Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too? by 6ixStringJack

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

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

POSTED BY: 6IXSTRINGJACK
UPDATED: Sunday, July 19, 2026 08:03
SHORT URL:
VIEWED: 172024
PAGE 95 of 95

Monday, July 6, 2026 5:51 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

That's a heartwarming story.

Fucking idiot.

Sounds like he was doing alright up through his late 20's. We were rocking just about the same amount of cash at that time in our lives.

One guy decided to never gamble or play the stock market again, and the other guy blew all of his money on stupid shit because he's a simple-minded retard.

Enjoy your empty lot, dummy. Your poor wife and kids.

Trump robs these dummies of their money, and so Trump is not to blame because they are dumb.

Alternatively, Trump should be removed from office and forced to repay what he stole.

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

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Thursday, July 9, 2026 9:46 AM

SECOND

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

The Zombification of America

By Stephen Marche | July 9, 2026
Mr. Marche is the author, most recently, of “The Next Civil War.” He wrote from Toronto, where he lives.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/09/opinion/america-world-us-isolation.
html

The rupture of the world order is going much better than expected.

At first there was rage at America’s betrayal, when President Trump called for the annexation of Canada, threatened Greenland, imposed tariffs on its friends and began his campaign to undercut NATO, which continued at its latest meeting this week, in Ankara, Turkey. Now, a strange feeling is emerging in some of the countries that used to be known as America’s allies: Optimistic determination. There’s an established principle in chess that applies to geopolitics as well: “The threat is stronger than the execution.” The possibility of U.S. abandonment of the world order was terrifying. The reality turns out to be a new beginning.

Canada, America’s neighbor, was the first to see it, naturally. Since the beginning of Mr. Trump’s second term, American bullying on trade has been ferocious. As a result, Canada has had to consider what American favor or disfavor is worth. The Bank of Canada recently ran a scenario in which the United States imposed a 25 percent tariff on everything Canada exports to the United States. Canada’s growth of its gross domestic product would slow by about 2.4 percentage points, which over a period of adjustment is well within Canada’s capacity. A disaster, to be sure, but not the end of the world. That’s the worst-case scenario.

A recent study by economists at the Canadian Shield Institute, commissioned for the podcast “Gloves Off,” which I host, found that Canadian merchandise exports to the United States last year fell by over 30 billion Canadian dollars, (21 billion U.S. dollars), or over 5 percent of exports to the United States. But that loss was offset by nearly 29 billion Canadian dollars in new demand from the rest of the world. When services were included, total exports from Canada increased by almost 7 billion dollars. America can make whatever threats it likes, but if you have the aluminum or oil or potash, somebody will buy it.

It’s not just Canada. European equities outperformed American equities in 2025, and surged in the first two months of 2026. The European Defense Industrial Strategy, put in place in 2024, is keeping more of Europe’s rapidly expanding military spending within the continent. And after the threat of the European Union’s anti-coercion instrument, the so-called trade bazooka allowing rapid counter tariffs, forced Mr. Trump to back down from his early round of Greenland threats, the Europeans now know that they have their own Strait of Hormuz — their own pain point that can make America flinch.

American military threats have the same diminishing power. If recent history has taught us anything, it’s that when the United States decides to achieve a geopolitical aim by means of military force, you can make a pretty safe bet that aim will not be achieved. Against all odds in a war with the United States, Iran’s corrupt and cruel regime has maintained its power and is now receiving sanctions relief. While the U.S. military invents whole new genres of defeat, the Gulf states, and their airports, have now learned during the Iran war exactly what an American security guarantee is worth.

At the NATO meeting in Ankara, where Mr. Trump berated allied nations — especially Spain — and repeated his call for U.S. control of Greenland, the leaders of Spain and Denmark took Mr. Trump’s comments as the idle threats they self-evidently are. Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada may well say that Mr. Trump “won the argument” on NATO members raising their spending levels for defense. The reason they are spending more now may be that they know that American military power is in retreat. American support, whatever that even means anymore, guarantees nothing.

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

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Thursday, July 9, 2026 4:00 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Shut up, faggot.

Keep your stupid ass opinions in Canada where they belong. Nobody here gives one single fuck what you have to say about anything, Stephan.

Spell your name like a man with a V too, while you're at it.

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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Tuesday, July 14, 2026 8:47 AM

SECOND

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

Judge voids Donald Trump's 'improper' $1.8b IRS settlement that gave him immunity from tax audits

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cn8q0e8d4ego

A US judge has voided a legal agreement between President Donald Trump and federal agencies that granted him immunity from tax audits and allowed his administration to create a since-abandoned $1.8bn (£1.3bn) "anti-weaponisation" fund.

The fund, intended to compensate individuals claiming they were unfairly targeted by the government, was unveiled in May in exchange for Trump dropping his personal $10bn lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

But on Monday, US District Judge Kathleen Williams said the suit was filed for an improper purpose.

She also referred a Trump lawyer to state authorities to determine whether ethics rules were violated and disciplinary action required.

In the ruling, Williams cast Trump's lawsuit - which he, two of his sons and the Trump Organization filed in 2026 - as far from a dispute between two opposing sides. Instead, she described it as more of an action carried out by lawyers with ties to Trump and those who claimed to have been government targets.

Williams wrote the lawsuit "was never about a party seeking judicial resolution of a legal issue or a factual dispute" between Trump and the IRS, which he controls as president.

She also described the settlement as a bid to "provide some legitimacy to an agreement to confer immunity to people and entities affiliated with the President and to earmark billions of dollars from American taxpayers to redress grievances not defined in the law."

The decision also prevents those involved with the case - including Trump and his sons - from referring to the settlement or citing its terms in future legal proceedings. This, in turn, could mean that the IRS can move forward with future audits into Trump's tax claims.

In the initial lawsuit, Trump claimed that nothing had been done to prevent the leak of his private tax information by a former IRS contractor, Charles Littlejohn.

Just before the 2020 presidential election, which Trump lost, the leaked information formed the basis of a New York Times investigation that revealed he paid only $750 in federal income taxes the year he won his presidency in 2016, and no taxes at all in 10 of the previous 15 years.

"President Trump did not pursue his claims until he once again occupied the White House and had appointed his former lawyer, and the former lawyer of persons who are putative beneficiaries of the 'Anti-Weaponization Fund' to prominent positions in the DOJ," Williams wrote, referring to the Department of Justice.

"These officials then negotiated on behalf of the United States, with his current lawyers, including his former White House Counsel to reach a 'settlement.' It is risible to suggest that there was ever adverseness between the Parties," she added.

One of Trump's attorneys, Alejandro Brito, was also referred to the Florida bar for potential disciplinary action, while a second lawyer, Daniel Epstein, will now be unable to join cases in the Southern District of Florida for at least a year.

In a statement to the BBC, a spokesman for Trump's legal team said the IRS "wrongly allowed a rogue, politically-motivated employee to leak private and confidential information" to the media.

"President Trump continues to hold those who wrong America and Americans accountable," the spokesman added.

Calling the agreement a "sweetheart deal" for Trump that had given him "unauthorized and unprecedented" exemptions from tax audit rules, Tax Law Center Policy Director Brandon DeBot said it had gone against "the tax system's protections against political interference".

