REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

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

POSTED BY: 6IXSTRINGJACK
UPDATED: Monday, June 23, 2025 16:00
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Tuesday, June 17, 2025 3:45 PM

SECOND

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


MAGA Phone? Trump Mobile Debuts With $499 Gold 'T1' Smartphone and $47-Per-Month Plan

Officially, Trump Mobile is a licensing venture with the Trump Organization, but the president's fingerprints are all over it, starting with the $47.45 monthly service price.

The $47.45 monthly price tag for its "47 Plan" is an obvious nod to Donald, who is the 45th and 47th US president.

By James Peckham | June 16, 2025

https://www.pcmag.com/news/trump-mobile-t1-smartphone-47-plan-wireless

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

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Tuesday, June 17, 2025 3:58 PM

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


Trump's fraudulent "Made-in-America" promise

Mobile Experts Skeptical of Trump 'T1' Phone Made-in-America Claims

The team behind Trump Mobile says the T1 phone will be manufactured in three US states. But the fledgling carrier is light on other details, including whether any components come from Asia.

By Michael Kan | June 17, 2025

https://www.pcmag.com/news/mobile-experts-skeptical-of-trump-t1-phone-
made-in-america-claims

To appeal to US consumers, the Trump Mobile T1 smartphone will be American-made, according to the Trump organization—something not even Apple has pulled off with the iPhone.

"Making phones in America. It’s about time we bring products back to our great country," President Trump's son, Eric Trump, said while talking about the device.

The T1 phone, housed in a gold casing, arrives as the Trump administration has been urging Apple to make its iPhones in the US. The big question is whether the team behind the Trump Mobile phone has truly pulled off the "made in America" pledge—or if it’s simply marketing spin.

The American-made claim is already facing skepticism that it's a scam. That's because modern electronics manufacturing has long relied on Asia’s low-cost skilled labor and vast supply chains to produce laptops, smartphones, and game consoles at scale. (One analyst, Max Weinbach, even speculates the T1 is merely a modified Revvl 7 Pro 5G handset from China.)

However, the team behind Trump Mobile insists the American-made promise is legit. “Manufacturing will be in Alabama, California, and Florida,” a spokesperson for Trump Mobile tells PCMag.

Still, the company didn’t offer any details or respond to other questions, like if the phone will source components from vendors in Asia. So far, the official site for the T1 phone has only said the device will arrive in either August or September for $499. However, only one picture of the product has been posted, and it appears to be more of a digital mockup than an actual product shot. It's also unclear what processor the T1 device will use, but it'll run Android 15.

Blake Przesmicki, an analyst at the research firm Counterpoint, is also skeptical that the T1 will be American-made. Instead, he expects Trump Mobile to source the device from a manufacturer in China. One reason why is because in an interview on Monday, Eric Trump mentioned: "You can build these phones in the United States... Eventually, all the phones can be built in the United States of America."

"This implies that initially many of them won't be," Przesmicki said in an email. Developing and releasing a phone within a few months also represents "a tight turnaround," he added.

Meanwhile, iFixit repairability engineer Carsten Frauenheim also expects the Trump Mobile team to source the device from China while adding some modifications. "It’s going to be a semi-custom 'modded/assembled in the USA' version of a designed-and-built-in-China basic-as-heck Android phone," Frauenheim said.

In addition, some at iFixit noted there's speculation that the T1 phone could be based on Blackwater CEO and Trump ally Erik Prince's Unplugged phone, pointing to the similar design.

Although the Trump phone looks poised to attract the president’s supporters, it’s not the first time a handset has been marketed toward Republicans and political conservatives. In 2021, a self-described bitcoin millionaire named Erik Finman created the $499 Freedom Phone, promising it would be completely free from “Big Tech’s” censorship and influence. But the actual device was simply a reskinned Android phone from a little-known Chinese vendor.

Finman later said in a deleted tweet: “Impossible to build phone in the US top to bottom unfortunately.” According to Fox News, PayPal also stepped in and reversed payments that customers had made for the Freedom Phone.

In the meantime, the president’s two sons have been marketing the T1 phone and Trump Mobile cell plan. But Trump’s family involvement in the actual device and service might be limited. In a press release, the Trump organization noted that a company called “T1 Mobile LLC” has entered into a licensing agreement to use the Trump name for both the cellular service and the upcoming phone.

“Trump Mobile, its products and services are not designed, developed, manufactured, distributed or sold by The Trump Organization or any of their respective affiliates or principals,” the press release added.

We also tried to call Trump Mobile's customer support number. It initially failed to connect with the line, automatically hanging up. By Monday afternoon, the number forced us to stay on hold, with Trump Mobile citing a large call volume.

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

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Tuesday, June 17, 2025 7:30 PM

SECOND

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


Who Is in Charge of the Government?
And does he know what his own positions are?

By Ben Mathis-Lilley | June 17, 2025 5:54 PM

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/06/donald-trump-reversal-iran
-ice-raids.html

Two stories in the news this week raise the question of who is currently in charge of the world’s most powerful country, the United States.

First, there’s the Wall Street Journal piece about how the U.S. government does not believe Israel’s claim that Iran is moving forward with an attempt to build a nuclear weapon.

Long story short, the U.S. didn’t support Israel’s military escalation against Iran because it doesn’t believe what Israel says about Iran’s nuclear plans. (In the New York Times’ phrasing, it “distanced itself from the strikes” via a statement by Secretary of State Marco Rubio.)

Except that, as the Journal notes, Donald Trump now says that Iran is “very close” to building a nuclear weapon; Trump is also, according to multiple Tuesday reports, considering ordering the U.S. military to bomb the country too. What changed? Not a ton, at least as far as new intelligence, input from allies, or Iranian belligerence. It’s just that Trump, in the Times’ euphemistic description, has “cycled” to a different position, one on which he “continues to gyrate.” (Sounds beautiful, perhaps even alluring.) Does he know what his own position was a few days ago? Who can say! According to the Times’ report, which, euphemisms aside, is impressively detailed, Trump told “associates” last week that he had urged Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, not to attack Iran—only to begin telling reporters this week that he “had played a bigger behind-the-scenes role in the war than people realized.” (The paper suggests that the president’s change of heart may have come after he got excited watching footage of Israeli strikes on Fox News.)

In a similar vein, there is the Washington Post’s new report that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have told agents to “continue conducting immigration raids at agricultural businesses, hotels and restaurants.” This reverses a directive not to target those venues that was itself issued last week, after Trump posted on his Truth Social site that ICE would back off farms and hotels because “very good, long time workers” were being detained. Compounding the confusion, the (new) Post report notes that the directive that was issued because of Trump’s post has been overruled because “the White House did not support it.” Who runs the White House? I thought it was the president!

These are things that have happened only this week. In late May, the State Department announced that it would be revoking visas issued to Chinese students in the U.S. who have “connections to the Chinese Communist Party” or study in “critical fields.” But last Wednesday, Trump wrote on Truth Social that “Chinese students using our colleges and universities” have “always been good with me.” What else might turn out to be American policy, or have been American policy already, unbeknownst to President Memento (2001, dir. Christopher Nolan) and/or the members of his Cabinet? It will be exciting to find out.

Who’s in charge of the government?

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

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Tuesday, June 17, 2025 7:57 PM

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


Congress Has One Way to Stop Trump From Going to War With Iran

A War Powers Resolution would prohibit the "United States Armed Forces from unauthorized hostilities in the Islamic Republic of Iran."

By Jessica Washington | June 17 2025, 7:39 p.m.

https://theintercept.com/2025/06/17/iran-war-powers-resolution-congres
s-israel-trump-massie-khanna/

As President Donald Trump draws the United States perilously close to war with Iran, some members of Congress are working across the aisle in an attempt to reign him in.

On Tuesday, Representatives Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and Ro Khanna, D-Calif., introduced a War Powers Resolution, which would prohibit the “United States Armed Forces from unauthorized hostilities in the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Senator Tim Kaine, D-Va., introduced similar legislation in the Senate on Monday.

“U.S. involvement in Israel’s war with Iran is a red line. We need Congress to speak out about that and pass a resolution prohibiting that,” Rep. Khanna told The Intercept. “And we need the United States to try to bring this war between Israel and Iran to an end.”

The War Powers Resolution, enacted in 1973, requires an act of Congress to declare a war. Over the decades, however, presidents have repeatedly ignored the federal law to deploy U.S. troops overseas without Congressional approval, ensnaring the U.S. in numerous foreign wars. Massie noted in his press release that War Powers Resolutions are privileged in the House and “can be called up for debate and a floor vote after 15 calendar days without action in committee.”

The resolution comes against a backdrop of escalating missile strikes between Israel and Iran over the last five days, beginning with Israel’s attack on Iranian nuclear and military facilities ahead of scheduled negotiations between the U.S. and Iranian leadership.

As attacks have continued, so too have concerns about direct U.S. involvement in the conflict. On Tuesday, Trump ratcheted up those fears with a string of Truth Social posts taunting the Iranian regime and calling for its surrender.

“We now have complete and total control of the skies over Iran,” he wrote. “Iran had good sky trackers and other defensive equipment, and plenty of it, but it doesn’t compare to American made, conceived, and manufactured ‘stuff.’ Nobody does it better than the good ol’ USA.”

In another post, he claimed to have the location of Iran’s Supreme leader. “We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding. He is an easy target, but is safe there – We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now,” Trump wrote. And in a third post, he called for Iran’s “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” News reports emerged Tuesday afternoon that in a meeting in the White House situation room, Trump told officials he was considering joining Israel’s strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Even before Tuesday, lawmakers expressed concerns about the lack of clarity from the president and senior military leadership. Last week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth refused to offer assurances to Rep. Khanna that the U.S. would stand up to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and not get dragged into the oncoming conflict. And on Monday, while leaving the Group of Seven summit in Alberta, Canada, Trump refused to answer a reporter’s questions about whether the U.S. military would get involved in the war.

“I don’t want to talk about that,” he told reporters.

Congresswoman Summer Lee D-Pa., told The Intercept that it is Congress’s duty to intervene and prevent Trump from usurping their authority.

“Since taking office, Trump has continuously tried to supersede Congress and is now using the escalating crisis between Israel and Iran to justify executive overreach. Congressional authorization is not optional, and many are already opposed to being dragged into another endless war,” wrote Rep. Lee in a statement.

The Pennsylvania representative also alluded to the United States’ disastrous invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan as a reason for caution. “The American people have been lied to before, and millions — at home and abroad — have paid the price. We cannot allow Trump or anybody else to use somebody else’s war for political gain or financial profit,” said Lee.

Members of Congress have previously tried to rein in the President’s military efforts in the Middle East. Earlier this year, progressives sent a letter to the White House demanding that Trump explain his legal basis for strikes against Yemen.

However, on Tuesday, Democratic Senator John Fetterman, also of Pennsylvania, struck a very different chord from Lee — encouraging military action against Iran and saying he would vote against Kaine’s resolution.

“I’m going to vote it down… I really hope the president finally does bomb and destroy the Iranians,” Fetterman told Chad Pergram with Fox News. It marks a reversal for the Senator, who in 2022 criticized President Trump for walking away from the negotiating table with Iran.

Samer Araabi, a member of the Center for Political Education’s advisory committee and the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), said the comments from Fetterman aren’t surprising.

“It’s the least surprising thing from a Senator who has been so abhorrently blood chillingly deaf and blind to the situation in Palestine and totally unwilling on any level to recognize the countless war crimes that Israel continues to commit,” he said, adding, “it would be laughable if it wasn’t so horrifying.”

Araabi warned that direct U.S. involvement in the war would be even worse than the invasion of Iraq, due in part to Iran’s larger population and size.

“We’re on the precipice of not even just another Iraq, but something that would potentially be significantly more destabilizing,” he said.

U.S. military intervention on the side of Israel, Araabi said, would heighten the risk for all parties involved. “Even a cursory reading of the past 30 years of history in this country tells us that everything that is happening right now in this drive towards war is making all of us less safe,” he said. “It makes literally every single human being on Earth less safe. It certainly makes the Iranians less safe. It makes Israelis less safe, and it definitely makes us in the United States less safe.”

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

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Tuesday, June 17, 2025 9:03 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Shut up, faggot.

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

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

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Wednesday, June 18, 2025 6:32 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Shut up, faggot.
6ix, if you get mad enough to kill, you might make history. Significant changes for the better are caused by America's evilest citizens, such as yourself. It was the evil Confederates who murderously forced the USA to make slavery illegal. Another example is the evil Klansmen who murdered Civil Rights protestors, thus forcing the USA to recognize civil rights. There wouldn't be Medicare without JFK being murdered by Lee Harvey Oswald. JFK would have never passed Medicare because it was too disruptive to Doctors' business interests in JFK's over-privileged, wealthy man's opinion. Thank Oswald for all the good things LBJ did while President.

Will the public side with the protesters in LA? Here are some lessons from history

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jun/17/will-the-public-
side-with-the-protesters-in-la-here-are-some-lessons-from-history

Civil rights leaders in the 1950s, for instance, went out of their way to provoke high-profile, violent and disproportionate responses from those who supported segregation. Leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. had an intuitive understanding of what empirical social science now affirms: what matters isn’t the presence or absence of violence but, rather, who gets blamed for any escalations that occur.

The current anti-ICE protests have included clashes with police and occasional property damage. Melees, looting and destruction are perennially unpopular. Then again, so were civil rights-era bus boycotts, diner sit-ins and marches. In truth, the public rarely supports any form of social protest.

