Lock him up.”

https://ktla.com/news/california/trump-endorses-arrest-of-gavin-newsom/

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 5:41 PM (P)

Shut up, idiot.

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

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 5:44 PM (P)

‘Wildly underprepared’: National Guard troops seen sleeping on floors in exclusive photos

“This is what happens when the president and (Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth) demand the National Guard deploy immediately with no plan in place … (and) no federal funding available for food, water, fuel and lodging. This is really the failure of the federal government. If you’re going to federalize these troops, then take care of them.”

Senior military leaders advised Monday that the California troops could continue sleeping on floors or outdoors until Thursday, at which point federal officials would decide whether to make more permanent lodging plans, the source said. By Monday afternoon, additional National Guard troops were expected to reach Los Angeles, upping the total from around 300 late Saturday to more than 2,100.

It was unclear where the new arrivals would stay at night, the source said, with only a few hundred available tents.

“Currently, there is no plan for where everyone is sleeping tonight,” the source said, adding that there was an urgent need to find more portable bathrooms and dumpsters for garbage.

The Pentagon referred questions about troop provisions to the California Guard, which in turn referred questions to the U.S. Special Operations Command North, which did not immediately respond to the Chronicle.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/california/article/national-guard-californ
ia-photos-20368334.php


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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Tuesday, June 10, 2025 5:49 PM (P)

I don't hear them whining, faggot.

How about you worry about yourself and stop pretending to be offended for everybody else.

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

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

THG
Tuesday, June 10, 2025 9:57 PM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by THG:
Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:


Evil people don't know the difference between good and evil


Yep!

We notice that about you pretty much every time you post!


Yanno the difference between me and you, stupid? The thing that makes me NOT EVIL?

I don't judge people as "evil" by my opinion of their opinion, I don't judge people categorically, and I don't wish to kill people by category.

I judge them by what they do, individually.

I just don't have that much hate and sociopathy in me to waste on whole groups ... political parties ... nations ... continents!

Yanno, I think you got a taste for killing people and you just can't let it go.






Really, you judge people by what they do. Then why do you constantly deny Putin is a butcher comrade? How he bombs civilian targets more than military targets.

Now remember, the civilized world agrees he does this.

Wait for it, folks.

T






Still waiting, not a problem. I'm sure you're busy.

T

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, June 11, 2025 12:19 AM (P)


Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

"Evil people don't know the difference between good and evil - SECOND"
Yep!
We notice that about you pretty much every time you post!


Yanno the difference between me and you, stupid? The thing that makes me NOT EVIL?
I don't judge people as "evil" by my opinion of their opinion, I don't judge people categorically, and I don't wish to kill people by category.
I judge them by what they do, individually.

I just don't have that much hate and sociopathy in me to waste on whole groups ... political parties ... nations ... continents!
Yanno, I think you got a taste for killing people and you just can't let it go.

THG:
Really, you judge people by what they do. Then why do you constantly deny Putin is a butcher comrade? How he bombs civilian targets more than military targets.

Now remember, the civilized world agrees he does this.

Wait for it, folks.

Since I need evidence I "believe" 0% what western establishment media says about Putin. Your problem? You believe 100%!

Your statement means as much to me as if you said "You deny that Trump colluded with Russia."
Yes, I deny that Trump colluded with Russia.
I also deny that Saddam had WMD, that Assad was using chemical weapons, and that Qaddafi was giving his troops Viagra for mass rapes.

I deny lies.

*****

Also, you cited the "civilized" world? Are you saying that Russia and China are uncivilized? That the entire world (except your favorite nations) is "uncivilized"?

Quote:

Still waiting, not a problem. I'm sure you're busy.

Yep, extremely busy.



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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, June 11, 2025 10:29 AM (P)

“The U.S. government is a representative democracy, and, in order for it to function well, the citizenry needs to be well educated, informed about the critical issues of the day, and knowledgeable about where candidates stand on these issues. I would add that voters need to possess the ability to identify disqualifying personal traits of candidates so that good choices are made for the good of the country. We are presently in a real world test of whether American voters possess this important skill.”

That is a quote from Authoritarian beliefs predict whether voters see Trump or Clinton as psychopathic by Eric W. Dolan | June 4, 2025

https://www.psypost.org/authoritarian-beliefs-predict-whether-voters-s
ee-trump-or-clinton-as-psychopathic
/

Despite the passage of time and political events such as impeachment, the core relationships between authoritarianism, psychopathy perception, and vote choice remained stable. This suggests that these are not fleeting political impressions but deeply rooted psychological dynamics that shape how people interpret the actions and personalities of political figures.

The study also connects with a broader literature on mental health literacy—people’s ability to accurately recognize signs of psychological disorders. Prior research has shown that while many laypeople can identify common conditions like depression, few can accurately recognize personality disorders such as psychopathy. In one study, only about 39 percent of respondents correctly identified a description of psychopathy.

This lack of knowledge likely contributes to the strong role that ideological filters play in shaping perceptions. People tend to interpret candidates’ actions in ways that confirm their preexisting beliefs, rather than making judgments based on accurate diagnostic understanding.

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, June 11, 2025 11:04 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Also, you cited the "civilized" world? Are you saying that Russia and China are uncivilized? That the entire world (except your favorite nations) is "uncivilized"?





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

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, June 11, 2025 11:08 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by second:
“The U.S. government is a representative democracy, and, in order for it to function well, the citizenry needs to be well educated, informed about the critical issues of the day, and knowledgeable about where candidates stand on these issues. I would add that voters need to possess the ability to identify disqualifying personal traits of candidates so that good choices are made for the good of the country. We are presently in a real world test of whether American voters possess this important skill.”

That is a quote from Authoritarian beliefs predict whether voters see Trump or Clinton as psychopathic by Eric W. Dolan | June 4, 2025

https://www.psypost.org/authoritarian-beliefs-predict-whether-voters-s
ee-trump-or-clinton-as-psychopathic
/

Despite the passage of time and political events such as impeachment, the core relationships between authoritarianism, psychopathy perception, and vote choice remained stable. This suggests that these are not fleeting political impressions but deeply rooted psychological dynamics that shape how people interpret the actions and personalities of political figures.

The study also connects with a broader literature on mental health literacy—people’s ability to accurately recognize signs of psychological disorders. Prior research has shown that while many laypeople can identify common conditions like depression, few can accurately recognize personality disorders such as psychopathy. In one study, only about 39 percent of respondents correctly identified a description of psychopathy.

This lack of knowledge likely contributes to the strong role that ideological filters play in shaping perceptions. People tend to interpret candidates’ actions in ways that confirm their preexisting beliefs, rather than making judgments based on accurate diagnostic understanding.

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




Oh fuck you dude...


"I read books and I have a college degree! How dare you disagree with me, infidels!!!"