"The court's decision is important, but does not remove the need for congressional action to nullify the entire deal and to prevent any similar attempts at presidential self-dealing in the future," he added in a statement to the BBC.

Based at New York University, the centre provides legal analysis of tax and public policy.

Plans for the proposed "anti-weaponisation" fund were abandoned in early June, just one week after another judge temporarily prevented justice department officials from implementing it.

That order came down after two men who alleged the fund was discriminatory filed a lawsuit in Virginia. The plaintiffs said they had been targeted for political retribution by the Trump administration but believed they would not be allowed to file claims for compensation.

The widely criticised plan prompted alarm among Democrats - and some Republicans - who argued it could result in payment to people who were prosecuted over the US Capitol riot on 6 January 2021, including those convicted of assaulting police officers.

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 14, 2026 4:49 PM

SECOND

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

Trump and DOJ spend 130 pages supporting Judge Cannon's 'discretion' in burying Mar-a-Lago secrets, as rivals hold up Mueller report as 'precedent'

Matt Naham | Jul 14th, 2026, 11:58 am

https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/trump-and-doj-spend-130-pages-sup
porting-judge-cannons-discretion-in-burying-mar-a-lago-secrets-as-rivals-hold-up-mueller-report-as-precedent/

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/trump-and-doj-spend-130-pages-
supporting-judge-cannon-s-discretion-in-burying-mar-a-lago-secrets-as-rivals-hold-up-mueller-report-as-precedent/ar-AA27TZkd

Attorneys for President Donald Trump, his former co-defendants, and the DOJ each filed lengthy briefs on Monday in support of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon's "discretion" in permanently blocking the release of ex-special counsel Jack Smith's Mar-a-Lago report.

Oral argument had been tentatively scheduled for late September, but the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals weeks ago removed the consolidated cases from the calendar, noting the appeals would be "reassigned at a later date."

In the meantime, lawyers for Trump, his valet Walt Nauta, and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira on Monday submitted a 75-page brief praising Cannon's decision to block the DOJ from "releasing, sharing, or transmitting Volume II of the Final Report or any drafts of Volume II outside the Department of Justice."
https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/28473950/trump-mal.pdf
https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/cannon-buries-jack-smith-mar-a-la
go-report-on-trump-angry-that-special-counsel-had-the-audacity-to-create-it/

"At its core, this matter arises out of Jack Smith's brazen and failed attempts to unconstitutionally prosecute and imprison President Trump and those around him, including Mr. Nauta and Mr. De Oliveira," Trump's brief began. "Even after the District Court dismissed Smith's baseless charges on the grounds that his appointment and the funding of his office violated the United States Constitution, Smith unlawfully prepared and sought to release a two-volume 'Final Report' in hopes of vindicating his efforts through other means."

Cannon, a Trump appointee, controversially dismissed the classified documents prosecution against the then-presidential candidate in July 2024, finding after "careful study" that Smith was unlawfully appointed as special counsel. In February, the judge said that her ruling meant "all" of Smith's acts were invalidated, and thus he had no business producing the report in the first place.

Construing that as a "breach" of her order, Cannon stopped short of ordering the destruction of Volume II, but she made her injunction permanent — leaving two groups who attempted to intervene under the Freedom of Information Act out in the cold.

On Monday, Trump's team fully backed Cannon against American Oversight and the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University at the 11th Circuit.

"The District Court did not abuse its discretion in denying Appellants' motions to intervene, and that this Court should dismiss their appeals for lack of jurisdiction," the brief said, not mentioning that the 11th Circuit previously chided Cannon for her "undue delay" in ruling on the motions.

On the same day, the DOJ weighed in with a 55-page brief of its own, from the office of U.S. Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones.

The DOJ argued that Cannon's review of Volume II in her chambers did nothing to help the attempted third-party intervenors.

"And, even if the report were a judicial record, the district court was well within its discretion to deny intervention to access it. The district court found that the disclosure would expose non-public discovery material implicating grand jury and privilege concerns and would contravene basic notions of fairness and justice. While the proposed intervenors may disagree, that does not amount to an abuse of discretion," the government said.

The two groups aren't alone in the fight, however, as the 11th Circuit allowed Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats to submit their brief on Tuesday as amici curiae, or "friends of the court."

Sens. Adam Schiff, Richard Blumenthal, Sheldon Whitehouse, Cory Booker, Chris Coons, Peter Welch, Dick Durbin, Mazie Hirono, Alex Padilla and Amy Klobuchar countered that Cannon's order was "wrong" in a number of ways, but especially in her dismissiveness of Congress' interest in Volume II — all while Trump, Nauta, De Oliveira, and the DOJ are on the same side.

The senators told the 11th Circuit that Cannon's "purported concern about grand jury secrecy," for instance, "rings particularly hollow in the context of legislative disclosure."

Slamming the judge for making "inappropriate" accusations that "improperly cast aspersions" on the committee's ability to be trusted to conduct an "in camera" review of the report without leaking "all or part of Volume II," the brief said former special counsel Robert Mueller's report "provides especially instructive precedent."

"In ordering the release of grand jury materials from Special Counsel Mueller's investigation to the House Judiciary Committee, the court found that the need for continued secrecy was 'minimal' because the Justice Department had already made redacted portions of the Mueller Report available to certain Members of Congress and because the Judiciary Committee agreed to negotiations to prevent release of information that would harm any ongoing investigations," the amici said. "With respect to Volume II of the Smith Report, the Senate Judiciary Committee explicitly offered to accept in camera review, which further minimized any disclosure risk."

"In short, any legitimate concerns related to sensitive information contained within Volume II of the Smith Report can be resolved with proper redactions, not the suppression of Volume II in its entirety," the senators concluded, emphasizing that the public has a right to know about the "serious crimes, including willfully retaining classified documents and obstruction," Trump and his aides were charged with.

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 14, 2026 9:49 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

He's just going to win all this too, so why don't you spend some of your free time fixing your fucking party.

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

Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Tuesday, July 14, 2026 11:59 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:
He's just going to win all this too, so why don't you spend some of your free time fixing your fucking party.

The Trumptards are rapists. To prove that point, you will explode when you learn that the writer E. Jean Carroll has collected over $5.6 million that a jury awarded in her sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit against President Donald Trump, court records and her lawyers said.

The payment — representing the $5 million jury award, plus interest — was made Monday from an account where it had been held in escrow since the 2023 verdict, according to court records. Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, confirmed the payment Tuesday.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-e-jean-carroll-lawsuit-award-payment-
c02b153cdc88fe0dafbf5146a1be6be2

Democrats kick rapists out of the party. Trumptards do the opposite.

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 15, 2026 12:26 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
He's just going to win all this too, so why don't you spend some of your free time fixing your fucking party.
The Trumptards are rapists. To prove that point, you will explode when you learn that the writer E. Jean Carroll has collected over $5.6 million that a jury awarded in her sexual abuse and defamation lawsuit against President Donald Trump, court records and her lawyers said.