Even before the protests began, there were signs that Americans were souring on Trump’s draconian approach to immigration, and public support has declined rapidly since the protests started on 6 June.

Whether the demonstrations ultimately lead to still more erosion of public support for Trump or continued declines in public support for immigration will likely depend less on whether the demonstrations continue to escalate than on whom the public ultimately blames for any escalation that occurs.

At present, it’s not looking good for the White House.

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

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Wednesday, June 18, 2025 7:02 AM

SECOND

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


Trump’s $4 Trillion Plan to Raise Your Energy Bills

The president’s plan will also “severely increase the risk” of nuclear accidents

By Joseph Romm | June 17, 2025

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/political-commentary/trump-energ
y-nuclear-electric-bills-4-trillion-1235365940/

A September report from the Department of Energy (DOE) — which funds SMR (small modular reactor) development — modeled a cost per megawatt over 50 percent higher for SMRs than large reactors. So, it’s no surprise SMRs show every sign of the kind of cost escalation that has plagued larger nuclear reactors for decades. That’s why a March Financial Times analysis labeled SMRs “the most expensive energy source.”

Indeed, the first SMR the U.S. tried to build — by NuScale — was canceled in 2023 after its cost soared past $20 million per megawatt, higher than Vogtle. In 2024, Bill Gates told CBS the full cost of his 375 megawatt Natrium reactor would be “close to $10 billion,” making its cost per megawatt nearly $30 million — almost twice that of Vogtle.

Significantly, a 2023 Columbia University analysis determined that “if the costs of new nuclear end up being much higher” than $6.2 million per megawatt, “new nuclear appears unlikely to play much of a role, if any, in the U.S. power sector.”

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

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Wednesday, June 18, 2025 8:52 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Shut up, faggot.
6ix, if you get mad enough to kill,


You've got a long, long, long history of archived posts with your assasination fantasies here over the years, goober.

I'm not the one who has fixated on one single person for the last 9 years and uttered their name 100 times per day.

Get some help.

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

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

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Thursday, June 19, 2025 7:23 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Shut up, faggot.
6ix, if you get mad enough to kill,


You've got a long, long, long history of archived posts with your assasination fantasies here over the years, goober.

I'm not the one who has fixated on one single person for the last 9 years and uttered their name 100 times per day.

Get some help.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
This started when Fatso was first running for President.
Elevating the Evil Fathead had consequences:

Where have all the jobs gone, and why does it matter?

By Paul Krugman | Jun 19, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/bad-times-for-college-graduates

. . . The only time college graduates were anywhere close to having higher than average unemployment was at the beginning of the 2000s, when America was in a recession after the tech bubble burst. Now grads are deep in the hole even though the nation as a whole isn’t (yet?) in a recession.

And even these numbers are basically for Americans in their mid-20s, many of whom have already been working for a while. Anecdotes suggest that the situation for those just graduating and looking for their first job is near-catastrophic, with many unable to find any job at all.

So what is going on? Like Thompson, I’d mostly discount the idea that this is largely about AI displacing educated workers. That might happen eventually, but replacement of workers by AI (or the complex number-crunching that we have, misleadingly, been calling AI) is probably too new a phenomenon to explain such a drastic change.

A more likely story, as many have pointed out, is that we’re looking at one consequence of an economy that has been “frozen” by uncertainty, largely uncertainty about U.S. government policy.

Most of the discussion in recent months has involved Donald Trump’s drastic but erratic changes in tariff policy. Imagine that you’re running a business for which decisions about where and how to invest depend a lot on what tariff rates you expect to prevail a year or two from now. Should you make investments assuming that, say, the cost of imported merchandise will be similar to what it was 6 months ago, or should you assume that average tariffs will remain where they are right now, at the highest level in 90 years?

Nobody knows.

Nor is it just tariffs. For a few months, the Trump administration’s harsh rhetoric on undocumented immigrants wasn’t translating into large-scale deportations. Now significant raids on workplaces have begun. But over the course of just a few days we saw Trump suddenly modify policy, then reverse himself — declaring that agriculture and hospitality would not face disruptive raids, then canceling that declaration. What will actual deportation policy look like? Nobody knows.

So what does a business do in the face of this kind of uncertainty? It tries to avoid making commitments that it may soon regret.

And hiring recent college graduates is a significant commitment. Whatever their formal training, young people need to acquire real-world experience to be effective in their new jobs. Employers need to be willing to spend time and money while new hires gain this experience. And in this uncertain environment, that’s not a commitment employers are willing to make. They may hold on to their existing workers, at least for now, but they won’t hire.

Let me also spitball a bit and suggest that other Trump policies may also be depressing the market for highly educated young people.

First, DOGE’s depredations have pushed a lot of highly educated people out of the federal work force and onto the job market. Indeed’s Hiring Lab estimates that almost 70 percent of the former federal workers now searching for new jobs have at least a bachelors’ degree. I don’t think that it’s unrealistic to suggest that these are experienced workers in effect competing for the jobs new college graduates might normally expect to land.

And what about the Trump administration’s drastic cuts in funding for scientific research? Is it foolish to suggest that these cuts directly and indirectly cut into job opportunities for new graduates?

So how long will it take for students graduating into this bad job market to recover from their bad luck? The answer, according to a 2023 survey by the National Bureau of Economic Research, is basically “forever.” Graduating into a bad labor market can make you miss a step on the job ladder, depressing your earnings for a decade or more. It increases your chances of being in poor health well into middle age. It even reduces your chances of having a successful marriage.

Oh, and you’ll still be burdened with student debt, now that Trump has reversed the Biden administration’s efforts to offer some relief.

In short, today’s no good, very bad market for recent college graduates is a bigger problem than many people realize. It will cast a shadow on America for years to come. And the Trump administration bears much of the blame.

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

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Thursday, June 19, 2025 8:23 AM

SECOND

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


‘He’s moving at a truly alarming speed’: Trump propels US into authoritarianism

By Robert Tait in Washington | Thu 19 Jun 2025 04.00 EDT

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/jun/19/trump-us-autocracy-aut
horitarianism

“He’s moving at a truly alarming speed and pressing all the authoritarian buttons. We’re a few supreme court decisions away from having a president we can’t get rid of.”

“In the US constitution, almost every existing constraint on executive power can be circumvented in a state of emergency. And it’s becoming clear that the administration is learning that emergencies are the easiest route to circumvent the law and not be blocked by the courts. The supreme court is very reluctant to say, ‘No, that’s not an emergency, Trump, you lied. You made that up.’ It’s sort of a free pass for circumventing the rule of law.”

Even if Trump were to suffer an election reverse, his ability to wreak further havoc will remain, Nyhan warned, simply because Senate Republicans are unlikely to vote in sufficient numbers to remove him from office in the event of him being impeached by a Democratic-controlled House.

“The Founding Fathers anticipated Trump precisely,” he said, referring to the constitutional provision to try and remove a president and other officials for “high crimes and misdemeanors”.

“It was just assumed that Congress will jealously guard its prerogatives and impeach and remove any president who exceeded the boundaries of the constitution. But in our current political system, that is a seemingly impossible task.”

“So we face the prospect of a lawless authoritarian continuing to act for the next three and a half years, and there’s a great deal of damage he can do in that time.”

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

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Thursday, June 19, 2025 8:42 AM

SECOND

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


Trump Calls for Iran’s ‘Unconditional Surrender’

On Monday, Trump posted on Truth Social to warn Tehran’s 9.7 million residents to flee the city immediately. He also abruptly left the G-7 summit in Canada a day early, saying he was returning to Washington to discuss the conflict with his national security team. On Tuesday, he told reporters that he wants “a real end” to Iran’s nuclear program, and he called for Iran’s “UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!” on Truth Social.
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114699621000737127

He also seemed to suggest that the United States might consider assassinating Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at some point in the future. “We know exactly where the so-called ‘Supreme Leader’ is hiding,” Trump wrote. “He is an easy target, but is safe there – We are not going to take him out (kill!), at least not for now.”
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/114699610769479275

U.S. lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have argued that Trump cannot strike Iran without congressional approval. Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine introduced a war powers resolution on Monday that would terminate any unauthorized use of the U.S. military against Iran, as only Congress has the right to declare war. Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced a separate bill on Monday that would prohibit the use of federal funds for “any use of military force in or against Iran” without congressional approval, with the exception of self-defense. And Republican Rep. Thomas Massie co-introduced a resolution with Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna on Tuesday reasserting that Congress must approve an armed force commitment.

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

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Thursday, June 19, 2025 8:53 AM

SECOND

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


Trump doesn’t have a foreign policy

What he has instead is the promise of chaos.

By Zack Beauchamp | Jun 18, 2025, 5:30 AM CDT

https://www.vox.com/on-the-right-newsletter/417156/trump-foreign-polic
y-ukraine-israel-iran

For years, there has been an increasingly bitter foreign policy fight between two factions of the Republican Party. On one hand, you have the GOP hawks like Sen. Lindsey Graham (SC) who want the United States to impose its will on the world by force. On the other, you have the “America First” crowd — like Tucker Carlson and Vice President JD Vance — who want the US to withdraw from international commitments and refocus its attention on domestic concerns.

The big question, as always, is where President Donald Trump lands. If Trump says that the MAGA foreign policy is one thing, then that’s what it is — and the rest of the party falls in line.

On one read, Trump’s early response to the Israel-Iran war settles the debate in the hawks’ favor. After months of opposing an Israeli strike, Trump rapidly flipped after the attack looked more and more successful. Since then, his rhetoric has grown increasingly heated, opening the door to possible US involvement. And he has publicly attacked Carlson for criticizing the war, writing on Truth Social that “somebody [should] please explain to kooky Tucker Carlson that, ‘IRAN CAN NOT HAVE A NUCLEAR WEAPON!’”

And yet, I think the factional debate remains far less settled than it seems. In fact, I believe it will remain unsettled as long as Trump is in power.

Trump’s own foreign policy thinking does not align neatly with either of the two main camps. The president does not do systematic foreign policy, but rather acts on the basis of a collection of impulses that could never amount to anything so grandiose as a doctrine. Those gut instincts include a sense that the United States should look out for itself only, ignore any rules or norms that might constrain it, use force aggressively without regard to civilian casualties, and seek “deals” with other states that advantage the United States and/or make Donald Trump look good personally.

It looks, in effect, like an internationalized version of Trump’s approach to New York real estate in the 1980s and 1990s.

This isn’t a new observation: I’ve been making versions of this case since his 2016 campaign, and it’s been well-supported by both his first term and early second-term record.

But its significance for US policy is widely underappreciated. His lack of ideology does not mean that he can be permanently persuaded by one faction or the other, but rather produces volatility. The president has teetered back and forth between interventionism and isolationism, depending on the interplay between Trump’s idiosyncratic instincts and whoever he’s talking with on a particular day.

Given the near-dictatorial power modern presidents have over foreign policy, this will likely produce something worse than ideological rigidity: an incoherent, mutually contradictory policy that ends up undermining itself at every turn. At a moment of acute geopolitical peril, when Trump’s ascendant hawkish allies are calling for yet another war of regime change in the Middle East, it’s easy to see how that could end in true disaster.

Trump’s real foreign policy guide is his instincts

Foreign policy analysts like to talk a lot about “grand strategy.” What they mean by this is a vision that identifies the objectives leaders want to accomplish in world politics — like, say, protecting American territories from physical threats — and then develops a series of specific policies designed to work together in accomplishing that goal.

Both the right’s hawks and the America First crowd have distinct visions of grand strategy.

The hawks start from the premise that the United States benefits from being the world’s dominant power, and from there they develop a series of policies designed to contain or eliminate threats to that dominance from hostile powers like Russia or China. The America Firsters, by contrast, believe that remaining a globe-spanning power costs the United States too much in blood and treasure — and that the American people will be both safer and more secure if the US reduces its involvement in non-essential conflicts and lets other countries settle their differences without American help.

When you start from each of these grand strategic premises, you can basically deduce where most members of each bloc land on specific issues. The hawks love Israel’s war in Iran, while the America Firsters fear it might pull in the United States more directly. The hawks believe in aggressively trying to contain Chinese influence in East Asia, while the America Firsters seek accommodations that don’t risk a nuclear war over Taiwan. The hawks (mostly) support arming Ukraine against Russia, while the America Firsters are overwhelmingly against it.

On all of these issues, Trump’s actual policy is all over the map.

He first tried to negotiate a nuclear agreement with Iran, which the hawks hated, but swiftly flipped to supporting Israel’s war. His China policy has been inconsistent, pairing initially harsh tariffs and talk of trade “decoupling” with a negotiated climb-down and vagueness on Taiwan. On Ukraine, where Trump cozies up to Russia’s Vladimir Putin and berates Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, the policy substance is even more muddled — he has cut US aid to Ukraine while simultaneously extending President Joe Biden’s sanctions on Russia, and even threatened new ones if Putin won’t make a ceasefire deal.

Trump’s second-term record, in short, is a tangle of incoherent policies and whiplash-inducing policy shifts. There is no consistent vision of the world, just whatever Trump decides policy should be in the moment — regardless of how much it contradicts what he’s said or done previously. And while all presidents have to develop new policies based on events, the Trump administration makes confusing and radical policy shifts over the course of very limited time periods (Exhibit A: the still-fluctuating tariff rates).

