REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

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

POSTED BY: 6IXSTRINGJACK
UPDATED: Friday, August 29, 2025 16:37
SHORT URL:
VIEWED: 58772
PAGE 62 of 62

Monday, August 25, 2025 4:55 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:

The point is, you've got caught stealing other people's words and trying to pass them off as your own again, AND that I caught you red-handed again.

It's easy to do because you are a very stupid person and I know when you're writing for your idiot self and when you're stealing somebody else's words.

Doesn't that get embarrassing after a while? Don't you have any shame?

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
High school teachers invented "plagiarism" to get their students to read the book rather than fake the reading by copying their answers from somebody who had read the book.

6ixStringJack, it is so obvious that you are completely stupid about life. You didn't read the books assigned, you didn't listen to the teacher, and you can't even understand the answers that other people give who did the reading. 6ix, you are just a sad, fucking mess. In other words, a goddamn worthless Trumptard who is completely lost. Lost within their families and lost within their nation, and lost within their time, and who only want some sort of direction or purpose or sense of community or love. Trump gives you direction, but only somebody who is completely lost would follow those directions. When you do follow, you are still lost, but you are in the company of a bunch of losers who are as lost as you are.

I never forget that 6ix did NOT download the free book Infinite Jest. If 6ix did, he won't understand that he is reading about a loser, himself, a story as told by another loser who killed himself, David Foster Wallace.

Is Infinite Jest about addiction?
AI Overview
Yes, Infinite Jest is profoundly about addiction, exploring not just substance abuse (drugs, tobacco, alcohol) but also other forms of dependence like sex, entertainment, and even the fundamental addiction to the self or the present moment. The novel presents addiction as ubiquitous, interwoven with mental illness and suicide, and examines its commercialization and the search for meaning in a world that fosters it.

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

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

Monday, August 25, 2025 5:12 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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

The point is, you've got caught stealing other people's words and trying to pass them off as your own again, AND that I caught you red-handed again.

It's easy to do because you are a very stupid person and I know when you're writing for your idiot self and when you're stealing somebody else's words.

Doesn't that get embarrassing after a while? Don't you have any shame?

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
High school teachers invented "plagiarism" to get their students to read the book rather than fake the reading by copying their answers from somebody who had read the book.


Fuck off, Pirate.

Quote:
Plagiarism is the representation of another person's language, thoughts, ideas, or expressions as one's own original work. Although precise definitions vary depending on the institution, in many countries and cultures plagiarism is considered a violation of academic integrity and journalistic ethics, as well as of social norms around learning, teaching, research, fairness, respect, and responsibility. As such, a person or entity that is determined to have committed plagiarism is often subject to various punishments or sanctions, such as suspension, expulsion from school or work, fines, imprisonment, and other penalties.


You're the one who gets caught stealing other people's ideas all the time here, so don't talk to me about who was cheating in high school and who wasn't. You've never read a book in your life.

You write like a 2 year old. You have no individual thoughts that weren't planted there by somebody else and you're incapable of critical thinking.

You are a waste of carbon.

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

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

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

Monday, August 25, 2025 8:19 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Did you know, you are 400% more likely to get murdered in Louisiana than California? That's a fact.


I've already addressed this here, faggot: http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=66964

Yanno... The thread you ran away from that I tried getting you to come back to no less than a dozen times already.


There are roughly around 500 murders per year in Louisiana on average.

Here's a list of Democrat (Blue) Counties in Louisiana and their murder stats...

1. Caddo County, LA - Includes Shravenport, which is where all the murders take place in this county.

https://www.ksla.com/2024/12/02/shreveport-homicide-numbers-down-43-so
-far-this-year/

Quote:
With about a month left to go in 2024, Shreveport has seen 48 homicides so far this year, according to news releases from the Caddo coroner’s office.

Only 2019 and 2016 had fewer homicides. Shreveport Police Department crime statistics show 43 such deaths were recorded in 2019 and 46 in 2016.

The city also has seen the number of homicides per year spike as high as 90, as was recorded in 2016.


So roughly 50 Murders or 1/10th of the yearly Murders took place in Caddo County



2. East Carroll, LA - East Carroll Parish, LA Murder Rates and Murder Maps

https://crimegrade.org/murder-east-carroll-parish-la/

Given a "Grade F" on crime.

Quote:
The F grade indicates that the rate of murder is much higher than that of the average US county. East Carroll Parish ranks in the 1st percentile for safety, meaning it is safer than 1% of counties but less safe than 99%. This analysis applies only to East Carroll Parish's official city boundaries. See the table below for nearby counties.


It's a small county with only around 8,000 residents though, so even though it's a dangerous hellhole of a BLUE county, we're only talking like 5 people being murdered per year here, or roughly 1% of the state's annual murders.


3. Madison, LA - Madison Parish, LA Murder Rates and Murder Maps

https://crimegrade.org/murder-madison-parish-la/

"D-Grade" given to this Liberal shithole county.

Quote:
The murder rate in Madison Parish is 0.2740 per 1,000 residents in the typical year.


There's only around 8,000 people living in this Blue shithole county too, so we're again only talking maybe up to 4 or 5 murders per year or another 1% of the state's annual number.

4. St. Helena, LA - St. Helena Parish, LA Murder Rates and Murder Maps

Another "D-Grade", another Blue shithole.

Quote:
The murder rate in St. Helena Parish is 0.1901 per 1,000 residents in the typical year.


11,000 people in St. Helena, so another 4 or 5 or so..

5. East Baton Rouge, LA - EBR district attorney says despite efforts, homicides rising again and courts backing up

https://www.wbrz.com/news/ebr-d-a-moore-discusses-2024-homicide-number
s-and-200-case-trial-backlog/

Quote:
Across the entire parish, there were 113 homicides in 2024, up 11 from 2023.


More than 1/5th of the yearly homicides in Lousiana are from Liberal shithole East Baton Rouge.


6. St. John the Baptist, LA - The Safest and Most Dangerous Places in St. John the Baptist Parish, LA: Crime Maps and Statistics

https://crimegrade.org/safest-places-in-st-john-the-baptist-parish-la/

Though they don't make specific mention of the murder rate per 1,000 on this page like they did for other counties, you can scroll down to the tables below and see what it is. Murder rates in this Blue shithole are 0.2424 per 1,000. 40,000 people live in this county, so that's another 10 or so per year.

7. Orleans, LA - Most of the murders here are in New Orleans, of course...

https://usafacts.org/articles/which-cities-have-the-highest-murder-rat
es/

Looks like 166 per year in Orleans, County. And that number has gone down quite a bit from well over 200 per year to where it is today from the early Joe Biden* years, so it actually brings the number of total murders down in the entire state since we're talking about such a huge number for this Blue shithole county.


Let's add those up, shall we?

1. Caddo County: 48
2. East Carroll County: 5
3. Madison County: 5
4. St. Helena County: 5
5. East Baton Rouge County: 113
6. St. John County: 10
7. Orleans County: 166

352 of the 500 or so murders in LA were all from Blue shithole districts, or roughly 7 out of 10 murders per year in LA are all in Democrat run counties. (REMEMBER: The 510 per year average that Google A.I. will spit out also includes all the years where Orleans County had way over 200 murders per year and doesn't include 2024 or 2025).

And as I've stated above, there are going to be less than 500 this year because the amount of murders in Orleans county have gone down, but that doesn't help the overall percentage for your argument, because every less murder recorded in Orleans county this year is one less murder in the state too. There could be as few as only 400 murders in LA this year, but that would still mean that Democrats were responsible for 7 out of 8 of them.

And as I illustrated in the thread that you ran away from, even though 2 of the three most dangerous counties in LA are tiny and voted in favor of Trump, they both have large Blue cities in them run by DEI hire idiot Democrats where all of the murders take place. It would stand to reason that this is also the case throughout the rest of the vastly Red state, and it's almost certainly the pattern you would see play out across the entire country.

So without any further digging, Democrat shitholes inside of LA are responsible for, at the very least, 4 out of every 5 murders in the state every year. That number is likely at least 4.5 out of every 5 if somebody took the time to break this all down on a city-by-city basis.



This is why you lose every argument, Ted.

Because you're too stupid and/or lazy to do any of this research on your own.

Either that, or you're willfully ignorant of facts and math because you are in a cult.

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

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

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

Tuesday, August 26, 2025 5:31 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:

This is why you lose every argument, Ted.

Because you're too stupid and/or lazy to do any of this research on your own.

Either that, or you're willfully ignorant of facts and math because you are in a cult.
Trump takes on the federal judiciary of an entire state

The case, U.S. v. Russell, centers on a legal question that the Justice Department could well have a winning argument for, according to legal experts. But in naming 15 federal judges as defendants, the unprecedented case would have significant implications for the Constitution’s separation of powers and the rule of law. Should the Justice Department prevail, some legal observers warn, the executive branch would be able to sue any judge or court it disagrees with. The normal recourse for challenging an adverse legal ruling – an appeal – could effectively be avoided.