If any of you so-called experts knew what the fuck you were talking about, the world wouldn't be shit right now.

You had your turn. We're done with you.

Either ride off into the sunset and enjoy your retirement, or scream into the void until you have a stroke for all I care.

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

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, June 11, 2025 3:33 PM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Oh fuck you dude...


"I read books and I have a college degree! How dare you disagree with me, infidels!!!"

If any of you so-called experts knew what the fuck you were talking about, the world wouldn't be shit right now.

You had your turn. We're done with you.

Either ride off into the sunset and enjoy your retirement, or scream into the void until you have a stroke for all I care.

6ix, did you know that Confederate slave owners invaded the US and murdered hundreds of thousands in an almost successful coup? What's that got to do with you and Trump?

Trump is renaming military bases to honor Confederate traitors because nothing says patriotism like honoring enemies of the United States.

Donald Trump Lists Confederate Fort Names He Plans to Restore

By Gabe Whisnant | Jun 10, 2025 at 7:34 PM EDT

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-restoring-confederate-fort-names
-including-robert-e-lee-2083684


On Tuesday, President Donald Trump said that he's restoring the name of Fort Robert E. Lee and other current or former military instillations that were previously named after soldiers that led the Confederacy during the Civil War.

Trump told U.S. Army soldiers during a speech at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, "For a little breaking news, we are also going to be restoring the names to Fort Pickett, Fort Hood, Fort Gordon, Fort Polk, Fort A.P. Hill and Fort Robert E. Lee."

As with the recent renaming of Fort Bragg and Fort Benning, Defense officials said Tuesday they selected service members with matching last names to rename the bases—ensuring the installations no longer “officially” bore names linked to the Confederacy.

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, June 11, 2025 3:41 PM (P)

Did you wonder why Trump says America is falling apart? Scientifically proven answer: To attract people with a certain kind of personality to himself. By the way, America is not breaking down, but there are broken-down Americans, thanks to their smoking, drinking, and their other self-destructive ways and means of coping with anxiety:

Perceived social breakdown fuels desire for authoritarian leaders, new psychology study shows

By Eric W. Dolan | June 10, 2025

https://www.psypost.org/perceived-social-breakdown-fuels-desire-for-au
thoritarian-leaders-new-psychology-study-shows
/

When people perceive society as falling apart, they may become more receptive to authoritarian leaders—those who promise order, control, and certainty. That’s the conclusion of a new study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, which provides the first causal evidence linking the perception of societal breakdown, or “anomie,” to support for authoritarianism. According to the researchers, this link is explained by a sequential process: anomie leads people to feel politically powerless, which then creates political uncertainty—ultimately increasing the appeal of authoritarian rule. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000483

The study aimed to address several unresolved questions in the existing literature on political psychology. While many prior studies had shown that people who perceive society as chaotic are more likely to support authoritarianism, the evidence had been correlational. It was unclear whether anomie truly caused increased support for authoritarianism or whether other psychological factors were responsible. It was also unclear how anomie exerted its influence—whether through feelings of powerlessness, uncertainty, or both.

Anomie is the perception that a society’s norms, values, and leadership are breaking down. People experiencing anomie often feel that social order is disintegrating, moral standards are unclear, and institutions are ineffective or illegitimate. This sense of societal instability can create feelings of alienation and disconnection.

To investigate these questions, the researchers began by reviewing prior theories and debates. Sociologists and psychologists have long suggested that anomie, defined as the perception that society’s moral fabric and leadership structures are disintegrating, can lead individuals to seek strong, controlling authorities. Some have argued that this happens because people feel politically ineffective; others have emphasized the role of confusion and unpredictability in politics. The new study sought to test whether both of these processes work together—and whether one leads to the other.

The researchers proposed a sequential model. According to their hypothesis, anomie leads to a perceived lack of political control. This repeated feeling of powerlessness then causes political uncertainty—a sense that politics no longer makes sense or is too chaotic to understand. People then turn to authoritarianism, which promises clarity, order, and strong leadership. To test this model, the researchers conducted a multi-part investigation combining large-scale survey data and controlled experiments.

In their first study, the researchers analyzed data from the 2006 . . .

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, June 11, 2025 3:59 PM (P)

How does Trump find time to be President and also make $billions?
The answer is that he could not make $billions unless he were President because he is deregulating the new business he opened since being elected!

Trump’s Crypto Playbook Is Now Clear

His business dealings and policy agenda are now in perfect alignment.

By Will Gottsegen | June 10, 2025, 11:30 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/06/trump-crypto-pe
rfect-alignment/683094
/

The world of crypto can feel impenetrable. The basic technology is complicated enough, but the subculture—with its own particular argot and decorum—is what’s truly forbidding. Even if you’re not quite ready to figure out what DePIN or zk-SNARKs are, you can get a solid glimpse into the industry right now just by looking at the lineup of the 2025 Bitcoin Conference, held late last month in Las Vegas. Speakers included goofball meme-coin boosters, good-hearted cypherpunks, crypto podcasters with names such as “Gwart,” and an army of Wall Street execs who seem to have waited until bitcoin hit $100,000 to give the whole crypto thing a shot.

There were also a whole lot of MAGA acolytes. Vice President J. D. Vance, the eldest Trump sons, and the White House crypto czar David Sacks all gave speeches that coalesced around a unifying theme: Trump and crypto are meant for each other. “What’s going on here in this very room, at this very conference, that’s the financial side of everything we’ve been fighting for on the free-speech side,” Don Jr. said during a conversation with the CEO of Rumble, a social-media platform favored by right-wing users. “They’re inextricably linked.”

In other words, the message was that Trump cares deeply about the kinds of civil-libertarian ideas that the bitcoin world has long touted. It’s a convenient narrative, a lofty way of explaining this once very bitcoin-skeptical president’s sudden embrace of crypto. At least, it’s one that transcends sheer self-enrichment: In the past year, members of the Trump family have launched two meme coins and announced a majority stake in a new crypto firm, World Liberty Financial. As I’ve previously written, crypto is quickly becoming the Trump family business: Last month, the president hosted the biggest investors in his $TRUMP coin for a private dinner at his golf course outside Washington, D.C.
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/05/trump-crypto-bi
llionaire/682763
/

But the linkages between Trump and crypto run deeper than just a couple of business investments. His White House has also ushered in a starkly pro-crypto agenda—rolling back regulations and dropping lawsuits to punish alleged crypto wrongdoing. The same week that Don Jr. spoke at the Bitcoin Conference, the Department of Labor eased a Biden-era guidance that made it difficult for Americans to invest their 401(k) plans in crypto because digital currencies can be volatile and prone to hacks. In cutting this language, regulators are taking away a guardrail, encouraging more investment in crypto. This, in turn, could boost the price of bitcoin and other coins, which is a boon to Trump’s own enterprises. It always comes back to the president himself: Trump’s crypto ambitions are as much about public policy as they are about his own meme coins.