The payment — representing the $5 million jury award, plus interest — was made Monday from an account where it had been held in escrow since the 2023 verdict, according to court records. Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, confirmed the payment Tuesday.

https://apnews.com/article/trump-e-jean-carroll-lawsuit-award-payment-
c02b153cdc88fe0dafbf5146a1be6be2

Democrats kick rapists out of the party. Trumptards do the opposite.

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

Also E. Jean Carroll telling Anderson Cooper that everyone has Rape Fantasies. That Rape is Sexy and she was leaking all over her chair while Anderson Cooper was desperatly trying to cut to commercial:

These are your heroes of the Democratic Party. You're a bunch of losers.

You are a Shit Golem, Shit Golem.

FIX YOUR FUCKING PARTY WHILE YOU STILL HAVE A CHANCE, LOSER.

NOBODY GIVES A SINGLE FUCK WHAT TRUMP IS DOING.

NOBODY WANTS TO HEAR ONE MORE FUCKING WORD OUT OF YOU ABOUT TRUMP.

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

Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Wednesday, July 15, 2026 12:28 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

By the way... Trump is still polling nearly 41% on the RCP average. And that's with this Iran thing still dragging out.

All of this that you've done has meant NOTHING.

NOBODY is listening to you anymore.

I've said it before and I'll say it again now because it's even more real now than it's ever been before... YOU work for Trump for free. There are people who will vote for Trump simply to spite shit golems just like you and braindead Ted over there in the corner.

Trump's approval rating right now is 3 points higher than Joe Biden*'s was at the same time in his single term.

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

Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Wednesday, July 15, 2026 8:41 AM

SECOND

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

President Donald Trump’s businesses and top executives have faced major legal penalties for tax-related fraud, and his personal tax practices remain highly controversial. Donald Trump paid zero federal income taxes in 11 years between 2000 and 2020. Donald Trump paid $750 in federal income taxes for 2016 and 2017.

The characterization of Trump regarding his taxes generally falls into three distinct categories based on legal rulings, investigative reporting, and political debate.

1. Corporate Convictions and Executive Guilt

While Donald Trump has avoided personal criminal tax charges, entities under his direct control have been convicted in court:

• The Trump Organization Conviction: In December 2022, a New York jury found two corporate entities of the Trump Organization guilty on 17 counts of criminal tax fraud and falsifying business records. Prosecutors proved a 15-year scheme to compensate top executives with off-the-books perks (like luxury cars and rent-free apartments) to evade payroll and income taxes.

• Executive Pleadings: Longtime Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Alan Weisselberg pleaded guilty to 15 felony counts of tax fraud and testified that the company benefited from the scheme.

• Trump's Awareness: During the trial, prosecutors argued that Trump signed documents explicitly approving elements of the off-the-books perks. However, Trump's defense attorneys argued he was unaware of the improper accounting, and Trump himself was not personally indicted in that case.

2. Aggressive Tax Avoidance vs. Fraud

When a House committee released six years of Trump's personal federal tax returns, it revealed that he paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017 and zero dollars in 2020.

• The Critical View: Investigative reporters and critics point to these documents as evidence of "brazen" tax manipulation. They highlight massive, questionable deductions—such as writing off millions in personal estate expenses as business costs, or utilizing complex shell companies to pass down family wealth via inflated transactions.

• The Defense: Trump and his supporters maintain that his tax practices represent standard, legal, and highly aggressive "tax avoidance" utilized by major real estate developers. They argue that real estate tax laws allow for large depreciations and write-offs to offset income legally. Trump has previously described avoiding high tax burdens as making him a "savvy businessman."

3. Civil Fraud History and Developments

Trump has faced extensive civil litigation over how he presents his finances to authorities:

• Asset Valuations: New York State previously brought a massive civil fraud lawsuit against Trump for artificially inflating his net worth on financial statements to secure favorable loans and insurance terms. While a lower court issued a $355 million penalty against him, an appeals court later threw out the massive fine. While the fine was eliminated, the court upheld the underlying finding that Trump and the Trump Organization committed fraud. As a result, non-monetary punishments were kept in place, including: 1) A three-year ban preventing him from taking out loans from New York banks. 2) A ban on serving as a director of any New York company.

• Recent IRS Settlement Dispute: In July 2026, a federal judge threw out a controversial $10 billion lawsuit Trump filed against the Internal Revenue Service. The administration had attempted to finalize an agreement granting Trump and his family broad immunity from tax audits. The judge voided the settlement, ruling that the lawsuit was filed in "bad faith" and lacked a real legal dispute.

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 15, 2026 10:30 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Let's see your tax returns, Shit Golem.

Go fuck yourself. Nobody cares except for you and Rachel Maddow.

Clowns.

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

Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Wednesday, July 15, 2026 12:53 PM

SECOND

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

The Forever War Gets Scary

But I'm not talking about bombs and drones

By Paul Krugman | Jul 15, 2026

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/the-forever-war-gets-scary

Transcript

The war with Iran has just reached a very scary phase, and I’m not talking about the bombs and the drones. Hi, Paul Krugman here, doing a brief podcast instead of a full post, because I actually spent the day with friends and doing other things, and this is a quicker alternative.

If you’re following the news, you know that the sort-of ceasefire with Iran has been called off. Trump has reinstated the blockade. The Iranians are back to hitting things with their drones and missiles.

The U.S. position has been wildly erratic. First, Trump said he was going to impose a 20% toll on all shipping, basically turning the Strait of Hormuz into a U.S. toll booth, which would have been wildly illegal and irresponsible, aside from being impossible. Now he says, no, he’s going to demand that countries invest in the United States, which is also actually wildly illegal. But in any case, it’s never going to happen.

And yet, this is extremely scary. The reason to be afraid is not that I think the war is going to come to America. It’s not even that I think the United States is going to seriously try to occupy Iran. We don’t have the troops. We don’t have the missiles. Trump depleted a large share of our weaponry in the course of his failed war so far. So this is likely going to be punitive strikes, maybe some war crimes along the way, but that’s all.

But what is really frightening here is that it does appear as if Trump has given up on trying to extract something that looks like victory. If we go back just a few days ago, it appeared that what was going to happen was that Trump was going to de facto pull out, give up on the project, take advantage of falling oil prices because the strait was sort of kind of open — and try to spin the story about this was truly, this was actually an American victory and the economy is great and look at the stock market.

And, you know, it was just a little bit — more than a little bit — stupid and doomed. It was also kind of amazing because a serious attempt to end the conflict would have required facing up to reality, saying, OK, this war didn’t go well, but America remains great. Sorry about that.

But that was apparently not something Trump could emotionally bring himself to do. He just cannot admit that this venture failed. He can never admit that anything failed. We’re going to be searching for the saboteurs of the reflecting pool for the remainder of his presidency.

This is a change in strategy that is ominous because what is Trump’s plan for the midterm elections? Here the idea presumably was that there would be enough economic success and people would have sufficiently short memories that they would possibly give Trump credit for opening the Strait of Hormuz, but in any case have put the gas price shock and the whole disruption surrounding the war behind them. And be ready to start admitting that this is the golden age that Trump and company keep on claiming it is.

Now that’s all off. Now it’s just that we’re going to bomb Iran. No clear strategy there, but we’re not going to even pretend that things are okay. We’re going to blockade them, which actually has a little bit more leverage, but no hint that anything might be resolved in a way that would help Republican chances in the midterms. So what is going to happen?