“If this lawsuit succeeds, I don’t see how a president couldn’t sue a judge whenever they do something he doesn’t like,” says Michael McConnell, a former federal appeals court judge and a professor at Stanford Law School.

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2025/0826/trump-maryland-russell
-habeas-corpus

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

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

Tuesday, August 26, 2025 5:38 AM

SECOND

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


I think many Americans wrongly believed there would be one clear, unambiguous moment where we go from “democracy” to “authoritarianism.” Instead, this is exactly how it happens — a blurring here, a norm destroyed there, a presidential diktat unchallenged. Then you wake up one morning and our country is different.

Today, August 25, 2025, is that morning. Something is materially different in our country this week than last.

Everything else from here on out is just a matter of degree and wondering how bad it will get and how far it will go? Do we end up “merely” like Hungary or do we go all the way toward an “American Reich”? So far, after years of studying World War II, I fear that America’s trajectory feels more like Berlin circa 1933 than it does Budapest circa 2015.

https://www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/america-tips-into-fascism-f51000e08e
03254d

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

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

Tuesday, August 26, 2025 6:02 AM

SECOND

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


Military occupation of cities: "the president using armed military units from governors loyal to his regime to seize cities run by opposition political figures"

Threats against states: "the president is now drawing up plans and explicitly threatening domestic political opponents like the governors of California and Illinois with similar military occupations"

Arbitrary stops and ID checks: "America has become a country where armed officers of the state shout "Papers please!" on the street at men and women heading home from work, a vision we associate with the Gestapo in Nazi Germany or the KGB in Soviet Russia"

Abductions without due process: "masked men wrestle to the ground and abduct people without due process into unmarked vehicles, disappearing them into an opaque system"

Corporate extortion: "a president, who is supposed to be the figurehead of the party of small government, is extorting US companies for the regular act of doing business - earning his good will in recent weeks has required seizing parts of major US companies or imposing bizarre taxes on others."

Purges of officials: "people who try to uphold the rule of law are being purged - sometimes for nothing more than personal friendships or because they voiced an inconvenient fact"

Attempts to control culture: "Trump assumes he can control and dictate our history, what books we read, our arts, and even our sports heroes"

https://boingboing.net/2025/08/25/america-has-already-fallen-into-fasc
ism-under-trump-says-pulitzer-prize-finalist-author.html

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

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

Tuesday, August 26, 2025 7:12 AM

SECOND

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


Trump’s Global War on Decarbonization

By Mark Blyth and Daniel Driscoll | Aug 21, 2025

https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/trump-global-war-on-decar
bonization-green-technologies-by-mark-blyth-and-daniel-driscoll-2025-08

There are multiple competing theories about what drives the anti-green policies embraced by US President Donald Trump. Perhaps they reflect the influence of carbon-heavy industries in Republican-controlled states. Or perhaps they channel ideological hostility to the notion that the state should play any kind of planning role in the economy.

Whatever the case, it is increasingly apparent that the Trump administration wants to halt decarbonization not only in the United States but globally. Viewed from this perspective, much of the recent US policy incoherence starts to make more sense – albeit in a dangerously regressive way.

The US sits atop vast reserves of fossil fuels, which have underpinned its national prosperity for decades. They have lit cities, powered factories, stimulated postwar job growth, and forged broad regional political coalitions among labor, agriculture, and corporations. They are also highly profitable commodities, with exports creating global dependence on US supplies (which is especially true for liquefied natural gas following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine). Fossil fuels are a core component of the country’s political economy – and a key factor in US domestic and foreign policymaking.

The Trump administration recognizes this. It includes ideological realists who understand that energy transitions make hegemons – that energy is power. Just as coal drove the industrial revolution in England, oil and gas fueled America’s postwar dominance. Whoever controls energy controls the future.

Unfortunately for the US, if the next energy transition is a green one, the future surely belongs to China, whose green-tech dominance is so firmly established that it does not really matter which metric you look at. In terms of the critical minerals used for such technologies, China supplies the majority of the world’s refined lithium (70%), cobalt (78%), graphite (95%), rare earths (91%), and manganese (91%). In terms of green-tech manufacturing, China accounts for 80% of solar panel production, 50-70% of the wind turbine market, and over half of electric vehicles. And in terms of deployment, it is undertaking three-quarters of the world’s renewable-energy projects.

This is all good news for those who care about decarbonization; but it is bad news for those hoping to extend US hegemony. If the US wants to preserve its global primacy, then realist logic dictates that it needs China to fail. And the US can engineer that outcome by continuing to do exactly what it is doing.

Since Trump returned to office, his administration has been reshaping American consumption by imposing massive import tariffs and abandoning the previous administration’s program of domestic decarbonization incentives and investments. The Inflation Reduction Act was an explicit attempt to compete with China in green tech. But now Americans are being weaned off the renewables that they were just beginning to enjoy.

Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill spells disaster for the future of US green-tech investment, and his administration is further deregulating fossil fuels and adding more hurdles for clean-energy projects. While the Environmental Protection Agency works to extinguish its own ability to regulate carbon emissions, NASA satellites that track US emissions are being targeted for self-destruction. All these moves, coupled with 30% tariffs on imports from China, signal to green-tech producers that the world’s top consumer no longer wants their wares.

Moreover, the US is trying to undercut global demand for Chinese green tech by compelling its largest trading partners to import US fossil fuels instead. China’s own top trading partner, the European Union, just committed to purchase $750 billion of US oil and gas by 2028 – an amount that far exceeds current US output. And the rest of China’s top trading partners are following suit. Japan and Taiwan have agreed to invest billions in US LNG, and South Korea is poised to join them.

These moves come straight from the US postwar playbook: By ensuring that European markets would be dependent on US oil, the Marshall Plan prevented the Soviet Union from wielding its own energy influence over the continent.

The current US government is not just trying to rebalance trade. It is obstructing global decarbonization as a matter of policy. Cratering American demand for green technologies decreases global demand by a non-trivial amount. And manipulating the terms of bilateral trade deals to favor US fossil fuels abroad further undercuts demand for green tech, impeding the clean-energy transition in key blocs like the EU and East Asia.

The Trump administration is doing everything it can to ensure that fossil fuels remain dominant in the energy mix of the twenty-first century. If it succeeds, the short-term returns to the US will be huge. But the long-term damage to the planet will be orders of magnitude larger.

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

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

Tuesday, August 26, 2025 7:54 AM

SECOND

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


America’s leading physician groups are now openly defying RFK Jr.

US vaccine consensus has officially shattered.

By Dylan Scott | Aug 26, 2025, 5:30 AM CDT

https://www.vox.com/health/459226/rfk-jr-trump-covid-vaccine-ban

For decades, the American public, the federal government, and the medical community have been nearly unanimous: Vaccines are important because they save lives. Today, after years of escalating attacks, that consensus has irrevocably shattered.

The rupture has centered around, what else, the Covid vaccines. Yesterday, a British cardiologist allied with US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told the Daily Beast that the Trump administration would soon pull Covid-19 vaccines off the market. Last week, the American Academy of Pediatrics said that the group would continue to recommend Covid vaccines for kids under the age of 2 — openly defying Kennedy’s move this May to end the recommendation for both healthy children and pregnant people.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/donald-trump-and-robert-f-kennedy-junior
-to-ban-covid-19-vaccine-within-months/

The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology followed suit, saying on Friday that it would also continue to advise pregnant people to get a Covid shot. In both cases, some of the country’s leading medical organizations said they wanted to maintain access to protection for the very youngest children, either directly or through vaccinating their mothers, because of the evidence that the population is at a higher risk of serious illness from Covid-19 compared to older children.

Kennedy, in response, ominously warned the physician groups that their members could lose liability protections from medical malpractice lawsuits if they don’t follow the government’s vaccine guidance. In this new reality in which doctors and federal health officials are at odds over who should get vaccines, shots could be harder to get — and not only Covid shots, but flu vaccines and routine childhood shots, all of which have come under Kennedy’s scrutiny.

And the divide between the Trump administration and other medical authorities may grow even further soon: A group of New England states is meeting this week to discuss whether to issue its own vaccine guidance. Even as scientists develop exciting new applications of the same mRNA technology that helped successfully produce the Covid vaccines as part of Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” during the pandemic, Kennedy is canceling mRNA contracts with drug developers. The loss of federal funding for the platform could possibly close off future treatments before they can even be developed.

As a result of all this, more people could get sick.

Drug manufacturers may produce fewer doses of their existing vaccines. Insurers may not be willing to cover people’s shots if they are not being recommended by the government. Various nightmare scenarios could emerge: Maybe a vulnerable person gives up on getting a shot, even if it is recommended for them and covered by their insurance, simply because they can’t find one at a nearby pharmacy. Or maybe the healthy loved one of a vulnerable person won’t be able to afford their shot because their insurance plan won’t cover it anymore. That will leave them to decide between taking the risk to go see their loved one, who could get seriously ill, or not seeing them at all.