This foreign policy ping-pong can only be understood if you see Trump as someone who is allergic to foreign policy doctrine. You can spin his allergy positively (he’s pragmatic) or negatively (he knows nothing and doesn’t care to learn). Perhaps both are true to a degree, but the evidence — like his refusal to read briefing documents — tilts heavily in the latter direction.

What we get, in place of doctrine, are Trump’s instincts about interests, deals, and strength.

We know he thinks about current US policy in zero-sum terms, such as that NATO and trade agreements cannot benefit both sides. We know he’s indifferent to legal constraints from domestic and international law. We know he’s willing to use force aggressively, authorizing attacks against terrorist groups in his first term that produced shockingly high civilian body counts. And we know he sees himself as the consummate dealmaker, with much of his policy seemingly premised on the idea that he can get leaders like Putin and China’s Xi Jinping onside.

Sometimes, of course, these instincts combine and crash into each other — with Iran as a case in point.

Trump spent quite a lot of effort in his second term trying to negotiate a new nuclear deal with Iran. In both April and May, he explicitly warned Israel not to attack Iran. Yet now he seems fully on board with Israel’s war, posting bellicose Truth Social posts suggesting Iranians should “immediately evacuate Tehran.”

Trump’s jumping from negotiations to cheerleading war is not a result of him changing his foreign policy worldview. It’s that he wanted to be the dealmaker and then was persuaded, by a combination of Israeli pressure and his own lack of patience, that the talks weren’t working. Hence, Trump decided, war would be the order of the day.

“Now Mr. Trump is seriously considering sending American aircraft in to help refuel Israeli combat jets and to try to take out Iran’s deep-underground nuclear site at Fordo with 30,000-pound bombs — a step that would mark a stunning turnabout from his opposition just two months ago to any military action while there was still a chance of a diplomatic solution,” the New York Times reports.

But even amid said deliberations, Trump pines to be the dealmaker — suggesting in an ABC News interview this weekend that war “had to happen” for talks to succeed, and that it “may have forced a deal to go quicker.” His more hawkish allies see Israel’s offensive as the opening shots in a war of regime change; Trump sees it as the art of the deal.

It is, in short, a category error to try to align Trump with one GOP foreign policy faction or the other. He’s just Trump — a man with a long track record of endorsing and ordering armed violence, but also a deep faith in his near-magical dealmaking powers.

Trump’s real policy is chaos

So, if Trump’s guide is his instincts, why do the factional disagreements splitting the GOP matter?

Because we know for a fact that Trump can be easily influenced by the people around him. While he has some fixed and unchangeable views, like his peculiar idea that trade deficits are inherently bad, there are many areas on which he doesn’t have a strong opinion about the facts — and can be talked in one direction or another. This is the well-known phenomenon of Trump making public pronouncements based on whoever he spoke to most recently.

In Trump’s first term, this ended up having a surprisingly stabilizing effect on policy. He was surrounded by more establishment types like Jim Mattis and Mark Milley, who would frequently talk him out of more radical policies — or else quietly make policies on their own that were consistent with longstanding bipartisan consensus.

There were still many Trumpian moments — everyone forgets that we were shockingly close to war with North Korea in 2017 — but the overall foreign policy record wasn’t as radical as many feared.

As we all know, the second term is different. The Mattis types are gone, replaced instead by loyalists. The factional disputes are not between Trump’s allies and establishmentarians who wished to check him, but rather between different strains of MAGA — some more hawkish, others more dovish. But neither is big on stability, in the sense of wanting to ensure Trump colors within the longstanding lines of post-Cold War US foreign policy.

This creates a situation where each faction is trying to persuade Trump that their approach best and most truly embodies his MAGA vision. The problem, however, is that no such vision exists. Each will have successes at various times, when they succeed at tapping into whichever of Trump’s instincts is operative at the moment. But none will ever succeed in making Trump act like the ideologue they want him to be.

What this means, in concrete policy terms, is that the chaos and contradictions of Trump’s early foreign policy is likely to continue.

In the post-9/11 era, presidents have accrued extraordinary powers over foreign policy. Even explicit constitutional provisions, like the requirement that Congress declare war or approve treaties, no longer serve as meaningful checks on the president’s ability to use force or alter US international commitments.

This environment means that the twin factors shaping Trump’s thinking — his own jumbled instincts and his subordinates’ jockeying for his favor — are likely to have direct and immediate policy consequences. We’ve seen that in the whiplash of his early-term policies in areas like trade and Iran, and have every reason to believe it will continue for the foreseeable future.

In a new Foreign Affairs essay, the political scientist Elizabeth Saunders compares US foreign policy under Trump to that of a “personalist” dictatorship: places where one man rules with no real constraints, like Russia or North Korea. Such countries, she notes, have a long track record of foreign policy boondoggles.

“Without constraints, even from elites in the leader’s inner circle, personalist dictators are prone to military misadventures, erratic decisions, and self-defeating policies,” she writes. “A United States that can change policy daily, treat those who serve its government with cruelty, and take reckless actions that compromise its basic systems and leave shared secrets and assets vulnerable is not one to be trusted.”

So long as Trump remains in office, this is the way things are going to be. American foreign policy will be primarily determined not by strategists or ideologues, but by the confused and contradictory whims of one unstable man.

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

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Thursday, June 19, 2025 1:27 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Shut up, faggot.
6ix, if you get mad enough to kill,


You've got a long, long, long history of archived posts with your assasination fantasies here over the years, goober.

I'm not the one who has fixated on one single person for the last 9 years and uttered their name 100 times per day.

Get some help.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
This started when Fatso was first running for President.
Elevating the Evil Fathead had consequences:


I don't give a single shit about your justifications for going insane.

Figure it out before you do something stupid, stupid.

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

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

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Friday, June 20, 2025 6:27 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

I don't give a single shit about your justifications for going insane.

Figure it out before you do something stupid, stupid.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Trump said he will make a decision about bombing Iran in two-weeks.

If “two-weeks” means what it normally means, and as it has regularly meant for Ukraine, then the US is almost certainly going to stay out of the war. It has been Trump’s go-to phrase if he does not want to do something and is looking for time. He has regularly said he needs two weeks to decide if he will sanction Russia more, to produce a new health care plan, etc. Yet, whenever he uses the phrase, the two week deadline passes and nothing happens — and Trump happily goes on to other things.

You'd have to be a Trumptard to not notice the “two-weeks” pattern.

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/if-trump-will-not-join-the-war-
what

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

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Friday, June 20, 2025 6:45 AM

SECOND

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


Trump, the Federal Reserve Bank and the fog of inflation

By Paul Krugman | Jun 20, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/why-the-fed-is-on-hold

Donald Trump got something right this week. Declaring that Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, is a “stupid person,” Trump predicted that the Fed wouldn’t cut interest rates at this week’s meeting. And he was correct! He was also correct to point out that the European Central Bank, which is to the euro what the Fed is to the dollar, has repeatedly cut rates while the Fed hasn’t.

Anyway, Powell isn’t stupid. Nor is he, as Trump also said, “a political guy” who’s keeping rates high to punish MAGA, or something. Of course, interest rate policy does have political effects, which Trump knows perfectly well. You may recall that back in 2024 he warned Powell not to cut interest rates before the election — because when it comes to Trump, every accusation is actually a confession.

But the reason Powell isn’t cutting rates now is that the Fed is in a difficult position, largely thanks to, you guessed it, Trump himself.

It occurred to me, reading Trump’s insults, that I haven’t seen many simple explanations of the dilemmas the Fed now faces — again, largely thanks to Trump himself. So I thought I might go a bit wonkier than usual and try to explain why the Fed is on hold for the time being.

The basics: By buying or selling short-term U.S. government debt, the Fed can effectively control short-term interest rates. Strictly speaking, all it controls is the federal funds rate, the interest rate at which banks lend money to each other overnight. But this rate has a lot of influence on longer-term rates, which in turn affect the real economy by affecting housing construction, business investment and so on.

In setting rates, the Fed has a “dual mandate”: full employment and price stability. These days full employment is normally interpreted to mean an official unemployment rate of around 4 percent, which is low enough that most people can easily find jobs but not so low that the economy overheats. Price stability is interpreted to mean inflation low enough that people don’t think about it much, but not zero inflation, which turns out to create some technical problems for economic management.

Now, the Fed was way off its target from 2021 to 2023, when inflation surged in the United States (and in almost every nation.) President Biden and his party paid a high price for that inflation surge, which is surely the main reason Trump won the 2024 election. But the surge was transitory. Trump inherited a “Goldilocks” economy in inflation had subsided without the protracted high unemployment some economists (but not me!) claimed was necessary:

The Fed, however, had raised interest rates a lot to fight that inflation surge, so one might have expected a series of rate cuts now that the inflation issue is largely behind us. And Trump might well be riding high in the polls if he had just left the economy alone and taken credit for Biden’s victory over inflation.

Instead, however, he went wild on tariffs.

On April 2 — Liberation Day, in MAGAspeak — Trump imposed huge tariffs on almost every nation. He has modified those tariffs several times since then, but it’s deeply misleading to say, as all too many news reports do, that the tariffs were “paused.” They were reshuffled, with lower tariffs on some countries and goods but higher tariffs on others, but the overall picture remains a leap in average tariffs to levels not seen for 90 years:

Source: Yale Budget Lab

This tariff surge creates big problems for at least one and possibly both sides of the Fed’s dual mandate.

What we know for sure is that the tariffs will cause a large jump in consumer prices. That jump isn’t visible in official price data yet, partly because many businesses rushed to hoard foreign goods before the tariffs kicked in and are still meeting consumer demand out of those stockpiles. But the big price hikes are already happening, and will become obvious to everyone over the next few months.

It's true that Trump continues to insist that tariffs won’t raise prices, that foreigners will pay them. But this is nonsense. Imagine that a Democratic president were to impose a 15 percent sales tax on every good made in America. Would Trump say “This won’t raise prices, because businesses will absorb the tax”? Of course not. So why imagine that foreign businesses will absorb the cost of tariffs, which are nothing but sales taxes on goods made abroad?

The only coherent argument against a large inflationary hit from tariffs was the claim that tariffs would push up the value of the dollar against other countries’ currencies, which would in turn reduce the prices of their goods measured in dollar terms. Both Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, and Stephen Miran, chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, made this argument before the big Trump tariffs went into effect.

But the dollar has, in fact, gone down rather than up:

This decline reflects a general loss of confidence in American stability and reliability. But that’s another discussion. What it means for the Fed is that yes, Trump’s tariffs are about to cause a major inflationary hit.

And the Fed isn’t going to cut interest rates in the face of surging inflation. My guess is that Trump has never heard of Arthur Burns, who led the Fed under Richard Nixon. But the Fed remembers. Burns is often accused of having kept interest rates low in 1972, despite rising inflationary pressures, in an attempt to ensure Nixon’s reelection — and thereby helping to set the stage for stagflation. One cardinal rule for every Fed chair since then has been, “Don’t be Arthur Burns.”

A tariff-fueled surge in inflation, then, is about as sure a thing as we ever get in economics. But after that, things get a lot less certain.

First, will the price shock from tariffs be a one-time event, or will it feed through into a sustained rise in the inflation rate? The Fed learned long ago to “look through” bumps in the inflation rate caused by fluctuations in volatile prices like the price of oil. That’s why it bases its interest policy on “core” inflation that excludes food and energy — not because food and energy prices don’t matter, but because excluding them gives a better measure of underlying inflation.

But how should we think about the tariffs? Are they a passing event like the now-forgotten oil price surge of 2007-8, or the potential beginning of 70s-type stagflation? I don’t know, and neither does Jay Powell. History offers no guidance: The Trump tariffs are the biggest trade policy shock in history.

Given this fog of inflation Powell is, and should be, cautious. He doesn’t want to be Arthur Burns.

But wait, there’s more. How will the tariffs affect the other side of the Fed’s mandate? Will the tariffs, and especially uncertainty about where they’re going, cause an economic slowdown and rising unemployment? Many observers believe that this will happen, and if it does it would indeed be a reason to cut interest rates. But again, nobody knows, since we’ve never before had a president who keeps announcing huge changes in tariffs every few weeks.

So what would you do if you were Jerome Powell? Almost surely what he is actually doing: Wait and see.

And Trump’s childish insults aren’t going to make any difference, except possibly to make Powell even more cautious to avoid giving the impression that he can be bullied.

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

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Friday, June 20, 2025 6:50 AM

JAYNEZTOWN


winds may actually change...a sneak attack on Iran after Iranian threats and offensive words, 2 weeks coming of Israeli Jew economic shut down as they trade blows back and forth, ok sure Isreal is landing more hits but how much blood and treasure can it afford?


all exports are stopped and both countries are going to bankrupt themselves

they are going nuts trying to drag Trump into this


Ted Cruz, the blackmailed faggot Lindsey and neo Democrats seem to want boots on the ground


will USA be out of this 'World Police' business?


if Trump sees Trillions being sucked out of the US Tax Payer maybe he backs off, or does he go Zionist Donald?


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Friday, June 20, 2025 6:53 AM

SECOND

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


Trump's birthday parade! What an event! (Turn the sound on)

https://imgur.com/gallery/what-event-CUElDyh

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

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Friday, June 20, 2025 7:06 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

I don't give a single shit about your justifications for going insane.

Figure it out before you do something stupid, stupid.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Trump said he will make a decision about bombing Iran in two-weeks.


All I've heard out of you and Ted is made up lists from the Legacy Media about how Trump has lied over 10,000 times now.