Crypto has become the glue that binds together so much of what the president and his administration are doing. Consider Trump Media & Technology Group, best-known as the parent company of his social-media app, Truth Social. Trump Media didn’t start as a crypto business, but now it’s pivoting to crypto. Late last month, Trump Media announced that it would raise money to purchase $2.5 billion in bitcoin, effectively creating a corporate bitcoin reserve. Why? “We view bitcoin as an apex instrument of financial freedom,” Devin Nunes, the CEO of Trump Media and a former Republican congressman, said in a statement. Putting the pseudo-utopian language aside, such a bitcoin reserve mostly just serves to tie the price of Trump Media’s stock, $DJT, to the price of bitcoin writ

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, June 11, 2025 5:06 PM (P)

If You Lie With DOGE You Get Fleeced

By Paul Krugman / Jun 11, 2025 at 5:34 AM

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/if-you-lie-with-doge-you-get-fleece
d


I have to admit that even now I’m not sure how the Donald Trump/Elon Musk breakup will play out. We’ve seen so many Trump critics eventually cave, engaging in humiliating acts of self-abasement, that it’s hard to be sure that even Musk — who has a monstrous ego, but whose business interests can be badly damaged by a vengeful president — is immune.

But one indication that this breach won’t be easily resolved is the pace at which anti-Musk stories are being leaked to the news media.

I was especially struck by reports of a confrontation between Musk and Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary. We have solid reporting of the fact that the two men fought over the choice of acting IRS commissioner, and that Bessent won. Unfortunately, our only account of what happened next comes from Steve Bannon. But that story is almost too good not to be true.

According to Bannon, after the meeting the two men began exchanging insults, with Bessent pointing out that Musk had promised to find trillions of dollars in wasteful spending but come up empty. “You’re a fraud. You’re a total fraud,” Bessent supposedly said. At that point Musk body-checked the Treasury secretary, who hit back, and White House staff had to break up the fight.

Is this story plausible? Is the world’s richest man so lacking in self-control that he would behave like a hopped-up adolescent in the White House? Of course he is — that’s the completely plausible part of the story. I’m a little more skeptical of the portrayal of Bessent as someone willing to speak the truth that bluntly.

But in any case what Bessent supposedly said was completely true. Musk is a total fraud. He failed to deliver on his promises of huge deficit reduction. In fact, DOGE almost certainly lost money. There’s no evidence for many of the cost savings it claims, and the “receipts” it has provided are full of misstatements and errors. And the disruption it caused almost surely cost taxpayers more than any minor savings it may have found.

Furthermore, its depredations have left both the federal government and the nation as a whole degraded and weakened in ways that will take years to reverse.

Of course, you shouldn’t expect anyone in the Trump administration to admit that DOGE was a complete, costly bust. These people never admit being wrong. But if you look at what is actually happening right now, there’s clearly a frantic effort at de-DOGEification. The Washington Post reports,

Across the government, the Trump administration is scrambling to rehire many federal employees dismissed under DOGE’s staff-slashing initiatives after wiping out entire offices, in some cases imperiling key services such as weather forecasting and the drug approval process.

The people DOGE installed in federal agencies appear to be losing most or all of their influence now that they no longer have a patron with the president’s ear, and it appears that at least some of the young tech bros Musk tried to put in charge of government programs they didn’t understand are self-deporting.

Oh, and if you think I’m being disrespectful by making fun of the Muskenjugend, consider what we’ve learned about the U.S. Institute for Peace, which DOGE took over for a while before being forced by the courts to give up control. Returning workers reportedly found the office full of cockroaches and rodents, with leftover marijuana and empty beer bottles strewn about.

All of this was completely predictable. Well, maybe not a fistfight in the White House, but anyone who knew anything about how the federal government spends its money knew that DOGE would fail.

To repeat the old line, the federal government is basically an insurance company with an army. Musk made a brief stab at going after the insurance side, with his ludicrous claim that millions of dead people were collecting Social Security, but aside from that all of DOGE’s efforts were focused on where t

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, June 11, 2025 5:37 PM (P)

Trump has more than doubled his personal wealth since starting his 2024 campaign.
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-trump-family-presidency-wealth
/?embedded-checkout=true


Billions of foreign dollars have flowed into his family’s real estate and crypto ventures.

The United States is becoming just another country with a strongman personalizing and profiting from power. Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, a MAGA favorite, has pursued this playbook on a smaller scale, leveraging the power of the state to marginalize opponents while his associates became ostentatiously wealthy.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-17/orban-style-cronyis
m-turns-gas-fitter-friend-into-a-billionaire?embedded-checkout=true


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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

THG
Wednesday, June 11, 2025 7:18 PM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:

"Evil people don't know the difference between good and evil - SECOND"
Yep!
We notice that about you pretty much every time you post!


Yanno the difference between me and you, stupid? The thing that makes me NOT EVIL?
I don't judge people as "evil" by my opinion of their opinion, I don't judge people categorically, and I don't wish to kill people by category.
I judge them by what they do, individually.

I just don't have that much hate and sociopathy in me to waste on whole groups ... political parties ... nations ... continents!
Yanno, I think you got a taste for killing people and you just can't let it go.



THG:

Really, you judge people by what they do. Then why do you constantly deny Putin is a butcher comrade? How he bombs civilian targets more than military targets.

Now remember, the civilized world agrees he does this.

Wait for it, folks.[/font]

Since I need evidence I "believe" 0% what western establishment media says about Putin. Your problem? You believe 100%!

Your statement means as much to me as if you said "You deny that Trump colluded with Russia."
Yes, I deny that Trump colluded with Russia.
I also deny that Saddam had WMD, that Assad was using chemical weapons, and that Qaddafi was giving his troops Viagra for mass rapes.

I deny lies.

*****

Also, you cited the "civilized" world? Are you saying that Russia and China are uncivilized? That the entire world (except your favorite nations) is "uncivilized"?

Quote:

THG

Still waiting, not a problem. I'm sure you're busy.


Yep, extremely busy.






Western media often frame events through individualistic and conflict-oriented lenses, emphasizing freedom, democracy, and human rights.”

You do not believe what any Western Media reports to be true about Putin. You say it here. I’ve got you quoted here saying that.

Freedom, democracy and human rights describe the Lens with which Western Media see things.

So, if not Western Media, then it must be Eastern Media where you get your news about Putin. Which is, “State-driven.” Russia and China are two examples of Eastern style Media. I’ve been saying this about you since we’ve met comrade. Nice of you to confirm it.