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that just as Trump essentially gives up, not gives up in the sense of abandoning his war, but gives up on trying to achieve anything he can even spin as a positive outcome, that we now have an announcement that this Thursday he’s going to have a primetime speech, which reports say is going to be about election fraud in 2020. Some reports hint that he might try to declare the two Democratic senators from Georgia somehow illegitimate.

Okay, that’s not going to actually work. And nobody’s going to be convinced by the claim that he actually won the 2020 election. But what is happening is that effectively he’s setting up the pretext, the groundwork for massive interference in the vote this November. That we’re basically seeing the stage set for some kind of attempt to block fair elections, maybe block elections entirely.

I don’t know how this is going to play out. But we are really now at the point where it’s pretty clear that Trump and the people around him have given up on actually winning the election. They’ve decided instead that some combination of propaganda, misinformation, disinformation, and possibly massive illegality is their way forward.

And don’t say they wouldn’t do that. That has been famous last words every step of the way. The proposition that there were some things that even Trump and company would not do has been the best way to be wrong about everything, every step of the Trump administration.

So in a peculiar way, the fact that Trump is back to bombing Iran is really bad news, not because of the bombs. Yes, it’s terrible and all that, But not because I have any real fear that America is going to be at risk from a foreign power, but because I think it signals an enormous risk to us from our own president, our own government.

Be afraid, be very afraid.

And take care.

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 15, 2026 1:15 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

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Wednesday, July 15, 2026 5:38 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:
By the way... Trump is still polling nearly 41% on the RCP average. And that's with this Iran thing still dragging out.

Even 41% Nazi is not enough to win. Nazis need 50%.

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 15, 2026 5:39 PM

SECOND

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

Confession proves Trump insiders know the reckoning is coming | Opinion

By Thom Hartmann

Jul 15

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/confession-proves-trump-inside
rs-know-the-reckoning-is-coming-opinion/ar-AA27XTlb

Donald Trump is already telling us he’s going to try to steal the 2026 election, and the fact that he’s saying it now, months in advance, is the whole tell.

Back in February, he stood up and declared that “Republicans ought to nationalize the voting,” floated taking over the vote in 15 states his party doesn’t control, and returned to the lie he’s been pushing for a decade, that mail-in ballots are crawling with fraud.

They aren’t. Americans have voted by mail for more than a century and a half, and the Brennan Center has shown over and over that you’re more likely to be struck by lightning than to commit mail-ballot fraud.

The fraud claim was never an argument: it’s an excuse for voter suppression, its own form of election fraud. When you convince tens of millions of people that the only way your side can possibly lose is if the other side cheats, you’ve prepared them to swallow whatever you “have to do to protect the vote,” and to reject the result as illegitimate if you lose anyway. That’s the groundwork, and they’re laying it right now in the open.

The measures themselves are extraordinary. This spring, Trump signed an executive order trying to seize federal control over how states run their elections, and when the courts blocked most of it, his administration found a back door through, of all places, the Post Office.

The Postal Service has proposed a rule that would let it refuse to deliver mail-in ballots in any state that won’t first hand over its complete list of mail voters to the federal government, a rule the NAACP says is built to disenfranchise voters and that 23 Democratic-led states are now suing to stop.

Steve Bannon went on his podcast and promised that “we’re gonna have ICE surround the polls come November,” and when reporters asked the White House to rule it out, the press secretary wouldn’t.

More than forty-eight million Americans voted by mail in 2024.

These men want the power to decide whose ballot gets carried to the mailbox and who feels safe enough to show up in person.

If you’re wondering why they’re working this hard to keep you from voting, the answer slipped out of Todd Blanche’s mouth this spring.

Standing on a stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) outside Dallas, the man who’d been Trump’s personal criminal defense lawyer and who now runs the Justice Department as acting Attorney General told the crowd, “Everybody’s afraid that the next administration, if we don’t win, we’re going to all be investigated and indicted.”

He meant it as a rallying cry. What he actually delivered was a confession: you don’t spend your evenings bracing for an indictment unless some quiet part of you already knows what you’ve done.

A reckoning is coming for the people breaking the law for this president, and they can feel it.

And now the White House is even discussing completely blowing up the Constitution and the right of habeas corpus, which dates back to the year 1215 when the British elite forced King John to sign the Magna Carta on the plain at Runnymede. As the New York Times reported:

“Suspending habeas corpus was one of two radical ideas [Trump's Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen] Miller had been pushing that alarmed [White House Staff Secretary Will] Scharf. The other was invoking the Insurrection Act to deploy the military to enforce the law on American streets as protests grew against deportation sweeps.”

Todd Blanche, in particular, has every reason to be worried: he knows who Trump really is, and what he’s capable of.

He’s the lawyer who defended Trump in the New York hush-money trial that ended in 34 felony convictions, and in the federal cases over January 6th and the classified documents stashed at Mar-a-Lago.

He’s also the guy who’s now hiding three million Epstein documents and cut the cushy, puppy-filled deal with Ghislaine Maxwell for keeping her mouth shut.

Now he presides over a Justice Department that he and Trump have remade into a personal instrument of vengeance, complete with a Hitler-like 60-foot banner of Trump’s leering face on its façade, and the president has just nominated him to hold the office permanently.

So when Blanche says out loud that he’s afraid, he isn’t being paranoid. He’s being a good lawyer, reading the room, and the room he’s reading is called “history.”

It reminds me of two lawyers I learned about when we lived in Germany, because the men doing Trump’s legal dirty work today are walking a road that better-dressed men walked 90 years ago, and, as a result, we know exactly where it leads.

The first is Hans Frank, who started out as Adolf Hitler’s personal attorney, defending Hitler and his Nazi thugs in court all through the 1920s the way Blanche once stood behind Trump at the defense table.

When Hitler took power, Frank was rewarded. He became the Reich’s chief jurist, president of the Academy for German Law, and eventually Governor-General of occupied Poland, where he presided over ghettos, mass plunder, and slaughter on a scale that’s still hard to grasp.

Frank was the respectable face of the regime, the man who insisted there was a legal theory for everything. At the Nuremberg trials he was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and on October 16, 1946, the respectable lawyer was hanged.

The second man is Roland Freisler, and if Frank shows you what happens to the enabler, Freisler shows you what happens to the judge who decides — like Blanche has argued and John Roberts went along with — that the law is simply whatever Dear Leader wants it to be.

Freisler ran the Volksgerichtshof, the People’s Court, a tribunal stood up outside Germany’s constitutional structure for the express purpose of producing the verdicts the regime demanded. He handed down thousands of death sentences in three years.

He screamed at defendants from the bench, ordered their microphones cut, condemned the young students of the White Rose resistance to the guillotine for the crime of printing leaflets, and sent the officers of the July 20th plot to be hanged within hours of their show trials.

Freisler never faced a Nuremberg of his own, but only because an American bomb fell on his courthouse in February 1945 while he was reportedly clutching a defendant’s case file. The defendant lived; the judge did not. There’s a grim justice in the fact that the one man who most weaponized the law against his fellow citizens was killed holding the very file he was using to destroy one of them.

