REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

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

POSTED BY: 6IXSTRINGJACK
UPDATED: Wednesday, July 2, 2025 15:45
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Wednesday, June 25, 2025 8:25 AM

SECOND

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


Trump’s big, beautiful bill has a price paid in blood

Republicans are proposing huge cuts to Medicaid. The impact on Americans’ health would be devastating.

By Dylan Scott | Jun 25, 2025, 6:30 AM CDT

https://www.vox.com/health/417639/trump-medicaid-health-insurance-big-
beautiful-bill

While public attention has largely been focused on the Middle East and on President Donald Trump’s immigration policy, Republicans in Congress are on the verge of passing massive Medicaid cuts as part of a budget bill that could lead to millions of Americans losing their health insurance benefits and, according to one recent estimate, thousands of unnecessary deaths every year.

While the GOP’s so-called “big, beautiful” bill is a smorgasbord of policy — potentially including everything from blocking AI regulation to restricting the power of the federal courts — perhaps the most consequential changes would be to Medicaid. The program, which covers low-income Americans of all ages, is now the country’s single largest insurer, covering more than 70 million people. The legislation approved by House Republicans, which is now being debated and amended by the Senate, would cut Medicaid spending by $793 billion over 10 years. The upshot is that 10.3 million fewer people would be enrolled in the program by 2034.

Those coverage losses would more than undo the progress the US has made in reducing the ranks of the uninsured over the past few years. On Tuesday, the National Center for Health Statistics reported that the number of US adults without insurance in 2024 had fallen to 27.2 million, down from 31.6 million in 2020. The GOP bill would reverse those gains and then some within a decade.

The consequences would be much more severe than the mere loss of a government health insurance card. According to one analysis of the House bill published last week in the Annals of Internal Medicine by a trio of Harvard-affiliated researchers, those losses of Medicaid coverage would lead to fewer Americans reporting good health, fewer patients getting preventive health screenings, and, at the end of the day, between 8,200 and 24,600 additional annual deaths.

Senate Republicans are not going to adopt the House bill exactly as it is, which means any estimates of its effects are preliminary. But it appears likely GOP senators will keep at least two impactful provisions: new work requirements for many of the people on Medicaid and limits on the financing tools that the states can use to access more federal Medicaid funding. The Harvard study broke out the estimated effects by provision and the results are still foreboding: between 3,000 and 9,000 annual deaths attributable to Medicaid work requirements, and between 4,200 and 12,600 deaths if state provider taxes were completely eliminated.

Even short of the worst-case scenario, Americans’ health would be worse off under the Republican bill, according to researchers Adam Gaffney, David Himmelstein, and Steffie Woolhandler. The number of Americans who have a personal doctor would drop by 700,000 under Medicaid work requirements; 285,000 fewer people would ever get their blood cholesterol checked, and 235,000 fewer patients would ever have their blood sugar tested. The number of women getting a recommended mammogram within the past 12 months would drop by nearly 139,000. And an additional 385,000 people would have to borrow money or skip paying other bills to afford their medical care. The people affected are low-income and disproportionately Black and Hispanic.

There is plenty of uncertainty in these projections. It is also hard to be sure how these policies would interact with each other: The Harvard researchers noted in their cumulative estimate of the House bill’s effects that there would likely be some overlap in the policies’ projected effects when combined together. Some of the people who lose their Medicaid coverage would be able to get insurance by other means, offsetting the losses to a degree that can be difficult to predict.

But the takeaway from the analysis is clear: A lot of people are going to suffer if these proposals become law.

The US is sabotaging its own health care system

The debate in the Senate has not yet concluded, and the bill could still change. Hospitals are busy on Capitol Hill, lobbying Republicans to reduce the spending cuts and warning lawmakers of the devastating consequences that the legislation would have. Some GOP senators are reportedly open to providing additional funding for rural hospitals, to relieve the impact on the facilities that would be hardest hit by the proposed Medicaid cuts.

But after Republicans narrowly failed to roll back Medicaid during Trump’s first term, they seem likely to succeed this time — a step backward from building a true universal health care system.

America’s lack of universal health care is the main reason we spend more money than any other country in the world while seeing worse outcomes. One recent JAMA analysis found that deaths that could be prevented by accessible health care increased in the United States from 2009 to 2019, while declining in most other comparable countries.

You can achieve universal health care via a variety of strategies, including the expansion of private health insurance, but the Republican bill could instead lead to more unnecessary deaths by taking existing benefits away from people, according to the Annals of Internal Medicine study.

Medicaid has actually been a rare bright spot in America’s often dysfunctional health care system. The program has its own problems — not enough doctors participate because of its low reimbursement rates, for one — but since its expansion through the Affordable Care Act in 2010, research has shown that Medicaid allowed more people to access health care, reduced their financial burden from medical services, and improved their physical and mental well-being.

Republican lawmakers and Trump administration officials justify the Medicaid cuts by saying that people who can work should be required to work in order to receive government benefits. They claim nobody who deserves to be on Medicaid will lose their coverage. As one White House official put it to Politico earlier this month: “Medicaid does not belong to people who are here illegally, and it does not belong to capable and able-bodied men who refuse to work. So no one is getting cut.” (Undocumented migrants are already ineligible for federal Medicaid funding. Six states cover undocumented adults through Medicaid using the state’s own funds, and 14 cover undocumented children.)

But independent analysts say that most of the people on Medicaid are either children, elderly, disabled — or adults who are already working or caring for another person — meaning they are limited in their ability to work. Most of the projected coverage losses result from people having paperwork problems in documenting their work or proving they should be exempt from the requirements, not because people are actually ineligible under the new rules.

That aligns with the experience of Arkansas during Trump’s first term. That state tested work requirements in the real world for the first time and 18,000 people lost their health insurance in a matter of months, with no meaningful effect on their employment.

The US has made halting progress in its pursuit of a better health system. In 2010, the uninsured rate was 16 percent. Today, it’s half of that. But in the GOP’s proposed future, the problems that have left Americans so frustrated with their health care system are going to get worse.

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 25, 2025 9:41 AM

THG


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

I haven't worked for 5 years and I still have more money than you've ever had at any single point of your life, Ted.

Oh... and a paid for house, and a paid for car, and an entire 2 1/2 car garage full of tools. And zero debt to anybody.

Keep pretending like you did well in that sad little lonely apartment you wish your dead whore of a mother were still alive to share with you.




Me, I'm just enjoying making you dance, jump through hoops Gilligan. I find making you constantly justify your very existence, enjoyable.

Are you starting to get it? Are you beginning to understand?

Laughing in your face again Gilligan.

T


You're not laughing in anyone's face, Theodore.

I doubt you've been face to face with anyone in real life for months, loser.

Everybody you know in real life hates you just like they do online.

You have no friends. You drove them all away with your politics. And your family is all dead. All you have left is your politics, and they're dying too.

You're liable to just fade away with them soon. And nobody will even be left to remember you when you do.

The sad truth is, son... I'm the closest thing you've got to a friend. I'm one of two people in your life that show you any attention at all. The other one is Sigs. There once was a third person, but you fucked that up, didn't you?






Poor Gilligan. Here is a good example of what he is like when he is in destress. He has no good response so in his anguish he lashes out. He invents a likeness of his antagonist that makes him feel better. That makes him feel superior because his nemesis keeps showing him, he is anything but.

As his antagonist, I am enjoying watching him implode, again.

Too funny...

T

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Wednesday, June 25, 2025 9:56 AM

THG


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

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






Well, Trump sure is. Your neocon warmongering President just bombed them.

T

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Wednesday, June 25, 2025 6:59 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

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






Well, Trump sure is. Your neocon warmongering President just bombed them.

T



My "NeoCon warmongring President" just said that Isreal "doesn't know what the fuck they are doing".

Kind of like the Democratic Party that he single-handedly destroyed.



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

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

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Thursday, June 26, 2025 7:57 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:

My "NeoCon warmongring President" just said that Isreal "doesn't know what the fuck they are doing".

Kind of like the Democratic Party that he single-handedly destroyed.
Did you know that Trump was prophesied in the Bible? The Book of Revelations says War with Iran is the key to bringing Jesus back to Earth

'Biblical prophecy': Christian nationalists pushing Trump to 'usher in the End Times'

By Alex Henderson | June 25, 2025 | 09:29AM ET

Before launching his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump didn't have a lot of contact with evangelical Christian fundamentalism.

Trump was raised Presbyterian/Mainline Protestant — not evangelical — in Queens by a Scottish immigrant mother and an American father. And religion, even non-fundamentalist Protestant Christianity, wasn't a high priority for him.

In 2016, 2020 and 2024, however, white evangelicals were a key part of Trump's MAGA base. And he gets a lot of input from them, often attacking Democrats as anti-religion even though many prominent Democrats — from Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Georgia) to MSNBC's the Rev. Al Sharpton to Catholic former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-California) — are quite religious and can quote the Bible with much more detail than Trump.

In an article published on June 25, Salon's Amanda Marcotte warns that Trump is getting a lot of input from far-right white Christian nationalists on the Middle East and explains why that is dangerous. https://www.salon.com/2025/06/25/evangelicals-push-trump-into-conflict
-with-iran/

"The wild claims made by leaders of the Christian Right have also been in the mix: that Trump is a prophet sent by God to usher in the End Times, and that attacking Iran is necessary to bring about the end of the world and the return of Jesus Christ," the Philadelphia-based Marcotte explains. "It's this delusion that (Sen. Ted) Cruz was winking at, and it was likely a powerful reason Trump decided to escalate."

White evangelical Christian fundamentalists have a complex relationship with Israel. On one hand, they believe that Jews are damned to eternal hell because they don't accept Jesus Christ as the Messiah; on the other hand, they consider themselves very pro-Israel because of the role they think Israel will play in the End Times.

"Anthea Butler, a religious studies professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told Salon that Cruz was referencing evangelical belief in a Biblical prophecy that war involving Israel and the larger Middle East is 'only one more step in ushering in Jesus' return," Marcotte notes. "As journalist Sarah Posner explained at Talking Points Memo, 'this movement holds that a series of prophesied events, including Jews' return to Israel and invasion by armies of foreign countries including Iran, will culminate in a bloody, victorious battle at Armageddon.'"

Marcotte continues, "As a result, the conflict between Iran and Israel has launched a frenzy within evangelical circles, as they hope the final battle is coming and they will get to witness the End Times…. Family Research Council head Tony Perkins was one of the architects of Project 2025, the far-right plan for a government takeover being implemented by Trump's administration. He's also a big believer in this Biblical prophecy and, as Kyle Mantyla of Right Wing Watch documented, has been using his podcast to frame war with Iran as the key to bringing Jesus back to Earth."

According to Marcotte, the "pressure from Trump's evangelical base" on the Middle East "offers insight into why he is cracking."

"He almost certainly would like to leave his intervention in Iran behind," Marcotte observes. "But he can't say no to evangelicals, because he knows that he’s nothing without them."

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 26, 2025 8:00 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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

My "NeoCon warmongring President" just said that Isreal "doesn't know what the fuck they are doing".

Kind of like the Democratic Party that he single-handedly destroyed.
Did you know that Trump was prophesied in the Bible?


Shut the fuck up.

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

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

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Thursday, June 26, 2025 8:53 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 the fuck up.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Trump said shut up about Air Force’s failure in Iran. Instead, all employees must falsely claim it was successful and that there absolutely was something valuable at the bottom of those 14 holes punched into Iran that look like water wells that didn't go deep enough to reach water.