So what do you give a shit?

You really need to get something else in that brain and push Trump out of it. You're fucking mental.

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

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

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Friday, June 20, 2025 7:54 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

All I've heard out of you and Ted is made up lists from the Legacy Media about how Trump has lied over 10,000 times now.

So what do you give a shit?

You really need to get something else in that brain and push Trump out of it. You're fucking mental.
Why would people complain about Donald "Adolf Hitler" Trump? So repetitive! Stop the complaining because Trump's Nazi followers, the Trumptards, who are degraded semi-humans, are angry about the complaints. Why would anyone want to make unhappy those diseased Trumptards, with their tax-cheating, lying, lazy, dishonest, rapist, racist, ignorant ways of life?

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

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Friday, June 20, 2025 7:55 AM

SECOND

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


We've become a failed nation-state in 150 days
From chaos and political violence to Israel and Iran, Trump's latest actions have sealed our fate

By Brian Karem | June 19, 2025 9:46AM (EDT)

https://www.salon.com/2025/06/19/weve-become-a-failed-nation-state-in-
150-days/

Donald Trump made his personal transformation of the White House nearly complete Wednesday morning.

He already announced his intentions to add a ballroom — “the biggest and best ever” — to the East Wing and has begun paving over the lawn of Jackie Kennedy’s iconic Rose Garden. (“It’ll be like nothing anyone has ever seen before,” he promised.) Now he’s installed two giant flagpoles, one on the North Lawn and the other on the South Lawn.

The two flagpoles, he posted on Truth Social, are “tall, tapered, rust proof” and of the “highest quality.” On Wednesday he said they were “beautiful poles” and “the best poles anywhere. . . in the world actually.” A few reporters, members of Congress and even some White House staff made the obvious snarky comments about “over-compensating” and “wishful thinking.” But the observation offered by a few who said that, with the oversized flags, Trump had turned the White House into a “used car lot” seems most accurate.

At this point, your honors, the prosecution humbly suggests we are a failed nation-state — not because of the erection of the flagpoles, but because of everything Trump, the courts, Congress and the press have done during the last 150 days of the new Trump regime. (A reminder that we still have just over 1300 days left.)

Iran is the latest debacle. That nation-state has been a thorn in the side of the United States since 1953, when the CIA toppled a democracy to install the Shah. During the Obama era, it looked like things might finally take a turn for the better after the former president’s negotiating team worked out a deal in 2015 that promised to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Trump canceled the deal during his first term, and since his inauguration in January, he has been trying to put nearly the exact same deal back into place. He says Iran “can’t have a nuclear weapon. It’s unacceptable.”

Yeah. That’s why Obama negotiated a deal that kept it from doing so.

With little incentive to restrain itself after Trump blew up the 2015 deal, Iran proceeded to enrich uranium. Israel got nervous and, over the weekend, despite the Trump administration’s ongoing negotiations with Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu launched missiles at the Islamic Republic. That caused the whole world to get nervous. Trump blamed Iran and defended Israel’s right to exist, bowing out of the G7 Summit in Canada on Tuesday so he could return to D.C. and ostensibly deal with the “growing crisis,” that is mostly his fault.

Aboard Air Force One, he gaggled with reporters and would not confirm what he would do about Iran. Instead, he posted “Unconditional Surrender” on Truth Social, without any explanation of what that meant, leading some wags in Washington to hope he had just resigned.

But that wasn’t the case, and he instead blasted Iran, saying he could kill that country’s “Supreme Leader” anytime he wanted. “We are not going to take him out (kill!) at least not for now.” He also claimed credit for Israel’s prowess, posting that “we now have complete and total control” of the skies over Iran because of “American made, conceived, and manufactured ‘stuff.’” But other than that wonderful bit of negotiation on social media, his early return to Washington led to little or no results by midweek. That led to speculation by press and staffers that he simply got bored at the G7 and used the Iranian crisis as an excuse to come home.

As the flagpoles went up on the White House campus on Wednesday, Trump said he had a hand on things and teased that America might join Israel in striking Iran. “You don’t know that I’m going to even do it. I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do.”

I think he said the quiet part out loud again. He has no idea what he’s going to do. As he admired his flagpoles, he admitted that he wouldn’t know what he would do until “a second before the deadline.”

Whatever that means.

Trump again blamed Iran. “Why didn’t you negotiate with me two weeks ago? You could have done fine.”

If you’re living in Iran you might not think so – especially after Trump sabotaged the last deal the U.S. government put into place. But logic has little place in Trump’s world.

All of this is evidence of why the U.S. is a failed nation-state. The chief executive officer is a convicted felon, 34 times over, and has been held liable in civil court for sexual abuse and defamation. He has issued executive orders that eliminate due process. He has ignored the Posse Comitatus Act and has considered invoking the Insurrection Act. He has deployed the military as police against American citizens. He is systematically purging from the federal government anyone perceived to be disloyal to him. He has hired clearly and provocatively unqualified people for some of the most important jobs in the administration. He has vowed recrimination against his “political enemies” and calls the press “the enemy of the people.” He won’t allow anyone to hold an opinion contrary to his own and lies so often that scores of fact-checkers owe their livelihood to researching his continuous, mind-bending deceptions. His foreign policy is a hot mess. He and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller screamed that “No Kings” protesters across the country were insurrectionists while he commuted the sentences of, or gave pardons to, 1500 people who engaged in insurrection on Jan. 6 because they supported him.

His administration has threatened, harassed and arrested Democratic lawmakers, including a U.S. senator, and a New York Comptroller.

Trump is a symptom of the problem and also a catalyst. The most telling piece of recent evidence of our failed nation-state status occurred Saturday, when two Minnesota Democratic state lawmakers and their spouses were horrifically targeted and shot in their homes. Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark, were victims of what U.S. Attorney Joseph H. Thompson called “a political assassination" and "a chilling attack on our democracy."

The MAGA crowd showed no empathy for the victims. A little more than 24 hours after Hortman was assassinated, Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee mocked the attack in a pair of social media posts. “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way,” Lee wrote on his personal X account. An hour later, in a post that showed a picture of the suspect, Lee wrote: “Nightmare on Waltz Street,” referencing Tim Walz, Minnesota’s Democratic governor.

Trump upped the ante. In the same gaggle on Air Force One where he rambled incoherently about Iran and Israel, Trump also insulted Walz. The governor is “slick” and “whacked out.” “I’m not calling him,” Trump said. A courtesy call would be a “waste of time.”

These divisive and deplorable actions by Trump have created imitators in both parties. While Sen. Lee’s comments were disgusting, so too were the recent actions in New York City by Mayor Eric Adams. He banned a New York Daily News reporter from his weekly news conferences after calling the reporter “disruptive” and “disrespectful” for shouting questions without being called on first. Trump tried the same thing with me in the White House. Spoiler alert: He lost three times in court trying to make that stick.

Further evidence of our failure includes the entire Democratic party which continues to eat its own. The Democrats are plagued by Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin, who couldn’t manage a 26-year-old activist — David Hogg — nor apparently anyone else in the DNC. Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, and Lee Saunders, the president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, recently declined offers to stay on as at-large members. Weingarten cited disagreements with Martin. Part of the Democratic party wants to hire consultants to find out what America wants, while another part wants to force its progressive agenda down the throats of a country that leans more centrist-right. How pathetic can the opposition be if it cannot defeat a party led by an autocrat allowing oligarchs to dismantle a democracy so the rich get richer and the poor will “die" anyway, according to Iowa GOP Sen. Joni Ernst.

Welcome back to chaos in a blender, the daily Donald Trump show that features endless madness, freaks, creeps, bumblers, tumblers, several royal curses and at least one trojan horse. And a really funny thing happened on the way to the forum; we don’t know if there’s a happy ending of course. But as Trump often tweets, “Stay tuned.” He is bound to get his. He’s now selling gold cellphones. Just imagine if Barack Obama or Joe Biden had done so.

And there you have it. One could mention how Congress has failed to provide checks and balances, but that once reputable branch of government is so ineffective as to be inconsequential in the telling of the tale. The judiciary is only marginally better, with even odds that anything positive done by a lower court will be reversed by Trump’s Supreme Court.

Meanwhile, the Fourth Estate has failed spectacularly, with reporters fired, lawsuits settled and apologies made that should never have been made. Rare is it these days that Trump is even asked a decent question.

If the United States before, during or immediately after World War II, had been presented with the fact of any nation-state behaving the way the U.S. has in the last 150 days under Donald Trump, the president, heavily supported by Congress, would have taken decisive action.

Now, the eye rolling, interruptions and damning with faint praise the G7 leaders gave Donald Trump is about the only indication of how little this country is respected internationally.

But it was a federal judge appointed by Ronald Reagan who nailed it when he blocked hundreds of cuts Trump had initiated for NIH grants. “I’ve never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable. I’ve sat on this bench now for 40 years. I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this,” said U.S. District Judge William Young of Massachusetts. “You are bearing down on people of color because of their color. The Constitution will not permit that…Have we fallen so low? Have we no shame?”

Apparently not.

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

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Friday, June 20, 2025 11:32 AM

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


Trump’s Vagueness on Iran Is Not Strategic

By Fred Kaplan | June 20, 2025 11:00 AM

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/06/donald-trump-iran-war-isra
el-two-weeks.html

What is Donald Trump up to? What is he trying to accomplish? Asked by reporters on Tuesday whether he’ll join Israel in its attacks on Iran, the president replied, “I may do it, I may not do it,” adding, “Nobody knows what I’m going to do.”

Sometimes a remark like this can be useful; it can prod an adversary into behaving with caution. Trump’s supporters have lauded him for his mastery of “strategic ambiguity” — a term coined by scholars of international relations to describe policies designed to deter aggression without quite spelling out the consequences.

But that’s not what’s going on here. In order for this ambiguity to be effective, leaders should have an idea of what they would do if war came — of how they would like to see the conflict play out.

Yet it’s clear, from all evidence, that Trump himself is among those who don’t know what he’s going to do. His contradictions breed only confusion; they might rein in Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but they might also spur him to take gigantic risks, believing (or hoping) that the threats are just bluffs. In any case, Trump has lost control of the narrative — the opposite of what any leader, much less a superpower, should do while playing this game.

Trump has gone back and forth on the question of whether to join Israel’s attacks on Iran, but in the past few days his words and deeds seemed to indicate that U.S. intervention was imminent. He warned residents of Tehran — a city of 9 million people, in a country of 90 million — to evacuate immediately. He said he’d given Iran an “ultimatum.” He said that when his emissary started negotiations with Iranians to get them to give up their nuclear program, he gave them a 60-day deadline — and “today is 61, right?” He said he was demanding “unconditional surrender.” He said he knew where “the so-called Supreme Leader” was hiding, though he wasn’t going to kill him — “not now,” anyway, suggesting that he might do so later (something that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu definitely would like to see happen).

Then came his “To be, or not to be” act — maybe he’ll attack, maybe he won’t, “nobody knows what I’m going to do.” Now Trump says he’ll decide what to do within the next two weeks.

This is not strategic ambiguity; it is, at best, ambivalence. In any case, a leader should not utter the rather definitive statements that Trump has uttered the past few days if he still hadn’t made up his mind, or if his mind was whirring like a strobe light.

Given Trump’s consistent record of inconsistency — his frequent threats, followed by reversals (and sometimes reversals of reversals), whether on tariffs, foreign conquests (cf. Greenland, Panama, Canada), or deporting migrants — Khamenei could reasonably conclude that the threats of recent days are more of the same and that, therefore, he needn’t back down. This, of course, could lead to catastrophe, especially if Trump decided to follow through this time — and Khamenei followed through on his own threats to unleash hundreds of missiles against Israel and U.S. bases throughout the Middle East if Trump intervenes.

Whatever happens, world leaders — all of whom are closely watching these events — are learning that nothing this president says should be taken seriously. Again, this is not strategic ambiguity. It’s merely the rantings of an overconfident president who thinks that acting tough gets results but doesn’t know what results he wants.

The best thing Trump could have done, when reporters asked him what he might do or not do in Iran, was to say nothing. Yes, he should have publicly noted that Iran’s pace of uranium enrichment is concerning, that he is considering a range of options. It was also a good idea, in and of itself, to move military assets, especially cargo-transport planes and aircraft carrier groups, into the region — whether as a deterrent or preparation for action. (It could serve both functions; that’s strategic ambiguity.) But then he should have kept quiet.

He should have sent private messages to Israel and Iran and consulted with other leaders — especially Arab and European allies — who have stakes in this war and its outcome. The problem is, Trump craves the spotlight; he can’t resist talking at length when cameras and microphones are pointed his way. And he finds allies unnecessary, at times annoying. He thinks he can figure out everything by himself. In recent days, he has called Cabinet meetings to discuss the options, but his secretaries — all of his minions — have learned to go along with everything he says. Offering contrary views gets them nowhere.

Trump is facing some dissension, if not from within his Cabinet, then from within the Republican Party. Many joined the MAGA movement because Trump promised to avoid getting sucked into the “stupid wars” of previous presidents, especially wars in the Middle East. On the other hand, the more traditional Republicans, especially those long devoted to Israel and hostile to the Islamic Republic of Iran, are yearning for Trump to drop bunker busters on the Fordow enrichment plant and help overthrow the ayatollah.

To the extent Trump is swayed by domestic politics, here too he is torn — and not for reasons having anything to do with strategy or ambiguity.