“Eastern media tend to adopt collectivist perspectives, prioritizing stability, national unity, and state-driven narratives. “

Or, you know the truth comrade. You've seen the stories and videos posted in these threads and on the news. Just like the rest of us. And because you are a worm you pretend it is not true. It’s the latter. You know better. It's just that you're cut from the same cloth as Putin.

Type Eastern Media vs Western Media into a search. Tell me which you prefer to have where you live? And too anyone else who reads this, which do you prefer?

T

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, June 11, 2025 8:19 PM (P)

Do you want to know why Trump supporters (Musk to 6ix, Rich to Poor) act that way? Here is why:

The LA protests reveal what actually unites the Trump right

For Trump’s ideological allies, it’s always 2020.

By Zack Beauchamp | Jun 11, 2025, 5:30 AM CDT

https://www.vox.com/on-the-right-newsletter/416336/la-protest-riot-tru
mp-right-tech-populist-2020


When President Donald Trump and Elon Musk had their dramatic falling-out last week, it appeared the right was on the brink of civil war — with Musk’s allies in the “tech right” poised to battle Steve Bannon and his faction of populist tribunes. The battle lines reflected deep disagreements between the right’s factions about the nature and purpose of government, divides made increasingly salient by Trump’s policies in areas like trade.

But now, after several days of protests and unrest in Los Angeles, everyone is once again reading from the same hymnal — condemning disorder and calling for a harsh crackdown. Even Musk is back to retweeting Trump like nothing happened.

Why this intra-right ceasefire? Because what’s happening in LA reminds every component of the modern right why they’re in coalition together: They believe that progressives in general, and the “woke” left activists in particular, represent an existential threat to everything good about the United States.

This vision has deep philosophical roots on the right, which has always positioned itself around defending elements of the status quo from its enemies on the left. But the 2025 American right tells itself a very particular version of that general story, one that focuses on the events of summer 2020.

In their minds, the combination of Covid restrictions, mainstream calls for wide-ranging social change, and mass street upheaval was the terrible terminus of modern progressive politics. Whatever their internal disagreements on issues like trade or spending or even immigration, the modern right agrees that the left must never be permitted another year like 2020 — and that Trump is the best vehicle for stopping it.

The Trump coalition has appeared fractious for much of 2025 because the big policy moves, like tariffs, have made areas of disagreement in the coalition more salient. It appears united for now because the news cycle has shifted to a topic — the specter of radical left street disorder — on which nearly everyone inside of it agrees.

The right’s long 2020

Philosophically speaking, the right has long been defined by its emphasis on the value of stability — as odd as it may seem in the era of Trump’s radically destabilizing administration.

Conservative theorists, most notably Edmund Burke, have long maintained that political flourishing depends on the existence of stable social rules developed gradually and from the bottom up over the course of generations. Those who seek to overturn this order, either through sweeping legislation or revolutionary violence, will inevitably do more harm than good. For this reason, the right’s intellectuals have long positioned themselves against what they saw as instances of leftist street violence.

Yet Trump has spent the past 10 years setting the American political order on fire — demolishing its norms, enacting radical changes to its longstanding policies, and flagrantly violating its laws. He even incited an honest-to-God insurrection aimed at overturning an election. How could any of this fit with a tradition premised on the values of stability and order?

The answer, in part, is that it doesn’t. The intellectual right has adopted a self-consciously revolutionary mode of politics, seeing the current political order as a fundamentally corrupt system that deserves to be torn down. This is a reactionary rejection of Burkean conservatism, which is why so many erstwhile Burkeans became the Never Trumpers who publish at places like the Dispatch and the Bulwark.

And yet, there’s a crucial element of the Burkean emphasis on order that the Trump right has retained: a belief that some specific elements of American life remain uncorrupted, an

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, June 11, 2025 9:35 PM (P)

As President Donald Trump crossed a dangerous line at Fort Bragg, the brass failed to speak out in the Army’s defense.

By Tom Nichols | June 10, 2025, 8:14 PM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/silence-generals/683
106
/

President Donald Trump continued his war against America’s most cherished military traditions today when he delivered a speech at Fort Bragg. It is too much to call it a “speech”; it was, instead, a ramble, full of grievance and anger, just like his many political-rally performances. He took the stage to Lee Greenwood’s “God Bless the USA”—which has become a MAGA anthem—and then pointed to the “fake news,” encouraging military personnel to jeer at the press.

He mocked former President Joe Biden and attacked various other political rivals. He elicited cheers from the crowd by announcing that he would rename U.S. bases (or re-rename them) after Confederate traitors. He repeated his hallucinatory narrative about the invasion of America by foreign criminals and lunatics. He referred to 2024 as the “election of a president who loves you,” to a scatter of cheers and applause. And then he attacked the governor of California and the mayor of Los Angeles, again presiding over jeers at elected officials of the United States.

He led soldiers, in other words, in a display of unseemly behavior that ran contrary to everything the founder of the U.S. Army, George Washington, strove to imbue in the American armed forces.

The president also encouraged a violation of regulations. Trump, himself a convicted felon, doesn’t care about rules and laws, but active-duty military members are not allowed to attend political rallies in uniform. They are not allowed to express partisan views while on duty, or to show disrespect for American elected officials. Trump may not know these rules and regulations, but the officers who lead these men and women know them well. It is part of their oath, their credo, and their identity as officers to remain apart from such displays. Young soldiers will make mistakes. But if senior officers remain silent, what lesson will those young men and women take from what happened today?

The president cares nothing for the military, for its history, or for the men and women who serve the United States. They are, like everything else around him, only raw material: They either feed his narcissism, or they are useless. Those who love him, he claims as “his” military. But those who have laid down their life for their country are, as he so repugnantly put it, just suckers and losers, anonymous saps lying under cold headstones in places such as Arlington National Cemetery that clearly make Trump uncomfortable. Today, he showed that he has no compunction about turning every American soldier into a hooting partisan.

Trump’s supporters and his party will excuse his behavior at Fort Bragg the way they always have, the same way that indulgent parents shrug helplessly at their delinquent children. But senior officers of the United States military have an obligation to speak up and be leaders. Where is the Army chief of staff, General Randy George? Will he speak truth to the commander in chief and put a stop to the assault on the integrity of his troops? Where is the commander of the airborne troops, Lieutenant General Gregory Anderson, or even Colonel Chad Mixon, the base commander?

And if these men cannot muster the courage to defend American traditions—by speaking out or even resigning—where are the other senior officers who must uphold the values that have made America’s armed forces among the most effective and politically stable militaries in the world? Where is the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Caine? He was personally selected by Trump to be America’s most senior military officer. Will he tell the man who promoted him that what he did today was obscene?

Will any of these men say one word? Will any of them defend the Army and the other services from

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Wednesday, June 11, 2025 10:39 PM (P)

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah......