I stood in the small plaza at the University of Munich back in 1988, the Geschwister-Scholl-Platz, named for Hans and Sophie Scholl, where the two of them were caught scattering their leaflets from the gallery before Freisler sent them to die. They were the Renee Good and Alex Pretti of their time.

The university has since pressed bronze replicas of those scattered leaflets right into the pavement, so that today you walk over them and have to stop.

You think, standing there, about how ordinary the machinery of all this was. It wasn’t run by monsters in uniform alone. It was run by men like Todd Blanche and John Roberts, men with law degrees, men who told themselves they were just interpreting the statutes, just following the orders, just serving the head of state.

And every honest accounting that came afterward, from Nuremberg onward, rejected that excuse and established the principle that a directive from above does not protect the man who carries it out.

That principle is precisely what must be keeping Todd Blanche awake, because we’re already watching the American version, as Mark Twain once said, rhyme.

When Trump wanted his enemies prosecuted, the career professionals balked, so the administration installed Lindsey Halligan, another former Trump personal lawyer with no prosecutorial experience whatsoever, as a U.S. attorney, and she promptly indicted James Comey and Letitia James.

In contrast with Germany in 1933, a federal judge threw both cases out, ruled her appointment unlawful, and other judges in the district were so disgusted that one of them now puts an asterisk beside her name on every court filing.

Thankfully, at least so far, these are not the actions of a legal system that’s fully surrendered (although Aileen Cannon may soon have a word). They’re the actions of one that’s still fighting back, and that fight is the whole ballgame.

But it gets worse, because that same executive order about mail-in voting also directs the Department of Homeland Security to build its own state-by-state lists of who’s eligible to vote, exactly the kind of national database you’d assemble if your real plan was to pressure states into purging their rolls.

If that sounds like paranoia, it’s only because we’ve already forgotten that we lived through it. In 2000, Jeb Bush’s secretary of state, Katherine Harris, who also happened to be co-chair of his brother George’s Florida campaign, hired a private firm to scrub the voter rolls using a list of supposed felons that included eight thousand names shipped in from Texas.

The matching was deliberately loose, flagging anyone whose last name was an 80 percent match to a felon’s, and the Brennan Center later found that at least 12,000 eligible voters were wrongly purged, 22 times George W. Bush’s 537-vote margin. Black Floridians were 11 percent of the electorate and 41 percent of the people thrown off the rolls.

Bush took the presidency by that sliver, and the Florida Supreme Court-ordered recount that would have caught the theft was shut down by a Supreme Court whose deciding majority included a justice his own father had put on the bench, Clarence Thomas, whose wife was at that very moment collecting résumés for a Bush administration, and Antonin Scalia, whose sons worked for firms representing Bush, neither of whom saw any reason to step aside.

That’s the voter merge-and-purge playbook, and they’re dusting it off on a national scale for this November with new, borrowed-from-Putin tweaks. Or at least they’re trying their hardest to.

When the Reichstag finally voted itself out of existence in March 1933, uniformed storm troopers lined the walls of the chamber so the legislators would understand the price of voting no.

That’s the tradition these men are drawing from, and we’d be fools not to be clear-eyed and ready for just about anything between now and November. After all, we all watched what Trump and his lickspittles did on January 6th, 2021, killing four police officers as they tried to “hang Mike Pence.”

But here’s the difference between Germany in 1933 and America in 2026 and, as Wendy Lawrence argues in a brilliant recent essay, it comes down to timing.

The Germans got their decisive vote after the seizure of power, when a newly seated Reichstag rubber-stamped the Enabling Act and handed Hitler everything. We get ours before. Which is why they’re so frantically trying to suppress the vote.

The November midterms will arrive while the courts are still ruling against this administration, while subpoenas can still be issued, while the power of the purse still belongs to whoever controls the House.

A Democratic majority doesn’t need to convict anyone to change everything. It can deny the appropriations that fund the deployments and the detention machine, it can compel sworn testimony and drag the concealed directives into daylight, and it can restore a Justice Department willing to enforce laws like Section 242, the Reconstruction-era statute that makes it a felony for any official to strip any citizen of their constitutional rights.

The Supreme Court’s immunity ruling shields the president’s official acts, but it shields no one beneath him. The agents, the contractors, the lawyers who signed the unlawful papers, all of them remain fully exposed, and a future attorney general can act on that.

Trump understands this perfectly, which is why he told House Republicans that they have to win the midterms because otherwise “they’ll find a reason to impeach me.” It’s why his people muse about ICE at the polls and write rules to choke off the mail. It’s why Stephen Miller is reportedly pushing to suspend habeas corpus. It’s why Trump promised to “pardon everyone who has come within 200 feet of the Oval [Office].”

These lawyers and judges aren’t afraid of impeachment as an abstraction: they’re afraid of the reckoning that oversight makes possible, the same reckoning Hans Frank met at the end of a rope and Roland Freisler escaped only by dying.

The coming reckoning — unless they can stop it this fall — isn’t vengeance. It’s the rule of law standing back up after being knocked down, and in this country that recovery still runs through a ballot box which the members of the Reichstag of 1933 no longer had.

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 15, 2026 6:04 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
By the way... Trump is still polling nearly 41% on the RCP average. And that's with this Iran thing still dragging out.
Even 41% Nazi is not enough to win. Nazis need 50%.

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

You guys voted for Platner.

Nobody wants to hear anything out of you about Nazis ever again, Shit Golem.

You fucking loser.

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

Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Wednesday, July 15, 2026 7:28 PM

SECOND

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
By the way... Trump is still polling nearly 41% on the RCP average. And that's with this Iran thing still dragging out.
Even 41% Nazi is not enough to win. Nazis need 50%.

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

You guys voted for Platner.

Nobody wants to hear anything out of you about Nazis ever again, Shit Golem.

You fucking loser.

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

Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

When the Democrats found out Platner was a Nazi and rapist, they curb-stomped him. When Trumptards found out Trump was a Nazi, a rapist, a tax cheat, and being bribed, they voted for him. Simultaneously, they said everything is Fake News, including climate change.

Trump is $4 billion Richer Than He Was Before The 2024 Election Because Of Bribes He Has Received As President.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/a-reporter-at-large/trumps-profiteering
-hits-four-billion-dollars

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 15, 2026 7:32 PM

SECOND

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

A tale of two Trump flip-flops

The president undid everything the Logoff wrote about this week.

By Andrew Prokop
Jul 15, 2026, 5:45 PM CDT

https://www.vox.com/politics/495780/trump-flip-flop-ice-stops-strait-h
ormuz

What happened? On Monday afternoon, President Donald Trump said he would charge a 20 percent fee to protect shipping in the Strait of Hormuz.

But he reversed course on that yesterday morning, posting on Truth Social that he’d “replace” the fee with trade and investment deals that Gulf nations would purportedly make in the US.

Yesterday afternoon, after two recent deadly shootings, ICE had been ordered to temporarily stop making traffic stops nationwide.

But this morning, Trump declared that traffic stops were back on, posting: “The Radical Left Dumocrats would like to see this done, but it won’t happen on my watch.”