On Tuesday, I wrote a column that began, “By the time you read this, the United States might be at war with Iran. If not, check back in a few hours or a couple of days, as President Donald Trump is giving every indication that he’ll join the fighting soon.”

Well, a few days have passed, and here we are, nervously twiddling our thumbs while Trump has pedaled back and forth to the fence. It is worth noting, once again, that Trump is to blame for what’s going on. In his first term, he scuttled the Iran nuclear deal, which President Barack Obama and six other leaders had negotiated and which — as international inspectors had verified — Iran was following to the letter. In the years since, Iran restarted its nuclear program and is now closer than ever to building a bomb. It is not true, as Trump currently claims, that he gave the Iranians a chance to negotiate a new deal, but they refused. The Iranians were negotiating; it’s just that the last remaining obstacle to a deal — Trump’s insistence on barring the country from enriching any uranium, even to the low levels permitted (even encouraged) by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty — was a demand that no country could permit, especially Iran, whose advanced program gave it more bargaining leverage than it had during the Obama era.

Now, Trump is trapped between his (I think genuine) aversion to war and his bellicose rhetoric to the contrary. If coupled with shrewd diplomacy and a realistic negotiating strategy, this could have amounted to an effective bargaining strategy of his own; it could stand as a case study in strategic ambiguity. But Trump doesn’t know what he wants, or how to get it, so it’s just a muddle — and a dangerous one, which could find him dashing or sleepwalking into war.

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

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Friday, June 20, 2025 1:12 PM

SECOND

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


VIDEO: Discolored Hands, Neck Patches, Slurring and Rambling - Trump's Bizarre Flag Pole Appearance Creates More Questions Around Trump's Health

Rambling rants, bruised hands, a bandaged neck, and bizarre claims mark one of Trump’s most disturbing public appearances to date at White House flag pole 'Lifting'.

By Dean Blundell | Jun 19, 2025

https://deanblundell.substack.com/p/video-discolored-hands-neck-patche
s

If Donald Trump staged a flag-raising ceremony on the White House lawn to project strength, it backfired harder than a gas stove in Mar-a-Lago.

What was billed as a patriotic spectacle turned into a disturbing display of cognitive decline, physical frailty, and surreal soundbites that left even his supporters wondering: What the hell is wrong with him?

Let’s start with the visuals. Trump appeared winded, slouched, and listless, struggling to maintain his balance and breath as he addressed the press. He wore golf cleats—yes, golf cleats—on the lawn and kept a white Trump cap firmly on his head. And for good reason: close-up photos captured what appears to be a medical dressing or patch on the back of his neck, partially obscured by his collar. Combine that with a bruised, discolored right hand that looked like it belonged to a cadaver and not a commander-in-chief, and the red flags (and flagpoles) were flying.

But the true spectacle came from Trump’s mouth.

"Any Illegal Immigrants Here?"

In one of the most surreal moments of the press event, Trump turned around to the construction crew that had just finished installing the new flagpoles and asked, "Do we have anybody here who's a member of – no, I don't think so... Any illegal immigrants?" The stunned workers stared ahead silently as Trump added, "They’ll destroy these people. I didn’t want to tell them that before they stood up. Don’t worry, I think you’re gonna be OK."

Journalists stood there dumbfounded. Was he trying to make a joke? A threat? Was this a live reenactment of a Breitbart comment thread? Either way, it came off as cruel, paranoid, and utterly bizarre.

Confusing Threats to California

Moments later, he shifted gears—sort of—and started talking about California. When asked whether his feud with Governor Gavin Newsom might impact federal funding, Trump said, "He’s on top," implying that because Trump is president again, Newsom might get shafted. The rest of the rant spiraled into complaints about wildfires, rail projects, and then the age-old MAGA chestnut: forest raking.

Golf Glory and Imaginary Polls

Then came the inevitable Trump classic: golf. Out of nowhere, he declared he had won "35 club championships." Yes, 35. Most people struggle to remember what they had for breakfast; Trump remembers winning tournaments that didn’t happen.

If that sounds like exaggeration, it’s not. Fact-checkers have long debunked this claim. Many of the so-called "wins" were self-declared or allegedly occurred in tournaments with only a handful of players—often at his own clubs. It’s like awarding yourself Employee of the Month when you’re the only one in the office.

Next, he claimed his poll numbers had "never been higher" and said Americans "like me more than they hate war in Iraq." Seriously. That’s a quote. Not only is this a lie—he’s polling in the low 40s and sinking—it’s such a weird metric that it almost defies satire. Who says that? Who measures their popularity in units of Middle Eastern conflict?

Iran, Israel, and Incoherence

Then came the truly concerning part. When asked if he would attack Iran, Trump went into a long, confused answer: "I may do it, I may not do it... nobody knows what I’m going to do... They made a mistake. Their country is in ruins. So many people are dead that shouldn't be dead." Then, without warning, he turned to a woman nearby and said, "Come on over here. You don't have to ruin your shoes."

Within seconds, he pivoted again—not to finish the point, but to talk about the wires inside the flagpoles. "When they're outside, they're very noisy. They snap in the wind." This is what a conversation with your very old, very confused uncle sounds like at Thanksgiving after too many sherries. Not what we should hear from someone with nuclear launch codes.

The Decline on Display

Let’s be blunt: this was not just a "bad day" for Trump. This was a neon-lit warning sign.

Breathlessness while standing still.

Discoloration and bruising on his hands.

A visible patch on the back of his neck, possibly covering a medical device or post-procedure site.

Incoherent, disjointed sentences veering from Iran to flagpole acoustics.

Even conservative insiders are starting to whisper louder: he’s not well. He left the G7 early, where sources said he looked exhausted and incoherent. His stamina is shot. His memory is slipping. And his obsession with dominance is morphing into erratic outbursts and imagined achievements.

The Emperor Has No Stamina

The flagpole event was supposed to project strength. What it projected was decline. And if you looked closely, you saw the whole charade unraveling:

A leader so vain he wore a hat to hide a wound.

So out of it, he rambled about grass and snapping wires while threatening Iran.

So obsessed with his own myth, he made up golf wins and imaginary polling highs.

So petty, he threatened to withhold disaster relief to California because of a grudge.

This isn’t just a clown show anymore—it’s a constitutional crisis in slow motion. If Trump can’t raise a flag without lowering the national IQ, we need to ask ourselves: are we watching the unraveling of a man… or a regime?

Because the next time Trump decides to take action, it might not be about flagpoles. It could be about war. And based on what we saw this week, he is not well enough to make that call.



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

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Friday, June 20, 2025 3:31 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

All I've heard out of you and Ted is made up lists from the Legacy Media about how Trump has lied over 10,000 times now.

So what do you give a shit?

You really need to get something else in that brain and push Trump out of it. You're fucking mental.
Why would people complain about Donald "Adolf Hitler" Trump? So repetitive! Stop the complaining because Trump's Nazi followers, the Trumptards, who are degraded semi-humans, are angry about the complaints. Why would anyone want to make unhappy those diseased Trumptards, with their tax-cheating, lying, lazy, dishonest, rapist, racist, ignorant ways of life?


Nobody wants to hear your lies after 4 years of pretending your meat potato auto-pen "president" had a brain.

Go fuck yourself and your dead party, Second.

Nobody is listening to any of you anymore. You lose. Forever.

You've earned it, buddy.

Keep on doing exactly what you're doing. Working for Trump every day for free.



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

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

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Saturday, June 21, 2025 6:57 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Nobody wants to hear your lies after 4 years of pretending your meat potato auto-pen "president" had a brain.

Go fuck yourself and your dead party, Second.

Nobody is listening to any of you anymore. You lose. Forever.

You've earned it, buddy.

Keep on doing exactly what you're doing. Working for Trump every day for free.
Alex Cole @acnewsitics

— Trump: “I made a trade deal with Xi!”
— Xi: “No, he didn’t.”

— Trump: “I negotiated a ceasefire between India and Pakistan.”
— Modi: “No, he didn’t.”

— Trump: “I talked to Newsom!”
— Newsom: “No, he didn’t.”

— Trump: “Iran called me.”
— Iran: “No, we didn’t.”

7:21 AM Jun 19, 2025
https://x.com/acnewsitics/status/1935674248858935531

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

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Saturday, June 21, 2025 6:58 AM

SECOND

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


He fell asleep at NATO in 2017.
He fell asleep at his criminal trial.
He fell asleep at the RNC.
He fell asleep at the Pope’s funeral.
He fell asleep at the G7 in Canada.
Being despised by the entire world must be exhausting!

The first reporter to simply stand up and ask Trump “what the f*ck is wrong with you?” should win a Pulitzer Prize.

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

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Saturday, June 21, 2025 6:59 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


REUTERS: Pakistan to nominate Trump for Nobel Peace Prize

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/pakistan-nominate-trump-nob
el-peace-prize-2025-06-21/

Holy shit...

I just heard the sound of 10 Million Far-Left college "educated" commie LARPer's heads explode in unison.



How you feeling about your 96% lower activist judge plant kangaroo court wins in May right now, Ted?

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

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

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Saturday, June 21, 2025 7:00 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Years of Queers for Palestine parading around and all that far-left ass rimming the white college "educated" kids were giving the Palestinians... along with Richard Maddow, Joe "the Intern Slasher" Scarborough and the very fine ladies on The View... all for naught.

Quote:
"President Trump demonstrated great strategic foresight and stellar statesmanship through robust diplomatic engagement with both Islamabad and New Delhi, which de-escalated a rapidly deteriorating situation," Pakistan said. "This intervention stands as a testament to his role as a genuine peacemaker."

...

Mushahid Hussain, a former chair of the Senate Defence Committee in Pakistan’s parliament, suggested nominating Trump for the peace prize was justified.

"Trump is good for Pakistan," he said. "If this panders to Trump’s ego, so be it. All the European leaders have been sucking up to him big time."


Get your tongues out of Trump's asshole.



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

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

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Saturday, June 21, 2025 7:52 AM

SECOND

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


So young and yet already taking bribes, just like Daddy! It is the Winds of Change Blowing!

Barron Trump's Crypto Investor Nears Cash Bonanza

By Theo Burman | Jun 19, 2025 at 12:16 PM EDT

https://www.newsweek.com/justin-sun-tron-barron-trump-cryptocurrency-2
087778

President Donald Trump has long touted Barron, his youngest child, as the family's cryptocurrency expert, saying: "He knows so much about this" during an interview last year. Barron Trump has reportedly earned nearly $40 million from cryptocurrency ventures and has multiple "wallets," a kind of portfolio used to manage blockchain transactions.

This would make him the richest of any of Trump's sons at the age of 19. Barron's position at World Liberty Financial, where he ranks the same as other members of his family, is his first big foray into the business world.

Barron is currently enrolled in New York University's Stern School of Business, where fees set students back $99,000 per year, which indicates he intends to follow his father into the same business background which made the Trump name.

6ixStringJack, Barron Trump should be Donald Trump's successor in the White House, and the Constitution should be changed so that Presidents need not be at least 35 years old.
https://www.usa.gov/requirements-for-presidential-candidates

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

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Saturday, June 21, 2025 1:36 PM

SECOND

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


What Iran Knows About Trump

The mullahs of Iran join the bet that Trump always chickens out.

By David Frum | June 21, 2025, 9 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/06/iran-trump-taco-play
/683271/

President Donald Trump is being pulled toward war in the Middle East by his predator’s eye for a victim’s weakness and his ego’s need to claim the work of others as his own. But since his “unconditional surrender” social-media post on Tuesday, other Trump instincts have asserted themselves: above all, his fear of responsibility.

Trump enjoys wielding power. He flinches from accountability. Days ago, Trump seemed to hunger for entry into Israel’s war. A dramatic victory seemed poised to tumble into somebody’s lap. Why not his? But as the hours passed, Trump reconsidered. Instead of acting, he postponed. He said that a decision would come within “two weeks.”

Time for diplomacy to work? Perhaps that might be the case in another administration. In this one, as attentive Trump watchers have learned, the “two weeks” promise is a way of shirking a decision altogether, whether on Russia sanctions (deadline lapsed June 11, without action), trade deals (deadline lapsed June 12, without result), or a much-heralded infrastructure program (deadline lapsed May 20, 2017, without action then or ever).

During his first term, Trump claimed to have taken the U.S. to the verge of war with Iran in the summer of 2019, only to cancel the mission (again, by his own account) 10 minutes before mission launch. The story, as Trump told it, can hardly have impressed the rulers of Iran with the U.S. president’s commitment and resolve. But the experience of 2019 could suggest to the Iranian regime a strategy for 2025:

Step 1: Absorb the Israeli strikes, as painful and humiliating as they are.

Step 2: Mobilize Russian President Vladimir Putin to dissuade Trump from military action.

Step 3: Agree to return to negotiations if Trump forces a cease-fire on Israel.

Step 4: Dawdle, obfuscate, and generally play for time.

Step 5: Reconstitute whatever remains of the Iranian nuclear program.

This strategy would play on all of Trump’s pressure points, especially his unwillingness to ever do anything that Putin does not want. It would leave Israel in the lurch, but over the years Trump has left many other allies like that.

Trump is vulnerable to the negotiate-to-delay strategy because he has not taken any of the necessary steps to lead the nation into the war he once seemed ready to join.

Trump has not asked Congress for any kind of authorization. The decision, he insists, will be his and his alone. Which will be feasible if the operation turns out as Ronald Reagan’s invasion of Grenada did in 1983: over in a few days with few U.S. casualties and at minimal cost. But Grenada was a nearby island nation with a population of less than 100,000; Iran is a regional power with a population of more than 90 million.