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

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, June 12, 2025 12:18 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah......

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

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

You know, that is a common attitude of Trumptards who are flunking out of school. How many times did you flunk out of college, 6ix? You didn't flunk? You left voluntarily because you knew more than the professors, who were biased against your deeper understanding than they had? I've heard that excuse from Trumptards, too.

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, June 12, 2025 12:30 AM (P)

$134 Million Later, Hegseth Still Can’t Say What Law Justifies LA Troops

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth faced sharp bipartisan criticism in Congress on Tuesday after deploying thousands of troops to Los Angeles without clear legal approval or a complete defense budget in place. The fiery House hearing left many Americans questioning both the cost and the constitutionality of using military force against civilians during domestic protests.

https://voznation.com/134-million-later-hegseth-still-cant-say-what-la
w-justifies-la-troops
/

https://www.google.com/search?q=%24134+Million+Later%2C+Hegseth+Still+
Can%E2%80%99t+Say+What+Law+Justifies+LA+Troops


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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, June 12, 2025 12:49 AM (P)

The Way Trump Speaks About the Military Is Awfully Revealing

By Fred Kaplan | June 11, 2025 12:20 PM

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/06/trump-military-parade-spee
ch-washington-dc.html


The big military parade that will be taking place along the National Mall in Washington this Saturday is shaping up to be not so much a celebration of the U.S. Army’s 250th birthday but rather a high-octane ego boost and joyride for President Donald Trump.

It has been widely noted that the event happens to fall not only on the Army’s birthday but on Trump’s as well. The convergence is no mere coincidence. After all, this year will also mark the 250th birthday of the Navy and the Marine Corps, on Oct. 13 and Nov. 10, respectively. But the president has not announced plans to join—much less preside over—their festive, if less grandiose, celebrations. . . .

More striking is what Trump omitted from his list of enthusiasms: the men and women who serve in the armed forces. Trump clearly doesn’t care much about any of the people who train, fight, or die for our country. It’s worth recalling the claim, made by his former chief of staff, retired Gen. John Kelly, that Trump once derided fallen soldiers as “losers” and “suckers.” Trump denies he ever said that. But if you believe the president over the general, consider that, earlier this year, Trump changed the names of Memorial Day and Veterans Day to “Victory in World War II Day” and “Victory in World War I Day.” The change is significant—and appalling. It means that the vast majority of American veterans have no day of their own to commemorate. (About 66,000 World War II vets are still alive, but that amounts to less than one-half of 1 percent of the nation’s 15.8 million living veterans from all wars.) Nor do the families of those who died in more recent wars—around 36,000 in Korea, 58,000 in Vietnam, 4,500 in Iraq, and 2,200 in Afghanistan, among others.

Trump has no interest in memorializing service or sacrifice for their own sake. (Remember his dis of John McCain, who was tortured in North Vietnamese jails for five years after getting shot down: “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”) Winning is all that matters in Trump’s book—and our most solemn national holidays have been altered to reflect his mindset.

Even winning is an abstract concept, floating on bombast. Trump wanted to throw a massive military parade in his first term after French President Emmanuel Macron hosted him at the cavalcade in Paris celebrating Bastille Day. French troops marched down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées alongside tanks and armored vehicles as fighter jets swooshed over the Arc de Triomphe. Trump was elated. Back home, he told everyone he could that he needed to stage his own version—and to “top it.” His defense secretary at the time, retired Gen. James Mattis, hated the idea, telling his aides that he’d “rather swallow acid.” Mattis responded by saying the parade would cost $90 million—a deliberate exaggeration, according to a Pentagon source of mine at the time. The ploy worked; even Trump backed off, seeing the price tag as too high.

The parade this Saturday is said to cost $45 million, not counting the expense of disrupting much of the city for four days and repairing the damage done by tank treads. (Each Abrams tank weighs 70 tons, almost twice the avenue’s maximum capacity.) This seems like a lot of money, given the latest round of Department of Government Efficiency budget cuts. But it’s a lot less than the $134 million that the deployment of National Guard troops and Marines in California is estimated to cost. And that show of force is no less performative or unnecessary than the parade in the nation’s capital.

Trump may hope that the parade will provide another occasion for force as well as show. Trump told reporters on Tuesday that “those people that want to protest” at the parade “are going to be met with very big force.” Those protesters, he added, without identifying who they might be or what t

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, June 12, 2025 1:34 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by second:
Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah......

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

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

You



Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah......


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

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, June 12, 2025 3:13 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah......



Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah......

GOP Senators Freak Out When Asked About Trump’s Military Parade Costing $145 Million

Out of 14 GOP senators, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) was the only one HuffPost talked to who criticized holding the parade. “If you ask me about a military parade, all the images that come to mind, the first images, are of the Soviet Union and North Korea,” he said.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/gop-senators-trump-military-parade-cost
_n_6849b95de4b0cf5f0c9ad0ab


This is the first major national military parade in the U.S. since 1991. President George H. W. Bush held the event on June 8 that year, after the U.S. led a successful coalition in the Gulf War. (But Trump's birthday parade is of the greatest importance.)

https://time.com/7293222/us-national-military-parade-1991-bush-gulf-wa
r-history
/

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, June 12, 2025 3:24 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah......


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

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

How much does it cost for Trump to fly to Mar-a-Lago to play golf each weekend?

$3.4 million

$3,383,250 in 2017 dollars more precisely

Maybe Trump should golf in DC rather than Florida?

https://www.npr.org/2019/02/05/691684859/government-watchdog-trumps-tr
ips-to-florida-costing-taxpayers-millions


https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-florida-golf-weekends-costing-1859300
03.html


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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, June 12, 2025 3:31 AM (P)

Maybe you should worry about yourself, cunt.

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

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, June 12, 2025 3:38 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Maybe you should worry about yourself, cunt.

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

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

How much did Trump pay in income taxes, that we have documentation for?

$750

Compare $750 to $3,383,250 for Trump to fly down to Mar-a-Lago for a golf weekend.

Trump is certainly getting his tax money back.

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/20/1144472882/a-house-panel-voted-to-publi
cly-release-a-report-on-trumps-tax-returns


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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, June 12, 2025 3:40 AM (P)

Shut up, fag.

You don't know shit about nothin'.

We're done listening to you read headlines.

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

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, June 12, 2025 3:57 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Shut up, fag.

You don't know shit about nothin'.

We're done listening to you read headlines.

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

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

Reading beyond the headline:

In both 2017 and 2020, the former president reported no taxable income on his personal, joint return with wife Melania Trump.

In 2016 and 2017, he paid just $750 in net tax on his income. In 2020, he paid $0 in net tax on his income.

How much income tax will Trump pay while President? We will never know as long as he is President.