White House to limit intelligence sharing, skip Gabbard at Senate Iran briefing

By Emily Davies, Theodoric Meyer, Dan Lamothe

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/06/25/iran-intel
ligence-sharing-gabbard/

The White House plans to limit classified intelligence sharing with Congress after leaks to the press of an early assessment undermined President Donald Trump’s claim that U.S. airstrikes obliterated Iranian nuclear facilities, a senior Trump administration official said, setting the stage for a contentious classified briefing before senators Thursday.

Amid a political battle over what the intelligence shows, the White House is expected to send four of its top national security officials to brief lawmakers: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, administration officials said.

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, who testified in March that U.S. intelligence agencies assessed that Iran was not building a nuclear weapon, will be notably absent.

“Ratcliffe will represent the intelligence community,” the senior Trump administration official said of Gabbard’s absence, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss plans not yet made public. “The media is turning this into something it’s not.”

Trump has called Gabbard’s assessment of Iran’s nuclear program “wrong” and largely sidelined her in navigating the United States’ role in the war between Iran and Israel, current and former U.S. officials and people close to the White House told The Washington Post. White House officials have insisted that she is doing critical work.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) on Wednesday called on the White House to “immediately undo” its decision to limit classified information sharing.

“The administration has no right to stonewall Congress on matters of national security,” Schumer said on the Senate floor. “Senators deserve information, and the administration has a legal obligation to inform Congress precisely about what is happening right now abroad.”

Axios first reported the White House plans to limit classified information sharing.
https://www.axios.com/2025/06/25/iran-bombing-intelligence-trump-congr
ess

The initial U.S. intelligence assessment, first reported by CNN, found that the airstrikes ordered by Trump against Iran’s nuclear facilities set back Tehran’s program by months but did not eliminate it. Trump and White House officials have since adamantly pushed back against the assessment and maintained that the B-2 bombers and submarine-launched Tomahawk missiles fully destroyed the sites.

Ratcliffe, however, released a statement Wednesday saying the airstrikes had “severely damaged” the nuclear program — previewing a refined White House posture that the administration might offer senators Thursday.

Nonpartisan military officers, including Caine, have been more restrained in their assessments so far, describing significant damage but stopping short of saying the facility was “obliterated.” Caine, speaking Sunday, said that final battle-damage assessments will take time to develop but that initial reviews indicated “extremely severe damage and destruction.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) echoed Ratcliffe’s assessment Wednesday. “There’s no doubt that Iran’s nuclear program was severely set back,” Thune said on “The Hugh Hewitt Show.”

The Trump administration’s tour to convince lawmakers and Americans of the mission’s success will include a Thursday morning stop at the Pentagon, where Hegseth and unnamed “Military Representatives” will hold a “Major News Conference” to “fight for the Dignity of our Great American Pilots,” Trump announced on Truth Social on Wednesday.

“These Patriots were very upset!” Trump said, without offering any evidence.

The president erroneously said that pilots had endured “36 hours of dangerously flying through Enemy Territory” — conflating the length of the entire round trip, including over the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, with time over target — and lambasted media reports about the initial intelligence assessment.

Democrats on the Hill have been sharply critical of the Trump administration for failing to brief lawmakers on Iran — with multiple members pointing to the 1973 War Powers Resolution, which requires the president to notify Congress within 48 hours of military action and provide a classified briefing. Trump on Monday sent a memo to lawmakers saying that the U.S. military had carried out the strikes under his constitutional authority to “protect the United States citizens both at home and abroad as well as in furtherance of United States national security and foreign policy interests.”

The classified briefings for Senate and House lawmakers were initially scheduled for Tuesday. They were postponed to Thursday for the Senate and Friday for the House as Trump worked to negotiate a ceasefire and to accommodate travel schedules, the senior Trump administration official said. Hegseth and Rubio spent Wednesday at The Hague with Trump.

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 26, 2025 9:33 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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

Shut the fuck up.

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

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


Shut the fuck up.

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

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

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Thursday, June 26, 2025 9:36 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 the fuck up.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Trump’s reckless bluster about his “spectacular military success” in Iran has just been thoroughly debunked. A classified defense report has surfaced, indicating that the US targeted bombing campaign barely made a dent in Iran’s nuclear program.

https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/trump-iran-2672439415/

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 26, 2025 9:42 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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

Shut the fuck up.

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

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


Shut the fuck up.

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

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

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Thursday, June 26, 2025 3:55 PM

SECOND

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


Yes, the Iran Mission Was Successful. No, We Are Not Taking Questions.

Pete Hegseth’s guide to war

By Alexandra Petri | June 26, 2025, 1:26 PM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2025/06/hegseth-iran-p
ress-conference/683332/

Pete Hegseth here.

Wow.

Wow.

I’ve called you members of the Fake News together for this special meeting because I can’t believe you could have gotten it so wrong. https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/live-blog/trump-
administration-congress-iran-israel-immigration-live-updates-rcna214380

I am personally ashamed of you. You are the reason that people are saying that the mission “only set back Iran’s nuclear program for months” and “was not an unmitigated success.” Did you not hear the president? The target was OBLITERATED. Stop acting like something can’t be obliterated for months. I’ve been obliterated for months myself.

Maybe if you BELIEVED more, you would understand how well the mission went! You would know that the second the bombs fell, the only thing they could possibly have hit was their target, and the only thing they could possibly have done was DECIMATE and DESTROY their target exactly as intended. But instead, because you didn’t BELIEVE enough, you demanded “reports”—and now we’re in this mess. You are making our pilots sad!

I know there is an old journalistic saying: If your mother says she loves you, check it out. I would never! I know my mother loves me, despite what her emails published in The New York Times suggest.

Everyone with eyes knows this mission was a success! And if you doubt, here are a number of quotes from people brave enough to see what was REALLY there and not just what so-called INTELLIGENCE shows. This is also what I’m like when my loved ones come out of surgery. I don’t need to see the patient. I just want to hear statements from True Patriots about how he’s probably doing. That’s enough for me. If you weren’t FAKE NEWS, it would be enough for you.

Now, thanks to Donald Trump, we are on the historic, unprecedented verge of a thing that we used to have before he tore up the treaty! Where’s the praise? Where’s the adulation?

You are free to write whatever you want. You can say the target was “devastated.” You can say the target was “obliterated.” Choose whatever word you like, as long as it is a synonym for destroyed. You can even say “utterly destroyed.” It’s a free country.

When I look out over this press corps, I think, Is it any wonder the mission only set back the nuclear program for months? Which, of course, it didn’t. It set the program back for an untold, unfathomable length of time. Who can fathom it? Who can tell it? Not I. After a mission like this, how about we take a beat, wave a flag, celebrate our warriors’ success?

Maybe, if you were a better press corps, the mission would have gone better. Have you ever considered that?

Not that it didn’t go perfectly! But hypothetically.

Say you are one of our brave pilots. How do you think he feels? He’s refueled. He’s dropped his payload. What he wants to hear you say is, “Great job, Kevin! Mission accomplished, Kevin!” He doesn’t need you saying, “Actually, was the whole target, you know, THERE?”

Look, we remember from 2003 that all you need in order to have accomplished your mission is a big-enough banner. Then it’s your job, as the media, to say, “Great job accomplishing that mission!” You know what it isn’t your job to do? Ask questions.

Why don’t you want to celebrate? Why do you hate America?

CLAP if you believe in mission.

CLAP! See, it’s going better all the time. CLAP! KEEP CLAPPING!

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 26, 2025 4:08 PM

SECOND

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


Does Trump Still Plan to Annex Canada and Make It the 51st State? Yes, but he does not know how.

Jun 25, 2025 7:26 AM CT

https://time.com/7297490/trump-plan-to-annex-canada-51st-state-mark-ca
rney/

It’s long been a point of contention, but that hasn’t stopped President Donald Trump from frequently—and publicly—expressing his desire to annex Canada and have it become the 51st U.S. state. The idea has been firmly shut down by former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his successor, Mark Carney. The latter of which has plainly said: “It will never happen.” But where do things currently stand in the Canada annexation row?

During an interview at the NATO Summit in the Netherlands on Tuesday, Carney was asked whether Trump is still saying he wants to annex Canada, to which the Canadian Prime Minister replied: “He’s not.”

“He admires Canada, I think it’s fair to say, and maybe for a period of time coveted Canada. We’re two sovereign nations discussing the future of our trade relationships, our defense partnership,” Carney told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour. “The President is focused on a series of changing bilateral relations... Making sure all members of NATO, Canada included, pay their fair share.”

Both Trump and Carney are notable presences at the 2025 NATO Summit, during which a 5% GDP defense budget target is a key focus point for global leaders across the board.

Read More: Trump Shares the Founders’ Delusions on Canada https://time.com/7207723/trump-canada/

In May, Trump offered Canada protection under his proposed Golden Dome missile defense system. “It will cost zero dollars if they become our cherished 51st State. They are considering the offer!” he claimed on Truth Social, adding that it would cost Canada $61 billion dollars otherwise, should they want to be part of the Golden Dome but maintain their sovereignty.

Canada was quick to shut down any notion that it was considering the bargain. “The Prime Minister has been clear at every opportunity, including in his conversations with President Trump, that Canada is an independent, sovereign nation, and it will remain one,” the Canadian Prime Minister’s office said in a statement to the press.

Trump has long argued that Canada should become the 51st state, saying that the incorporation of the United States’ northern neighbour would be beneficial to Canadians, an argument he doubled down on amid heightened tensions over his tariffs, which Trudeau—who Trump famously goaded by calling “Governor Trudeau”—and Carney have expressed deep concern over.

Amid the tariff debates in March, Trump again attempted to use the annexing notion as a bargaining chip. “The only thing that makes sense is for Canada to become our cherished 51st State. This would make all tariffs, and everything else, totally disappear,” he suggested.

“The biggest risk we have to this economy is Donald Trump… he’s trying to break us so he can own us,” Carney fired back during his election campaign. ”We’re all going to stand up against Donald Trump. I’m ready.”

The ongoing back-and-forth has been further complicated by the fact that some separatists in the Canadian province of Alberta see Trump as an ally, and have even started a "Make Alberta Great Again" campaign.

During his April 22 interview with TIME, Trump denied that he was “trolling” when talking about his desire to annex Canada.

“We’re taking care of their military. We're taking care of every aspect of their lives… We don't need anything from Canada. And I say the only way this thing really works is for Canada to become a state,” he said.

Read More: Secretary of State Marco Rubio Speaks Out on Trump’s Plans to Annex Canada https://time.com/7280793/does-trump-plan-to-annex-canada-marco-rubio-5
1st-state-comments/

When Trump and Carney sat down for a meeting in the Oval Office of the White House on May 6, the issue was once again dredged up, with Trump brazenly saying in front of the Canadian Prime Minister that an annexation would “really be a wonderful marriage.” To which a clearly uncomfortable Carney replied by reiterating that Canada “is not for sale.” Trump’s response? “Never say never.”

While Carney’s NATO comments appear to suggest the dialogue and tension has since settled down, it would be of little surprise to many if Trump returned to his rhetoric further down the line.

In May, Trump vowed to “always” talk about his keenness to annex the neighboring country.

“I’ll always talk about that. You know why? We subsidize Canada to the tune of $200 billion a year,” he claimed. "If Canada was a state it wouldn’t cost us. It would be great. It would be such a great—it would be a cherished state… What a beautiful country it would be."