We are running headlong into a forced experiment, in which the federal government actively obstructs the usage of vaccines and the development of new ones, and a growing share of the public has lost their faith in one of modern medicine’s greatest tools.

That the federal government and professional medical societies would be openly at war over vaccine guidance in this way really was once unimaginable. Around the turn of the century, more than 90 percent of Americans agreed that childhood immunizations were important. After years of federal advocacy and government coordination with doctors, the United States had successfully eradicated measles as of 2000.

But in 2025, less than 70 percent of Americans still believe that childhood vaccinations are “very important.” This year, the US saw its worst measles outbreak since the early 1990s, and Kennedy’s health department was, based on reporting by KFF Health News, reluctant to help, while he made public statements waffling on the value of vaccines — even though the measles vaccine is 97 percent effective.

How did we get here?

Well, for starters, even though anti-vaccine activism has existed for decades, the movement received a boost with the COVID-19 pandemic and the way it polarized people’s opinions about public health experts. It edged further into the mainstream with Kennedy’s presidential campaign promising to “Make America Healthy Again” — a movement that has found an uneasy home within the Trump administration. After Trump’s election, he nominated Kennedy to be US health secretary and, once confirmed, Kennedy quickly started rolling back the federal government’s support for vaccines.

In the first few months on the job, he put a vaccine skeptic in charge of searching for a link between vaccines and autism. He unilaterally rolled back those COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for kids and pregnant people. He replaced the federal government’s expert vaccine panel with his own handpicked members. He has ordered a review of the childhood immunization schedule, as well as the safety of Covid shots. He canceled a $500 million mRNA vaccine contract.

This is a fight Kennedy wanted. But now the medical community is punching back. Americans, meanwhile, are stuck in the middle, just as we head into another cold-and-flu season.

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

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

Tuesday, August 26, 2025 8:17 AM

SECOND

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


Trump Gets Stuck on ‘Magnets’ in Deranged Rant

By William Vaillancourt | Aug. 25 2025 4:44PM EDT 
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-gets-stuck-on-magnets-in-deranged-
rant/

Donald Trump claimed Monday that the use of magnets was part of a plot begun by the Chinese two decades ago. The president said he may impose a steep tariff if China didn’t give the U.S. magnets.

“They have to give us magnets. If they don’t give us magnets, then we have to charge them 200 percent tariff for something, you know?” said Trump.

“You know, China intelligently went and they sort of took a monopoly of the world’s magnets, and nobody needed magnets until they convinced everybody 20 years ago, ‘Let’s all do magnets,’” Trump went on. “There were many other ways that the world could have gone.”

The president estimated that it would take “probably a year” to acquire them.

The U.S., he said, will be “heavy into the world of magnets now — only from a national security standpoint.”

Trump’s mention of magnets came amid a discussion on Boeing aircraft.

“I sent them all of the parts so their planes can fly,” Trump said of China. “200 of their planes were unable to fly because we were not giving them Boeing parts purposely because they weren’t giving us magnets.”

“But we have a much more powerful thing, and that’s tariffs,” he said, adding: “We’re going to have a lot of magnets in a pretty short period of time.”

The White House didn’t immediately respond to request for comment.

Trump has portrayed that as a positive development, even if his understanding of the technology might be lacking. Last January, he suggested at a campaign stop that magnets don’t work underwater. They do.

He also criticized them being used as part of the Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System earlier this year.

“And they have all magnetic elevators to lift up 25 planes at a time, 20 planes at a time. And instead of using hydraulic, like on tractors that can handle anything from hurricanes to lightning to anything, they use magnets,” he said in February.

“It’s a new theory: Magnets are going to lift the planes up. And it doesn’t work. And they had billions and billions of dollars of cost overruns,” Trump claimed, even there’s no proof that those magnets don’t work.

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

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

Tuesday, August 26, 2025 9:53 AM

SECOND

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


Trump’s attempt to fire a Fed governor is illegal. Now we find out whether that matters.

By Paul Krugman | Aug 26, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/in-the-matter-of-lisa-cook

Yesterday Donald Trump said that he had fired Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. My wording is advisable: He “said” that he had fired her. I’m not a lawyer, but it seems clear that he does not have the right to summarily fire Fed officials, certainly on tissue-thin allegations of mortgage fraud before she even went to the Fed.

Cook has said that she will not resign. So at this point the immediate onus is on Jerome Powell, the Fed chairman. He has the right — I would say the obligation — to say, “Show me the legal basis for this action.” If Trump’s officials can’t provide that basis, he should declare that as far as he is concerned, Cook is still a Fed governor.

If Powell caves, or the Supreme Court acts supine again and validates Trump’s illegal declaration, the implications will be profound and disastrous. The United States will be well on its way to becoming Turkey, where an authoritarian ruler imposed his crackpot economics on the central bank, sending inflation soaring to 80 percent:


And the damage will be felt far beyond the Fed. This will mark the destruction of professionalism and independent thinking throughout the federal government.

So, about the legal authority. The Supreme Court, shamefully, has said that Trump has the authority to fire officials at will throughout the federal government, effectively eviscerating the principle of a professional civil service. But even the Court specifically carved out protections for Fed governors, saying that they can only be removed “for cause.” https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/24pdf/24a966_1b8e.pdf

Normally “for cause” means neglect of one’s job or malfeasance on the job. Yet even Trump’s people have made no claims that Lisa Cook has failed to fulfill her duties at the Fed or done anything wrong in her role as governor.

So what is the complaint about Cook? Trump says that she committed mortgage fraud by taking out two mortgages, claiming both properties as her primary residence, back when she was a professor at Michigan State, before joining the Fed.

Even if true, this accusation wouldn’t meet the standard for immediate dismissal from the Fed.

Furthermore, there’s no reason to believe Trump’s assertions that she committed fraud. So far, the Justice Department hasn’t even made any formal charges, let alone won a conviction. And we have no clear evidence of wrongdoing. As far as I can tell, the only evidence seen by outsiders shows that she took out mortgages on two properties, and the security instruments associated with these mortgages say that both properties are “principal residences.”

But as Adam Levitin at Credit Slips, says, “principal” isn’t the same as “primary”: someone who has a home in the city and a second place in the country might well consider both “principal” residences. Furthermore, there is no evidence that Cook even knew what the security instruments said — she may have done nothing more than promise to make her mortgage payments.

And a claim of mortgage fraud requires both that the borrower make a deliberate misrepresentation — as opposed to making a mistake on a complicated process — and that this misrepresentation caused financial harm to the lender. We’ve seen no evidence at all for either proposition.

This is not a case a nonpolitical Justice Department would even consider bringing to trial, or have much hope of winning. And again, it has no relevance at all to Cook’s work at the Fed, providing zero justification for dismissal “for cause.”

But of course Trump’s attempt to fire Cook has nothing to do with allegations of fraud. Her real crime, in his mind, is that she isn’t an obedient minion (oh, and that she’s a black woman.) The goal of his attempt to fire her is to replace independent Fed officials with lackeys who will take Trump’s orders — not just by getting rid of Cook but by intimidating everyone else.

As I wrote yesterday, the real message here is “If you get in our way we will ruin your life.”

The immediate test here is how the Fed itself responds. Cook is doing the right thing by refusing to resign. Jerome Powell now faces a moment of truth: Will he back her up, until or unless Trump demonstrates that he has the legal authority to fire her?

What if Trump uses some kind of force — deployment of U.S. Marshals? — to block Cook from continuing to work? Good. That will demonstrate to everyone the grotesqueness of this power grab.

And one way or another, this will end up in the courts, where we will find out whether our judicial system has any integrity left.

What will all of this mean for financial markets? The markets keep shrugging off the Trump administration’s lawlessness, and maybe they’ll do it again. But really, it doesn’t matter. This isn’t, ultimately, about monetary policy. It’s about whether we are still a nation of laws.

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

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

Tuesday, August 26, 2025 12:51 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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

This is why you lose every argument, Ted.

Because you're too stupid and/or lazy to do any of this research on your own.

Either that, or you're willfully ignorant of facts and math because you are in a cult.
Trump takes on the federal judiciary of an entire state

The case, U.S. v. Russell, centers on a legal question that the Justice Department could well have a winning argument for, according to legal experts. But in naming 15 federal judges as defendants, the unprecedented case would have significant implications for the Constitution’s separation of powers and the rule of law. Should the Justice Department prevail, some legal observers warn, the executive branch would be able to sue any judge or court it disagrees with. The normal recourse for challenging an adverse legal ruling – an appeal – could effectively be avoided.

“If this lawsuit succeeds, I don’t see how a president couldn’t sue a judge whenever they do something he doesn’t like,” says Michael McConnell, a former federal appeals court judge and a professor at Stanford Law School.

https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2025/0826/trump-maryland-russell
-habeas-corpus

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



We didn't vote any of your Obama/Clinton/Biden* appointed judges as President.