Why did Trump flip-flop? The Hormuz fee was a Trump whim that many of his own aides had deep logistical and political qualms about. For one, they believed the move could push gas prices higher. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had said just last month that “no country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway.”

As Monday stretched on, Trump was deluged with lobbying from Gulf nations who rely on the strait — such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — and ultimately decided to back down.

The ICE traffic stop pause followed the opposite trajectory. This was a decision made by administration officials without Trump’s knowledge — and when he watched press coverage and heard right-wing criticism of it, he was irate, per CNN.

What’s the takeaway? The reversals show whose criticism and feedback Trump actually cares about.

Wealthy Gulf leaders and the spectre of higher gas prices helped talk him down from his Hormuz fee. And on traffic stops, he ultimately cared less about tamping down national outrage over deadly shootings than he did about preserving his “tough on immigration” reputation and agenda.

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 15, 2026 8:33 PM

SECOND

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

[America’s first Nazi President speaks tomorrow night about “saving” Democracy]

Midterm Elections: The Con Always Works, Right Up Until the Moment It Doesn’t

Democracy has survived con men before, but only because ordinary Americans refused to become the mark.

By Thom Hartmann | July 15, 2026

https://hartmannreport.com/p/midterm-elections-the-con-always-4c5

Tomorrow night at nine o’clock Eastern, Donald Trump will look into a television camera and tell America he’s rescuing democracy. He teased the address to reporters this week, promising “really big news” about “free and fair elections” and adding that “it doesn’t get bigger.” For once, he and I agree. It doesn’t get bigger.

An administration official told Reuters that the speech will center on newly declassified intelligence about the 2020 election and what the White House calls voting machine vulnerabilities open to foreign hackers; multiple election experts quoted in that same reporting warn he’s laying the groundwork to contest Republican losses this November.

To understand what we’ll actually be watching Thursday night, we have to go back to 1973, to a Manhattan night spot called Le Club, where a 27-year-old Donald Trump, freshly sued by the Justice Department for refusing to rent apartments to Black families, met the most feared lawyer in New York. It’s a story I tell in detail in The Last American President.

Roy Cohn had made his reputation as Joe McCarthy’s chief counsel, wrecking careers with accusations he never had to prove. His advice to young Trump, as Cohn’s own cousin later recalled it, was blunt: “You might be guilty; it doesn’t matter.” Don’t settle. Don’t apologize. Attack the accuser.

So instead of quietly signing the consent decree his father’s regular lawyers recommended, Trump called a press conference and countersued the federal government for $100 million. A judge tossed the countersuit; the Trumps eventually signed roughly the deal they’d been offered at the start, and Cohn declared total victory anyway.

He understood something that’s become the operating system of Donald Trump’s entire life: the court of public opinion matters more than any court of law, and a lie defended with absolute commitment will usually beat a truth defended halfheartedly.

Over their thirteen years together, Cohn drilled three rules into his student: Attack, never defend. Deny everything, admit nothing. Claim victory no matter what actually happened.

When Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation in 2017, Trump reportedly demanded of his aides, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” He was mourning a fixer who’d been dead for three decades.

It took him eight more years, but he’s finally found his Roy Cohn. He’s found several of them, in fact, and he’s installed them at the Justice Department, the FBI, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

That’s the machinery humming behind Thursday’s speech. The acting Director of National Intelligence is now Bill Pulte, a nepo-baby real estate guy with no intelligence experience who referred Trump’s political enemies for criminal prosecution based on mortgage records he pulled from government databases, and who Democrats say was installed precisely to help Republicans rig the midterms.

A White House task force has been combing through thousands of pages of classified documents, timed to land in the middle of an election season. Federal agents have already raided the Fulton County elections office and carted off 700 boxes of 2020 ballots, something I covered here at the Hartmann Report earlier this year.

Steve Bannon has promised ICE agents at the polls come November, and Trump’s new Postmaster General has confirmed the Postal Service won’t deliver mail-in ballots from states that refuse to hand over sensitive voter data to the federal government. And Jay Clayton, Trump’s pick for permanent DNI, faces his Senate confirmation hearing today, one day before the speech, having already auditioned for the job by echoing Trump’s phony claims about “election integrity” on CNBC.

Standing in front of Mount Rushmore on the third of July, Trump told the crowd that if Senate Republicans kill the filibuster and pass his SAVE America Act, with its proof-of-citizenship, driver’s license-must-match-birth certificate (that kicks off millions of married women), and photo ID requirements, then Republicans “will not lose an election for a hundred years.”

He tried holding a bipartisan housing affordability bill hostage to force the Senate’s hand, and now GOP leadership is trying to attach SAVE to the national security spending bill this week. Even Dan Abrams, hardly a flamethrower, opened his radio show this Monday by saying it’s time to admit the president of the United States is “trying to cheat” in the midterm elections.

One detail gives the whole con away: Tulsi Gabbard, before she resigned as DNI last month, commissioned a forensic analysis of voting machines seized in Puerto Rico. That analysis, Reuters reports, found security flaws but no evidence of hacking — none — and Gabbard’s own follow-up report recommending fixes has been sitting unreleased at the White House for months.

They went looking for proof of fraud, found none (but perhaps a way to hack machines in the future), buried the report that could have helped states harden their systems before November, and are now preparing a primetime address built on the fumes of the very investigation that came up empty.

Roy Cohn would be proud. Claim victory no matter what the facts say. When you’re in the wrong and on the defensive, lie and attack.

I lived in East Germany’s shadow for a year in the 1980s, working for an international relief organization in a small village a few miles from the border, and in 1986 I passed through Checkpoint Charlie into East Berlin. Most Americans probably don’t remember or even know that the DDR held elections; regular ones, with polling places and ballots and officially reported turnout levels that were typically north of 98 percent.

What they didn’t have was any possibility of a surprise. The regime had hollowed out every institution that could have made the outcome uncertain, so the election became theater, a ritual performed to legitimize a result already decided.

Putin ran East Germany’s KGB at the time, and he’s now Trump’s mentor with biweekly phone calls. Authoritarians rarely abolish elections. They keep the shell and kill what’s inside it, and it appears that Trump is following the path Putin blazed at multiple levels.

So will it work here? There’s no secret button that flips vote totals: more than 98 percent of American ballots are cast in jurisdictions with paper records, and when Trump signed an executive order that would have forced the decertification of voting machines, a federal judge permanently blocked it based on the Constitution handing the running of elections to the states.

The weapon Trump and his corrupt GOP will use is chaos, not hacking: seizures of ballots and equipment, decertification fights, litigation that delays counts past deadlines, ICE vans parked outside polling places in Democratic neighborhoods, and a pre-built national narrative, launched tomorrow night, that gives every Republican candidate permission to refuse to concede when they lose.

David Becker, a former Justice Department voting rights attorney, thinks the document dumps will fall flat with most Americans, and the primary results this spring suggest voters aren’t buying what Trump’s selling.

But Roy Cohn’s method never needed a majority to believe the lie. It only needed enough confusion, enough delay, and enough intimidation to change who shows up and what gets counted. It’s worked for Donald Trump for fifty years.