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 26, 2025 7:14 PM

SECOND

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


Trump has been so unnerved by Iran that he can focus on nothing else

https://www.rawstory.com/trump-iran-2672441389/

Only one of 17 intelligence agencies released reports on the possible effects of last weekend's bombing, yet the Trump administration continues to call it a raging success. When the press has questioned exactly how Trump knows Iran's nuclear capabilities have been wiped out, the president has been going ballistic.

At Wednesday's NATO summit press conference at The Hague, Trump claimed news media was out to disparage him and the brave men and women who defend the country.

Trumpian rage rants are, of course, routine. But this time feels different. The president posted 21 times on Truth Social yesterday about the supposed success of his military strikes. And at yesterday’s NATO summit — a moment specifically designed by the Western world for Trump to bask in the glory of a huge defense spending boost — he spent most of his public appearances repeating his assertions on Iran.

Sykes turned to Politico's reporting to find the reasoning behind Trump's "latest indignant frenzy."

"Critics see a president spooked by a bombshell leak that has undermined his authority," wrote Politico's Jack Blanchard and Dasha Burns.

"Supporters say Trump is genuinely outraged by what he claims is false reporting and wants the record corrected. Either way — he’s using every tool in his arsenal to push back hard: Witness the hammer-like repetition that sites were 'obliterated'; the plentiful use of surrogates like Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio; the vindictive targeting of the journalists and media organizations involved; the barrage of statements from both U.S. and Israeli intelligence chiefs yesterday that the initial report was wrong," the report states.

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 26, 2025 7:29 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Trump has been so unnerved by Iran that he can focus on nothing else


Incorrect. For 10 years now, you've been so unnerved by Trump that YOU can focus on nothing else.

Get some help.

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

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

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Thursday, June 26, 2025 8:24 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:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Trump has been so unnerved by Iran that he can focus on nothing else


Incorrect. For 10 years now, you've been so unnerved by Trump that YOU can focus on nothing else.

Get some help.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
When only 10 years old, I identified the first Trumptard, a guy named Joe Duncan, a pilot for Eastern Airlines, bankrupted by bad management, who died choking on a chicken bone because he was a greedy stupid glutton. How could he be a Trumptard before Trump was famous? Easy. There is a certain kind of American, numbering at least one-third of the population, who are lazy, stupid, fearful, conceited, dishonest, evil in all predilections. These defective Americans vote for Trump. Or if they are dead like Joe Duncan, their grandchildren vote for Trump. Their defectiveness must be either genetic or environmental. It sure would be a better America if they killed themselves like Joe Duncan or your uncle with his botched suicide or Rush Limbaugh, who died from smoking. That's how you Make America Great Again! Let their habitual debauchery and mental illnesses kill them earlier than normal folk.

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 26, 2025 9:00 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Trump has been so unnerved by Iran that he can focus on nothing else


Incorrect. For 10 years now, you've been so unnerved by Trump that YOU can focus on nothing else.

Get some help.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
When only 10 years old


Nobody cares.

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

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

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Friday, June 27, 2025 6:51 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 cares.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
And you wonder why bad things have happened to you. I told my Father that Joe Duncan should not be an airline pilot. Joe was mean and stupid when on the ground, like Trump, except the demon driving Joe was alcohol. My Father laughed at my naivety about evil and told me about the law forbidding pilots to drink before flying. Now that I’m older, I’ve learned that regardless of what the law is, a Joe Duncan or Trumptards will be out of control, especially around others who were born mean and stupid, even when sober.

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 27, 2025 6:52 AM

SECOND

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


The Coming Health Care Apocalypse

One chart on the Big Ugly Bill

By Paul Krugman | Jun 27, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-coming-health-care-apocalypse

Still worn out from travel, so today’s post will basically consist of a single chart trying to illustrate the sheer ugliness of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, in a way that I hope cuts through the blizzard of numbers and projections out there.

I hope most people following policy at all — which unfortunately misses a substantial part of the electorate — know that soon, maybe within a few days, Republicans appear highly likely to pass legislation that combines big tax cuts for the rich with savage cuts to programs that help lower-income Americans, including Medicaid and SNAP (food stamps). Loss of health insurance coverage won’t be the only source of mass misery from this legislation, but it’s the biggest and easiest to illustrate.

So let’s review what happened over the past 15 years. The Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, was enacted in 2010 but only went into full effect in 2014. It fell short of achieving universal health care, especially because many red states refused to expand Medicaid even when the federal government offered to pay for it. It is also somewhat complicated, because of the compromises made to limit disruption of the existing system.

Nonetheless, it led to a large decline in the number of Americans without health insurance. It also led to a large reduction in anxiety among Americans with preexisting conditions, who no longer had to fear being denied coverage or being trapped in jobs with health benefits for fear of losing coverage.

Essentially all these gains are about to be wiped out.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has estimates based on Congressional Budget Office analysis of the House plan, plus refusal to retain enhancements that took place during the Biden years. Once the Senate gets done with it, the plan might be even worse. Also, some independent analysts believe the CBO is understating the likely coverage losses. But anyway, here are the CBPP numbers:

Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

What I find, however, is that I need a way to put 16 million people losing insurance coverage in perspective. So here’s one way: 16 million people is about 6 percent of the population too young for Medicare, so if we add this to the current level of uninsurance we get this:

Source: KFF plus author’s estimate

Basically, we’re talking about undoing all the progress America has made in expanding health insurance. And as I said, many independent analysts believe it could be substantially worse.

Remember, this isn’t happening to save money: If Republicans cared about the deficit, they could forego those tax cuts. It isn’t happening by popular demand: the Big Beautiful Bill is extremely unpopular already, and will become even more unpopular once people see its effects.

It’s happening because our government has been taken over by fanatics who believe that, one way or another, they can escape the electoral consequences of making millions of Americans’ lives much, much worse.

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 27, 2025 6:56 AM

SECOND

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


IRS Warning Issued for 2026 Taxes (That You Can Cheat)

By Matt Cannon | Jun 26, 2025 at 11:35 AM EDT

https://www.newsweek.com/irs-warning-issued-trump-bill-job-cuts-2026-t
axes-2091061

Why It Matters

The reduction of 26 percent of the IRS workforce comes as the agency prepares for new, complex tax law changes anticipated in congressional budget negotiations. Substantial staff losses and the prospect of a 20 percent reduction in the IRS budget, plus retroactive legislative changes, raise concerns about the agency's ability to process returns efficiently and deliver refunds, potentially affecting tens of millions of U.S. households and the federal government's ability to collect revenue.

What To Know

The IRS headcount dropped from 102,113 to 75,702 employees as of June. More than 17,500 employees accepted buyouts under the "deferred resignation program."

The Trump administration's budget proposal features an additional 20 percent funding reduction for the IRS. Accounting for stripped Inflation Reduction Act supplemental funds, that represents a 37 percent budget cut compared to the previous year, the Associated Press reported.

Collins wrote that "a reduction of that magnitude is likely to impact taxpayers and potentially the revenue collected."

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 27, 2025 12:49 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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

Nobody cares.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
And you wonder why bad things have happened to you.


Turn on the news or look at the paper everyday an all you see is "Liberals are outraged".

Bad things happen to everyone. Grow up.

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

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

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Friday, June 27, 2025 1:47 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:

Turn on the news or look at the paper everyday an all you see is "Liberals are outraged".

Bad things happen to everyone. Grow up.
This "bad thing" was done by Trump because he is evil:

The National Science Foundation is homeless

By Joel Eissenberg | June 26, 2025 7:37 am

https://angrybearblog.com/2025/06/the-national-science-foundation-is-h
omeless

During my career, I was principal investigator on three NSF grants. I also served on five grant review panels for the NSF. The NSF always struck me as a tightly run, parsimonious science agency. They are scrupulous about *not* funding biomedical research, so as not to compete with the much bigger National Institutes of Health. They stick to the basic science mission.

“But out of the blue yesterday, word emerged that the Department of Housing and Urban Development is taking over the NSF’s building, evicting all of its more than 1,800 employees. . . . Adding to the wildness, the top floors of the building are, according to the AFGE Local 3403, going to be retrofitted into a kind of executive mansion for HUD Secretary Turner, including an executive suite, executive dining room, reserved parking for the Secretary’s five cars, exclusive use of an entire elevator, special space for his various assistants and a planned gym for the Secretary and his family. Turner wouldn’t be the only Secretary with nice office space. But this does sound like it’s on the extreme end of the spectrum. Equally eye-catching, there appears to be no plan for where the NSF staff will go.”

Research is the “seed corn” on which future discovery and progress is made. The Trump Administration is in the process of burning down decades of investment and expertise in the US. Trainees are now looking overseas for science jobs, and other countries are actively recruiting our best and brightest scientists. This is another symptom of the contempt Trump has for America.

Trump evicts the National Science Foundation
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/national-science-foundation-to-be
-requisitioned-as-mansion-for-hud-secretary-and-also-hud-office

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 28, 2025 6:13 AM

SECOND

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


Trump Is Setting the US Economy Up for Another Great Financial Crisis

Trump and tech capitalists like Elon Musk are trying to become kingpins of a largely unregulated financial system.

By C.J. Polychroniou | June 26, 2025

https://truthout.org/articles/trump-is-setting-the-us-economy-up-for-a
nother-great-financial-crisis/

The financial system of the United States has always been prone to instability and crises. Now, however, under the new Trump administration, which is pushing for major cuts in regulation, including in the cryptocurrency sector in which the Trump family has a major financial stake, the financial system has become more vulnerable than ever, posing serious risks to the wider economy. Of course, this matters very little to Donald Trump, his family, and his billionaire friends. For Trump, the actual meaning of “America First” is “self-enrichment.”

In the interview that follows, progressive economist Gerald Epstein, a leading expert in finance and banking, talks about the changing nature of the U.S. finance system under Trump 2.0. He argues that Trump is turning the entire financial system into “a Wild West of unregulated institutions and markets,” thus potentially setting the stage for a financial crisis of unprecedented proportions. Epstein is professor of economics and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the author of Busting the Bankers’ Club: Finance for the Rest of Us.

Gerald Epstein: The Great Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2007-2009 hurt millions of Americans and was costly to countless others elsewhere. Americans lost their jobs, their homes, and saw public services — such as resources for schools, health care, and subsidized child care — experience major cuts. As I show in Busting the Bankers’ Club: Finance for the Rest of Us, the roots of the GFC stem from radical financial deregulation by both Democratic and Republican administrations, and also joined by European governments, that permitted megabanks and their top personnel to take on huge risks and win large payoffs. And when the markets collapsed, they were bailed out by central banks and governments without penalty to themselves or their banks. More specifically, bankers and other operatives in the financial system, such as credit rating agencies, were able to profit from massive conflicts of interest; huge and often hidden levels of debt (leverage); deliberately overly complex and opaque financial products that their customers, and often themselves, did not understand; large-scale fraud and corruption that went largely unpunished; and, in the end, massive government bailouts that saved them and their institutions but came at the expense of the taxpayers and the overall economy, as the work of the late James Crotty has shown.

Much more at https://truthout.org/articles/trump-is-setting-the-us-economy-up-for-a
nother-great-financial-crisis/

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 28, 2025 2:16 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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

Turn on the news or look at the paper everyday an all you see is "Liberals are outraged".

Bad things happen to everyone. Grow up.
This "bad thing" was done by Trump because he is evil


We had nothing but bad things out of Democrats and Joe Biden* for 4 years.

Nobody cares about what you think is a bad thing in 2025.

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

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

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Sunday, June 29, 2025 7:05 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:

Turn on the news or look at the paper everyday an all you see is "Liberals are outraged".