They either sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up and let the President do what we elected him to do, or we cut their fucking dicks off.

Ya dig?

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

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

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

Tuesday, August 26, 2025 2:39 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:

We didn't vote any of your Obama/Clinton/Biden* appointed judges as President.

They either sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up and let the President do what we elected him to do, or we cut their fucking dicks off.

Ya dig?
Judge Dismisses Trump Administration Suit Against Federal Bench in Maryland

By Alan Feuer | Aug. 26, 2025 1:59 p.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/us/politics/trump-suit-maryland-jud
ges.html

A federal judge on Tuesday threw out an extraordinary lawsuit that the Trump administration had filed against the entire federal bench in Maryland, challenging a standing order intended to briefly slow down the government’s ability to deport undocumented immigrants.

In a scathing 39-page ruling, the judge, Thomas T. Cullen, called the suit “novel and potentially calamitous,” saying that the administration had simpler — and clearly more legal — ways to contest the standing order aside from bringing a suit against all 15 federal judges who sit in Maryland. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.584990/gov.us
courts.mdd.584990.58.0_4.pdf

Judge Cullen, who was appointed by President Trump, went out of his way to describe the complaint as extremely unusual, offering his own role in the case as a prime example of its unorthodox nature. Because the suit was filed against the state’s entire federal bench, all of the district judges there were forced to recuse themselves and Judge Cullen had to be brought in from his home courthouse in Roanoke, Va., to preside over the case.

Moreover, he used the ruling to take Mr. Trump and some of his top aides to task for having repeatedly attacked other judges who have dared to rule against the White House in a flurry of cases challenging aspects of its political agenda.

“Over the past several months, principal officers of the executive (and their spokespersons) have described federal district judges across the country as ‘left-wing,’ ‘liberal,’ ‘activists,’ ‘radical,’ ‘politically minded,’ ‘rogue,’ ‘unhinged,’ ‘outrageous, overzealous, [and] unconstitutional, crooked,’ and worse,” Judge Cullen wrote.

“Although some tension between the coordinate branches of government is a hallmark of our constitutional system, this concerted effort by the executive to smear and impugn individual judges who rule against it is both unprecedented and unfortunate,” he concluded.

Judge Cullen’s plaintive criticism of the Trump administration’s assaults on the judiciary was in many ways reminiscent of a ruling issued in April by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit — for which he once served as a clerk — in the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the immigrant from Maryland who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador.

The ruling was written by Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, an icon of the conservative legal movement, who expressed deep concerns about the executive and judicial branches “grinding irrevocably against one another in a conflict that promises to diminish both.”

“We yet cling to the hope,” Judge Wilkinson wrote, “that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the executive branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos.”

The case in front of Judge Cullen began in June when the Trump administration filed suit challenging a standing order put in place the month before. The order said that immigrants who sought to contest their removal from the country in the Maryland federal courts by filing what is known as a habeas petition would automatically be granted a two-day reprieve from being expelled.

The order was intended to give judges time to sort through the complicated legal issues in a flurry of fast-paced cases being filed in Maryland contesting the White House’s aggressive deportation policies. The most prominent of those was a lawsuit brought in March by Mr. Abrego Garcia.

Judge Cullen pointed out in his ruling that the White House took “umbrage” with the standing order because Trump officials believed it hindered their ability “to police immigration matters and enforce the nation’s immigration laws.”

He admitted that such arguments might have gotten “traction” if the administration had made them “in the proper forum.” Trump officials, he said, could have appealed any individual cases where the standing order had actually slowed down an immigrant’s removal or could have contested the underlying validity of the blanket rule in front of the Judicial Council of the Fourth Circuit, which has the authority to rescind or modify such measures.

But instead, Judge Cullen maintained, the administration “chose a different, and more confrontational, path.”

“The executive decided to sue,” he wrote, “and in a big way.”

In dismissing the lawsuit, Judge Cullen agreed with almost all of the arguments put forward at a hearing two weeks ago by a lawyer for the judges, Paul Clement, a former solicitor general who has argued more than 100 cases in front of the Supreme Court.

The judge found that the defendants, as federal jurists, were immune from being sued and that the administration’s suit essentially violated the separation of powers laid out in the Constitution by having the executive branch attempt legal action against the judicial branch.

“Regrettably, this lawsuit effectively pits two of those branches against one another,” Judge Cullen wrote. “But it is important to remember that, at bottom, all branches — and the public officials who serve in them — share the same core sovereign interest: to support and defend the Constitution.”

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

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

Tuesday, August 26, 2025 3:15 PM

SECOND

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


Donald Trump (audio voiceover): As you all know, Chicago is a killing field right now, and they don’t acknowledge it. And they say, We don’t need him. Freedom, freedom. He’s a dictator. He’s a dictator. A lot of people are saying, Maybe we like a dictator. I don’t like a dictator. I’m not a dictator. I’m a man with great common sense and a smart person.

Sargent: Well, there you go. He said it. He said he didn’t want to be a dictator. He said he’s not a dictator. But he said some people want him to be a dictator. I think that’s best seen as a trial balloon, a test run, another tiny step on the incremental slope.

Trump’s Fury Erupts at Many Targets as Expert Fears Worsen

As Trump’s threats escalate on numerous fronts, a journalist and historian explains how the events of recent days suggest that little by little, our country really is crossing over into authoritarian and/or fascist rule.

By Greg Sargent | August 26, 2025

https://newrepublic.com/article/199579/transcript-trump-fury-erupts-ma
ny-targets-expert-fears-worsen

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

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

Tuesday, August 26, 2025 3:49 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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

We didn't vote any of your Obama/Clinton/Biden* appointed judges as President.

They either sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up and let the President do what we elected him to do, or we cut their fucking dicks off.

Ya dig?
Judge Dismisses Trump Administration Suit Against Federal Bench in Maryland


That's excellent news. Thanks for the update.

This is one we want going all the way up to SCOTUS so it becomes the law of the land and you can't ever do this again.

We thank you idiot Democrats for your continued and easily predictable, unwitting service in this matter.



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

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

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

Tuesday, August 26, 2025 6:58 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:

That's excellent news. Thanks for the update.

This is one we want going all the way up to SCOTUS so it becomes the law of the land and you can't ever do this again.

We thank you idiot Democrats for your continued and easily predictable, unwitting service in this matter.
Trump is breaking the mail

“Postal services around Europe announced on Saturday that they are suspending the shipment of many packages to the United States amid a lack of clarity over new import duties.

“Under a decree signed by US President Donald Trump last month, international goods that were previously exempt from US tariffs – those valued less than $800 fell under the global “de minimis” exemption – will be subject to import duties from August 29.

“A trade framework agreed by the US and the European Union last month set a 15% tariff on the vast majority of products shipped from the EU. But many European postal services say they are pausing deliveries now because they cannot guarantee the goods will enter the US before August 29.

“They cite ambiguity about what kind of goods are covered by the new rules and the lack of time to plan for their implications.”

Trump destroys everything he touches.

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20250825-french-suspension-of-us-pa
ckage-deliveries-over-tariffs-comes-into-effect

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

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

Tuesday, August 26, 2025 7:25 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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

That's excellent news. Thanks for the update.

This is one we want going all the way up to SCOTUS so it becomes the law of the land and you can't ever do this again.

We thank you idiot Democrats for your continued and easily predictable, unwitting service in this matter.
Trump is breaking the mail

...

Trump destroys everything he touches.

https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20250825-french-suspension-of-us-pa
ckage-deliveries-over-tariffs-comes-into-effect


Oh, BOO HOO.

France is crying, and now you're pretend crying for France.


When isn't France crying about something? When aren't you pretending to cry for people everybody knows good and goddamned well by now that you don't give a single shit about?

*yawn*


Do me a favor and follow up on this story 3 weeks from now.

Prove to me that you can even remember a single headline from a single article you've ever posted here 3 weeks after you've posted it.

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

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

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

Tuesday, August 26, 2025 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:

Oh, BOO HOO.

France is crying, and now you're pretend crying for France.


When isn't France crying about something? When aren't you pretending to cry for people everybody knows good and goddamned well that you don't give a single shit about?

*yawn*


Do me a favor and follow up on this story 3 weeks from now.

Prove to me that you can even remember a single headline from a single article you've ever posted here 3 weeks after you've posted it.
Why is Trump trying to be like Obama?

Does anyone else remember the 2015 Jade Helm conspiracy theory that said Obama was planning to end states' rights by deploying federal troops and declaring martial law so he could stay president forever?

https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Jade_Helm_15_conspiracy_theor
ies

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

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

Tuesday, August 26, 2025 7:29 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK




Shut up, faggot.

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

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

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

Tuesday, August 26, 2025 7:53 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Come on, Second. Give me something else stupid to shit on.

I'm on fire today and it looks like Ted is going to tap out.

