Newsbleat

He did it. Today Trump announced a deal with Nederlands for what amounts to a virtual takeover of Greenland. A deal was made at no cost to either party for the US to have total military dominance over Greenland along with mineral rights, forever. No one else allowed except NATO allies on US approval. This will do wonders for the people there, the US is about to start building new bases and they’ll be employing many of the locals. Prosperity is finally coming to those poor, hard-scrabbling folks in Greenland and a massive security boost is coming to North America.

Just two days ago I told you that petrol in Europe was going to get really scarce, really soon, and you over there should stock up on some spare fuel. This morning the Saudis told European refiners that they’ll get no oil next month because they had to shut down that pipeline that the Houthi’s blew up. Repairs are going to take awhile.

I wasn’t expecting the pipeline attack to be the cause of this, I was expecting the Houthis shutting off the Bab al Mandab Strait to  be sufficient. The Saudis aren’t saying much, blaming this all on the pipeline, but not much is going through the Strait of Hormuz now in spite of Trump’s claims and most likely this is because the Saudis decided not risk any more tankers to the Houthi threat now that they’ve taken over the Yemen port city of Mokha, at the mouth of the Red Sea and the pinch point of the Bab al Mandab Strait.

The Saudis are in serious trouble and their request to Trump yesterday for military aid was denied, as I knew it would be (and said so). They and the rest of those M.E. oil producers are going to have to fight this battle on their own.

This is a comment Trump made to Axios yesterday about the conflict with Iran:

“I have a big decision coming up. Do I want to go in and annihilate them [the Iranian regime] or do I not? It’s a big decision. Anything could happen with me.”

Gee, I don’t know. Should I annihilate Iran or should I not? I might, I might not, who knows? Anything could happen with me. Umm, REALLY? Anything could happen with me?

We have two grocery stores in our little town, one is a locally owned franchise store called Grocery Outlet and the other is Mega Monster Corporate Giant Octopus Vons Grocery. Since the much higher priced Vons has fresher produce and always has better brands, I shop there when I’m after specific stuff.

Bear in mind that I’m getting crankier as my left eye very slowly but definitely gets a little darker over time and I don’t like it. It’s causing me to screw up, nothing major, but small mistakes add up.

Anyway, no problem getting in the door and getting the initial shopping done in the produce section, then on to the meat counter where I asked the woman I’d never seen in there before, for 2 pounds of bacon and 4 of the nice big sausages next to the chorizo sausage, which will burn your mouth out and make it permanently useless. She hands me my packages and off I trundle, to get a dozen eggs, a tub of margerine and two bottles of my favorite creamer. Then a few more items and over to the checkout. Now the fun begins.

I slide my card through the strip reader, NO. Push it into the chip reader. NO, strip reader, NO, finally the chip reader accepts it, BUT FIRST, would I like to donate to… No, I would not. Okay, I’m asked to give to something else, I push No, okay then, would I like to be involved in some other goddam thing, No, I push NO a third time and then it presents me with two options, “If you agree to allow us to send you email ads from God Knows how many sellers of whatever we sell your information to, Press Here”. NO. At that point I uttered JESUS CHRIST, which earned me a scowl from the fat, dumpy old twat at the register.

My hell sakes, what is wrong with those people that they do their best to make shopping in their stores as repugnant an experience as possible? No one goes to the grocery mart to be hounded for donations to anything, and it happens I researched what they do with the money and only 3% goes to any charity, the rest is “operating expenses”.

On arriving home, I found that I’d bought the coffee creamer brand that I hate because they’ve changed their colors and appearance to mimic the best selling one, which is of course the one I buy, because it’s the best. I wouldn’t have made this mistake if it weren’t for that Damned Eye, and Poe be damned as well.

Ah, but we’re not quite done. I told that butcher lady I wanted four of those sausages. Somehow she heard Three, which is what I actually came home with but at least that’s all I was charged for. There is that.

A duck could quack a better lie than when “President Donald Trump said Wednesday that the war with Iran could reach what he called “a really good conclusion” even before the November election, suggesting the conflict could end sooner than he previously expected” and this isn’t the first time he’s pushed this nonsense, while “Vice President Vance warned Wednesday that a U.S. withdrawal from the Middle East would trigger a “worldwide energy crisis” as Iran continues targeting commercial shipping.”

Quaaaack quack quack. Trump is spouting this crap for November votes, trying to keep economic confidence up in the face of the inflation bubble that keeps getting bigger. In fact the Fed FINALLY increased the Federal interest rate to slow inflation down, no doubt too little too late, while Vance tells the whopper that the US getting out of the Middle East fracas would cause a global energy crisis, when the truth is that the US caused it by being there and there’s no chance of it all ending until Western oil production is back in a commanding lead. The Nov. mid-term elections have nothing to do with it.

I explained all this in recent posts and no need to bore you with a re-run, I’m just having fun watching these con men do their spiels. While you’re listening to their blatant lies, keep in mind that Vance is the Numero Uno choice for the next US president. Would Diogenes laugh, or despair? What do you think?