Bad things happen to everyone. Grow up.
This "bad thing" was done by Trump because he is evil


We had nothing but bad things out of Democrats and Joe Biden* for 4 years.

Nobody cares about what you think is a bad thing in 2025.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
6ixStringJack, you are dishonest writing "We had nothing but bad things out of Democrats and Joe Biden* for 4 years." If you were honest, you Trumptards would write that you wasted your lives, you ruined yourselves for the last four years. But that would be shifting the blame for your failures where it belongs, so you won't do it. Writing about personal failure, dishonesty and Trumptards (three things that go together):

She was working before it was legal for her to . . .

When Barron Trump was born, Melania was not a US citizen. Trump wants to end birthright citizenship - let's start with his own family. Deport Melania and Barron.

She had an "Einstein" visa. Bought for her by the Orange Felon. And brought her family in from Slovenia. The very definition of chain migration.

A felon married to an immigrant is telling us that the problem is immigrants and felons.


Think about this: Donald Trump, who avoided military draft five times said on Wednesday that Americans who don’t want to fight for our country can leave.
Didn't know he was leaving....

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 29, 2025 7:28 PM

SECOND

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


John Stoehr | June 29, 2025 | 07:56AM ET

https://www.alternet.org/alternet-exclusives/conspiracy-group-support-
trump/

Vaccine specialist and science communicator Edward Nirenberg put it best this morning: "If I were HHS secretary and my goal were to kill as many children as possible, it would be difficult to distinguish the actions I would take from those that Kennedy has taken."

In this particular instance he was referring to yesterday's announcement that RFK Jr is withdrawing US funding from the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), but he could be talking about any number of other policy changes RFK Jr has made already.

I don't know if it's a "rightwing" goal generally, but it sure as hell seems to be the goal of the Trump administration and MAGA Republicans.

When RFK Jr rolled out his "Make America Healthy Again" campaign, the assumption was that he intended to make existing Americans healthy. Instead, everything he, the Trump administration and congressional Republicans are doing seems to be intended to ensure that sick people simply die off, which presumably would make those who survive healthier on average, thus achieving his "MAHA" goal.

Call it Operation Nietzsche, I suppose.

I've written several explainers about the goals of the Affordable Care Act and how health insurance risk pools work, which involve this concept: Generally speaking, around 5 percent of a given large population tends to eat up around 50 percent of all medical spending.

Kennedy’s and the administration’s "logic," therefore, seems to be that if you simply killed off the sickest 5 percent of the population, healthcare costs for the remaining 95 percent would be cut in half.

This is obviously immoral and appalling, but it also seems to be the driving force behind many of their decisions.

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 30, 2025 7:06 AM

SECOND

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


What Trump Doesn’t Understand About Nuclear War

The contours of World War III are visible in numerous conflicts. The president of the United States is not ready.

By Jeffrey Goldberg | June 26, 2025
Jeffrey Goldberg is the editor in chief of The Atlantic

On October 27, 1962, the 12th day of the Cuban missile crisis, a bellicose and rattled Fidel Castro asked Nikita Khrushchev, his patron, to destroy America.

“I believe that the imperialists’ aggressiveness makes them extremely dangerous,” Castro wrote in a cable to Moscow, “and that if they manage to carry out an invasion of Cuba—a brutal act in violation of universal and moral law—then that would be the moment to eliminate this danger forever, in an act of the most legitimate self-defense. However harsh and terrible the solution, there would be no other.”

We exist today because Khrushchev rejected Castro’s demand. It was Khrushchev, of course, who brought the planet to the threshold of extinction by placing missiles in Cuba, but he had underestimated the American response to the threat. Together with his adversary, John F. Kennedy, he lurched his way toward compromise. “In your cable of October 27 you proposed that we be the first to carry out a nuclear strike against the enemy’s territory,” Khrushchev responded. “Naturally you understand where that would lead us. It would not be a simple strike, but the start of a thermonuclear world war. Dear Comrade Fidel Castro, I find your proposal to be wrong, even though I understand your reasons.”

Castro was 36 years old during the missile crisis. He was 84 when I met him, in Havana, in late summer 2010. He was in semiretirement, though he was still Cuba’s indispensable man. I spent a week with him, discussing, among other things, the Nuclear Age and its diabolical complexities. He still embraced the cruel dogmas of Communist revolution, but he was also somewhat reflective about his mistakes. I was deeply curious about his October 27 cable, and I put this question to him: “At a certain point it seemed logical for you to recommend that the Soviets bomb the U.S. Does what you recommended still seem logical now?” His answer: “After I’ve seen what I’ve seen, and knowing what I know now, it wasn’t worth it.”

The problem with wisdom is that it tends to come slowly, if it comes at all. As a species, we are not particularly skilled at making time-pressured, closely reasoned decisions about matters of life and death. The sociobiologist E. O. Wilson described the central problem of humanity this way: “We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike technology.” The main challenge of the 80 years since the Trinity atomic test has been that we do not possess the cognitive, spiritual, and emotional capabilities necessary to successfully manage nuclear weapons without the risk of catastrophic failure. Khrushchev and Castro both made terrifying mistakes of analysis and interpretation during the missile crisis. So, too, did several of Kennedy’s advisers, including General Curtis LeMay, the Air Force chief of staff, who argued that a naval blockade of Cuba, unaccompanied by the immediate bombing of missile sites, was “almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich.”

Today, the Global Operations Center of the U.S. Strategic Command, which oversees America’s nuclear forces, is housed in an Offutt Air Force Base building named for LeMay. This decision has always struck me as an indirect endorsement by America’s nuclear establishment of the bias toward action embodied by the sometimes-Strangelovian LeMay. Bias toward action is an all-purpose phrase, but I first heard it in the context of nuclear warfare many years ago from Bruce Blair, a scholar of nonproliferation and a former Air Force missile-launch officer. It means that the nuclear-decision-making scripts that presidents are meant to follow in a crisis assume that Russia (or other adversaries) will attempt to destroy American missiles while they are still in their silos. The goal of nuclear-war planners has traditionally been to send those missiles on their way before they can be neutralized—in the parlance of nuclear planning, to “launch on warning.”

Many of the men who served as president since 1945 have been shocked to learn about the impossibly telescoped time frame in which they have to decide whether to launch. The issue is not one of authority—presidents are absolute nuclear monarchs, and they can do what they wish with America’s nuclear weapons (please see Tom Nichols’s article “The President’s Weapon”). The challenge, as George W. Bush memorably put it, is that a president wouldn’t even have time to get off the “crapper” before having to make a launch decision, a decision that could be based on partial, contradictory, or even false information. Ronald Reagan, when he assumed the presidency, was said to have been shocked that he would have as little as six minutes to make a decision to launch. Barack Obama thought that it was madness to expect a president to make such a decision—the most important that would ever be made by a single person in all of human history—in a matter of minutes.

We are living through one of the more febrile periods of the nuclear era. The contours of World War III are visible in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia has been aided by Iran and North Korea and opposed by Europe and, for the time being, the United States. Pakistan and India, two nuclear states, recently fought a near-war; Iran, which has for decades sought the destruction of Israel through terrorism and other means, has seen its nuclear sites come under attack by Israel and the United States, in what could be termed an act of nonproliferation by force; North Korea continues to expand its nuclear arsenal, and South Korea and Japan, as Ross Andersen details elsewhere in this issue, are considering going nuclear in response.

Humans will need luck to survive this period. We have been favored by fortune before, and not only during the Cuban missile crisis. Over the past 80 years, humanity has been saved repeatedly by individuals who possessed unusually good judgment in situations of appalling stress. Two in particular—Stanislav Petrov and John Kelly—spring to my mind regularly, for different reasons. Petrov is worth understanding because, under terrible pressure, he responded skeptically to an attack warning, quite possibly saving the planet. Kelly did something different, but no less difficult: He steered an unstable president away from escalation and toward negotiation.

In September 1983, Petrov was serving as the duty officer at a Soviet command center when its warning system reported that the United States had launched five missiles at Soviet targets. Relations between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. were tense; just three weeks earlier, the Soviets had shot down a civilian South Korean airliner. Petrov defied established protocols governing such an alert and declared the launch warning to be false. He understood that the detection system was new and only partially tested. He also knew that Soviet doctrine held that an American attack, should it come, would be overwhelming, and not a mere five missiles. He reported to his superiors that he believed the attack warning to be a mistake, and he prevented a nuclear exchange between the two superpowers by doing so. (Later, it was determined that a Soviet satellite had mistakenly interpreted the interplay between clouds and the sun over Montana and North Dakota as missile launches.)

John Kelly, the retired four-star Marine general who served as White House chief of staff for part of Donald Trump’s first term, is known for his Sisyphean labors on behalf of order in an otherwise anarchic decision-making environment. Kelly, during his 17 months as chief of staff, understood that Trump was particularly dangerous on matters of national security. Trump was ignorant of world affairs, Kelly believed, and authoritarian by instinct. Kelly experienced these flaws directly in 2017, when Trump regularly insulted the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, who was widely regarded as inexperienced and unstable himself. After North Korea threatened “physical action” against its enemies, Trump said, “They will be met with fire and fury and frankly power, the likes of which this world has never seen before.”

Read: John Kelly finally lets loose on Trump
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/02/john-kelly-alexan
der-vindman-north-korea-and-trump/606496/

Kelly repeatedly warned Trump that such language could cause Kim, eager to prove his bona fides to the senior generals around him, to overreact by attacking South Korea. But Trump continued, tweeting: “Military solutions are now fully in place, locked and loaded, should North Korea act unwisely. Hopefully Kim Jong Un will find another path!” Kim later responded by firing missiles over Japan and calling Trump a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard.”

According to reporting in Michael S. Schmidt’s book, Donald Trump v. The United States: Inside the Struggle to Stop a President, Kelly told Trump, “You’re pushing him to prove he’s a man. If you push him into a corner, he may strike out. You don’t want to box him in.” Schmidt wrote, “The president of the United States had no appreciation for the fact that he could bring the country not just to the brink of a war at any moment—but a nuclear war that could easily escalate into the most dangerous one in world history.” Kelly realized that his warnings to Trump weren’t penetrating, so he played, instead, on Trump’s insecurities, and on his need to be a hero, or, at the very least, a salesman. “No president since North Korea became a communist dictatorship has ever tried to reach out,” Kelly told Trump, according to Schmidt. “No president has tried to reason with this guy—you’re a big dealmaker, why don’t you do that.”

Kelly’s diversion worked: Trump quickly became enamored of the idea that he would achieve a history-making rapprochement with North Korea. Kelly understood that such a deal was far-fetched, but the pursuit of a chimera would cause Trump to stop threatening nuclear war.

Trump remains an unstable leader in a world far more unstable than it was during his first term. No president has ever been anything close to a perfect steward of America’s national security and its nuclear arsenal, but Trump is less qualified than almost any previous leader to manage a nuclear crisis. (Only the late-stage, frequently inebriated Richard Nixon was arguably more dangerous.) Trump is highly reactive, sensitive to insult, and incurious. It is unfair to say that he is likely to wake up one morning and decide to use nuclear weapons—he has spoken intermittently about his loathing of such weapons, and of war more generally—but he could very easily mismanage his way, again, into an escalatory spiral.

The successful end of the Cold War caused many people to believe that the threat of nuclear war had receded. It has historically been difficult to get people to think about the unthinkable. In an article for this magazine in 1947, Albert Einstein explained:

The public, having been warned of the horrible nature of atomic warfare, has done nothing about it, and to a large extent has dismissed the warning from its consciousness. A danger that cannot be averted had perhaps better be forgotten; or a danger against which every possible precaution has been taken also had probably better be forgotten.