I know you have more bullshit clickbait and headlines to throw out there right now. Let's see them.

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

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

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

Wednesday, August 27, 2025 6:25 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:
Come on, Second. Give me something else stupid to shit on.

I'm on fire today and it looks like Ted is going to tap out.

I know you have more bullshit clickbait and headlines to throw out there right now. Let's see them.
A Third of U.S. economy is already in recession or at high risk, and another third is stagnating, Moody’s economist warns

After saying that the U.S. is on the precipice of a recession earlier this month, Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi continued to add more granularity to his warning.

In social media posts on Sunday, he said his assessments of various datasets indicate that states accounting for nearly a third of U.S. GDP are already in a recession or at high risk of slipping into one. Another third is treading water, while the last third is still expanding.

The economy will be most vulnerable to recession toward the end of this year and early next year. That is when the inflation fallout of the higher tariffs and restrictive immigration policy will peak, weighing heavily on real household incomes and thus consumer spending.

https://fortune.com/2025/08/25/recession-warning-economic-outlook-stat
es-high-risk-stagnating-expanding/

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

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

Wednesday, August 27, 2025 6:28 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:


Shut up, faggot.
Tariffs are a giant national sales tax that will hobble U.S. economic growth

Buckle up, Americans. You’ve just been ambushed by a federal money grab, the equivalent of a national sales tax—branded under another name. This version’s a giant revenue raiser that deficit-ridden Washington is likely to get hooked on. In fact, it’s looking more and more like America’s answer to Europe’s fatal attraction that’s long been the leading enabler for the region’s extremely high levels of government spending: the value-added tax—the VAT. As you’ve guessed by now, we’re talking about the Trump tariffs. And you can forget about foreigners picking up the tab for the tariffs. It’s Americans who will.

Tariffs are a national sales tax by another name

Almost all countries except the U.S. impose national sales taxes on all or most goods sold anywhere within their borders, either at a flat rate or at varying percentages depending on the product. These taxes come in two forms: A few nations, including Pakistan and Myanmar, deploy a simple countrywide tax similar to America’s state sales taxes. But the most common type by far is the value-added system imposed in stages at each level of production. It’s a bedrock of the regimes in France, Germany, and virtually every other EU country. The VAT is a formidable revenue generator that has fueled government spending in Europe and imposed a huge drag on its nations’ growth.

The U.S. is highly unusual in that it’s never had a VAT or anything resembling a major national sales tax. This likely explains why America’s federal spending stands at least 10 percentage points lower as a share of GDP than the lions of Europe. Trump tariffs mark a historic shift to an effective national sales tax. By employing huge tariffs, Uncle Sam is embracing a tax that’s virtually never been used at remotely this scale by any other major economy in recent history.

By making tariffs more than a minor footnote in the federal budget, the Trump administration takes this long-fading mode of taxation into uncharted fiscal territory. To be clear, tariffs operate differently from VATs. They’re collected at U.S. ports of entry by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency and are paid entirely by American importers. Under the Trump plan, the rates vary greatly even for the same goods, depending on what country they’re arriving from. On aluminum and steel, we’re charging Canada 50% and the U.K. “just” 25%. Typically, importers tack the tariff cost onto the price of their products in auto showrooms, grocery chains, and megastores. Hence, they raise the bill for American consumers at checkout counters. In this sense, tariffs are no different than the German VAT that marks up tabs at the supermarket chain Edeka in Munich or the Minnesota state sales tax that gets added to Walmart price tags in Minneapolis.

By the way, tariffs resemble VATs in another sense. Tariffs are “indirect” taxes embedded in retail prices, like VATs, and are not added at checkout. Sales taxes, on the other hand, are tacked on at the point of sale and visible on receipts, and usually spark outrage when they are increased. A danger of tariffs is that they could become a VAT-like way to hike taxes on the sly.

More at https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/it-s-time-to-unmask-the-trump-
tariffs-for-what-they-really-are-a-giant-national-sales-tax-that-will-hobble-u-s-economic-growth/ar-AA1LemTG

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

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

Wednesday, August 27, 2025 6:41 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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


Shut up, faggot.
Tariffs




*yawn*

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

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

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

Wednesday, August 27, 2025 6:43 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Come on, Second. Give me something else stupid to shit on.

I'm on fire today and it looks like Ted is going to tap out.

I know you have more bullshit clickbait and headlines to throw out there right now. Let's see them.
A Third of U.S. economy is already in recession


The recession that Joe Biden* put us through and the worst 3 year inflationary period that most living Americans have ever experienced in their lives didn't bother you in the slightest.

Funny that, huh?

Shut the fuck up.

You have no business speaking about any issue you put out here.


Everyone agrees with me except for Ted, Ed Kilgore, Paul Krugman and dead Kevin Drum.

That's why your party is dead, and the two of you have to go to sketchier and sketchier sources of "news" to find people willing to keep telling you the things you want to hear.

You're both going to be QAnon by this time next year.

Tick Tock



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

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

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

Wednesday, August 27, 2025 8:40 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:

The recession that Joe Biden* put us through and the worst 3 year inflationary period that most living Americans have ever experienced in their lives didn't bother you in the slightest.

Funny that, huh?

Shut the fuck up.
According to Donald Trump’s White House, the US economy is booming, inflation is dead and jobs are surging. When that reverses, how can it be Biden's fault?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/aug/02/us-economy-trump-char
ts

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

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

Wednesday, August 27, 2025 4:19 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
According to Donald Trump




*yawn*



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

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

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

Thursday, August 28, 2025 7:41 AM

SECOND

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


Trump is testing whether the world’s most important central bank belongs to the U.S.—or to him.

By Nitish Pahwa | Aug 27, 2025 2:10 PM

https://slate.com/business/2025/08/trump-lisa-cook-federal-reserve-fir
ing.html

Back in May, when the Supreme Court approved President Donald Trump’s decision to fire the leaders of once independent government agencies at his discretion, the conservative justices laid out one sole exception: The Federal Reserve, as the nation’s regulator of monetary policy, was to remain untouched. But this hasn’t stopped Trump from threatening to fire Fed Chair Jerome Powell and his board of governors—and his efforts reached a frightening, unprecedented breaking point this week.

On Monday evening, Trump posted a letter to Truth Social (naturally) addressed to Lisa D. Cook, a 2022 Biden administration appointee and the first Black woman to serve on the board. Finding “sufficient cause” based upon cocked-up accusations of “mortgage fraud” from Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte, the president illegally ordered that Cook step down from her position, “effective immediately.” Cook responded that evening, noting in a statement that “no cause exists” for her dismissal and that she “will not resign,” as she is entitled by Congress to serve on the board until 2038. The next day, Cook’s attorney announced that she would sue Trump over this action, and the Fed released a public statement declaring that it would “continue to carry out its duties” and “will abide by any court decision” as Cook challenges the president’s interference. (Trump subsequently agreed to also “abide by the court,” as this tangle will inevitably head back to the SCOTUS chambers.) Meanwhile, Cook’s profile as board governor remains live on the Fed’s official website.

The Fed’s response was not the full-throated defense of Cook (and of the agency’s independence) that analysts like Paul Krugman had hoped for—especially as the likes of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick kept up the fallacious case that she has to go. The stock and bond markets have also remained stable throughout the week. Still, plenty of other public-facing leaders and institutions recognize the stakes here. High-ranking Democrats unilaterally condemned Trump’s order, and one House Republican—retiring Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon—even defended Cook’s “right to due process” while pointing out that Trump is trying to “gain control of the Fed.” An executive for a prominent wealth-advisory firm wrote to his staff that the White House was likely targeting Cook “in order to remake the Fed.” The New York Times editorial board decried Trump’s “grab for power,” while former Obama administration economic adviser Jason Furman wrote an op-ed for the paper that warned, “This week could mark the beginning of the end of the Federal Reserve as we have known it.”

Considering how many global investments and transactions are tied up in the U.S. dollar, held aloft primarily by unshakable faith in the Federal Reserve’s stewardship, you can understand why foreign dignitaries like European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde are also criticizing Trump’s approach to the Fed.

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

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

Thursday, August 28, 2025 8:01 AM

SECOND

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


Trump fires CDC Director Susan Monarez after she refused to quit in dispute with RFK Jr.

Monarez 's ouster, less than one month after the Senate confirmed her to the role, was followed by resignations from three other top CDC officials in protest of Kennedy's leadership.

By Joey Garrison and Ben Adler | Aug. 27, 2025, 11:03 p.m. ET

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/08/27/cdc-director-s
usan-monarez-ousted/85856035007/

The CDC experts said RFK Jr. was crazy. Trump said he preferred crazy. He bathes in crazy. He eats crazy three times per day. Anyone who tells Trump he cannot have all the craziness he wants is fired.

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

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

Thursday, August 28, 2025 8:10 AM

SECOND

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


Why Aren’t Markets Freaking Out about Trump attacking the Federal Reserve?