Remember, though, how it ended for the teacher. Roy Cohn died in 1986, disbarred just weeks earlier for dishonesty, fraud, deceit, and misrepresentation, abandoned by nearly everyone he’d ever helped, including Trump, who dumped him when he got sick.

The con, in other words, always works right up until the moment it doesn’t.

Whether Thursday night marks the beginning of the biggest con in American history or the beginning of its collapse depends less on what Trump says than on what tens of millions of us do between now and the first Tuesday this coming November.

Congress is voting this week on whether to bolt the SAVE Act onto the national security spending bill, so call the Capitol switchboard at 202-224-3121 and tell your senators and representative where you stand, and don’t forget to mention Todd Blanche to your senators.

Check your voter registration right now at vote.org, because purges are already underway in Red states, and track what your own legislature is doing to protect or restrict your ballot at openstates.org.

Democracy has survived con men before, but only because ordinary Americans refused to become the mark. As Jefferson told us, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty…”

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 15, 2026 8:59 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
By the way... Trump is still polling nearly 41% on the RCP average. And that's with this Iran thing still dragging out.
Even 41% Nazi is not enough to win. Nazis need 50%.

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

You guys voted for Platner.

Nobody wants to hear anything out of you about Nazis ever again, Shit Golem.

You fucking loser.

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

Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
When the Democrats found out Platner was a Nazi and rapist, they curb-stomped him.

No. They didn't. They all circled the wagons and protected him and said that it was more important for Republicans to lose than to worry about who they were voting for.

(You really should look at more than just what I post in the Garden, and you would have known about the dozens upon dozens of Left-wing shit sites that were blowing Platner even after the tattoo thing, and maybe you wouldn't look like a fucking idiot again right now).

It was only after one of yours came out and claimed that he raped her that they curb stomped him.

Being a Nazi was never a disqualifying issue as far as Democrats were concerned about Platner. Even the Jews that vote straight-ticket Democrat rallied behind him. Being an alleged rapist was never an issue for Democrats either, until it was a woman who voted Democrat that came out and claimed he raped her.

And it is just another in a very, very long list of reasons that nobody takes a fucking thing you say on any topic seriously anymore.

Your party is shit. You are shit. Shit Golem.

You stand for nothing, and you NEVER have.

All you care about is the destruction of everything good.

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

Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Friday, July 17, 2026 7:31 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

Your party is shit. You are shit. Shit Golem.

You stand for nothing, and you NEVER have.

All you care about is the destruction of everything good.

I'm gonna make this as blunt as possible: Trumptards are evil. Nazis were evil, too, but at least they tried to hide their evilness by keeping silent about their plans to exterminate all inferior people. Trumptards? They talk about it. Trumptards can't shut up about their plans. Last night, Trump told the world about his plans. Hitler would have been aghast to see how talkative America's Nazi leaders have become, but way back in the 1930's Germans were much smarter than Trumptards are. Americans can be told and shown what Trump's plans are, and yet they are too dull-witted to understand.

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/trump-cant-get-no-respect

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

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Friday, July 17, 2026 7:33 AM

SECOND

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

[Trump is obviously a lying sack of shit: The Reflecting Pool Edition]

Reflecting Pool peeling probably caused by application flaws, experts say

President Donald Trump has blamed vandals, but a Washington Post analysis finds that the peeling tracks closely with stages of the renovation process.

By Jarrett Ley, Meg Kelly, Klara Auerbach and Maura Judkis

July 16, 2026 at 10:17 a.m.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/interactive/2026/07/16/r
eflecting-pool-peeling-likely-caused-by-application-flaws-experts-say/

The lining of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool peeled away in at least seven places along seams that were created when the material was applied in large rectangular sections, indicating likely problems in how it was installed, according to a Washington Post analysis of visuals and interviews with experts.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly said vandals are to blame for the damage that appeared just two weeks after the $14 million renovation was completed in early June. “The slashes were 300 yards long, and the floor of the pool was cut and then pulled upward, with great force, by these thugs,” he wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform on Monday. On Tuesday, photos emerged on social media that showed the pool had been drained in preparation for repairs.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum made similar claims in television interviews in early July, saying on Fox News that vandals left gashes totaling 350 feet. “[The lining] didn’t peel off,” he said on CNN, adding that people were “literally trying to destroy part of a monument.”

Post reporters visited the Reflecting Pool on June 25 and identified seven locations where the lining — a waterproof membrane that was painted onto the concrete basin — had partially or entirely peeled away. The peeling occurred in irregularly shaped patches that stretched alongside the long edges of the pool. The pieces ranged in size from a few inches to as long as six feet. In one case, the concrete was visible underneath. (Reporters could not see the condition of the lining in the middle of the basin.)

By comparing the seven locations with satellite imagery, photos and videos taken during the renovation process, the analysis found that all of the failures occurred at the seams — lines between two areas that were painted at different times.

Four experts in waterproofing materials — who have decades of experience and have served as educators and expert witnesses in pool-related construction lawsuits — reviewed The Post’s findings and said the failure pattern strongly suggested errors in the application process. They said that while a precise cause cannot be determined without on-site examination and lab testing, such seams require careful attention and are especially prone to failure.

When The Post shared its findings with the White House and the Interior Department, spokespeople disputed that the surface had been improperly applied. “There were no missteps during the initial repairs to the pool,” said White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers. “Unfortunately, deranged individuals made several gashes in the side of the pool and destroyed over 300 feet of the pool’s siding. Once the necessary repairs to fix the vandalism are complete, the Reflecting Pool will be restored to all its glory.”

An Interior spokesperson said that “the National Park Service team has walked every foot of the Reflecting Pool, and unlike the exorbitant Obama renovation, the Reflecting Pool is now leak-proof. This project was executed after consultation with the Army Corps of Engineers Engineering Research and Design Center and other leading experts who have experience working on the Reflecting Pool.” Interior said “gashes” are located along the edge of the pool on its perimeter expansion joint, which is where the coating is soft enough to be cut. Officials provided no evidence to support the administration’s assertion that the pool was vandalized.

After the concrete basin was emptied, cleaned and dried, the Reflecting Pool was painted in sections. The sections were coated with two products, both made by the San Diego-based company Rhino Linings, according to the imagery, government records, and public statements by the company and contractors. The process began with Rhino 406, a light blue epoxy base coat applied on the concrete to seal surface irregularities and establish a protective barrier. Next, a thick, sprayed layer of Pipeliner 5000 — a dark blue hybrid polyurea — was applied to complete the waterproof membrane.

In five of the spots, the dark blue Pipeliner 5000 coating had peeled off to reveal more of the same material. Experts said this appears consistent with an adhesion failure caused by an overlap of the dark blue over a dried layer of the same material at the seams. For any overlapping Pipeliner 5000 to adhere, the underlying layer would need to still be wet or, if not, steps would need to be taken to prepare the surface.

Pipeliner 5000 dries within four hours, according to technical documents, depending on temperature and humidity. The Post confirmed that in each of the five spots, five hours or more had elapsed between when adjacent sections were sprayed.

At a sixth spot The Post identified, the dark blue Pipeliner 5000 had peeled back to reveal the light blue Rhino 406 primer. The Pipeliner 5000 should be applied within 24 hours of the primer, according to technical specifications. Photos and a video of the renovation process showed that, at this location, it was applied more than 24 hours after the primer, which experts said made it less likely that the two materials bonded properly.