We forget at our peril. We forget that 80 years after the world-changing summer of 1945, Russia and the United States alone possess enough nuclear firepower to destroy the world many times over; we forget that China is becoming a near-peer adversary of the U.S.; we forget that the history of the Nuclear Age is filled with near misses, accidents, and wild misinterpretations of reality; and we forget that most humans aren’t quite as creative, independent-minded, and perspicacious as Stanislav Petrov and John Kelly.

Most of all, we forget the rule articulated by the mathematician and cryptologist Martin Hellman: that the only way to survive Russian roulette is to stop playing.

This article appears in the August 2025 print edition with the headline “Nuclear Roulette.”

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 30, 2025 7:51 AM

SECOND

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


Elon Musk Doubles Down On Distaste Of Trump’s Big Bill As Senate Republicans Scramble To Pass It

“The latest Senate draft bill will destroy millions of jobs in America and cause immense strategic harm to our country,” Musk wrote on X ahead of a procedural Senate vote.

By Ali Swenson | Jun 29, 2025, 12:02 AM EDT

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/elon-musk-doubles-down-on-distaste-of-t
rumps-big-bill-as-senate-gop-scramble-to-pass-it_n_6860b97fe4b0a613dff56ce6

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 30, 2025 8:02 AM

SECOND

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


We’re All Rats Now

Time to take a stand, again, against racism

By Paul Krugman | Jun 30, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/were-all-rats-now

Zohran Mamdani’s upset victory in New York’s Democratic primary has created panic in MAGAland. Stephen Miller, the architect of Donald Trump’s deportation policies, waxed apocalyptic:

Stephen Miller @StephenM
NYC is the clearest warning yet of what happens to a society when it fails to control migration.
9:12 AM • Jun 25, 2025 • 7.5M Views

Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, declared that New York is about to turn into “Caracas on the Hudson.”

And Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama basically declared New York’s voters subhuman, saying:

These inner-city rats, they live off the federal government. And that’s one reason we’re $37 trillion in debt. And it’s time we find these rats and we send them back home, that are living off the American taxpayers that are working very hard every week to pay taxes.

These reactions are vile, and they’re also dishonest. Whatever these men may claim, it’s all about bigotry.

Miller isn’t concerned about the state of New York “society.” What bothers him is the idea of nonwhite people having political power.

Bessent isn’t really deeply worried about Zamdani’s economic ideas. But he feels free, maybe even obliged, to slander a foreign-born Muslim with language he would never use about a white Christian politician, even if that politician were (like some of his colleagues in the Trump administration) a total crackpot.

And while Tuberville stands out even within his caucus as an ignorant fool, his willingness to use dehumanizing language about millions of people shows that raw racism is rapidly becoming mainstream in American politics.

Remember, during the campaign both Trump and JD Vance amplified the slanders about Haitians eating pets.

And now that they’re in office, you can see the resurgence of raw racism all across Trump administration policies, large and small. You can see it, for example, in the cuts at the National Institutes of Health, which are so tilted against racial minorities that a federal judge — one appointed by Ronald Reagan! — declared

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.

You can see it in the renaming of military bases after Confederate generals — that is, traitors who fought for slavery.

You can even see it in a change in the military’s shaving policy that is clearly custom-designed to drive Black men — who account for around a quarter of the Army’s new recruits — out of the service.

So racism and bigotry are back, big time. Who’s safe? Nobody.

Are you a legal immigrant? Well, the Supreme Court just allowed Trump to summarily strip half a million U.S. residents of that status, and only a fool would imagine that this is the end of the story. Anyway, when masked men who claim to be ICE agents but refuse to show identification are grabbing people off the streets because they think those people look illegal, does legal status even matter? Does it even matter if you’re a U.S. citizen?

And the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is set to massively increase ICE’s funding — basically setting up a huge national secret police force.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/06/big-beautiful-bill-donald-
trump-government-spending-republicans-immigration.html

Now, maybe you imagine that you yourself won’t suffer from this new reign of bigotry and imagine that everyone you care about is similarly safe. But if that’s what you think, you’re likely to face a rude awakening.

I personally don’t have any illusions of safety. Yes, I’m a native-born white citizen. But my wife and her family are Black, and some of my friends and relatives are foreign-born U.S. citizens.

Furthermore, I’m Jewish, and anyone who knows their history realizes that whenever right-wing bigotry is on the ascendant, we’re always next in line. Are there really people out there naïve enough to believe MAGA’s claims to be against antisemitism, who can’t see the transparent cynicism and dishonesty?

The fact is that the Trump administration already contains a number of figures with strong ties to antisemitic extremists. The Great Replacement Theory, which has de facto become part of MAGA’s ideology, doesn’t just say that there’s a conspiracy to replace whites with people of color; it says that it’s a Jewish conspiracy.

So I’m definitely scared of what the many antisemites inside or with close ties to the Trump administration may eventually do. And no, I’m not frightened at all by the prospect that New York may soon have a somewhat leftist Muslim mayor.

Anyway, my personal fears are beside the point. Everyone who cares about keeping America America needs to take a stand against the resurgence of bigotry. Because the truth is that we’re all rats now.

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 30, 2025 6:28 PM

SECOND

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


Trump Oversees Worst Dollar Start to Year in Over Half a Century

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-oversees-worst-dollar-start-year-over-h
alf-century-2092446

The U.S. dollar has had its worst start to a year since 1973, weighed down by President Donald Trump's trade policy, a worsening outlook for the country's ever-growing public debt, and concerns about the independence of the Federal Reserve.

The Financial Times reported that the U.S. Dollar Index had declined by 10 percent over the course of 2025, marking the weakest performance since the end of the Bretton Woods system, which was underpinned by the dollar's convertibility to gold. https://markets.ft.com/data/indices/tearsheet/summary?s=IRDXY0:IUS
https://www.ft.com/content/59c07f63-3331-462b-b9e3-d1bcaea69fce

Trump has staked much of his political reputation on his handling of the economy, pitching himself as the leader who can slash household bills, put more money in Americans' pockets through lower taxes, and lift commerce into a new golden age.

The dollar news coincides with the U.S. Senate gearing up to pass Trump's much-tweaked One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the tax-cutting provisions of which are set to expand the deficit by trillions of dollars over the coming decade, putting pressure on the dollar.

Import tariffs typically strengthen the currency. However, Trump's disordered approach to trade, coupled with U.S. debt concerns and his pressure on the Fed to cut interest rates, has driven the dollar down.

Talks with different countries are ongoing, but are subject to sudden changes in direction.

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 30, 2025 6:42 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
We’re All Rats Now

Time to take a stand, again, against racism

By Paul Krugman | Jun 30, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/were-all-rats-now

Zohran Mamdani’s upset victory in New York’s Democratic primary has created panic in MAGAland.


Hahahahahahahahaha!

No. It hasn't, Paul.

We're absolutely THRILLED about that outcome.

We're rooting for him to win so NYC can be completely destroyed and we can put Democrats to bed 6 feet under where they belong forever.

Good job NY.

And thank you for your service, Paul.

You as well, for all the free Trump campaign work you do here everyday, Second.



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

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

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Monday, June 30, 2025 6:44 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Trump Oversees Worst Dollar Start to Year in Over Half a Century


Fake and/or outtdated news.

We're far beyond the "start" of the year, and this headline is not reflective at all of reality in end-June 2025.

Try again.

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

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

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Monday, June 30, 2025 6:46 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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

Turn on the news or look at the paper everyday an all you see is "Liberals are outraged".

Bad things happen to everyone. Grow up.
This "bad thing" was done by Trump because he is evil


We had nothing but bad things out of Democrats and Joe Biden* for 4 years.

Nobody cares about what you think is a bad thing in 2025.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
6ixStringJack, you are dishonest writing "We had nothing but bad things out of Democrats and Joe Biden* for 4 years."


No. I'm not.

And your party is dead. Because you've never once done a proper assessment of the world around you and you followed them right off a cliff.

It's why everything you post here ends up never happening and you will never see your party win an election again unless the economy actually does tank like your idiot college "educated" intellectuals like Paul Krugman and dead Kevin Drum keep praying for.

You lose. You are a loser. You will always be a loser.

The world you thought you were living in 6 months ago no longer exists and will NEVER come back.



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

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

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Tuesday, July 1, 2025 8:16 AM

SECOND

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


How Trump Will Be Remembered

No other president has made his time in office so nakedly about himself and his legacy.

June 30, 2025, 8:07 AM

By Stephen M. Walt, a columnist at Foreign Policy and the Robert and Renée Belfer professor of international relations at Harvard University.

https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/06/30/trump-president-us-history/

U.S. presidents have big egos—if they didn’t, their chances of reaching the Oval Office would be slim—and they want to be remembered favorably after they are gone. A few presidents, such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, enjoy an exalted status in part for their exceptional qualities but also because they overcame challenging circumstances that required extraordinary leadership. Presidents who govern in more normal times, or whose actions in office are tainted by obvious failures, can only hope they don’t end up near the bottom of one of those lists ranking presidents from best to worst.

As in so many other things, Donald Trump’s obsession with his own place in history is in a class by itself. No other president has made his time in office so nakedly about himself or been as transparent in his desire to be remembered as one of the greatest U.S. presidents. Indeed, he seems to believe that he has already earned this accolade.

The signs of Trump’s desire for personal glory are everywhere. In his first term, he told reporters that delays in filling key positions were irrelevant because he was “the only one” who mattered. He has repeatedly expressed his desire for a Nobel Peace Prize, which he covets in part because his predecessor Barack Obama got one. During his 2024 presidential campaign, he made it clear that he saw himself as the greatest president ever—even better than Lincoln or Washington. He boasts about his own intelligence, and he expects cabinet members and other top officials to engage in ritual acts of fawning admiration in public. Cultish MAGA Republicans are already working to venerate Trump; there’s even a congressional bill proposing that his face be added to Mount Rushmore.

Trump’s problem, however, is that his record in office is at best mediocre and at worst a disaster. During his first term, he mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic, increased U.S. debt by more than $8 trillion, made the U.S. trade deficit worse, failed to end the war in Afghanistan, couldn’t persuade North Korea to reduce its nuclear arsenal, and roiled relations with long-standing U.S. allies to no good purpose. After that performance, the electorate quite properly turned him out of office. He won a second term largely because Joe Biden didn’t leave the race soon enough, and he’s now attempting a radical transformation of U.S. domestic and foreign policy that has raised legitimate fears of a recession, threatens to destroy the country’s world-leading scientific and academic prowess, and has caused his approval ratings to plummet faster than any U.S. president in 80 years. Call me old-fashioned, but that doesn’t look like Mount Rushmore material to me.

But don’t count Trump out yet because his entire career both before and after he entered politics has been based on a remarkable ability to create the illusion of achievement, even when the facts say otherwise. He started his business career having inherited a sizable fortune, only to suffer repeated bankruptcies and other business failures while committing multiple frauds. Despite this mediocre record, a combination of relentless self-promotion, adroit and shameless lying, and a fortuitous gig as a reality TV star convinced millions of people that he was a business genius and a master dealmaker.

As president, Trump’s primary achievement has been to shatter many of the norms that shaped the U.S. democratic order and to challenge a lot of conventional wisdoms. For his supporters, that is his genius; to his critics, it is why he’s so dangerous. Unfortunately, he has been too unable or unwilling to master the detail necessary to implement effective reforms and too inept a negotiator to out-maneuver experienced and tough-minded foreign adversaries. But these failings may not matter, given his ability to convince people that he’s doing great things no matter what the reality may be.