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/20/1144472882/a-house-panel-voted-to-publi
cly-release-a-report-on-trumps-tax-returns


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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, June 12, 2025 4:11 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Shut up, fag.

You don't know shit about nothin'.

We're done listening to you read headlines.

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

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

You may not know that V.P. JD Vance did not reveal his income taxes, following Trump's example. We only know Trump's because of Congressional Investigations.

But for all other Presidents' tax returns, see https://www.taxnotes.com/presidential-tax-returns

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, June 12, 2025 4:55 AM (P)

Trump’s top general contradicts his assessment of Putin, L.A. unrest

Gen. Dan Caine’s comments in Senate testimony were restrained but significant, perhaps easing lawmakers’ fears he will bow to political pressure.

By Abigail Hauslohner | June 11, 2025 5:42 p.m. EDT

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/06/11/dan-caine-
trump-la-protests-russia
/

Gen. Dan Caine, who since becoming chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in April has assiduously avoided the public spotlight, on Wednesday broke with President Donald Trump’s assessment of the threat posed by Russia and the ongoing protests and violence in Los Angeles.

Caine’s comments during a Senate Appropriations subcommittee hearing were restrained but significant, coming from the nation’s top military officer who Democrats and moderate Republicans had feared might show little appetite for going against a president prone to pushing falsehoods in pursuit of his political agenda.

Trump has routinely downplayed alarm about Vladimir Putin’s territorial ambitions in Eastern Europe and, in an address this week, branded those in the United States protesting his immigration policies as agents of a “foreign invasion.” But Caine declined to confirm either assessment.

When asked by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) whether Putin intends to “stop in Ukraine,” the general was frank: “I don’t believe so, sir.”

When pressed by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) to say if he believes the demonstrations and violence in Los Angeles are a sign the United States is “being invaded by a foreign nation,” as Trump told an audience of soldiers Tuesday in North Carolina, Caine said he doesn’t.

“At this point in time, I don’t see any foreign, state-sponsored folks invading,” the general replied, before adding, “but I’ll be mindful of the fact that there has been some border issues throughout time.”

When Schatz asked if there has been a “rebellion” against the government, another politically charged term the president and his administration have employed since unrest flared in Southern California, Caine declined to affirm that either. “I think there’s definitely some frustrated folks out there,” he offered.

Trump’s second term in office has been remarkable, in part, for the frequency with which false and misleading statements by the president go unchecked by a majority of Republicans on Capitol Hill, and Caine’s responses Wednesday offered a stark contrast with the man seated beside him, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

As the president’s top military adviser, the Joint Chiefs chairman is expected to provide honest and unflinching advice to the commander in chief, the defense secretary and to Congress, even when that assessment conflicts with the political messaging of the administration in power. During his confirmation hearing, Caine, a surprise selection for the job after Trump abruptly fired the general’s predecessor, Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., in February, promised to earn lawmakers’ trust.

Hegseth tried to paper over what Caine had said.

“It’s quite easy to point out that there has been an invasion of 21 million illegals in our country under the previous administration,” he told Schatz. “So this administration was elected to get a hold of that.”

To Graham’s question about Putin’s intent to pummel Ukraine and turn his war machine westward, Hegseth allowed only that “it remains to be seen.”

Graham — whom Republican lawmakers often view as the senator best equipped to persuade the president on the GOP’s more traditional foreign policy postures — laughed. “Well, he says he’s not,” the senator said, referencing the Russian leader. He likened Putin’s ambitions to Adolf Hitler’s stated intentions to kill Jews and take over Europe in the 1930s. “It doesn’t remain to be seen,” Graham went on. Putin, he added, “tells everybody around what he wants to do.”

Wednesday’s hearing was the second time in as many days that Hegseth and Caine faced lawmakers’ questions, with another hearing, before the House Armed Services Committee, set for Thursday.

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, June 12, 2025 5:03 AM (P)

Shut up already, idiot.

You're done.

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

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, June 12, 2025 6:37 AM (P)

SECOND finds the stupidest people to re-post.
I guess it's bc he uses grossly left-biased AI to scour the inet.

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, June 12, 2025 7:38 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND finds the stupidest people to re-post.
I guess it's bc he uses grossly left-biased AI to scour the inet.

Among the Trumptards of Texas, everybody is stupid except other Trumptards. This story is labeled fake news by Trumptards in the coal/oil/natural gas industry, but it is not:

EPA says power plant carbon emissions aren't dangerous. We asked 30 scientists: Here's what they say

The Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday proposed a new ruling that heat-trapping carbon gas emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants do not contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution

By Seth Borenstein - AP Science Writer | June 11, 2025 at 4:00 pm

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/health/epa-says-power-plant-
carbon-emissions-arent-dangerous-we-asked-30-scientists-heres-what-they-say
/

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration’s Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday proposed a new ruling that heat-trapping carbon gas “emissions from fossil fuel-fired power plants do not contribute significantly to dangerous air pollution.”

The Associated Press asked 30 different scientists, experts in climate, health and economics, about the scientific reality behind this proposal. Nineteen of them responded, all saying that the proposal was scientifically wrong and many of them called it disinformation. Here’s what eight of them said.

“This is the scientific equivalent to saying that smoking doesn’t cause lung cancer,” said climate scientist Zeke Hausfather of the tech firm Stripe and the temperature monitoring group Berkeley Earth. “The relationship between CO2 emissions and global temperatures has been well established since the late 1800s, and coal burning is the single biggest driver of global CO2 emissions, followed by oil and gas. It is utterly nonsensical to say that carbon emissions from power plants do not contribute significantly to climate change.”

“It’s about as valid as saying that arsenic is not a dangerous substance to consume,” said University of Pennsylvania climate scientist Michael Mann.

“The world is round, the sun rises in the east, coal-and gas-fired power plants contribute significantly to climate change, and climate change increases the risk of heat waves, catastrophic storms, infectious diseases, and many other health threats. These are indisputable facts,” said Dr. Howard Frumkin, former director of the National Center for Environmental Health and a retired public health professor at the University of Washington.

Climate economist R. Daniel Bressler of Columbia University, said: “We can use tools from climate economics, including the mortality cost of carbon and the social cost of carbon, to estimate the climate impacts of these emissions. For instance, in my past work, I found that adding just one year’s worth of emissions from an average-sized coal-fired plant in the U.S. causes 904 expected temperature-related deaths and over $1 billion in total climate damages.”

University of Arizona climate scientist Kathy Jacobs said: “Their statement is in direct conflict with evidence that has been presented by thousands of scientists from almost 200 countries for decades.

“It’s basic chemistry that burning coal and natural gas releases carbon dioxide and it’s basic physics that CO2 warms the planet. We’ve known these simple facts since the mid-19th century,” said Oregon State’s Phil Mote.

