This one I can believe he thought of and asked someone to put it into word-like forn:
President Donald Trump signed an executive order reversing federal policies promoting paper straws and restricting plastic straws, citing concerns over paper straw effectiveness and environmental impact. The order bans federal agencies from purchasing paper straws and promotes plastic straw use.
I kind of agree. Paper straws sucked (if there’s a pun - intended). I had bought some glass straws that did not sustain sloppy-dishwashing or being stepped on.
Why’d he wait so long? The plastic straw industry could have had a really neat Super Bowl commercial.
I, President Donald Trump signed an executive order reversing federal policies promoting paper straws and restricting plastic straws, citing concerns over paper straw effectiveness and environmental impact. The order bans federal agencies from purchasing paper straws and promotes plastic straw use.
I think in the UK they just gave up straws entirely. The Gulf of America Stream better not push up a whirlpool of them else we’ll mail them to Mar-a-lago.
No citation either, but I also remember it. Which may make both of us delusional, but it is consistent with his observed management style.
Problem is, as anyone who’s dealt with raw (or at least unhomogenized) milk can tell you, stirring things up is the worst way to have the cream rise to the top.
I lived in NYC in those long ago days. He was well-known as a slum lord (and not paying contractors - it’s in his ‘Art of the Deal’ book like he’s bragging)… Buying the Plaza (and putting John Hughes in a bind over whether to shoot that scene with the still fairly-well-known Slumlord for Home Alone II) bought him some credibility. Spy magazine mercilessly taunted and satirized him - especially each time he’d declare bankruptcy. Sure, the GOP/his story is his big-thinking brain rebuilt his empire. He is he shit that is swirling around. He’s just on top of it.
Citing ChatGPT:
Trump Taj Mahal (1991) – Overleveraged after opening, the casino couldn’t pay debts. Trump had to give up half his stake.
Trump Plaza Hotel (1992) – Faced financial troubles, and Trump gave up a large portion of ownership.
Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts (2004) – Filed for bankruptcy due to heavy debt. Trump’s ownership stake was reduced.
Trump Entertainment Resorts (2009) – Reorganized after financial struggles, with Trump resigning as chairman.
Additionally, some sources count Trump Castle (1992) and Trump Marina (2009) separately, bringing the total to six.
Can’t or would rather not pay debts? Being sued by creditors and contractors? Chapter 11 - it’s not you - it’s just your companies.
Cannot resist mentioning Donald J State Park in slightly upstate New York:
If I owned some land nobody wanted, I’d donate it as a tax-dodge as well.
ETA a quote:
He donated it in 2006[3][4] after he was unable to gain town approvals to develop the property.[2] At that time Trump claimed the parcel was worth $100 million.[1] He used the donation as a tax write-off.[5] The donation was praised by governor George Pataki. Trump said, "I hope that these 436 acres of property will turn into one of the most beautiful parks anywhere in the world.”[1]
Who needs Adirondack State Park? Yosemite? Yellowstone? If you want to dump your garbage, here is the place. It’s extremely sad to me that Theodore Roosevelt, who did so much to develop national state parks, was a New Yorker and Trump can claim to be one too (though I think he’s Florida now).
All of those bankruptcies were losses that could be claimed against any capital gains for many years. And $100 million for the most beautiful place in the world is far too much hyperbole. Yet this is how you avoid ever paying taxes. And fuck Pataki too.
That’s “America Stream” to you. It’s a phenomenon in hwich AMerica both blows and sucks at the exact same time.
Regarding felon47’s so-called management style: Sadly, I’ve had to deal with managers like that on more than one occasion. They are not doing it to get the job done. They’re doing it because they haven’t a clue how to get the job done and refuse to learn, especially from their “underlings”. They’re bad for morale, bad for the team, and bad for the bottom line. And we now have one back in the White House.
Lampert took the myth that humans perform best when acting selfishly as gospel, pitting Sears company managers against each other in a kind of Lord of the Flies death match. This, he believed, would cause them to act rationally and boost performance.
If you think that sounds batshit crazy, congratulations. You understand more than most of America’s business school graduates.
Instead of enhancing Sears’ bottom line, the heads of various divisions began to undermine each other and fight tooth and claw for the profits of their individual fiefdoms at the expense of the overall brand.