In my post below, “Remembering With A Vengeance”, I stated that the US wasn’t going to help the Saudis against the Houthi attacks, and in this morning’s news I have confirmation of that:

“US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the Houthis had phoned his administration asking the United States to keep out of the Yemen war. Vice President JD Vance said on Monday the United States was in direct contact with the group, without giving details.”

Re-reading this morning’s post, I thought it might be good to point out that my Great Uncle MacDonald lived to 102. Almost everyone else on both sides of the family made it to 95 or longer. If you’re waiting for me to expire, I suggest you don’t hold your breath. I’m in great health.

Shippo is a recent startup online alternative shipping application, an alternative to ebay, which I’ve started using and this morning they sent me an email asking me to complete a survey that they’d pay me $10 for completing.

So, fine, I clicked the Survey link and the first question was, what gender do I “mostly associate with”? Well, there’s only two of them and you either have one, or the other, not “mostly”, but what the hell, yes, MALE.  Next question: “Please enter your age”. I typed in 87. That’s my age, and up pops this message, “ERROR, the number must be 80 or less.”

Well, looks like that’s the end of the survey, no $10 for me unless I lie about my age and I haven’t done that since I was still too young to buy liquor. But I do have to thank them for a good laugh.

 

25 years ago today, the Saudis carried out their attack on the USA by flying passenger jets seized by Saudi terrorists into the two World Trade Center towers. At that same time, Pres. George Bush was hosting the Saudi Royal Family and their close friends, the bin Ladens, at his Texas ranch. Once the destruction of the Twin Towers was accomplished, he put them all on a chartered jet to Florida where they boarded another jet that took them home to Saudi Arabia.

Witnesses came forward at the time and testified to all this, it was in news stories in newspapers, on the radio and on TV and the Internet, and all of it has been thoroughly scrubbed out of existence now and anyone who mentions it is called an Extremist. But that’s what happened. What happened next is that Bush blamed Afghanistan for the attack and sent a small contingent of soldiers over there while he redirected all the attention to Saddam Hussein with the false claim that Saddam was making “Weapons of Mass Destruction”, launched his “Shock and Awe” campaign that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and wrecked the country in an effort to seize the Iraqi oil fields, an effort that ultimately collapsed but not before it removed Iraq for a long while as a competitor of Saudi Arabia.

The perfidy and collusion between the Bush oil family and Saudi oil family is finally coming back to haunt, if not the treacherous Bush family, at least the Saudis. No one could deserve it more, really. Because the Good News today is that the Houthis have taken over the seaport city that commands the transit choke point, the Bab-El-Mandeb Strait and Iranian IRGC troops are flooding in to help hold the city and fortify it.

Already, the Saudis are finally forced into defending their own interests and are attacking the airport there to block the influx of Iranian troops and supplies, because they need that strait open if they’re going to sell their oil.

You can bet your sweet ass that the USA isn’t going to lift a finger to help the Saudis. Remember that all this time, Trump has insisted that his only purpose in the region is to prevent Iran from having nukes. His latest statement is that he “doesn’t regret” the Iran war, and Hell No he doesn’t, it’s The Plan. Now the Middle East nations must finally do battle with Iran. They can’t sit back and chuckle while Iran threatens Israel and kills Jews, because Shiite Muslim Iran is now afraid to hit Israel and is lashing out at the majority Sunni Muslims who now have to focus on defeating Iran because their national futures depend on it, and by the time it’s all over, the USA-Venezuela partnership will be supplying all the world’s oil cheaper than the M.E. can, the Chinese economy will be in a shambles and the plan between China and the Saudis to wreck the US Dollar will be ashes, and we will have a measure of revenge against the Saudis for the 9/11 attack.

 

 

My little ebay store is starting to do some business. One stellar sale was a few days ago, of an antique bronze sundial. I bought it for 8 pounds in London in the winter of 1987 and after all ebay’s fees, it gave me back $450. Not bad.

Mostly selling rock slabs, otherwise. Slices of agate and jasper, mostly, and mostly top quality. At somewhat depressed prices, it’s obvious that all the blah blah about our economy being so great, I can tell you, is a pack of lies, it’s not so hot. You can’t let in 30 or 40 million unemployed migrants willing to do anything for any money, and expect wages to be up and it’s those good wages that make a good economy.

But the truth is I don’t need the money anyway, I’m just an entrepreneurial type, and it helps keep me involved in my hobby and from being bored. I do wish I had a nice share of Elon’s money though, it would be so much more fun to live on a mega-yacht and go fishing in Bermuda. I’d hire one of those Jamaican steel drum bands to make music on the fantail in the evenings.

HEADLINE: “The death toll from flash floods along the Nepal-China border rose above 1,300 on Friday, while more than 5,600 others remained missing.”

When there’s too many people, they run out of room for safe places to build, and then this happens, over and over and over again. If Man doesn’t limit his numbers, Mother Nature will do it for him.

I would really feel sorry for these people if I didn’t already feel a lot worse for all the other animals that have lost their homes because we took them.