By Paul Krugman / Aug 28, 2025 at 5:37 AM

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/why-arent-markets-freaking-out

For those of us who follow economic policy in general and the Federal Reserve in particular, the past week has been shocking and terrifying. Donald Trump’s ongoing attempts to bully the Fed into large interest rate cuts have escalated into an attempt to fire Lisa Cook, a member of the Fed’s Board of Governors, over unsubstantiated claims that she committed financial fraud while still a college professor. Indeed, Trump claims that he has already fired her, although he has no legal right to do so.

Whatever happens, Trump’s campaign to take over monetary policy has shifted from a public pressure to personal intimidation of Fed officials: the attack on Cook signals that Trump and his people will try to ruin the life of anyone who stands in his way. There is now a substantial chance that the Fed’s independence, its ability to manage the nation’s monetary policy on an objective, technocratic basis rather than as an instrument of the president’s political interests and personal whims, will soon be gone.

So why aren’t markets freaking out? Nations in which central banks lose their independence sooner or later suffer high inflation, especially when they are taken over by autocrats who buy into crackpot economic doctrines. And Trump, who has been demanding large rate cuts because, he claims, the economy is running hot — which almost every economist would say is a reason to raise rates, not cut them — certainly fits that pattern. Yet although there have been small tremors in the bond and currency markets, there have been no significant upheavals in financial markets that reflect the severity of the situation we are in. Throughout this episode, the stock market has remained fairly flat and bond yields haven’t spiked.

Why not? Do financial markets doubt that Trump will get his way? Or do they reject mainstream economics and the clear examples of countries like Turkey and Argentina?

Neither. My read of economic and financial history is that market pricing almost never takes into account the possibility of huge, disruptive events, even when the strong possibility of such events should be obvious. The usual pattern, instead, is one of market complacency until the last possible moment. That is, markets act as if everything is normal until it’s blindingly obvious that it isn’t.

The inimitable Nathan Tankus summarizes this by saying that the market is not, as stylized economic models would have us believe, a mechanism that pools the knowledge and informed judgment of millions of investors. It is, instead, a “conventional wisdom processor.” That is, it reflects views that seem safe to hold because many other people hold them — and the crowd only abandons those views when they become blatantly unsustainable.

John Maynard Keynes said something similar in Chapter 12 of his General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Market investors, he argued, pay little attention to the question of what assets are truly worth. Instead, they worry mostly about the market value of those assets a few months in the future. In a memorable albeit sexist passage (it was 1936), he declared that

professional investment may be likened to those newspaper competitions in which the competitors have to pick out the six prettiest faces from a hundred photographs, the prize being awarded to the competitor whose choice most nearly corresponds to the average preferences of the competitors as a whole; so that each competitor has to pick, not those faces which he himself finds prettiest, but those which he thinks likeliest to catch the fancy of the other competitors, all of whom are looking at the problem from the same point of view … we devote our intelligences to anticipating what average opinion expects the average opinion to be. https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300071h/chap12.html

So if the conventional wisdom is that economic conditions will remain more or less normal despite highly abnormal policy, markets will remain calm until the illusion of normality becomes unsustainable. At that point market prices may “change violently.” The current technical term for this phenomenon is a “Wile E. Coyote moment” — the moment when the cartoon character, having run several steps off the edge of a cliff, looks down and realizes that there’s nothing supporting him. Only then, according to the laws of cartoon physics, does he fall.

You might ask why smart investors with long time horizons don’t foresee Wile E. Coyote moments and get very rich in the process. Some do. But for reasons that would take another long post to explain — maybe a primer one of these days — there never seem to be enough such investors to shake market complacency, no matter how unwarranted. It’s one thing to short a stock, but to short the entire market is a completely different beast.

Can I document these assertions? Let’s look at a couple of relatively recent examples of market complacency and myopia in the midst of clear signals of an oncoming crisis.

More at https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/why-arent-markets-freaking-out

So if you want to know why markets aren’t reacting to the risk of very bad policy if Trump takes over the Fed, you should know that major market reactions to that kind of risk are rare. In fact, I can’t come up with a single example.

All of which says, in turn, that the absence of a strong reaction to Trump’s assault on the Fed isn’t a sign that everything is OK. We are, in fact, looking at a policy disaster in the making. But markets probably won’t react strongly until the disaster is already upon us.

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

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

Thursday, August 28, 2025 11:20 AM

SECOND

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


In 1990, Playboy published an interview with Donald Trump in which the future president offered his thoughts on foreign affairs, the death penalty, and why he puts his name on everything. He also reflected on the meaning — or, perhaps, meaninglessness — of life. “Life is what you do while you’re waiting to die. You know, it is all a rather sad situation,” he said. “We’re here and we live our 60, 70, or 80 years and we’re gone. You win, you win, and in the end, it doesn’t mean a hell of a lot.”

It’s no secret that every president cares about how they’ll be remembered. But that pithy, 35-year-old quote explains a whole lot about Trump, his rise to power, and how he governs today. He doesn’t only want a legacy, be it good or bad. Even winning the presidency twice doesn’t suffice. What Trump really wants is to — in some way or another — live forever, and he’s only just getting started.

https://www.ebroadsheet.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/playboy-intervi
ew-donald-trump-1990

https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/things-with-trumps-name-on-them/2/

What Trump has been chasing throughout his entire adult life is omnipresence. Celebrity status, untold fortune, and television success were never going to be enough; he wants to be everywhere. For a big chunk of his New York business years, Trump was completely obsessed with the idea of having the biggest and tallest buildings in the world. He injected himself into the American zeitgeist decades ago, giving tabloids enough gossip to fill their pages with scandal after scandal since the 1970s. His real estate career, his offensively lavish lifestyle, and his eventual rise as a reality TV star made him, in many ways, a caricature of American capitalism’s excesses.

That never-ending pursuit of omnipresence has shaped Trump’s political career and presidencies, perhaps more than anything else. After all, from a political standpoint, Trump has been all over the place: He has been a Democrat, an independent, and a Republican. He sought to befriend Hillary Clinton — donating to her Senate campaigns and the Clinton Foundation — before eventually running against her in 2016. And while there are some policies and ideas that Trump has long been committed to, like tariffs or racist conspiracy theories, he has always been more devoted to himself than any policy agenda.

His true desire, it seems, wasn’t to simply become the president of the United States, but to become the single most enduring representation of America itself.

Trump’s political project, in other words, is to rebrand America. He’s seemingly not so desperate to eke out wins for the Republican Party so much as he is trying to remake America in his own image. Gone are the days when America was promoted as an idea — a nation of immigrants or an unfinished project that every generation of Americans strives to improve — because in his eyes, America is Trump.

https://www.vox.com/politics/459397/trump-rebranding-america-style-aes
thetic-taste

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

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

Thursday, August 28, 2025 11:44 AM

THG


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

The entire atmosphere surrounding all of this is completely different than it was in 2016 and 2020.

Things just kind of feel normal again.

It's like all the loudest voices either screamed themselves out or they aren't being platformed anymore and/or we just finally, collectively tuned them out for a change.

It's kind of nice, innit?


Happy Inauguration Day!




Donald Trump was Epstein's best friend for more than a decade. They hung out. Not just at the same events but right next to each other at large gatherings. They'd sit at the same table. Epstein introduced Trump to his current wife.

Gaylene Maxwell would always be there as well. Maxwell and Epstein were, and are, convicted pedophiles. Before cutting Maxwell loose with the same deal Epstein got. The same deal everybody was so outraged about. Trump sent his personal lawyer, who is also a part of the Justice Department now, to interview her. To get her to say flattering things about Trump. And if she did, her 20-year sentence in a maximum-security prison would go away. And guess what Gilligan, it did.

These are just a few of the facts with more to come moron. And in these threads, all you do, all you ever do, is aid and abet pedophile, sexual assaulter, Fraudster, convicted felon, Donald Trump. It doesn’t matter what you post Gilligan. These are facts. And to aid and abet someone makes you guilty as well. You have no morals or character.

The legal term aiding and abetting refers to a person’s action to help, support, or approve of someone else’s illegal act. Aiding and abetting is a crime in itself.

Are you paying attention comrade Signym, JSF, Brenda and JAYNEZTOWN? Pretending Trump is innocent or you just don't follow what he has done or is doing, doesn't cut it. Pretending Trump isn't destroying the rule of law doesn't cut it. Pretending Trump isn't destroying democracy doesn't cut it. Pretending Trump isn't ruining millions of lives doesn't cut it. And so on...

T

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

Thursday, August 28, 2025 12:09 PM

SECOND

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


Thomas Jefferson Meets Donald Trump In The Oval Office

August 28, 2025

https://andrewtobias.com/thomas-jefferson-meets-donald-trump-in-the-ov
al-office/

THOMAS JEFFERSON:

Mr. Trump. I’ve read your speeches. Watched your conduct. Heard your calls for loyalty—not to the Constitution, but to yourself. Tell me plainly—do you believe in a government of laws or of men?