Andrew Weaver, a professor at the University of Victoria and former member of parliament in British Columbia, said: “President Trump is setting himself up for international court charges against him for crimes against humanity. To proclaim you don’t want to deal with climate change is one thing, but denying the basic science can only be taken as a wanton betrayal of future generations for which there should be consequences.”

Stanford climate scientist Chris Field, who coordinated an international

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, June 12, 2025 8:09 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND finds the stupidest people to re-post.
I guess it's bc he uses grossly left-biased AI to scour the inet.



Who can even tell where Second ends and the AI begins. That process began the first moment he started using a "smart" phone.

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

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, June 12, 2025 8:38 AM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND finds the stupidest people to re-post.
I guess it's bc he uses grossly left-biased AI to scour the inet.



Who can even tell where Second ends and the AI begins. That process began the first moment he started using a "smart" phone.

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

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

These are not hard questions to ask:

1) How much does it cost the Federal government when Trump flies to Florida to play golf instead of playing in DC?

$3,383,250

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-florida-golf-weekends-costing-1859300
03.html


2) This questions follows from Question 1) How much income tax did Trump pay?

$750 but $0 in 10 of 15 years

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54319948

Even when Trump is playing golf, he is raping (or sexual violating) taxpayers.

3) How much does Trump owe that woman he raped? Or sexual violated?

$91,000,000

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-posts-bond-e-jean-carroll-case-91-m
illion
/

4) How much money has Trump made since Inauguration Day?

$3,000,000,000 (approximately $3 billion, meaning he more than doubled his wealth)

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2025-trump-family-presidency-wealth/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2025/03/31/how-truth-social-
and-crypto-helped-donald-trump-double-his-fortune-in-just-one-year
/

So many questions about Trump and so many startlingly easy to understand answers.

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, June 12, 2025 9:03 AM (P)

Shut the fuck up.

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

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, June 12, 2025 1:14 PM (P)

I think SECOND is just jealous.

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, June 12, 2025 3:08 PM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I think SECOND is just jealous.

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


So, you approve of Trump's tax cheating? Approve of Trump more than doubling his wealth since Inauguration, made possible because he is President and stopped regulation of crypto-currency and bribery? Approve of Trump increasing CO2 emissions because climate change is a Chinese hoax? The all-purpose excuse Trumptards use when confronted for their bad behavior is sometimes NOT to express approval but to claim the bad behavior isn't happening by saying "Fake News". I've seen all the tricks Trumptards have to disguise that they are evil.

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, June 12, 2025 3:09 PM (P)

Quote:

Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Shut the fuck up.

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

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

This Is What Trump Does When His Revolution Sputters

His military deployment in Los Angeles follows a long, disturbing tradition.

By Anne Applebaum | June 11, 2025, 8:05 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/california-protests-
ice-trump/683102
/

Revolutions have a logic. The revolutionaries start with a big, transformative, impossible goal. They want to remake society, smash existing institutions, replace them with something different. They know they will do damage on the road to their utopia, and they know people will object. Committed to their ideology, the revolutionaries pursue their goals anyway.

Inevitably, a crisis appears. Perhaps many people, even most people, don’t want regime change, or don’t share the revolutionaries’ utopian vision. Perhaps there are unplanned disasters. Smashing institutions can have unexpected, sometimes catastrophic, consequences, as the history of post-revolutionary famines shows very well.

But whatever the nature of the crisis, it forces the revolutionaries to make a choice. Give up—or radicalize. Find compromises—or polarize society further. Slow down—or use violence.

The bloodiest, most damaging revolutions have all been shaped by people making the most extreme choices. When the Bolsheviks ran into opposition in 1918, they unleashed the Red Terror. When the Chinese Communists encountered resistance, Mao sent teenage Red Guards to torment professors and civil servants. Sometimes the violence was mere theater, lecture halls full of people demanding that victims recant. Sometimes it was real. But it always served a purpose: to provoke, to divide, and then to allow the revolutionaries to suspend the law, create an emergency, and rule by decree.

I doubt very much that Donald Trump knows a lot about the methods of Bolsheviks or Maoists, although I am certain that some of his entourage does. But he is now leading an assault on what some around him call the administrative state, which the rest of us call the U.S. government. This assault is revolutionary in nature. Trump’s henchmen have a set of radical, sometimes competing goals, all of which require fundamental changes in the nature of the American state. The concentration of power in the hands of the president. The replacement of the federal civil service with loyalists. The transfer of resources from the poor to the rich, especially rich insiders with connections to Trump. The removal, to the extent possible, of brown-skinned people from America, and the return to an older American racial hierarchy.

Trump and his allies also have revolutionary methods. Elon Musk sent DOGE engineers, some the same age as Mao’s Red Guards, into one government department after the next to capture computers, take data, and fire staff. Trump has launched targeted attacks on institutions that symbolize the power and prestige of the old regime: Harvard, the television networks, the National Institutes of Health. ICE has sent agents in military gear to conduct mass arrests of people who may or may not be undocumented immigrants, but whose arrests will frighten and silence whole communities. Trump’s family and friends have rapidly destroyed a matrix of ethical checks and balances in order to enrich the president and themselves.

But their revolutionary project is now running into reality. More than 200 times, courts have questioned the legality of Trump’s decisions, including the arbitrary tariffs and the deportations of people without due process. Judges have ordered the administration to rehire people who were illegally fired. DOGE is slowly being revealed as a failure, maybe even a hoax: Not only has it not saved much money, but the damage done by Musk’s engineers might prove even more expensive to fix, once the costs of lawsuits, broken contracts, and the loss of government capacity are calculated. The presi

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, June 12, 2025 4:48 PM (P)

Too bad that the Republicans didn't do this 20 years ago:

The House spending bill, which is now under consideration in the Senate, allocates $185 billion for immigration enforcement, including $27 billion for ICE operations such as raids. That’s an increase of about $150 billion over the current funding levels for immigration enforcement.

If the Republicans had been spending $185 billion per year (or as little as $27 billion) on immigration control for the previous 20 years, there wouldn't be an illegal migrant problem today.

https://www.vox.com/politics/416496/trump-immigration-worksite-raids-l
os-angeles-protests


Now, if Republicans spent $185 billion per year (or $27 billion) on the IRS, there wouldn't be a $2 trillion per year increase in the National Debt, year after year. IRS’s actual expenditures were $18.2 billion for overall op­erations in Fiscal Year (FY) 2024. There is $1 trillion in tax cheating that the IRS could stop if only the enforcement budget were large enough. Illegal migration could be stopped if only the enforcement budget were large enough.

https://www.irs.gov/statistics/irs-budget-and-workforce

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

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, June 12, 2025 5:26 PM (P)

Trump's "beautiful" bill wrecks our energy future

By Matthew Yglesias / Jun 12, 2025 at 5:05 AM

https://www.slowboring.com/p/trumps-beautiful-bill-wrecks-our

I continue to feel that Donald Trump is pulling off something close to the heist of the century by creating so much news on other topics that there’s barely any public attention on the multi-trillion dollar piece of legislation that already passed the House of Representatives and is pending in the Senate. I don’t want to do a huge disquisition on political strategy, but I do want to flag that progressives are allowed to organize protests against looming Medicaid cuts, not just immigration enforcement.