War with Iran will also need real money. The 78-day air war against Serbia in 1998 cost the U.S. and its NATO allies a comparatively modest $7 billion (about $14 billion in today’s dollars). Iran is likely to prove a more dangerous enemy than Serbia was. Israel’s air war against Iran costs about $1 billion a day, according to estimates published by Ynet News. A fight with Iran will likely require some kind of supplemental appropriation above the present defense budget. Congress may balk at funding a costly war it did not approve in the first place.

Trump has not put competent leadership in charge of the nation’s defense or domestic security. Trump’s secretary of defense is accused by his own former advisers and friends of playacting a role that completely exceeds his abilities. If Iran retaliates with terror attacks inside the United States or on American interests abroad, it will find the U.S. desperately vulnerable. Trump purged experienced leaders from counterterrorism jobs. He installed underqualified culture warriors atop the FBI, and appointed at the Department of Homeland Security a cosplaying partisan who diverted $200 million of agency resources to a “Thank You Trump” advertising campaign.

Trump has not mobilized allies other than Israel. The United States has generally fought its major wars alongside coalition partners. Even Trump did so in his first term. France, the United Kingdom, and many other partners shouldered heavy burdens in the 2014–17 campaign in Syria and Iraq against the Islamic State terror group. But Trump did not assemble that coalition; he inherited it from the Obama administration. Trump shows no inclination to try assembling his own in 2025.

Trump has not rallied domestic public opinion. Before this year, only a minority of Republicans and not even a third of Democrats regarded Iran as an important security threat to the United States. George W. Bush went to war in Iraq with almost three-quarters of Americans behind him. As late as the spring of 2006, half the country still supported Bush’s war. Trump will begin a war with Iran with less support than Bush could muster after three years in Iraq. Nor does Trump have any evident path to broadening support. As my former Atlantic colleague Ronald Brownstein quips, Trump is governing as a wartime president, but the war into which he has led the country is red America’s culture war against blue America: Even as Trump weighs the deployment of U.S. air power against Iran, he’s leading a federal military occupation of California.

Trump seems to recognize that he cannot unify the nation and therefore dares not lead it into any arduous or hazardous undertaking. That may be the secret self-awareness behind Trump’s “two weeks” hesitation. This is not a self-awareness that will help Israel or secure the United States’ long-term interest in depriving Iran of a nuclear weapon. But in the absence of any strategic planning or preparedness, that self-awareness is all we have to guide the country through the next fortnight and, very possibly, a long succession of “two weeks” after that.

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

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Saturday, June 21, 2025 1:37 PM

SECOND

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


American Democracy Might Not Survive a War With Iran

The United States is well down the road to dictatorship. Imagine what Trump would do with a state of war.

By Robert Kagan | June 21, 2025, 7 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/06/democracy-ir
an-israel-war-trump/683269/

The current debate over bombing Iran is surreal. To begin with, bombardment is unlikely to lead to a satisfactory outcome. If history has shown one thing, it is that achieving a lasting resolution by bombing alone is almost impossible. There was a reason the United States sent ground forces into Iraq in 2003, and it was not to plant democracy. It was that American officials believed they could not solve the problem of Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs simply by bombing. They had tried that. The Clinton administration bombed Iraq for four days in 1998. At the end, they had no idea what they had destroyed and what they hadn’t. They certainly knew they had not put a permanent end to the program. In 2003, if George W. Bush thought he could have permanently ended Saddam’s weapons programs by bombing alone, he would have taken that option.

Iran today poses the same dilemma. America’s weapons may be better than they were in 2003, its intelligence capabilities greater, and Iran may be weaker than it was even a year ago, but the problem remains. Bombing alone will not achieve a verifiable and lasting end to Iran’s nuclear program. It can buy time, and Israel’s strikes have done that. American strikes could extend that period, but a determined Iranian regime will likely try again. A permanent solution would require a far more intrusive international verification regime, which in turn would require a ground presence for protection.

However, that is not the main reason I oppose bombing Iran. Nor is it the reason I find the discussion of all of this so bizarre. You would never know, as The New York Times churns out its usual policy-option thumb-suckers, that the United States is well down the road to dictatorship at home.

That is the context in which a war with Iran will occur. Donald Trump has assumed dictatorial control over the nation’s law enforcement. The Justice Department, the police, ICE agents, and the National Guard apparently answer to him, not to the people or the Constitution. He has neutered Congress by effectively taking control of the power of the purse. And, most relevant in Iran’s case, he is actively and openly turning the U.S. military into his personal army, for use as he sees fit, including as a tool of domestic oppression. Whatever action he does or doesn’t take in Iran will likely be in furtherance of these goals. When he celebrates the bombing of Iran, he will be celebrating himself and his rule. The president ordered a military parade to honor his birthday. Imagine what he will do when he proclaims military success in Iran. The president is working to instill in our nation’s soldiers a devotion to him and him alone. Imagine how that relationship will blossom if he orders what he will portray as a successful military mission.

Indeed, I can think of nothing more perilous to American democracy right now than going to war. Think of how Trump can use a state of war to strengthen his dictatorial control at home. Trump declared a state of national emergency in response to a nonexistent “invasion” by Venezuelan gangs. Imagine what he will do when the United States is actually at war with a real country, one that many Americans fear. Will he tolerate dissent in wartime? Woodrow Wilson locked up peace activists, including Eugene V. Debs. You think Trump won’t? He has been locking people up on flimsier excuses in peacetime. Even presidents not bent on dictatorship have taken measures in wartime that would otherwise be unthinkable.

Then there is the matter of terrorism. What if Iran is able to pull off a terrorist attack on U.S. soil in retaliation for an American strike? Or even just tries and fails? The courts will permit a president almost anything in the aftermath of an attack: Any restraints they’ve put on Trump will vanish. The administration may claim that anti-terrorism laws permit it to violate the rights of American citizens in the same way that it is currently violating the rights of the noncitizens being scooped off the streets by masked men. The attorney general has already threatened to use terrorism statutes to prosecute people who throw stones at Tesla dealerships. Imagine what she will do to anti-war protesters with the justification of a real terrorist threat.

Finally, there are the global implications. The United States is currently ruled by anti-liberal forces trying to overturn the Founders’ universalist liberal ideals and replace them with a white, Christian ethnoreligious national identity. American officials are actively supporting similar anti-liberal forces all around the world, including the current anti-liberal ethnoreligious government of Israel. Any success Trump claims in Iran, whatever its other consequences, will be a victory for the anti-liberal alliance and will further the interests of anti-liberalism across the globe. This is true even though the current regime in Iran is itself anti-liberal. Should the mullahs fall, Trump and Israel are likely to support a military strongman against any democratic forces that might emerge there. That has been Israel’s policy throughout the region, and even presidents who did not share Trump’s proclivity for dictators, such as Barack Obama, have acquiesced to Israel’s preferences. I’m not interested in using American military power to make the world safer for dictatorship.

I might feel differently if Iran posed a direct threat to the United States. It doesn’t. The U.S. policy of containing Iran was always part of a larger strategy to defend a liberal world system with a liberal America at its center. Americans need to start thinking differently about our foreign policy in light of what is happening in our country. We can no longer trust that any Trump foreign-policy decision will not further illiberal goals abroad or be used for illiberal ends at home.

Today, the United States itself is at risk of being turned into a military dictatorship. Its liberal-democratic institutions have all but crumbled. The Founders’ experiment may be coming to an end. War with Iran is likely to hasten its demise. Not that it matters, but count me out.

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

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Saturday, June 21, 2025 9:49 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Looks like they've got all you faggots across the spectrum obsessing over Iran now.



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

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

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Sunday, June 22, 2025 6:58 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Looks like they've got all you faggots across the spectrum obsessing over Iran now.



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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
It looks like you are idiotic, 6ix. Not specifically about Trump but about EVERYTHING, which is pretty darn typical for all Trumptards, and explains why they struggle so hard to be successful in America and fail to reach that goal. The Trumptards then compensate for failure with alcohol, tobacco, gluttony, drugs, sex, cheating, lying, stealing, religion or materialistically buying happiness to feel better about themselves.

(I suddenly realize what Trumptards find attractive about Trump! He compensates for failure in the same ways they do. Ever notice how fat Trump is? Or how much sex he has with strangers? Or how he cheats in business? Libtards think Trump and his Trumptards are huge American failures, but don't want to tell those despicable citizens because that would alienate the Trumptards from voting for Democrats.)

21 thoughts on Trump's war with Iran

A risky situation brought to us by a weak president

Slow Boring by Matthew Yglesias / Jun 21, 2025 at 8:51 PM

https://www.slowboring.com/p/21-thoughts-on-trumps-war-with-iran

1. America’s top priority in the Middle East should be decreasing our involvement in the region. President after president keeps vowing to do that, they’ve all failed, and now Trump has arguably failed most of all.

2. What’s been maddening about Iran policy debates for the past decade is that the hawks keeps lying about their own policy preferences.

3. Opponents of the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) deal would make a big show of getting upset if you said that their preferred alternative to the deal was war. When Trump tore up the JCPOA, they again made a big show of getting mad at anyone who said this was putting us on a course for war. But here we are, at war.

4. Now that war is upon us, the biggest red herring in the world is that proponents will say they did this to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. No. Obama signed the JCPOA to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

5. To be clear, JCPOA critics weren’t delusional. The reason that Iran was willing to sign the deal was that it provided them with meaningful upside in the form of sanctions relief. And because the point of the JCPOA was to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, it did not address other concerns one might have with Iran, like the nature of its regime or its cultivation of a regional network of proxy militias or its ballistic missile arsenal. But JCPOA prevented Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. What deal opponents didn’t like was that this was all that it did.

6. The problem with making a deal with Iran that offers Iran upside is it lets them improve their economy and thus pour more resources into various non-nuclear undertakings. This is especially a problem from Israel’s perspective, since they are the targets of many of these undertakings.

7. But the problem with not offering Iran upside is that if Iran doesn’t get upside in a deal, then there’s no deal. You end up with either a nuclear Iran or a war.

8. Now, maybe the war will end up being a “splendid little war” conducted by air with no American casualties and minimal impacts on Israel. Maybe Iran caves and signs a humiliating deal. This definitely might happen, and I wouldn’t trust anyone who professes to be certain it will turn into a fiasco.

9. That said, as Robert Pape wrote a few days ago, the practical track record of countries achieving major strategic goals through air power alone is pretty thin. Ever since aerial bombardment was invented, there’s been a desire to believe wars can be won by securing air superiority and dropping bombs, but it rarely works. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/iran/israels-futile-air-war

10. It’s going to be hard to know how much damage has actually been done to Iran’s underground nuclear facilities.

11. The treatment received by North Korea over the past 25 years — in contrast to Iraq, Libya, Iran, and, in a different way, Ukraine — is a strong argument for countries to sprint to nuclear weapons development and then figure things out from there. The “Iran surrenders” scenario is definitely on the table, but “Iran genuinely goes for a nuclear weapon” seems like a more likely scenario.

12. Which again brings us back to the JCPOA debate: The Obama administration wanted to make a deal because they didn’t want Iran to build a nuclear weapon and they didn’t want to get sucked into a regime change war. JCPOA opponents were happy to have a regime change war, but they’ve never wanted to admit that.

13. Israel attracts a lot of moralistic outrage for its conduct toward Palestinian civilians, much of which I think is warranted, and for its refusal to engage in good faith negotiations around a two-state solution, where I think the outrage is entirely wanted.

14. In the eyes of a lot of western progressives, this creates a kind of moral contamination around everything else that Israel does. But judged in isolation, Israel is clearly the sympathetic party in its regional conflict with Iran. And while the Iranian “axis of resistance” has been a thorn in Israel’s side, the sponsorship of Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis has, in practice, only brought disaster on Palestinians.

15. I would have no particular objection to Israel deciding it wants to wage war against Iran, or to the United States helping Israel on the level of selling them weapons and military equipment for that war. The problem with an “Israel bombs Iran” scenario has always been that Israel lacks the capacity to take out the underground nuclear facilities, so an Israeli bombing campaign means starting a war they can’t finish and hoping to bait the United States into finishing the job for them.

16. A lot of people felt that Joe Biden gave Netanyahu everything he wanted, but he absolutely did not give him this.

17. Donald Trump could have simply embarked on this course of action if he thought it was a good idea. But he plainly did not and was trying for a while to reach a new diplomatic accord with Iran, an accord that by all accounts would look a lot like the JCPOA. But for all Trump’s bluster, he’s a fundamentally weak and indecisive leader, and he let Netanyahu jam him up in a way that Biden and Obama never did.

18. You can hardly blame Netanyahu for taking advantage of Trump’s weakness and lack of control over the situation. From the standpoint of Israeli policy, it is definitely better to have the US maximally engaged in the Middle East rather than cutting a deal that could strengthen the Iranian economy.

19. The problem, obviously, is that the US and Israel are different countries with different interests.

20. A lot of people spent years insisting the Trump administration’s pro-Russian views on the Ukraine War reflected either a general anti-war disposition or else a strong desire to set regional priorities and focus American energy on the Pacific. The decision to go to war with Iran puts the lie to all that and reveals what should have been clear to anyone paying attention: There’s no sophisticated strategy guiding Trump on Ukraine, he’s just on the other side.