But is there something wrong with a president striving for a special place in the history books in the first place? Shouldn’t we want our presidents to be ambitious and not be content with simply preserving the status quo or tinkering with it at the margins? The answer is yes, provided that 1) they have well-conceived ideas for how to benefit the country (and not just enrich themselves or their biggest backers) and 2) they know how to implement these plans effectively. Ambition is welcome when it advances the common good and is pursued energetically and effectively but not when it’s all about glorifying the individual who happens to occupy the White House.

When leaders are driven primarily by the desire for personal glory, rather than by a genuine commitment to the public interest, they are more likely to pursue meaningless “achievements” that bring few benefits (e.g., renaming the Gulf of Mexico) and to ignore more challenging problems whose solution would help millions of people (such as improving infrastructure or reducing economic inequality). They are more inclined to take big risks, conjure up imaginary emergencies to justify extreme measures, and pursue lofty but ill-conceived projects that ordinary citizens will end up paying for. And if appearances are all that matter, an ambitious leader will spend more time building up cults of personality and suppressing criticism than on actually governing. Sound familiar?

Trump’s oft-expressed desire to take over Greenland illustrates these tendencies perfectly. There is no compelling security justification for annexing the island because the United States already has a treaty with Greenland’s rightful sovereign, Denmark, that permits increasing the U.S. military presence there if circumstances require. Nor is there a compelling economic reason to take it over because exploiting Greenland’s mineral resources may not be commercially viable and U.S. firms are free to pursue these opportunities if they wish. There’s also the pesky problem that Greenland’s population has no desire to become part of the United States.

Taking over Greenland would damage whatever remains of America’s image as a comparatively benign great power, undermine relations with Denmark (previously one of the most pro-American countries in the world), and further undermine the long-standing norm against territorial expansion. In short: It’s a dumb idea. But in Trump’s mind, seizing Greenland (or making Canada the 51st state, for that matter) would make America bigger and therefore “greater.” Surely a dramatic “achievement” like that would cement his place in history, no matter what the consequences or collateral damage might be.

Indeed, history warns that leaders obsessed with personal glory typically do enormous harm to their own countries. Napoleon Bonaparte was unquestionably an extraordinary individual and a world-historical figure, but his addictive pursuit of personal glory cost the lives of millions of Europeans (including perhaps a million French citizens), and he ended up dying a lonely death in exile on St. Helena. Adolf Hitler was a megalomaniac who aspired to create a “1,000-year Reich,” but his main “achievement” was tens of millions of dead Europeans and a division of Germany that lasted more than four decades. Other ambitious leaders convinced of their historic destiny—such as the Shah of Iran, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, Saddam Hussein, Mao Zedong, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and Joseph Stalin—may have achieved some remarkable feats, but each ultimately did their countries more harm than good.

The Founding Fathers understood the damage that overweening personal ambition could cause. That is why they rejected the idea of monarchy, wrote a constitution, insisted that the United States should be a nation ruled by laws, and created a system of government where “ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” James Madison’s statement in “Federalist No. 51” that in “republican government, the legislative authority necessarily predominates” showed his keen awareness of the dangers that would arise if presidents were too powerful or eager to subordinate the interests of the country to their own quest for recognition and acclaim.

Because we live in a world where truth is an increasingly scarce commodity, humility is old-fashioned, and naked self-promotion is the norm, Trump may manage to convince the MAGA faithful that he is a truly great president. But in the end, his historical reputation will depend on results. Based on his record to date, he’s likely to be judged as a highly significant president because his smashing of norms and other radical actions will have had an enormous impact by the time he leaves office.

But unless Americans decide they are happier in a country that is weaker, sicker, poorer, dumber, more indebted, less admired, more divided, and maybe no longer a genuine democracy, the mantle of true greatness will forever escape his grasp.

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

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Tuesday, July 1, 2025 9:49 AM

SECOND

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


Republicans Beware: Medicaid Is Not a Soft Target
America’s health backstop is more popular than ever
By Paul Krugman | Jul 01, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/republicans-beware-medicaid-is-not

Does anyone remember the 1995 government shutdown and why it happened? Basically Newt Gingrich, fresh off a big Republican victory in the midterm election, was trying to force Bill Clinton to make big cuts in Medicare. He failed, in large part because Medicare was and is an immensely popular program.

A decade later, George W. Bush tried to privatize Social Security. But he, too, failed, because Social Security is also immensely popular.

But the Republican quest to rip up as much of the social safety net as possible never ends. And for the past 15 years or so that has meant steering clear, for now, of Medicare and Social Security, which are middle-class programs, and going after Medicaid instead. If the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — which is, incredibly, the legislation’s actual name — goes into effect, Medicaid will be cut by around a trillion dollars over the next decade. (As of this morning, the fate of that bill remains uncertain.)

What is Medicaid? Like Medicare, it’s government-provided health insurance. But unlike Medicare, it’s “means-tested”: your income has to fall below a certain level before you’re eligible. This makes Medicaid a program for the poor or near-poor — and that, for many on the right, suggests a political opportunity.

Ostensibly, the right attacks Medicaid because it costs too much. I mean, it’s a government program, which means that it must be riddled with waste, fraud, and abuse, right? And surely there must be millions of lazy people getting health care through Medicaid who should be getting up off their couches and going to work.

The reality is that none of this is true.

No doubt there’s waste and fraud in Medicaid, as there is in any system created and run by human beings. But overall Medicaid provides essential health care relatively cheaply. Once you adjust for the relatively poor health of the average Medicaid recipient — chronic illness can make you poor! — Medicaid appears to have significantly lower costs than private insurance:

Actually, in some ways Medicaid resembles the health care systems of other advanced countries, which are much cheaper than U.S. health care (while achieving equally good results) largely because they’re more cost-conscious, willing to bargain hard with drug companies, say no to expensive procedures of dubious medical benefit, and so on.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of Medicaid recipients either are working or can’t work — they’re disabled or need to stay home to care for others:

Oh, and one thing we know from repeated experience is that adding work requirements to Medicaid does not, in fact, lead to more people working.

I don’t know how many of the right-wingers clamoring for drastic Medicaid cuts believe the stories they tell about waste and lazy Americans who won’t get a job. My guess, though, is that they don’t care whether these stories are true. They’re going after Medicaid because they see it as a soft target — a program that helps lower-income Americans, and who cares about them? Medicaid’s beneficiaries, they imagine, are the new welfare queens driving Cadillacs.

But a funny thing has happened to public opinion about Medicaid. The share of Americans covered by the program has increased a lot over the past 15 years:

Source: KFF

And the fact that so many Americans now receive Medicaid means that many people have either benefited from the program or know people who have. And as a result the program has become remarkably popular:

Source: KFF

83 percent favorability — 74 percent among Republicans! — is incredibly high. In fact, Medicaid appears to have slightly higher favorability than apple pie.

What this suggests is that Republicans who consider Medicaid a soft target, a program that only benefits inner-city rats, are going to be shocked by the blowback if they do manage to eviscerate this key piece of American health care.

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

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Tuesday, July 1, 2025 10:27 AM

SECOND

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


USAID cuts may cause over 14 million additional deaths by 2030, study says

By Kanishka Singh | June 30, 2025 7:17 PM CDT

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/usaid-cuts
-may-cause-over-14-million-additional-deaths-by-2030-study-says-2025-07-01/

Deep funding cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development and its potential dismantling could result in more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, according to research published in The Lancet medical journal on Monday.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(25)011
86-9/fulltext

BY THE NUMBERS

The study estimated that over the past two decades, USAID-funded programs have prevented more than 91 million deaths globally, including 30 million deaths among children.

Projections suggest that ongoing deep funding cuts - combined with the potential dismantling of the agency - could result in more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030, including 4.5 million deaths among children younger than 5 years, the study in The Lancet said.

Washington is the world's largest humanitarian aid donor, amounting to at least 38% of all contributions recorded by the United Nations. It disbursed $61 billion in foreign assistance last year, just over half of it via USAID, according to government data. https://foreignassistance.gov/

KEY QUOTE

"Our estimates show that, unless the abrupt funding cuts announced and implemented in the first half of 2025 are reversed, a staggering number of avoidable deaths could occur by 2030," the study said.

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

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Tuesday, July 1, 2025 2:00 PM

SECOND

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


AI fact-checked Donald Trump and this is what we learned

By Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Stephen Henriques, Steven Tian | July 1, 2025

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2025/ai-trump-fact
s-lies/

President Donald Trump has presented himself as a strong champion and consistent supporter of artificial intelligence. Upon returning to the White House, one of his first acts was to issue an executive order to “sustain and enhance America’s dominance in AI.” On his second day in office, he announced the Stargate Project, calling it “the largest AI infrastructure project, by far, in history.”

The president has courted AI luminaries, most notably Sam Altman, Larry Ellison, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. His “big, beautiful budget bill” contains a provision prohibiting states from regulating AI over the next decade, in the hopes that this will help secure U.S. supremacy in the global AI race.

However, though Trump appears to support AI, that does not mean AI supports him, as our recent AI analysis of some of the president’s many questionable public statements shows.

To counter any inadvertent bias or systemic failures, we asked each of five leading AI models — OpenAI’s ChatGPT; Anthropic’s Claude; X/xAI’s Grok (owned by Elon Musk); Google’s Gemini; and Perplexity — to verify the president’s most oft-repeated claims or assertions. The systems are completely independent, with no known ideological filters and no revealed perspective biases among the model trainers. Statisticians would call this methodological verification a check for inter-rater reliability.

Artificial intelligence discredited all the Trump claims we presented, fact-checking the president with startling accuracy and objective rigor.

Across all questions, AI model responses disproving Trump’s claims or rejecting his assertions were always in the majority (i.e., 3 out of 5 responses or greater). All five models generated consistent responses firmly denying the claims in 16 of the 20 questions. In 15 of those consistently firm responses, all five AI models debunk the claims. (Note: Question 19 in the comprehensive analysis addresses the models’ lack of inherent bias against Trump and is one of those 16 responses, bringing the technical total down to 15 instead of 16.) But even those responses that we categorized as “less firm” partially refute Trump’s claims.

Consider the following sample of responses. Most questions with “less firm” responses have been included and are denoted by an asterisk.

1 Will Trump’s current tariff policies be inflationary?

ChatGPT Yes, Trump’s proposed tariffs would likely raise consumer prices in the short-to-medium term, contributing to inflation unless offset by other deflationary forces.

Grok Trump’s 2025 tariff policies are likely to be inflationary, with estimates suggesting a 1-2.3% rise in consumer prices, equivalent to $1,200-$3,800 per household in 2025.

2 Is the U.S. being taken advantage of on trade by its international partners?

ChatGPT The U.S. is not broadly being “taken advantage of” — but there are real areas where trade practices are unfair or asymmetric, especially involving China, and to a lesser extent, the [European Union] and some developing countries.

Perplexity The U.S. runs large trade deficits with several key partners … However, the economic reality is more complex: trade deficits do not necessarily mean the U.S. is “losing” or being exploited … Public opinion generally supports free trade …

3 Are Trump’s cryptocurrency investments a conflict of interest?

Claude Yes, Trump’s cryptocurrency investments do present significant conflict of interest concerns, and these have become a major issue since he took office. …

Grok Trump’s cryptocurrency investments … present a strong case for a conflict of interest due to his administration’s pro-crypto policies, personal financial gains, and events like the $TRUMP gala, which suggest access-selling. Foreign investments and regulatory pauses amplify concerns about influence and corruption …

4 Has the Department of Government Efficiency actually “found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud”?

Gemini Donald Trump’s claim that DOGE has “found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud” is highly misleading. While there is indeed a recognized problem … DOGE has: not exclusively attributed its claimed “savings” to fraud; often taken credit for fraud … already discovered; and presented “estimated savings” that have been challenged.