We’ve already written about those health care provisions several times, but just to review, we’re talking about nearly 11 million people losing their health insurance if this thing passes.

And it’s also going to increase the national debt by $3 trillion.

This generates a short-term boost to GDP growth via fiscal stimulus, but in the long run, the growth rate and level of GDP are lower than they would be without this bill.

That all sounds pretty bad. But what’s received even less attention is the energy provisions of the bill, which would repeal much of the Inflation Reduction Act. And because the IRA replaced prior energy programs with new, enhanced programs, the repeal wouldn’t just put us back where we were pre-IRA. It would leave us with no policy support whatsoever for wind, solar, or emerging technologies, including advanced nuclear and geothermal and carbon capture. It doesn’t even leave us with policy support to keep existing conventional nuclear plants open.

The upshot is going to be a loss of innovation and momentum for the long term. And in the short term, it’s going to mean higher electricity prices, as Trump’s multi-pronged effort to kneecap renewables runs up against the supply chain constraints limiting the pace at which new natural gas facilities can be brought online.

This is all genuinely really bad, and I think in a deep and profound way, this is truly not what voters angry about inflation wanted when they cast ballots for Trump.

And yet, it’s what we’re getting.

Trump’s BBB will raise electricity prices

The basic story here is that by killing the Production Tax Credit for solar and wind and storage, as well as the Investment Tax Credit for biomass, geothermal, hydroelectric, offshore wind, and nuclear, the BBB is going to reduce the rate at which new electricity sources come on the grid.

NERA Economic Consulting did some modeling of the impact of repeal and found significant state-to-state variation. Household electricity prices would go up 20 percent in Maine, for example, versus only 3.5 percent in New Hampshire, according to their estimates. But prices are up either way. The Princeton Zero Lab has a somewhat more restrained set of estimates, suggesting an average 9 percent increase nationally (though again with state-to-state variation), while the Rhodium Group sees something like a 7 percent increase.

Modeling the entire electrical system is complicated, but directionally speaking, the story here is that by eliminating the tax breaks, the BBB will slow capital investment in solar, storage, and onshore wind. This will be offset by burning more natural gas, both by running the stock of gas-fired plants more intensively and also by building more gas plants. But there’s a supply crunch in the availability of turbines to build more gas plants, and relying on the existing natural gas plants so heavily to power the country will raise the price.

This bottlenecking of electricity sources will happen against the backdrop of structurally rising demand for electricity thanks to EVs and data centers.

To a limited extent, this higher price of electricity will help keep existing nuclear plants open. Except that Energy Secretary Chris Wright himself concedes that removing tax credits is going to kneecap the nuclear industry. Wright is a renewables-hater but a nuclear enthusiast, and he keeps saying th

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

Thursday, June 12, 2025 7:54 PM (P)

This Is Not a Drill
American democracy is on the line right now

By Paul Krugman | Jun 12, 2025 at 7:24 AM

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/this-is-not-a-drill

There are two disastrously wrong ways to read the news from Los Angeles right now, and the rest of America over the next few days. The first is to believe that there is actually anything resembling an insurrection underway. The second is to believe that the Trump administration’s response to the nonexistent insurrection is simply cynical politics, an attempt to gain Donald Trump a few points in the polls.

What we’re actually seeing is much worse: An attempt to end politics as we know it, to deploy force to suppress dissent. Not eventually, but right now.

On the first point: No, LA isn’t a city in chaos, wracked by devastating riots requiring military intervention.

LA knows what real chaos looks like. The Rodney King riots in 1992 killed 63 people, injured thousands, and involved widespread looting and arson. Nothing like that is happening now. When heavily armed ICE agents arrested workers who may or may not have been legal residents but were definitely not threats by any stretch of the imagination, they set off demonstrations — which was clearly their intention. But while there were, inevitably, some relatively minor acts of violence, the demonstrations have been overwhelmingly peaceful — and nothing local law enforcement couldn’t handle. The chief of the Los Angeles Police Department issued a statement practically pleading with the Feds to stay out of the situation:

The Los Angeles Police Department, alongside our mutual aid partners, have decades of experience managing large-scale public demonstrations, and we remain confident in our ability to do so professionally and effectively.

Of course, Trump ignored that plea. He federalized part of California’s National Guard despite the opposition of the governor — something that hasn’t happened since 1965, when Lyndon Johnson mobilized part of the Alabama National Guard, basically to protect civil rights protestors. And Trump sent in some Marines, too, which would be completely crazy if the goal was to defuse tension and prevent violence. After all, the mission of the Marines, what they’re trained to do, is to deliver deadly violence.

It's easy to see how this could spin out of control. Which is, of course, what Trump is hoping for.

But why does Trump want chaos? Many pundits and, I’m sorry to say, all too many Democrats assume that performative cruelty, both in the form of those ICE arrests and in roughing up demonstrators, will work to Trump’s political advantage. After all, isn’t immigration one of the few issues on which he polls positively? Doesn’t acting tough make him look strong?

For what it’s worth, that’s not what the available polling says. According to YouGov, pluralities of Americans disapprove of the deployment of both the National Guard and the Marines to Los Angeles. According to Quinnipiac, 56 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s policies on deportations, while only 40 percent approve.

The poll analyst G Elliott Morris, who recently talked with Greg Sargent, summarized some more detailed polling, and found that

The only real part of [Trump’s] agenda that’s popular in immigration is deporting convicted violent criminals—so you get about 87 percent support for deporting those people. That one makes sense. And basically everyone else, Americans say, Don’t deport them.

And for those who don’t trust polls, Democrats keep beating expectations, often by very large margins, in special elections.

So have Trump and his advisers simply misjudged the politics here? No. The militarized response to the LA demonstrations and Trump’s warning that anyone protesting his military birthday parade (which millions probably will) will be “met with heavy force” aren’t about moving the poll numbers. They’re all about rejecting the idea that Americans have a right to oppose Trump policies. In the same interview Morris says it’s “part of his destruction of mutual

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME

THG
Friday, June 13, 2025 3:06 AM (P)

NOTIFY: Y  | REPLY  | REPLY WITH QUOTE  | PERMALINK  | TOP  | HOME