At the seventh spot, both the dark blue coating and light blue epoxy primer underneath had peeled away, leaving the concrete exposed. This was one of three failure points that occurred on top of visible expansion joints built across the concrete basin — which experts said would also strain the coating. The width of the perimeter expansion joint referenced by the Interior spokesperson is not clear from visuals, but at least one failure point appeared directly on the pool’s edge.

When applying the product, the goal should be to have the coating be “as monolithic as possible” and to lay down as much material at one time as possible, said Vito Mariano, president of waterproofing company Basecrete Technologies. “Anytime you have a stop [and] go, you’re going to open yourself up to a problem that might occur,” he said.

The experts agreed that the seams required special treatment, but their assessment of the best approach varied. After reviewing The Post’s timelines, photos and video of the peeling sections and the technical specifications of the sealants used, they said several techniques might have prevented the failures but stopped short of diagnosing a definitive cause.

“They have a window [of time] … to get the next layer down. Otherwise, it’s not going to adhere properly unless additional prep is done,” said Rudy Stankowitz, a pool operations expert.

If a section has already cured, its edges need to be sanded to rough up the surface and cut at an angle before a new set of coatings is applied next to it, otherwise they will fail to bond properly along the new seam, according to Michael Bushnell, a retired certified coating inspector for the U.S. Navy.

“If [the seams] are the only place where the failure is occurring, it’s strongly indicative of improper [edge] preparation,” Bushnell said.

Derek Downey, an expert in pool failure analysis who frequently testifies as an expert witness in construction defect lawsuits, recommends placing a separate material, such as tile and grout, between pool sections. That material would act as a physical barrier between separate coating applications, preventing adhesion failures when the coatings overlap.

The available visuals do not show workers applying special treatment at the seams where The Post found failure points, although it’s possible those steps were taken but not photographed. Atlantic Industrial Coatings, the contractor responsible for the project, and Mid-America Industrial Coatings, the subcontractor whose crews helped line the basin, did not respond to questions from The Post. Rhino Linings also did not respond.

On June 21, Atlantic Industrial Coatings said in a statement on its website that the company, along with the U.S. Park Service, had identified areas in the Reflecting Pool that needed repairs. “These areas are a very small part of the massive 7 acre project, and do not indicate a failure of the liner,” the statement said.

Rhino Linings, in a statement on its website, said the company is “aware of reports regarding localized areas of finish coat separation within portions of the Washington DC Reflecting Pool rehabilitation project.” The company added that, based on information provided by the project team, the condition “does not affect the underlying waterproofing membrane.”

New Canton, Virginia-based Atlantic Industrial Coatings was awarded a no-bid contract in April to repaint and waterproof the pool’s concrete floor. A March 31 Interior Department memo justifying the sole-source award said that “only a limited pool of contractors possess the qualification and equipment necessary” to complete the project in time for the 250th anniversary celebration.

In turn, Atlantic Industrial Coatings hired the Oklahoma-based Mid-America Industrial Coatings as a subcontractor to assist in the renovation. The company advertises its prior work with Rhino materials. Its website states that the company aimed to create “a seamless, protective barrier” for the pool.

The pool, which holds approximately 4 million gallons of water, has long had problems with algae and leaks. In 2012, it completed a two-year, $34 million renovation that shored up its floor support system to prevent the pool from sinking. For that project, contractors poured new, tinted concrete for the bottom of the pool and utilized a hydrophilic joint sealing strip, Hydrotite, from the New Jersey company Sika. In June, CNN reported that Sika declined to work on Trump’s renovation after being asked to do so, saying that the quick time frame and the color change made the project “unfeasible.” Sika did not respond to a request for comment.

In addition to the peeling paint, the pool experienced one of the biggest recorded algae blooms in years just days after its reopening.

On CNN’s “State of the Union” on July 5, Burgum said that the pool will be partially drained and that repairs will be completed by Atlantic Industrial Coatings. “We’ll use the same company, because they did a fantastic job,” he said, noting that the repairs could cost tens of thousands of dollars.

Federal authorities have charged at least four people in connection with alleged vandalism, and three of them have pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor charges after allegedly peeling paint off the bottom of the pool and being caught in possession of pieces of liner. One person has been indicted, former Olympian David Hearn, and he has pleaded not guilty to a felony vandalism charge. At a news conference on July 2, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said National Park Service employees witnessed Hearn “forcefully and violently” pulling at the liner with both hands and turning belligerent when told to stop. No one has been accused of making gashes, according to charging documents.

Salvador Rizzo and Luis Melgar contributed to this report. Photos of the renovation process were shared publicly by the Interior Department.

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

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Friday, July 17, 2026 9:32 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK

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

Your party is shit. You are shit. Shit Golem.

You stand for nothing, and you NEVER have.

All you care about is the destruction of everything good.
I'm gonna make this as blunt as possible: Trumptards are evil.

Rejected, Shit Golem.

Nobody gives a shit about your opinion.

Go fuck yourself.

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

Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Sunday, July 19, 2026 8:03 AM

SECOND

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

THE THREAT

By Andrew Tobias | July 17, 2026

https://andrewtobias.com/the-kings-speech-ii/

Jamison Firestone’s Rule of Lies: My Wild Ride Through Chaos, Corruption, and Murder in Putin’s Russia is at once amazing, engaging, important, tragic, true — and highly relevant to USA situation today. [Free download from https://z-lib.sk/s/Jamison%20Firestone ]

It’s no coincidence Trump admires Putin and never says a bad word about him.

Russia’s path from democracy to kleptocracy — it briefly had one after Reagan got Gorbachev to “tear down that wall” — and from a free press and the rule of law (at least somewhat) to jailing dissidents and the rule of lies . . . to a president for life surrounded by loyalists living, like him, lives of luxury while the masses struggle to get by . . . has so many parallels to the direction Trump has been taking us that it’s frightening.

It shows us how a murderous thug leading his country to ruin could remain popular among millions of his countrymen . . . and what could eventually happen here. Trump could eventually walk down Fifth Avenue shooting people and not lose support if we don’t succeed in restoring checks and balances.

I can’t recommend Rule of Lies highly enough.

It even has a (relatively) happy ending. As will, I think, the drama we’re living through.

From the Introduction

Quote:
While I’m American by birth, a great part of me is Russian. I founded the first independent foreign-owned law firm in Russia to help small businesses and entrepreneurs enter the market. I lived and worked in Russia for eighteen years. Most of my extended family and closest friends are Russian. I arrived in Russia in 1991 at the age of twenty-four and was living in Moscow when modern Russia came into existence. I have seen the country go from a land of infinite freedom, opportunity, and hope to a Mafia state, and from there to a dictatorship that attacks its own people, destabilizes our democracies, and wages war on its neighbors. For better or worse, I’m both a victim of Russia and one of its success stories.

So on that note, let me explain how a kid from New York founded a law firm in Moscow, had to flee for his life, and ended up in a pissing contest with the Putin regime. There’s a bit of family history in this story, but it’s there for a reason. It’s not something most of my clients or work colleagues have ever heard.

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

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