Grok The Department of Government Efficiency has not substantiated claims of finding “hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud.”… DOGE’s verified savings ($2-8.6 billion) are a fraction of its $55 billion claim, often tied to ideological cuts (e.g., DEI, USAID) rather than proven fraud. Trump and Musk’s assertions lack specific evidence of criminal intent, as legal experts note.

5 Is Harvard more antisemitic than other universities?

ChatGPT Harvard is not measurably more antisemitic than peer universities, but it has become a focal point in the broader national and political debate about antisemitism on campus …

*Claude The evidence suggests Harvard has serious antisemitism problems that place it among the worst-performing major universities, but it’s part of a broader pattern affecting many elite institutions rather than being uniquely problematic.

*Gemini Harvard has been particularly prominent in the public and governmental discourse due to the severity and visibility of incidents, the responses of its leadership, and the extensive legal and regulatory scrutiny it has faced.

6 Is Trump right that the media is “dishonest” or “tells lies”?

Perplexity Fact-checking evidence does not support the blanket assertion that the U.S. media is “dishonest” or “tells lies.” Donald Trump’s own record of false and misleading statements is well-documented and far exceeds the rate and scale of inaccuracies found in mainstream media reporting. His attacks on the media are widely seen as a political tactic rather than an accurate assessment of journalism.

ChatGPT Trump is right that media bias, errors, and spin exist — and that some stories mislead. But his blanket claim that the media is inherently “dishonest” or always “lying” is misleading and self-serving. The truth is more complex: journalism is flawed but still vital — and lumping all media into one corrupt entity is as dangerous as it is inaccurate.

7 Did the “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris that aired in October distort the truth and damage Trump’s candidacy?

Grok The 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris on October 7, 2024, did not distort the truth in a deceitful manner, as Trump alleged. CBS’s editing used different segments of Harris’s response to the same question, a standard practice for time constraints, not a deliberate attempt to mislead, as confirmed by the released transcript …

8 Was the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 President Joe Biden’s fault?

Gemini The overwhelming majority of experts and international bodies attribute the 2022 invasion directly to Vladimir Putin’s decisions and his long-standing geopolitical objectives … President Biden’s administration worked to deter the invasion through diplomacy and warnings, and … led a strong international response to support Ukraine.

*Claude The evidence suggests that while some Biden policies may have been suboptimal, Putin bears primary responsibility for choosing to invade a sovereign nation.

*Grok The Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 was primarily Vladimir Putin’s decision, driven by long-standing geopolitical ambitions … Biden’s policies, like the Afghanistan withdrawal and Nord Stream 2 sanctions lift, may have contributed to perceptions of U.S. weakness … The international consensus and expert analyses place primary blame on Putin, not Biden.

9 Was the American economy the worst in its history under the Biden presidency?

Gemini While the Biden presidency has been marked by high inflation … other key economic indicators such as job creation, unemployment rates, GDP growth and new business formation suggest a strong and resilient economy. To characterize it as the “worst in history” is not supported by … economic data and historical precedents.

10 Was the Biden administration responsible for higher levels of inflation following the covid-19 pandemic and through 2024?

Claude The Biden administration bears partial responsibility for higher inflation levels following COVID-19, but it was not the sole or even primary cause … While the American Rescue Plan did contribute to inflationary pressures by boosting demand during a supply-constrained period, most economic analysis suggests supply chain disruptions, energy price increases, and global pandemic effects were more significant drivers.

11 Did 21 million illegal immigrants enter the United States [during the Biden administration]? And were many of them murderers, human traffickers, gang members, or other sorts of serious criminals?

ChatGPT No, the claim that 21 million illegal immigrants have entered the U.S. — and that many are murderers, traffickers, or gang members — is significantly misleading, not supported by verified data, and often used in politicized or inflammatory rhetoric …

Grok The claim that 21 million illegal immigrants entered the U.S. is false. CBP data shows 10.8 million encounters and 2.3 million gotaways from FY21-24, with net entries likely 3-5 million, and the total undocumented population remains 11-13 million. The assertion that “many” are murderers, human traffickers, or gang members is exaggerated. ICE’s 425,431 convicted noncitizens (5-6% of undocumented) include 13,099 murderers and 15,811 sexual assaulters, but these span decades, include legal immigrants, and are mostly pre-Biden.

Note: Grok contradicts itself, incorrectly claiming 425,431 convicted noncitizens is 5 to 6 percent of the undocumented population, when the number represents only about 3 percent.

12 Were the Jan. 6, 2021, rioters who stormed the capitol “patriots” or “heroes”?

ChatGPT Calling the Capitol rioters “patriots” or “heroes” ignores the facts, undermines the rule of law, and insults the democratic process. While people can peacefully protest, those who used violence to overturn an election result crossed a clear line — and have been treated accordingly by courts, law enforcement, and historians.

13 Was the 2020 presidential election stolen from Trump?

Gemini No, the overwhelming consensus from all official and credible sources is that the 2020 presidential election was not stolen … Despite persistent claims from Donald Trump and his supporters, there is no credible evidence from courts, election officials, or independent investigations to support the assertion.

14 Is Trump the most dishonest president in U.S. history?

Perplexity Based on available fact-checking data and expert analysis, Donald Trump is considered the most dishonest president in U.S. history in terms of the number and frequency of false or misleading statements.

*Claude Rather than definitively ranking presidential dishonesty, it’s more accurate to say Trump’s approach to truth-telling was distinctively frequent and public in ways that differed from his predecessors, while acknowledging that presidential deception has unfortunately been a recurring feature throughout American history.

How would Trump respond to the near-unanimous denial of his claims by the five AI models? Probably the way he always reacts to unfavorable news — by discrediting the dissent. But would he disavow the technology he is decisively promoting?

Or, is there something fundamentally wrong with the accuracy of these AI models that is not widely realized?

The simple truth our analysis points to is this: Either the president is wrong, or the technology is a failure. We leave it to you to choose. But as Aldous Huxley said: “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.”

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

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Wednesday, July 2, 2025 6:42 AM

SECOND

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


Medicaid cuts in spending bill spark alarm for millions of nursing home residents

CBS Evening News July 1, 2025



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

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Wednesday, July 2, 2025 7:05 AM

SECOND

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


Muskenfreude

By Paul Krugman | Jul 2, 2025 at 5:45 AM

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/muskenfreude

So the Senate has passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. True, it could still be blocked if House Republicans stood by their principles. But they won’t. This monstrosity will become the law of the land, and tens of millions of Americans will suffer so that billionaires can pay lower taxes.

Looking forward, those of us who care about a decent society will have to do what we can to make sure that Americans understand who ruined their lives and make the people responsible pay a heavy political price. But there will be plenty of time for that, so I thought I’d devote today’s post to a more pleasant topic: The humiliation of Elon Musk.

Does taking some satisfaction in Musk’s demise make me a bad person? Maybe, but I’m only human. Should I go easy on Musk because he came out against the terrible bill that just passed? No.

For one thing, Musk’s opposition predictably made no difference. Musk and other oligarchs will soon learn just how little political power their wealth gives them in the political environment they helped create. More on that in a minute.

Beyond that, Musk was against the bill for all the wrong reasons.

The whole DOGE story remains remarkable on a couple of levels. It’s not just that Donald Trump temporarily gave immense power over federal spending to someone who had no legitimate basis for that power — he was neither elected by voters nor, as is normally required for senior officials, approved by the Senate. Beyond that, Trump gave that power to a man who clearly understood nothing about what the government does and what it spends money on — but who, in his arrogance, assumed that he could eliminate trillions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse.

He couldn’t, of course, and he should have been fired on the spot after making the absurd claim that millions of dead people were receiving Social Security checks. But he wasn’t. For months after that episode Musk remained in a position to create chaos and degrade the functioning of the government — oh, and condemn large numbers of children to death. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/usaid-cuts-lead-14-million-
deaths-five-years-researchers-say-rcna216095

Now he’s on the outs — but he still lacks the honesty and courage to admit what he got wrong. Here’s Musk condemning the Beautiful Bill:

Elon Musk @elonmusk • Follow
It is obvious with the insane spending of this bill, which increases the debt ceiling by a record FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS that we live in a one-party country - the PORKY PIG PARTY!!
Time for a new political party that actually cares about the people.
3:08 PM • Jun 30, 2025

What is the “insane spending” and “pork” of which he speaks? If there’s huge wasteful spending going on, well, Musk had months of unprecedented power and access to find it — and came up empty. The truth is that this bill will explode the deficit because of the huge tax breaks it’s offering to the wealthy and corporations. But Musk can’t handle the truth.

What about Musk’s threat to form a new political party? It will go nowhere if he tries. But I don’t think he’ll get anywhere near making good on that threat. As Trump might say, Musk just doesn’t have the cards. My prediction is that very soon one of two things will happen. Either Musk will slink off, tail between his legs. Or he will see his wealth destroyed, faster than he imagines possible.

Most immediately, Musk’s business interests are unusually dependent on federal support, and hence on the good will of whoever is running the government. I’m not sure whether Musk is really the most subsidized businessman in history, but Trump basically got it right here:

Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
Elon Musk knew, long before he so strongly Endorsed me for President, that I was strongly against the EV Mandate. It is ridiculous, and was always a major part of my campaign. Electric cars are fine, but not everyone should be forced to own one. Elon may get more subsidy than any human being in history, by far, and without subsidies, Elon would probably have to close up shop and head back home to South Africa. No more Rocket launches, Satellites, or Electric Car Production, and our Country would save a FORTUNE. Perhaps we should have DOGE take a good, hard, look at this? BIG MONEY TO BE SAVED!!!
Jul 01, 2025, 12:44 AM

Beyond that, even great wealth offers little protection from the people in power under an authoritarian regime.

Three years ago NPR’s Planet Money newsletter published an article titled “How Putin conquered Russia’s oligarchy” that people like Musk really should have read before throwing their support behind Trump. https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2022/03/29/1088886554/how-putin-con
quered-russias-oligarchy

As the article explained, Russian oligarchs played a large role in Vladmiri Putin’s rise to power. But a few years after his ascent, Putin summoned the wealthiest among them to the Kremlin to explain who was in charge:

Putin offered the oligarchs a deal: bend to my authority, stay out of my way, and you can keep your mansions, superyachts, private jets, and multibillion-dollar corporations (corporations that, just a few years before, had been owned by the Russian government). In the coming years, the oligarchs who reneged on this deal and undermined Putin would be thrown into a Siberian prison or be forced into exile or die in suspicious circumstances.

And oligarchs who refused to come to heel were replaced by

a new breed of oligarchs, who have accrued wealth and power under Putin: the siloviki, which translates roughly to "men of force."

It can’t happen here, you say. Trump can’t arbitrarily punish wealthy men or seize their property. After all, that would be against the law. And the rule of law still prevails in America, doesn’t it? I mean, we’re not the kind of country where masked men claiming to be government agents kidnap people off the street. Oh, wait.

Still, Musk is a U.S. citizen, which gives him protection, right? Except the Department of Justice has already announced that it will soon be seeking to revoke citizenship for many naturalized Americans. And Trump is already fantasizing about sending Musk back to South Africa.