It only sounds stupid to us down here who have seen it is usually easier for people to advance by making their co-workers look bad rather than actually achieving anything themselves.
For the masters of the universe at their 20000ft remove, it’s a brilliant tactic, not an insane strategy at all
Have you seen the DOGE Tracker? It’s a thing of beauty. It’s constantly updating, there is a Leaderboard, even a section for betting, and a long list of the fraud. Elon is like a comic book villain, only real.
He must be talking about the special cigars the CIA made to assassinate Fidel Castro. Did not work. Neither did the exploding sea-shells (Fidel liked diving) or spraying liquid LSD all over his broadcasting studio.
Paper straws go limp when exposed to liquid. Apparently lining them with black powder didn’t help either. Let’s not do a damn thing about the proliferation of bottled water. It’s necessary in some places where you can literally light tap water on fire. Frack, baby, frack.
I win as last year I bought thousands of call options on plastic straw stock.
This should be well within the bounds of Fair Use. We offer up the salient quote now and then, but the totality of this paragraph is portentous and chilling:
Oceania was at war with Eastasia: Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia. A large part of the political literature of five years was now completely obsolete. Reports and records of all kinds, newspapers, books, pamphlets, films, sound-tracks, photographs—all had to be rectified at lightning speed. Although no directive was ever issued, it was known that the chiefs of the Department intended that within one week no reference to the war with Eurasia, or the alliance with Eastasia, should remain in existence anywhere. The work was overwhelming, all the more so because the processes that it involved could not be called by their true names. Everyone in the Records Department worked eighteen hours in the twenty-four, with two three-hour snatches of sleep. Mattresses were brought up from the cellars and pitched all over the corridors: meals consisted of sandwiches and Victory Coffee wheeled round on trolleys by attendants from the canteen. Each time that Winston broke off for one of his spells of sleep he tried to leave his desk clear of work, and each time that he crawled back sticky-eyed and aching, it was to find that another shower of paper cylinders had covered the desk like a snowdrift, halfburying the speakwrite and overflowing on to the floor, so that the first job was always to stack them into a neat enough pile to give him room to work. What was worst of all was that the work was by no means purely mechanical. Often it was enough merely to substitute one name for another, but any detailed report of events demanded care and imagination. Even the geographical knowledge that one needed in transferring the war from one part of the world to another was considerable.
(Rogue repairman and suspected terrorist Archibald Tuttle)
Yes, there’s more bits of paper in
Central Services than bits of pipe
read this, fill in that, hand in
the other listen, this old system
of yours could be on fire and I
couldn’t even turn on the kitchen
tap without filling in a 27B/6…
Bloody paperwork.
Source: “Brazil”
Orwell wrote much of 1984 in his flat at 27B Canonbury Square, London, on the 6th floor
From the FAFO Department: I’m seeing on Facebook that ‘South Africa has officially banned all American businesses from operating within its borders and halted mineral exports to the U.S.’
South Africa has officially banned all American businesses from operating within its borders and halted mineral exports to the U.S.
This decision comes just days after Donald Trump announced a complete withdrawal of U.S. funding and USAID support to South Africa.
In response, the South African government made it clear to Trump that the U.S. relies heavily on African minerals. They firmly stated that if he views Africa as nothing more than a recipient of aid, he should seek resources elsewhere—because Africa is done tolerating disrespect and disregard from Western powers.
With the U.S. generating over $25 billion in profits from South Africa annually, this move is expected to have significant economic repercussions for both nations.
No African country has ever taken such a bold stand against the United States before.
As an aside, I’m wondering why China hasn’t jumped in and started funding a lot of the USAID projects, seems like a good way to diminish American prestige all over the continent. And this case (if confirmed) gives them an opportunity to increase their mineral purchases from S. Africa, further enhancing their status in Africa as our status heads down the toilet…
Oh, I’m sure they’re all over it. It’s not China’s way to make grand announcements about these things - they just do them quietly and reap the benefits accordingly.
Back when I was managing large and labyrinthine computer systems, we were occasionally faced with the question: is anybody actually reading this report? or using this data feed? And there were 2 ways to get to the bottom of that question. The first – the safe and sane way --would be to send out a survey and hope to get responses. The 2nd - buckaroo swashbuckling approach – was to shut it off and see if anyone complained.
It looks like Musk likes #2. Just slash and burn, and when the smoke clears, put back things that turned out to be important.