21. I have grave, grave misgivings about this course of action — there are so many ways it could end up going horribly, and the upside to the United States of any possible “better deal” than the JCPOA is limited. Still, it’s at least possible that it will work out fine. Israel’s attacks on Hezbollah and earlier strikes on Iran have shown that Iranian military capacity is not as strong as many observers thought. I hope for the best. But hope is not a plan, and I seriously doubt that Trump has a better one.

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

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Sunday, June 22, 2025 9:09 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Looks like they've got all you faggots across the spectrum obsessing over Iran now.



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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Iran is not the only Trump foolishness. He has also appointed dozens of multi-billionaires to run the Federal government.

Inequality, Part IV: Oligarchs

The rise of mega-fortunes

By Paul Krugman / Jun 22, 2025 at 5:33 AM

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/inequality-part-iv-oligarchs

Share of the top 0.01% in total wealth, from the GC Wealth Project

https://wealthproject.gc.cuny.edu/wealth-inequality-trends/inequality-
trends/#countryview

Who said this?
Quote:
If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it; what we have to determine now is whether we are big enough, whether we are men enough, whether we are free enough, to take possession again of the government which is our own.
No, it wasn’t Bernie Sanders or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. It’s a quote from The New Freedom, Woodrow Wilson’s campaign platform in the 1912 presidential election.

Wilson was a vile racist, even for his time, and his reputation has suffered appropriately. But he was also a progressive on economic policy. And I’ve always been struck by the fact that in the early 20th century a politician could declare that great concentrations of wealth were a threat to democracy without being considered a radical, un-American Marxist. Wilson won that election!

Politicians, even progressives, are far more timid these days. Yet we are once again living in an era in which there are men big enough to own the U.S. government — and to a large extent they do. For a while Elon Musk exerted more power over the operations of the U.S. government than any cabinet member or elected official short of Donald Trump himself. Musk is currently on the outs, but the Trump administration is stuffed full of billionaires and people who take their marching orders from billionaires. Congress appears to be about to enact legislation, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, that billionaires love even though the broader public hates all its main provisions.

How did we get here?

This is my latest entry in a series of primers on inequality; here are Part I, Part II, and Part III. Today my focus will be on extreme wealth concentration — the rise of an American oligarchy. Beyond the paywall I will address the following:

1. Tracking the rise of extreme wealth

2. How did our modern oligarchs get so rich?

I’ll eventually want to talk about the political and social consequences of extreme wealth concentration, and how it undermines democracy. But that will have to wait for later posts.

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

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Sunday, June 22, 2025 4:33 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Looks like they've got all you faggots across the spectrum obsessing over Iran now.



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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
6ix, Trump bombs Iran. Why should that, and his “One Big Beautiful Bill” Act, make you so glum?
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Well... this is all a fucking joke now.

It would have been all the news could talk about on Monday, but now nobody will mention it. And rightfully so.


Now I'm 50/50 on whether or not we've improved anything. Epstein killed himself, we went to war with Iran AND I'm going to lose my health insurance.


Unless some big turnarounds happen in the next 18 months, I'm done. If we're just going to watch the world burn, I'd rather have health insurance while it all goes down in flames.

I'm about one large bad decision away from committing myself to voting Democrat the rest of my life, regardless of how bad the Democratic Party is for American Citizens and the future of our country.

Looks like the NeoCons win again. They always find a way to win.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=66892&mid=12219
89#1221989

One Big Beautiful Bill Act 119th Congress (2025-2026)
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1/text

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

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Sunday, June 22, 2025 4:40 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Looks like they've got all you faggots across the spectrum obsessing over Iran now.



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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
With strikes on Iran, Trump has chosen a path of insanity

It's time to ask: Is a mental condition driving his foreign policy?

By Bill Curry | Published June 22, 2025 5:45AM (EDT)

https://www.salon.com/2025/06/22/with-strikes-on-iran-has-chosen-a-pat
h-of-insanity/

There are lots of good reasons for not psychoanalyzing politicians. But when a leader suffering a severe mental illness poses a grave risk to the nation and the world, we can’t just close our eyes. We are in such a moment now.

In the lead-up to last night's airstrikes, which Trump immediately declared a "spectacular military success" in a hyperbolic 3½ minute speech from the White House, his behavior has been marked by manic outbursts and abrupt changes of course. His actions strongly suggest that his mental condition is driving his foreign policy, and that it has now drawn us into war, however limited he promises it will be, with Iran.

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

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Sunday, June 22, 2025 11:21 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Looks like they've got all you faggots across the spectrum obsessing over Iran now.



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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Why so gloomy, 6ix? Trump forcing you to go back to work can’t be that awful. Trump loves you! You need to experience Trump’s Winds of Change Blowing you.
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack, Wednesday, June 4, 2025 4:12 PM :
Yanno....

I have been giving this one quite a lot of thought over the last few months, and largely keeping it to myself.

I've always been one to keep a low profile... Little things like nondescript colors in my clothing choices and cars. Being generally quiet while out in public. Especially while alone... not so much if I'm out having a good time with friends or something... but out in public for sure.

We all had dreams of being famous one day when we were kids. Even those of us who would never want to admit to such a silly thing is lying to you if they tell you there was never a time that they didn't want that...

Well...

I don't know when that shift happened for me for certain, but many decades have passed since I left that dream behind. And many years more have driven me so far the other way that the idea of everyone knowing who you are and recognizing your face is absolutely abhorrent and even a terrifying thought...

I certainly don't want that now. No matter the reason. I wouldn't wish that on anyone.


And therein lies my biggest remaining hurdle to a decision I'd have otherwise already come to. And if I can somehow climb that hurdle, than I think that I've already made up my mind.



I will refuse to go back to work if work requirements are reinstated.

I will lose my health insurance.

I will not pay for any drugs or the healthcare that will quickly become necessary to keep me alive, because any money I have left along with my house will be going to my disabled brother to support him when I'm not there to.

And I will slowly die.

And it will all be documented in video.

And after I am gone the pubic will be able to judge of that what they will.



Whatever higher power there is out there, even if it's just the vague notion of Chaos itself... Grant me the bravery to put my face out there and make this statement public.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=48944&mid=12204
83#1220483

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

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Monday, June 23, 2025 12:04 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Go eat a dick, cunt.

Been listening to you cry about everything, everyday for 12 years.

Why don't you tell us who you want to murder today.


Meanwhile, I'm just doing what what I said I would do and what you're completely incapable of doing. Calling out "my side" when they fuck up.

Maybe if you did that ONCE, your party wouldn't be dead right now and there would be some legitimate pushback to the bad things that the Trump admin is trying to do.

But you didn't do that, so here we are.



In the meantime, if you're going to try to use taking healthcare away from American Citizenss and/or starting a new war without a Congressional go-ahead as if they are not things you also don't agree with against me, go fuck yourself. Hard.

You petty, whiny, worthless little shit.

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

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

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Monday, June 23, 2025 7:08 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Go eat a dick, cunt.

Been listening to you cry about everything, everyday for 12 years.

Why don't you tell us who you want to murder today.


Meanwhile, I'm just doing what what I said I would do and what you're completely incapable of doing. Calling out "my side" when they fuck up.

Maybe if you did that ONCE, your party wouldn't be dead right now and there would be some legitimate pushback to the bad things that the Trump admin is trying to do.

But you didn't do that, so here we are.



In the meantime, if you're going to try to use taking healthcare away from American Citizenss and/or starting a new war without a Congressional go-ahead as if they are not things you also don't agree with against me, go fuck yourself. Hard.

You petty, whiny, worthless little shit.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Scott Aaronson wrote on June 22nd, 2025 at 3:09 pm

There are 10,000 things one could pick to explain why Trump has been a catastrophe for the US and the world, but one that sticks in my mind right now is the gutting of USAID, which will cause hundreds of thousands of children to die needlessly, for no purpose except to give DOGE a symbolic and fiscally almost meaningless “win.” Every Trump supporter should have those children’s deaths on his or her conscience forever.

https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8950#comment-2011661

6ixStringJack, Scott Aaronson is too nice to wish worse than a troubled conscience on Trumptards, but he might if he knew you.


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

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Monday, June 23, 2025 7:16 AM

SECOND

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


MAGA Will Devastate Rural America

Trump’s policies will hit the American heartland hard, very hard

Paul Krugman / Jun 23, 2025 at 5:40 AM

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/maga-will-devastate-rural-america

Everyone is talking, understandably, about Iran. But the rest of Donald Trump’s policy agenda continues to goose-step on. Radical changes in social spending, immigration policy and tariffs — changes that will hurt tens of millions of Americans — are either about to start or are already happening.

And one point I haven’t seen emphasized much is that while the human damage from these policies will be very widespread, it will be especially severe in rural areas and small towns — the very areas that overwhelmingly supported Trump in 2024.

The first thing you need to understand is that while rural Americans like to think of themselves as self-reliant, the fact is that poorer, more rural states are in effect heavily subsidized by richer states like Massachusetts and New Jersey.

This reality makes it inevitable that the standard conservative fiscal agenda — tax cuts for the rich, benefit cuts for the poor and middle class — hurts the heartland more than it hurts major metropolitan areas. But MAGA’s Reverse Robin Hoodism goes far beyond the standard conservative agenda, in ways that will be especially devastating to rural areas and small towns.

First, consider the shape of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. (I think it’s important to call it by its ludicrous official name, as a reminder of the extent to which Republican members of Congress have become North Korea-style sycophants.) The final details haven’t been settled, and there’s still an outside chance that the whole thing falls apart. But it’s almost certain that there will be savage cuts to Medicaid and food stamps, programs that disproportionately help Trump-supporting rural areas.

Let’s talk about Medicaid first, a program that is far more important than most affluent Americans tend to realize. Almost 40 percent of children are covered by Medicaid, with some of the highest percentages in deep red states like Alabama and Mississippi. Medicaid pays for 42 percent of births in America. And more to my point, Medicaid covers a higher fraction of the population in rural than in urban counties. So deep cuts in the program will hit Trump-supporting regions especially hard.

The same is true for OBBB’s deep cuts to food stamps.

The damage will be magnified by Republican plans to cut Medicaid spending by adding work requirements. We know from repeated experience that such requirements don’t actually lead to significant increases in employment. What they do instead is block access to health care by creating bureaucratic hurdles for beneficiaries — hurdles that rural Americans, often burdened by limited formal education and inadequate internet access, find especially hard to overcome.

Furthermore, rural America has long had a problem of hospital closures: It’s hard for hospitals to stay in business given both low population density and limited ability of patients to pay. The Beautiful Bill will accelerate this trend, so that even rural residents who can afford care may very well find it geographically out of reach.

In addition, federal health spending, both Medicaid and Medicare, is disproportionately important in supporting rural and left-behind local economies. For example, the economy of West Virginia no longer rests on coal mining, which employs very few people these days. It would be more accurate to say that the foundation of West Virginia’s economy is federal spending on Medicare and Medicaid. That is, in deep red West Virginia, Medicare and Medicaid are directly and indirectly a major source of income.

Then there are Trump’s immigration policies. American agriculture relies heavily on hired workers — and around two thirds of these hired workers are immigrants. A majority of these foreign-born workers are undocumented:

Moreover, even if you a legal resident or even a native-born citizen, do you really feel safe if ICE thinks you look like an illegal immigrant? Not surprisingly, there are reports of widespread ICE raids on farms and of workers refusing to work out of fear of arrest and deportation.

Can immigrant workers be replaced with native-born workers, or even with legal immigrants? No. All indications are that few native-born Americans would be willing to do these jobs unless they were paid much higher wages. Under the Biden administration the U.S. introduced a program offering grants to farmers who bring in foreign workers legally — but the Trump administration has frozen funding for that program, including money that had already been promised, leaving farmers on the hook for many thousands of dollars.

So Trump’s anti-immigrant policies are inflicting will be a major blow to U.S. agriculture — to family farms that employ immigrant workers and are being left high and dry, to food processing and local retail. Like Medicaid, immigrant farm labor directly and indirectly supports many rural jobs for the native-born.

Finally, there’s the trade war. In case you haven’t noticed, Trump hasn’t yet delivered a single one of the 90 trade deals he promised to negotiate by July 8. China has already retaliated, and others will follow. And U.S. agriculture is highly dependent on exports:

Source: Department of Agriculture

Nor can you argue that farmers will make up for lost exports by producing goods we currently import, since we mainly import the farm products we can’t produce here. That’s a point that seems to be lost on Trump’s Commerce Secretary. Recently Howard Lutnick clashed with Rep. Madeline Dean over the impact of tariffs on prices of food items including bananas. “If you build in America … there will be no tariff,” Lutnick argued. “We cannot build bananas in America,” she replied, somehow managing to avoid saying “Duh.”

While many are now realizing that Trump’s policies will produce social and economic disaster, relatively few understand that the disaster will fall disproportionately on rural Trump voters. But of course it will. For the purveyor of Trump bibles and Trump meme coins, screwing the little guy has always been his personal style of grift. It remains to be seen if rural Trump supporters will awaken from their naivete.

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

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Monday, June 23, 2025 7:34 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Go eat a dick, cunt.

Been listening to you cry about everything, everyday for 12 years.

Why don't you tell us who you want to murder today.


Meanwhile, I'm just doing what what I said I would do and what you're completely incapable of doing. Calling out "my side" when they fuck up.

Maybe if you did that ONCE, your party wouldn't be dead right now and there would be some legitimate pushback to the bad things that the Trump admin is trying to do.