TRUMP (smirking):

Look, Tom—can I call you Tom? Here’s the deal. The people love me. Nobody’s ever had support like I’ve got. We’re restoring order. Power was too spread out—too many weak people in the way. I’m just doing what works.

JEFFERSON:

What works in the short term often destroys the long term. Power unchecked becomes tyranny. We saw it in kings. You are not crowned, Mr. Trump—you are elected. And you serve only by the consent of the governed.

TRUMP:

Consent? I got 74 million votes. That’s consent. And when the system’s rigged, when the media lies, when judges don’t play fair—you better believe I’ll take control. The people want strength.

JEFFERSON:

The people also wanted Caesar. And they lost their Republic.

When fear and faction replace truth and principle, democracy becomes a performance—just a stage for the loudest voice. That is not strength. That is spectacle.

TRUMP (leaning forward):

What’s wrong with spectacle? You think anyone remembers quiet leaders? No—they remember winners. We’re making America great again. Strong borders. Strong economy. Strong leadership.

JEFFERSON:

Greatness without virtue is just empire. We declared independence to escape strongmen who mistook authority for righteousness. I wrote those words so no future ruler—elected or not—could forget the limits of power.

TRUMP:

That was 250 years ago. Things are different now. We’ve got enemies everywhere—inside and out. You’ve got to fight fire with fire. The press is the enemy. Judges don’t listen. Congress? Useless. You think your little parchment still applies?

JEFFERSON (coldly):

Yes. And if it no longer applies, then the Republic is already lost.

You speak of enemies, but you divide your own countrymen. You praise autocrats. You mock reason. You stir up mobs and silence dissent. You do not preserve the Union—you fracture it.

TRUMP:

I know loyalty. I know winning. You’re too idealistic. This isn’t the Age of Reason anymore—it’s the age of survival.

JEFFERSON:

And in trading liberty for survival, you will have neither.

I did not risk treason against a king to see my country fall under the rule of another—in a red tie instead of a crown.

Power must always serve the people—not bend them to its will.

TRUMP (standing up):

You had your time, Tom. You wrote your fancy words. I’m doing what has to be done.

JEFFERSON (softly, yet fiercely):

And I wrote those words for moments exactly like this.

When the flame of liberty flickers low…

When truth is drowned out by volume…

When one man seeks to become more than the people who gave him power…

That’s when patriots must rise—not with muskets—but with memory. With courage. With principle.

Because tyranny never knocks—it slips in through applause.

[The room falls silent. A storm brews outside. One man believes he is saving the country by dominating it. The other knows it can only be saved by freeing it.]

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

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

Thursday, August 28, 2025 12:15 PM

THG


Hear! Hear!

T

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

Thursday, August 28, 2025 12:35 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


And now you're crticizing Trump for an entirely made up "conversation".

Proving once again you can't separate reality from propaganda.


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

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

Thursday, August 28, 2025 12:36 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Trump is not a convicted pedophile.

You, too, can't separate reality from propaganda.

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

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

Thursday, August 28, 2025 12:58 PM

THG


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

And now you're crticizing Trump for an entirely made up "conversation".

Proving once again you can't separate reality from propaganda.




You can't change the facts comrade. No matter what you think.

T

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

Thursday, August 28, 2025 12:59 PM

THG


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Trump is not a convicted pedophile.

You, too, can't separate reality from propaganda.




Explain To me where I say Trump was a convicted pedophile. I said Epstein and Maxwell are convicted pedophiles. Based on the evidence we currently have, I insinuated Trump was one.

And explain to me why Maxwell got such a great deal with the DOJ out of the blue if Trump didn't have something to hide. He just released a pedophile from prison. She was serving a 20-year sentence. This is far from over.

T

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

Thursday, August 28, 2025 2:14 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Trump is not a convicted pedophile.
You, too, can't separate reality from propaganda.


Explain To me where I say Trump was a convicted pedophile. I said Epstein and Maxwell are convicted pedophiles. Based on the evidence we currently have, I insinuated Trump was one.
And explain to me why Maxwell got such a great deal with the DOJ out of the blue if Trump didn't have something to hide. He just released a pedophile from prison. She was serving a 20-year sentence. This is far from over.


I never said you posted that, I merely insinuated.

Just like you insinuate, don't you, comrade?



You have got a SERIOUS case of TDS, THUGR. Why aren't you hounding after Clinton with the same fervor about the multiple allegations of assault and rape? What about his longstanding friendship with Epstein, including multiple recorded trips to Pedo Island? Even JFK was a multiple philanderer.

FWIW I wasn't hounding Clinton either. I voted for Clinton as President, not for sainthood. I voted for Trump as President, not for sainthood. I'm concerned with their policies, or when private behavior affects policy.

I push back where I see we're being flooded with lies and propaganda.
So, Trump did not "collude" with Russia. The documents coming out prove that it was fiction. I DO want to know who killed Seth Rich tho.
Jan 06 was not an "insurrection". That's overblown hysteria.
Vaccine mandates and endless lockdowns were power grabs in the name of "health".


*****

AFA policies are concerned: WHERE I DISAGREE WITH TRUMP

I strongly disagree with Trump's support of the genocidal religious nutcases in Israel, including Netanyahu.

I also strongly disagree with Trump's view of climate change, and his views of science in general.

The Big Beautiful Bill is a big, ugly waste of money that drives up our deficit. We need a serious effort to rein in waste, and that includes a lot of our cost-plus MIC contracts and our 800+ military installations across the globe, and reforming Medicare and health care in general.

Acquiring Greenland and Canada? Nutty ideas.

I think that Trump is overstepping his authority at various times, but I have to leave that to Constitutional lawyers and judges to decide. I also add that if Congress and previous Presidents of BOTH parties hadn't been so grossly dysfunctional, leaving people desperate for ANY sort of resolution, Trump wouldn't have any support. "At least Moussolini", Italians said "made the trains run on time".

*****
WHERE I AGREE

On the other hand, I support securing the Mexican border, and deporting illegal immigrants.

I believe we NEED to reindustralize America. Tariffs are part of that plan (altho I think Trump is going about it bass akwards).

We need to stop our endless wars, proxy wars, color revolutions, and destabilizations and work on fixing ourselves, not trying to destroy everyone else. That includes getting out of Ukraine, the Caucuses, and Taiwan.

If Trump is able to extend the START treaty and normalize relations with Russia, that's good thing.

I applaud ending the all-encompassing media and social media censorship, and I hope that Gabbard, Trump, and the DOJ can root out the malefactors and traitors in the CIA, FBI, and elsewhere that treated us to an unending stream of lies and propaganda.

I also applaud ending DEI, and ending the pandering to LGBTQ+, racists of all colors, sexists, and other "victim" groups. Those are policies which divide, not unite. I hope we can reaffirm our commitment to meritocracy.

*****

So, I'm not "all in" for Trump, and I fervently hope that Dems ... or SOMEBODY... can stop obsessing about TRUMP! and RUSSIA! and CHINA! and ISRAEL! and come up with reasonable proposals that make America more secure and Americans more prosperous.

Capisce?

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

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

Thursday, August 28, 2025 6:57 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Thomas Jefferson Meets Donald Trump In The Oval Office


THOMAS JEFFERSON:

Well, well, Mr. Trump. It looks as if you're getting those invaders out of our country. You're doing a fine job.

*shakes hands*

Now I can go back to a peaceful rest in my grave after decades of spinning in circles.

Thank you.

*evaporates into dust*

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

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

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

Thursday, August 28, 2025 8:15 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Thomas Jefferson Meets Donald Trump In The Oval Office


THOMAS JEFFERSON:

Well, well, Mr. Trump. It looks as if you're getting those invaders out of our country. You're doing a fine job.

*shakes hands*

Now I can go back to a peaceful rest in my grave after decades of spinning in circles.

Thank you.

*evaporates into dust*

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

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


Hahaha!
Too funny!!!

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

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

Thursday, August 28, 2025 8:59 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK




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

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

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

Friday, August 29, 2025 11:37 AM

SECOND

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


Alliances were what made us great

By Paul Krugman | Aug 29, 2025

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/decline-and-fall-of-the-american

Even Kaisers need allies



Germany lost both world wars in part because it was confronted by powerful alliances while its own allies were “terrible” — Austria-Hungary in World War I, Italy in World War II.

The key of the United States has been that it has maintained arguably the most successful alliance system in history since 1945. What the U.S. maintained with NATO, an alliance which kept Europe very much on the American orbit, in the American orbit, both economically and militarily, also with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and countries in Asia is, they constructed this alliance system which hugely amplified both America's economic possibilities but also its strategic possibilities.

And Trump is throwing all that away.

The U.S. had a specialty of creating international organizations that were formally equal, where we were all partners together. Now, everybody understood that the United States was actually in charge, but we went to great lengths to make sure that the World Trade Organization or NATO were alliances of equals, at least on paper. And it was a very effective trick.

