Rice and food scarcity

Here's another example of how the food supply is being disrupted by climate change. 

This is going to become the norm. 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/officials-sound-alarm-major-staple-111500167.html

Elon 🖕🏼

You tried to buy an election, presumably for your own personal gain. 

But Wisconsiners? Wisconsinites? Aren't having it. 

Suck it. 

Here's to hoping they come after you for breaking the law, ya blatherskite 

April Fools

 

I was admittedly a bit of a prankster in college.  I perpetrated several different elaborate pranks just because, and on April Fools I tried to think "bigger."  

For several years running on April Fools, I would look for a free-standing newspaper machine (like the one pictured here).  I would switch 10 copies of the paper - 9 from the stack, and the one that was facing the world in the window - with ones from the previous year.  (this prank took some serious planning!).

I would then take the 10 current ones, and return home with them, and save them for the following year.

And for the record, since this was a prank, not a theft, I also carefully considered how to ensure everyone came out "even" on the deal.  I paid for the newspapers! (they only cost $.25 a the time, so I didn't see it as a big deal for a fun prank)

On tariffs

A little self own by the GOP. Fact checking yourself to remind people that WE will be paying for these tariffs and not whoever made and sold them is enlightening. 

So $100 billion divided by 300 million people means, on average, we will be spending $333 more a year. It may not seem like a lot, but it disproportionately skews down to lower income people, where the income is smaller and it takes a larger bite out of what you have already budgeted. 

And then T-rump saying he doesn't care if WE have to pay more for a car? That's crazy. An already expensive $50,000 automobile will now cost $62,500. That made what was unaffordable now unattainable. But I'm sure some company will be happy to write you a loan for that amount for a ridiculous amount of interest.  

This guy….

A shell game

I saw a headline "Elon Musk sells [the platform formerly known as twitter]"

The subhead is that it's for a lot of money and something about it being a valuable property and he profited from it!

Except that it's just some made up nonsense to generate a headline when no one checks any facts. 

He personally owned the platform. He "sold it" to another company that he owns, and rolled it under that company. 

That's an accounting trick of sorts, that allows for obfuscation of profits, losses, tax liability and such. 

It was a "stock swap" so that no actual cash changed hands. Another accounting trick!

The valuation was whatever he said it was since he owns both companies. 

And in the end, he still owns the social media platform, and can do whatever with it. But he'll tell you otherwise. Because him putting some distance between his name and any company he's involved with is better for his bottom line. 

Greenland, Panama, and the assumed agenda

Throughout history, controlling trade routes has been an important part of opening the world. Through various large companies and through government action, routes opened and people benefited - from the sellers to the buyers to the people and companies that facility the trade. 

What was the Silk Road? A trade route. What of Marco Polo and other early traders? They looked to open trade. 

The new world opened trade routes that now needed military ships to protect these routes. (And if you think about it, the stamp act, the tea party, and other pre-revolutionary war actions were fueled by this trade being unfavorable to the colonists) 

The Panama Canal opened as a means to make trading with Asia easier. 

Germany looked to disrupt trade routes in order to further their goals of European domination. 

Oil and natural gas are always commodities that travel along some routes to literally fuel our lives. 

In the early 20th century, wealthy industrialists made their mark, too. They looked to own certain passages, owned shipping companies, harbors and ports, and then sought to make ways for the goods to be delivered. 

And here we are in the 21st century and it's playing out again, and still. 

Putin took Crimea and is still trying to take Ukraine. Why? Because there are ports to be had and trade to control. 

And that brings us around to the topic at hand. 

Why does T-rump want the Panama Canal? Because it is still a vital part of trade with Asia. And of course the US no longer controls the canal, and several other nations are working to create a new shipping channel through part of Panama to bypass the old canal. So there's money to be made that we are missing out on. 

Funny enough, some of these venture capital companies now own a lot of ports that are useful in the area, but they could be even more profitable if they had a "friendly" agreement with the owners of the canal. 

And then there's Greenland. Its seems illogical that the US would show such great interest in it. 

Except that with climate change comes melting ice, meaning that new shipping channels are starting to open much further north than they ever could have. And Greenland would be part of the shipping channel, a place where goods could be held before shipping to the Americas or other places further south. 

And there's your proverbial killing two birds with one stone. Saying climate change isn't real while using it to your advantage to increase potential profits, all the while acting like 20th century robber barons, T-rump stands to reshape global trade. And meanwhile he can take any natural resources he wants from Greenland.  

And he and his allies get rich. 

It's so 19th and early 20th century diabolical. But in the great magicians trick, pay no attention to that. DEI! That's what we need to focus on!

Wake up people.