But you didn't do that, so here we are.



In the meantime, if you're going to try to use taking healthcare away from American Citizenss and/or starting a new war without a Congressional go-ahead as if they are not things you also don't agree with against me, go fuck yourself. Hard.

You petty, whiny, worthless little shit.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Scott Aaronson wrote on June 22nd, 2025 at 3:09 pm

There are 10,000 things one could pick to explain why Trump has been a catastrophe for the US and the world, but one that sticks in my mind right now is the gutting of USAID, which will cause hundreds of thousands of children to die needlessly, for no purpose except to give DOGE a symbolic and fiscally almost meaningless “win.” Every Trump supporter should have those children’s deaths on his or her conscience forever.

https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=8950#comment-2011661

6ixStringJack, Scott Aaronson is too nice to wish worse than a troubled conscience on Trumptards, but he might if he knew you.


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


We've already been over this a dozen times. Nobody gives a shit about Scott Aaronson's made up kids.

If you care so much, get on a plane and go feed them, Mr. Billionaire.

America first. Everyone else doesn't exist. Not when it comes to tax dollars being spent.

If you want to blame somebody for these 300,000 made up kids starving, start with their 600,000 parents.

Take your emotional blackmail and shove it up your well laid ass. It doesn't work anymore in 2025.

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

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

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Monday, June 23, 2025 8:28 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

We've already been over this a dozen times. Nobody gives a shit about Scott Aaronson's made up kids.

If you care so much, get on a plane and go feed them, Mr. Billionaire.

America first. Everyone else doesn't exist. Not when it comes to tax dollars being spent.

If you want to blame somebody for these 300,000 made up kids starving, start with their 600,000 parents.

Take your emotional blackmail and shove it up your well laid ass. It doesn't work anymore in 2025.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
6ix, you just gave an almost perfect example of Trumptards' evil personality defects. If only you had added a "Fuck Ukraine" and something about climate change being a hoax, and Covid-19 never killing anyone, it would have been perfect. I have never said clearly enough for Trumptards to understand, and this time won't be any better, but the maladaptive mental constructs Trumptards are naturally attracted to are very unnatural. Trumptards' minds habitually bend toward evil behavior. They just can't stop themselves, back away, turn around and flee at maximum speed away from being evil.

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

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Monday, June 23, 2025 8:42 AM

SECOND

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


You don't have to be a male Trumptard to be evil:

'Being MAGA robs you': Analyst warns Karoline Leavitt is beginning to crack

By Krystina Alarcon Carroll | June 23, 2025 7:21AM ET

https://www.rawstory.com/karoline-leavitt-2672416790/

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt is beginning to crack, according to Salon Senior Writer Amanda Marcotte. https://www.salon.com/2025/06/23/why-karoline-leavitt-is-so-annoying/

The Trump attack dog — whose role Marcotte described as “to keep the mostly male MAGA base invigorated by demonstrating the White House's powers at annoying the women they resent” — is beginning to show signs of strain, the analyst wrote Monday.

Marcotte wrote that Leavitt's role is to take to the White House podium and troll Trump's detractors — and she's good at it.

“Leavitt's not just a more clever troll than her boss, but she has more courage,” Marcotte said, noting the several times Leavitt has “gaslit” seasoned White House reporters during her briefings.

But the trolling — and the hit back from anti-Trumpers who have mocked Leavitt's defense of her boss as well as her attacks on the feminism that has allowed her to reach her position in the first place — are leaving their mark, Marcotte wrote.

"I don't want to dissuade anyone from making fun of Leavitt. First, it's fun, which needs no justification," she wrote.

"More importantly, the mockery is working, especially as a long-term strategy. Yes, Trump voters get the sugar high of knowing they've angered some feminists. But in reading the comments sections of various social media posts where people were fighting about Leavitt, it became clear that conservative women find her embarrassing.

"Their defenses of her were weak and mealy-mouthed, mostly lame assertions that she's a good Christian — which is hard to square with all the lying. These debates, especially if witnessed by younger women who haven't fully made up their minds about their political identities, help to instill a sense that being a handmaiden of patriarchy is cringeworthy.

"No one wants to be like Karoline Leavitt, old before her time, and spending all her time around cranky, Fox News-addled senior citizens. She may make a certain kind of man happy, but to women, the ultimate message is clear: Being MAGA robs you of your youth, beauty and talent, and replaces them with a lifetime of service to the worst men."

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

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Monday, June 23, 2025 10:05 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

We've already been over this a dozen times. Nobody gives a shit about Scott Aaronson's made up kids.

If you care so much, get on a plane and go feed them, Mr. Billionaire.

America first. Everyone else doesn't exist. Not when it comes to tax dollars being spent.

If you want to blame somebody for these 300,000 made up kids starving, start with their 600,000 parents.

Take your emotional blackmail and shove it up your well laid ass. It doesn't work anymore in 2025.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
6ix, you just gave an almost perfect example of Trumptards' evil personality defects.


Shut the fuck up, cunt.

You don't have any moral high ground when all you do is sit here every day and post articles and bitch and moan.

You don't give one single fuck about those kids either. If you did, you'd take some of those billions you keep telling all of us that you've got and you'd go feed them yourself.

Stop wasting time arguing with me and get to it, motherfucker. Those kids are dying by the minute while you're here insulting me. I expect not to hear from you for at least 2 weeks while you're gone and taking care of that.

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

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

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Monday, June 23, 2025 2:28 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Shut the fuck up, cunt.

You don't have any moral high ground when all you do is sit here every day and post articles and bitch and moan.

You don't give one single fuck about those kids either. If you did, you'd take some of those billions you keep telling all of us that you've got and you'd go feed them yourself.

Stop wasting time arguing with me and get to it, motherfucker. Those kids are dying by the minute while you're here insulting me. I expect not to hear from you for at least 2 weeks while you're gone and taking care of that.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
You are as crazy as Trump is, and as obnoxiously stupid, which seems be a thing with Trumptards. I don't wonder why bad things continuously happen to Trump and his Trumptards. They bring disaster down on themselves all the time, but with zero understanding that they are at fault:

Trump Says Iran’s Nuke Sites Are “Obliterated.” The Military Isn’t So Sure.

Defense officials say his claims are “overblown” — and the intelligence community said Iran wasn’t building a bomb.

By Nick Turse | June 23 2025, 1:13 p.m.

https://theintercept.com/2025/06/23/trump-iran-nuclear-strikes/

President Donald Trump took to social media to crow over his bombing of Iran on Saturday night. “Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated,” he wrote.

Current and former Pentagon officials question Trump’s certainty that three of Iran’s nuclear sites were “totally obliterated” by U.S. attacks. One current official called the post-strike assessment, offered in the immediate wake of the Saturday attacks, “overblown.” All said the destruction at Fordow, Natanz, and Esfahan was extensive, but that the full extent of the damage to Iran’s nuclear capabilities was not immediately clear.

“Overblown and premature,” the defense official, commenting about Trump’s claims on the condition of anonymity to avoid retaliation, told The Intercept by instant message. “What else is new[?]” That assessment was echoed by a former defense official who also spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the nature of his current employment.

In the wake of such criticism, Trump doubled down. “Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran, as shown by satellite images. Obliteration is an accurate term!” he posted on TruthSocial on Sunday. “The biggest damage took place far below ground level. Bullseye!!!”

“From a targeting standpoint, ‘destruction’ means there is absolutely nothing left. These facilities were not destroyed by formal definition. Further, there is no way to assess the full scale of damage against such targets without boots on the ground,” said Wes Bryant, a former Pentagon official who previously worked as a Special Operations joint terminal attack controller, or JTAC, and called in thousands of strikes against the Islamic State and other terrorist groups across the greater Middle East.

Bryant added: “Suffice to say that the use of these facilities has been denied for the near or considerable future, and the strikes no doubt had a psychological effect on the regime. However, to state that any potential nuclear weapons development on the part of Iran has been permanently stopped would be incredibly naive.”

Six U.S. Air Force B-2 stealth bombers reportedly dropped 12 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators — 30,000-pound bombs colloquially known as “bunker busters” — on the heavily fortified Fordow nuclear facility, Iran’s main location for enriching uranium. A seventh U.S. B-2 bomber attacked the Natanz Nuclear Facility with two GBU-57 bombs, while a U.S. Navy submarine also launched Tomahawk missiles, targeting both Natanz and Esfahan, as part of the mission code-named “Operation Midnight Hammer.”

Rafael Mariano Grossi, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, reiterated the IAEA’s consistent message that “armed attacks on nuclear facilities should never take place, and could result in radioactive releases with grave consequences within and beyond the boundaries of the State which has been attacked,” in an address to the agency’s Board of Governors on Monday.

He noted that craters were now visible at the Fordow site but stated that “no one — including the IAEA — is in a position to have fully assessed the underground damage at Fordow. He added: “Given the explosive payload utilized, and the extreme vibration-sensitive nature of centrifuges, very significant damage is expected to have occurred.”

A senior Iranian official told Reuters that most of the highly enriched uranium at Fordow had been moved to an undisclosed location ahead of the U.S. strikes. Before and after the Saturday attacks, current and former U.S. defense officials told The Intercept that this was highly likely.

“We often don’t give our adversaries enough credit and underestimate their savviness. They’ve been planning for something like this for years. They could have planted information on Fordow as a decoy,” Bryant explained. “It could be a major nuclear facility but might not have been as important as people think. Their nuclear warfare capabilities might be under development somewhere that we don’t even know about and they could have invited the attack on this high-profile decoy. There is no reporting saying that’s the case, but these are things you always have to look at when you’re planning military operations — especially of this scale against a near-peer adversary.”

Grossi also confirmed the damage at Natanz and said that at Esfahan, the “affected buildings include some related to the uranium conversion process” and that entrances to tunnels used for the storage of enriched material also appear to have been attacked.

U.S. Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine said Sunday that there was “severe damage and destruction” to the three facilities but did not go so far as to say that Iran’s nuclear capacities had been eliminated.

“Final battle damage [assessments] will take some time, but initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction,” Caine said. When asked if Iran still retains any nuclear capability, Caine said that battle damage assessments were “still pending, and it would be way too early for me to comment on what may or may not still be there.”

The Pentagon did not offer an update on Monday. “We have nothing additional to provide beyond the Chairman’s comments at this time,” a spokesperson told The Intercept.

The White House did not reply to a request for comment about the discrepancy between Caine’s statement and Trump’s claims.

The aim of the attacks, American and Israeli officials have said, is to prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb. The U.S. intelligence community says that threat was not, however, real.

“We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that [Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably built on him to do so,” reads the 2025 Annual Threat Assessment published in March. The assessment serves as the intelligence community’s official evaluation of threats to “the Homeland,” U.S. citizens, and the country’s interests. Last week, Trump said Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard was “wrong” about intelligence on Iran when she testified in March before the Senate that the nation was not actively building a nuclear weapon.

Photos of the Situation Room during the attack on Iran, released Saturday evening, did not show Gabbard present alongside Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and other administration officials. The White House later told Fox News that Gabbard was present.

On Monday, Israel struck Evin prison, Iran’s most notorious jail for political prisoners, adding it to the list of nonmilitary and nuclear sites that it has attacked, which includes energy infrastructure and Iran’s government news agency. Israeli strikes have killed at least 950 people and wounded 3,450 others since its campaign began 10 days ago, according to the Washington-based group Human Rights Activists.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed his desire for regime change in Iran and not ruled out targeting the country’s supreme leader, saying “no one in Iran should have immunity.” Israel’s defense minister said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei cannot “continue to exist.” Trump joined in on the threats, pointing out that the U.S. knows Khamenei’s location and dangling the possibility of assassinating him in the future.

The U.S. attacks on Saturday were incredibly complex and expensive. U.S. forces employed approximately 75 precision guided weapons, including 14 of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator bombs, according to Caine. More than 125 U.S. aircraft participated in the mission, including the B-2 stealth bombers, fighter jets, and dozens of air refueling tankers. It was reportedly the largest B-2 strike in U.S. history and the second longest B-2 mission ever flown. Bombers launched from the continental U.S. flew east for 18 hours before they attacked Iran, while a decoy flew west over the Pacific. A guided missile submarine; a full array of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance aircraft; and hundreds of maintenance and operational military personnel also took part.

Bryant lauded the tactical prowess of the strikes but questioned the aptitude of the man who ordered them. “It was a demonstration of the unparalleled precision, global reach, and the devastating power of the U.S. military,” he said of the attack, emphasizing that such force needs to be “tempered and guided by a level hand.” Trump, he said, was unfit for this job, increasingly seems to “worship” military power, and that the president’s sudden decision to join Israel’s war “demonstrates his increasing volatility.”

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

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Monday, June 23, 2025 4:00 PM

SECOND

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


Donald Trump's decision to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities wasn't strategic planning — it was pure ego.

Trump flip-flopped wildly in the final hours before Saturday's strikes, initially siding with Tucker Carlson's anti-war stance before abruptly reversing course when Republican hawks convinced him military action would make him "look like a winner."

Wolff, speaking on The Daily Beast Podcast, dismissed White House claims that the bombing represented careful, methodical planning. "This is not true at all, this is completely made up," he said bluntly.

The deciding factor? Trump's vanity. "Then the tenor of the phone calls was him saying, 'I think I'm gonna look very good if I do this,'" Wolff explained, calling the Iranian strikes a "vanity bombing."

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-tulsi-iran/

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

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