The United States was getting the substance of power but giving up the style. We’ve lost that, possibly irretrievably, thanks to just a few months of Trumpism.

One of the best explanations I’ve read of who Trump is, and implicit predictions of what he would do, was a 2017 discussion of his design tastes titled “Dictator Chic.” "Trump’s New York apartment projects a kind of power that bypasses all the boring checks and balances of collaboration and mutual responsibility and first-among-equals. It is about a single dominant personality."

Remember, this was written in 2017, yet it was a better prediction of Trump’s current behavior than almost any judicious-sounding “news analysis.”

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

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

Friday, August 29, 2025 12:15 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 SIGNYM:

Hahaha!
Too funny!!!

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
In just 7 months Trump has completely ripped up the foundations of the Pax Americana.

Almost all his tariffs are clearly in violation of the GATT, yet Trump has vandalized the world trading system as casually as he has paved over the Rose Garden.

We haven’t yet had a test of whether he would honor our obligations under NATO, but he’s said that his willingness to abide by the most central obligation, the guarantee of mutual defense, “depends on your definition.”

Trump’s foreign policy doctrine appears to be Oderint dum metuant — let them hate as long as they fear — supposedly the favorite motto of the Emperor Caligula. America, he seems to believe, is so powerful that it doesn’t need allies; he can bully the world into doing his bidding.

History shows that such a belief is always wrong. And it’s especially wrong right now, when America is far less dominant than it once was. Whatever Trump may imagine, the world doesn’t fear us. For example, Trump may have imagined that his tariffs would bring India crawling to him, begging for relief; instead, India seems to be moving to closer ties with China.

In fact, not only does the world not fear us. Increasingly, it doesn’t need us.

This is even true for nations that used to depend on U.S. military aid. You may remember Trump berating Ukraine’s president Zelenskyy, declaring “you don’t have the cards.” In reality, even in the Ukraine war Trump has far fewer cards than he imagines. At this point Europe has provided far more aid to Ukraine than we are:



Source: Ukraine Support Tracker
https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tra
cker/

And in an ever-evolving war in which drones, not tanks, rule the battlefield, Ukraine (with European help) is producing many of its own weapons.

One of the many problems with the slogan Make America Great Again was that America already was great. Now, not so much. In a world in which America is no longer the dominant economic and military power it once was — measured by purchasing power, China’s economy is already 30 percent larger than ours — our role in world affairs depends, even more than it did in the past, on having willing allies who trust our promises. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.PP.CD?locations=CN-US

We used to be very good at having allies. But Trump has flushed all of that down the golden toilet.

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/decline-and-fall-of-the-american

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

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

Friday, August 29, 2025 1:00 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Fuck Ukraine. Nobody cares.

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

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

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

Friday, August 29, 2025 2:39 PM

SECOND

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


Pentagon is reinstalling portrait of Confederate General Robert E. Lee that includes a slave

The 20-foot-tall painting, which was on display at the United States Military Academy for 70 years, will be hung in the West Point library under President Trump’s instruction despite a congressionally mandated commission that ordered its removal back in 2020.

The law that led to the painting’s removal was passed during Trump’s first term, when a key Senate committee passed a $741 billion defense policy plan in defiance of the president. Against Trump’s wishes, the Pentagon was forced to scrub names from monuments and paraphernalia honoring the Confederacy and its leaders.

Memorials to General Lee, former commander of the Confederate army and a slave owner, have long proven controversial.

More at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/pentagon-is-reinstalling-portrait-of
-confederate-general-robert-e-lee-that-includes-a-slave/ar-AA1LuIPQ

Trump honors a general who killed hundreds of thousands of good Americans. Funny how Trump won't honor generals who killed hundreds of thousands of evil slaveowners.

How did the United States come to have nearly a dozen military installations named not after its heroes but after its enemies — men who led a war against the country and killed tens of thousands of people in defense of the indefensible institution of slavery?

The last I checked, the Confederate army lost the Civil War. So isn’t it kind of off-message, to say the least, to name military posts after the rebel officers who fought for the losing side?

Yet that’s exactly what the United States did. That’s why today we have Ft. Bragg in North Carolina, named after Braxton Bragg, an irascible Confederate general. There’s also Ft. Hood in Texas, named after Gen. John Bell Hood. And Ft. Polk in Louisiana, named for Gen. Leonidas Polk. Also Fts. Beauregard, Benning, Lee , Pickett, Rucker, A.P. Hill and Gordon, dotted across the American South.

Plenty of people have rightly demanded that those names be removed — and last year, Congress voted to do so. When President Trump vetoed the legislation (of course he did!), his veto was overridden. A congressionally appointed commission is now overseeing the renaming process and must report back by October 2022.

But what has long mystified me is how those bases got named in the first place. Remember, this wasn’t Mississippi or Alabama honoring Confederate officers — this was the United States of America. It won the war, and then honored the losers.

Does any other country do that? In Paris, Metro stops are named for French generals and French military victories, not Russian or British ones. Yet the U.S. apparently had no problem glorifying the leaders of a violent white supremacist insurrection.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2021-10-14/civil-war-base-names-
confederate-generals

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

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

Friday, August 29, 2025 2:40 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by SECOND:
Pentagon is reinstalling portrait of Confederate General Robert E. Lee that includes a slave


Sweet.

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

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

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

Friday, August 29, 2025 3:49 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:
Pentagon is reinstalling portrait of Confederate General Robert E. Lee that includes a slave


Sweet.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Good behavior is learned with positive reinforcement: portraits and naming army bases for the person with good behavior. Bad behavior is unlearned with negative reinforcement: removing portraits or changing names. The most negative reinforcement, absolutely ending the bad behavior, is two bullets in the back of the bad guy's head.

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

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

Friday, August 29, 2025 4:24 PM

THG


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Trump is not a convicted pedophile.

You, too, can't separate reality from propaganda.


Explain To me where I say Trump was a convicted pedophile. I said Epstein and Maxwell are convicted pedophiles. Based on the evidence we currently have, I insinuated Trump was one.
And explain to me why Maxwell got such a great deal with the DOJ out of the blue if Trump didn't have something to hide. He just released a pedophile from prison. She was serving a 20-year sentence. This is far from over.


I never said you posted that, I merely insinuated.

Just like you insinuate, don't you, comrade?


You have got a SERIOUS case of TDS, THUGR. Why aren't you hounding after Clinton with the same fervor about the multiple allegations of assault and rape? What about his longstanding friendship with Epstein, including multiple recorded trips to Pedo Island? Even JFK was a multiple philanderer.



No such thing as TDS. And whataboutism doesn't cut it. As for the rest of your rant, I cut it. No time to hear you justify again, Trumps digressions without addressing them. Like acting as though Trump wasn't convicted in a court of law for sexual assault. Or, that he isn't on tape admitting to doing that again and again with many other women.

T

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

Friday, August 29, 2025 4:37 PM

THG


T



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

YOUR OPTIONS

NEW POSTS TODAY

USERPOST DATE
SECOND 08.29 11:37
SECOND 08.29 12:15
6ixStringJack 08.29 13:00
SECOND 08.29 14:39
6ixStringJack 08.29 14:40
second 08.29 15:49
THG 08.29 16:24
THG 08.29 16:37

OTHER TOPICS

DISCUSSIONS
Durham Report Another Bust. Hey Jack, I Was Right
Fri, August 29, 2025 16:41 - 143 posts
Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?
Fri, August 29, 2025 16:37 - 3098 posts
CDC Director Susan Monarez won’t leave the post until Trump fires her directly, lawyers say
Fri, August 29, 2025 16:31 - 5 posts
MAGA losers
Fri, August 29, 2025 15:32 - 185 posts
WHY TRUMP IS STUPID
Fri, August 29, 2025 15:10 - 51 posts
Friend of yours, Ted? Second? Minneapolis shooting live updates: Trans shooter Robin Westman chillingly wrote about outfit he wanted to wear ‘for my shooting’ in disturbing manifesto
Fri, August 29, 2025 14:17 - 11 posts
Trump Urges Fed Governor Lisa Cook to Resign Amid Mortgage Fraud Allegations
Fri, August 29, 2025 14:04 - 5 posts
Mayor Johnson: Chicago Is Ready To "Rise Up Against Tyranny" If Trump Deploys National Guard
Fri, August 29, 2025 14:02 - 7 posts
End of the world Peter Zeihan
Fri, August 29, 2025 14:01 - 269 posts
Countdown Clock Until Vladimir Putins' Rule Ends
Fri, August 29, 2025 13:48 - 172 posts
Russia wants to upend Western democracy
Fri, August 29, 2025 13:47 - 259 posts
Cracker Barrel reverses course on new logo, brings back ‘Old Timer’ after fan backlash: ‘We said we would listen’
Fri, August 29, 2025 13:42 - 4 posts
 VIEW MORE TOPICS 

FFF.NET SOCIAL