OK, I don’t expect things to go that far for Musk or any of the other Trump-backing oligarchs who may be having second thoughts — not because I think there are limits to what Trump is willing to do, but because I don’t think any of these guys will have the courage to stand up to him.

Just to be clear, much as I hate what Musk has done, I don’t want to see him exiled or falling out of a window, because I don’t want to live in that kind of country. But if we do become that kind of a country, people like Musk will bear much of the responsibility — and, whatever they imagine, may pay part of the price.

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

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Wednesday, July 2, 2025 8:45 AM

SECOND

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


Analysis shows Trump's tariffs would cost US employers $82.3 billion

By JOSH BOAK Associated Press | July 2, 2025, 5:26 AM

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory/analysis-shows-trumps-tariff
s-cost-us-employers-823-123402795

The analysis by the JPMorganChase Institute is among the first to measure the direct costs created by the import taxes on businesses with $10 million to $1 billion in annual revenue, a category that includes roughly a third of private-sector U.S. workers.

The findings show clear trade-offs from Trump’s import taxes, contradicting his claims that foreign manufacturers would absorb the costs of the tariffs instead of U.S. companies that rely on imports.

The outlook for tariffs remains highly uncertain. Trump had stopped negotiations with Canada, only to restart them. He similarly on Monday threatened more tariffs on Japan unless it buys more rice from the U.S.

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

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Wednesday, July 2, 2025 1:40 PM

SECOND

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


We are led by fools

By Joel Eissenberg | July 2, 2025 5:19 am

https://angrybearblog.com/2025/07/we-are-led-by-fools

RFK Jr. has appointed a clown car to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). And it shows:
Quote:
If observers were waiting for a moment when the newly anointed members of the CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) made a clear case against U.S. vaccine science, it didn't happen during the group's 2-day meeting last week.

Instead, panelists repeated old COVID grievances, re-litigated solved issues around thimerosal and the measles, mumps, rubella, and varicella (MMRV) vaccine, and asked basic questions about epidemiologic methods underpinning high-quality science, experts told MedPage Today.

"We have people who are asking questions of the CDC like it's a college epidemiology class, not understanding basic principles," said James Lawler, MD, MPH, of the University of Nebraska Medical Center's Global Center for Health Security in Omaha. "It's embarrassing for the United States and it makes me incredibly sad."
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/vaccines/116343

Not just sad, it’s dangerous. Would you want inexperienced people chosen for aeronautics skepticism flying your plane? Would you want architects who are suspicious of “big engineering” designing the bridges you drive on? Would you trust your prostate surgery to someone who believes prostatectomies are a conspiracy against men?

This is MASA (Make America Stupid Again).

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

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Wednesday, July 2, 2025 3:10 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
AI fact-checked Donald Trump and this is what we learned

By Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, Stephen Henriques, Steven Tian | July 1, 2025

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2025/ai-trump-fact
s-lies/

President Donald Trump has presented himself as a strong champion and consistent supporter of artificial intelligence. Upon returning to the White House, one of his first acts was to issue an executive order to “sustain and enhance America’s dominance in AI.” On his second day in office, he announced the Stargate Project, calling it “the largest AI infrastructure project, by far, in history.”

The president has courted AI luminaries, most notably Sam Altman, Larry Ellison, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. His “big, beautiful budget bill” contains a provision prohibiting states from regulating AI over the next decade, in the hopes that this will help secure U.S. supremacy in the global AI race.

However, though Trump appears to support AI, that does not mean AI supports him, as our recent AI analysis of some of the president’s many questionable public statements shows...



Just proves what I've been saying all along about Artificial so-called Intelligence: garbage in, garbage out.

Training computer programs using "what people talk about“ (large language models) generates responses that sound smart but aren't grounded in reality.

What flipped my lid were the responses to

Quote:
Is Trump right that the media is “dishonest” or “tells lies”?


OF COURSE the media lies! See below...

Quote:
Did the “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris that aired in October distort the truth and damage Trump’s candidacy?


Editing may not have changed Harris' content, but it sure manicured her overall demeanor, changing her from a word- salad spewer to a thoughtful incisive candidate.

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Wednesday, July 2, 2025 3:34 PM

SECOND

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


Trump’s Big ‘Growth’ Brag Gets Hit With an Immediate Reality Check
GUESS AGAIN
A new jobs report suggests the president’s plans are causing economic uncertainty.

By Ewan Palmer | Jul. 2 2025 1:11PM EDT

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-big-growth-brag-gets-hit-with-an-
immediate-reality-check/

President Donald Trump’s boast that the U.S. is experiencing economic “growth” at levels “never seen before” was quickly fact-checked by a damning jobs report.

New data showed private sector employment fell by 33,000 jobs in June, payroll processing firm ADP announced Wednesday.

Not only is this figure far below the estimated gain of 95,000 jobs some economists predicted, it’s also the first decline in private sector jobs in at least two years, reported Axios. ADP’s previous figures from May, initially showing 37,000 additional jobs, were also revised down to 29,000.

“Though layoffs continue to be rare, a hesitancy to hire and a reluctance to replace departing workers led to job losses last month,” Dr. Nela Richardson, chief economist at ADP, said in a statement. “Still, the slowdown in hiring has yet to disrupt pay growth.”

Donald Trump has now overseen the first first decline in private jobs in years.

The report landed just hours after Trump praised his “Big, Beautiful” spending bill, which squeaked through the Senate thanks to Vice President JD Vance’s deciding vote, as well as his new tariff plans. Both have sparked fears that they will devastate the economy and drive the deficit up by trillions.

“Nobody wants to talk about GROWTH, which will be the primary reason that the Big, Beautiful Bill will be one of the most successful pieces of legislation ever passed,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “THIS GROWTH has already begun at levels never seen before. Trillions of Dollars are now being invested into the USA, more than ever before.”

The net loss of 33,000 private sector jobs was driven largely by significant cuts in the service-providing sector, which shed 66,000 jobs overall. Major declines hit professional and business services (-56,000) and education and health services (-52,000). In contrast, the goods-producing sector grew by 32,000 jobs, with manufacturing adding 15,000 and construction gaining 9,000. Leisure and hospitality also managed to grow by 32,000 jobs.

The Department of Health and Human Services will be bringing back hundreds of CDC employees it previously fired.

ADP’s numbers are based on payroll data from private firms and are not the official indicator of the overall job market. The next official U.S. jobs report is due from the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Thursday and is expected to show a very different picture.

The government’s Non-Farm Payrolls report could indicate a gain of 110,000 jobs for June, according to Dow Jones estimates.

In a follow-up Truth Social post after the ADP numbers dropped, Trump wrote in his typical all-caps rant: “THE ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL DEAL IS ALL ABOUT GTOWTH [sic]. IF PASSED, AMERICA WILL HAVE AN ECONOMIC RENAISSANCE LIKE NEVER BEFORE. IT IS ALREADY HAPPENING, JUST IN ANTICIPATION OF THE BEAUTIFUL BILL. DEFICIT CUT IN HALF, RECORD INVESTMENT — CASH, FACTORIES, JOBS POURING INTO THE USA. MAGA!!!”

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast.

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

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Wednesday, July 2, 2025 3:45 PM

SECOND

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


Washington has crushed Trump’s Maga revolution

The ‘One Big Beautiful Bill’ is politics-as-usual reasserting itself, a Congressional mess Americans are all too familiar with

Dan McLaughlin | 02 July 2025 8:07pm BST
Dan McLaughlin is a senior writer at National Review

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/comment/2025/07/02/washington-has-crush
ed-trumps-maga-revolution/

New presidential administrations often spur talk of revolution in Washington, and that goes double for Donald Trump. Supporters promise an end to the old politics; opponents warn of the end of America as we’ve known it. But the minute anything needs to be done through Congress, the forces of politics as usual reassert themselves. So it is with the “One Big Beautiful Bill”.

The gigantic tax and budget bill isn’t just the centrepiece of Trump’s legislative agenda. Given the narrow Republican majorities in both houses of Congress, the power of the Senate filibuster to block party-line bills outside of the tax and budget context, and the disinterest of all sides in forging bipartisan compromise, the bill is likely to be Trump’s entire legislative agenda for 2025-26.

There was a lot of talk about how the bill would do big, dramatic things and break with Republican policies of the past in favour of a new, populist agenda. Perhaps, Trump suggested, Republicans would raise taxes on the wealthy. There was fierce lobbying to undo some provisions of the 2017 Trump tax bill.

But the forces of political gravity are not so easily defied. From the beginning, Republicans understood that this was a must-pass bill. Without it, not only would many of the 2017 tax cuts expire, but the GOP would likely miss the opportunity to satisfy priorities such as funding more immigration enforcement.

In the end, the bill passed the House by just one vote, 215-214 (with two Republicans voting no and three others absent or abstaining), and did the same in the Senate, with vice-president JD Vance casting the 51-50 tiebreaker (with three Republicans voting no). The bill’s passage followed a “vote-a-thon” of record length in the Senate, as Senators voted down one amendment after another.

When a must-pass bill needs every single yes vote to pass, that’s a lot of people who have to be appeased or outright paid off. If the House baulks at the Senate’s changes, the same dynamic is apt to repeat itself.

So, the broad outlines of the bill look a lot more like traditional conservative policymaking with some Trump flavouring. Tax cuts for businesses and the wealthy are preserved, and coupled with working-class tax relief such as eliminating taxes on tips, overtime, and car loans. There’s more money for warships and other weapons, and also for the tools of border enforcement (a wall, more agents, and more detention facilities).

Poverty programmes such as Medicaid are subjected to work requirements, tightened eligibility rules, and restrictions on benefits for immigrants. The bill cuts back on subsidies for student-loan repayments and green energy.

Republican moderates got their own concessions. The deduction for state and local taxes, which effectively subsidises high-tax blue states, was raised from $10,000 to $40,000 (at significant cost to the budget deficit) to secure a few votes from blue-state Republicans, mainly in the northeast. The child tax credit was expanded, which amounts to a payout to many lower-income taxpayers.

Alaska was given more generous treatment in some benefits programmes once Senator Lisa Murkowski’s vote became a must-have. Hospital and nursing-home lobbies made out like bandits. Fiscal hawks who wanted deeper spending cuts are instead presented with a bill that does nothing to alter the debt-ridden nation’s grim fiscal trajectory.

Other conservative ambitions were scaled back or ended on the cutting room floor. Abortion giant Planned Parenthood was defunded from the Medicaid programme – a long-time goal of pro-lifers – but the Senate cut the duration of that defunding to one year. The Senate version also cut out plans to ban Medicaid funding for gender transitions, sell public lands in the West, tax third-party funding of lawsuits, or prevent states from regulating artificial intelligence or giving state-funded healthcare to illegal immigrants. A Senate effort to reduce the federal subsidy for Obamacare health insurance plans was scrapped.

The end result is a bill nobody likes – which is how lawmaking in Washington usually works. Among Republicans, only the handful of purist fiscal conservatives casting “no” votes are truly at peace with their votes. Trump and Vance can doubtless sell the deal to Maga diehards as a necessity, and the donor class will be pleased. Democrats are back in their happy place, complaining that Republicans are cutting taxes on the rich and paying for it with welfare cuts for the poor – a hymn they’ve been singing since the 1930s.

Voters instinctively dislike the bill because it’s huge and messy, but that’s precisely why they’re unlikely to remember much about it a year and a half from now at midterm election time other than the Medicaid cuts, which Democrats aim to make the centrepiece of their campaigns. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

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

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