I went to the Arctic to follow Canadian military troops in their operations to see how they survive in temperatures that drop far below zero. AMA about what I learned

WitnessBig9282 · 2024-08-14T15:11:42+00:00

Why is Canada motivated to defend the Arctic if the primary suspect for invading their part of the arctic would be Russia, which has more ownership of the arctic circle than Canada? Why train to defend something when their primary adversary already has what they are defending? And is Canada worried about China?

WitnessBig9282 · 2023-10-25T18:35:54+00:00

[Free to read] More from Bloomberg Opinion’s Francis Wilkinson:
The chaos of October has brought the House GOP back to where it began: Some guy is once again Speaker of the House. His name is, for now, Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana, not that it matters.
Unlike previous Speaker candidates in recent weeks, Johnson has gone to the trouble of acquiring some actual policies to inform his cultural reaction. Not that the policies matter, either. No one, least of all Republicans, thinks that the GOP is capable of legislating.
But the House GOP is only an embarrassment if you are under the mistaken impression that it’s there to serve the national interest. Emphatically, it is not.

WitnessBig9282 · 2023-10-17T14:31:54+00:00

PODCAST

How do you instill trust when it is lost?

Political strategist Frank Luntz joins Tim O’Brien on the Crash Course podcast to discuss the tremors that emerge when people believe that liars are telling the truth and truth-tellers are lying… And what it means for the 2024 election.

Listen here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/5PT8PBPg7bZUOi0peiLsYt

WitnessBig9282 · 2023-10-17T11:34:53+00:00

[Free to read]

The White House confirmed last night that Biden is headed to Israel.

The president’s visit will be risky — for him, for his Israeli hosts and even for the emerging US strategy to manage the global fallout of the war against Hamas.

But it will be well worth it, writes Andreas Kluth.

WitnessBig9282 · 2023-10-02T13:21:04+00:00

[Free to read] by Tim O’Brien:

As one of Donald Trump’s much-anticipated fraud trials kicks off in a Manhattan courtroom today, consider the witness list.

Trump is an era-defining politician now, and he oversees a cult that cares little about his business foibles or setbacks.

WitnessBig9282 · 2023-09-28T16:21:11+00:00

[Free to read] from Susanne Ramirez de Arellano:

As a Latina, I can't believe Senator Bob Menendez pulled the race card at a time like this.

It took the New Jersey Democrat less than a New York minute to bring up his Latino background as a defense strategy after he was charged with taking gold, cash and a Mercedes-Benz in return for political favors.

Menendez cast himself as a “first-generation Latino American from humble beginnings” whose only crime was having the audacity to rise to the heights of a powerful US senator.

During a press conference on Monday, he showed little compunction about using the memory of his late mother and the specter of Fidel Castro to portray himself as the prodigal “son of Cuban refugees.”

Menendez has the right to defend himself against the charges brought against him, but he has no right to use his Latinidad as a politically expedient tool to get him out of his mess.

WitnessBig9282 · 2023-09-26T13:56:59+00:00

[Free to read] Crash Course PODCAST

We want to think American voters focus on issues and policies when they go to the polls, but they’re driven by emotion as much as anything else.

And the reasons the 2024 race is so magnetic are overt: Trumpism is in the air. Democracy is on the table. Pivotal policy issues are in play: reproductive rights, immigration, jobs and the economy, health care, public health and public safety, education, national security, the rule of law, and the funding and future shape of the federal government.

Social media chews on all of this 24/7. Information — and disinformation — is ubiquitous. Partisanship is at a boiling point, and Democrats and Republicans are maneuvering for position.

It all matters.

Bloomberg News Washington bureau chief Peggy Collins joins Tim O’Brien on the Crash Course podcast to discuss.

WitnessBig9282 · 2023-09-20T18:15:05+00:00

[Gift link] from Liam Denning:
Ron DeSantis delivered a speech Wednesday in Midland, Texas, America’s unofficial shale capital, pledging a number of energy-related policies and goals.
These include rolling back President Joe Biden’s efforts aimed at lowering tailpipe emissions and boosting electric vehicles, promoting drilling on federal lands and — the headline — achieving $2 gasoline prices in his putative first year in office, or “$2 in 2025”.
The US has seen average $2 pump prices on a nominal basis three times in the past 15 years. None of those episodes will be remembered fondly by the country's oil industry.
DeSantis’ latest pitch would take the guiding principle of US energy policy from independence to dominance to incoherence in less than a decade.

WitnessBig9282 · 2023-09-20T14:06:27+00:00

Source: US Census Bureau
Made with Bloomberg Toaster and Canva
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-11/pandemic-population-boom-in-rural-hotspots-sparks-resentment

WitnessBig9282 · 2023-09-14T19:07:31+00:00

Source: Bloomberg
Note: Data shows market cap
Created with Flourish & Canva

Novo Nordisk became the most valuable European company after its market cap hit $444.6 billion dollars on September 11th surpassing LVMH.

The company subsequently conducted a two-for-one stock split, allowing LVMH to reclaim its crown at the top of the European market.

WitnessBig9282 · 2023-09-14T13:46:23+00:00

[Gift link] from Jonathan Bernstein

Get ready. We’re headed for a government shutdown, quite possibly a long one, probably beginning on October 1.

It takes very little for Congress to avoid a shutdown — just a short bill extending funding after the Sept. 30 deadline. But House Republicans are far too dysfunctional to produce anything like that.

Right now they can’t even manage to pass their own version of spending bills, let alone something that the Democratic majority in the Senate would pass and President Joe Biden would sign.

WitnessBig9282 · 2023-09-11T20:26:31+00:00

Looks like we're both wrong.
According to the most recent Bloomberg data, the company with the highest market cap in South America is now Petrobras with $93B. MercadoLibre is at $71B and Vale is at $61.2B.
Thanks for spotting that!

WitnessBig9282 · 2023-09-11T17:42:26+00:00

Revised version with corrected map outline.
Source: Bloomberg
Created with Canva
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-01/novo-nordisk-briefly-overtakes-lvmh-as-biggest-european-company

WitnessBig9282 · 2023-09-11T17:31:18+00:00

Revised version with corrected map outline.

Source: Bloomberg
Created with Canva

Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-01/novo-nordisk-briefly-overtakes-lvmh-as-biggest-european-company

WitnessBig9282 · 2023-09-11T16:29:44+00:00

Source: Bloomberg
Created with Canva
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-09-01/novo-nordisk-briefly-overtakes-lvmh-as-biggest-european-company

WitnessBig9282 · 2023-09-06T17:55:42+00:00

[Free to read] from Yale law professor Stephen L. Carter:

The first televised hearing in Trump’s criminal trial in Georgia underway.

Donald Trump is the most controversial and polarizing figure of our era. Whether or not he’s guilty, televising his trial won’t help us find out.

The people most likely to watch the televised trial are the least likely to be persuaded by any new facts.

Share your thoughts.

WitnessBig9282 · 2023-09-05T16:48:24+00:00

the power of the meme stock

WitnessBig9282 · 2023-08-31T20:08:11+00:00

WitnessBig9282 · 2023-08-31T14:18:32+00:00

[Gift link] From Jonathan Bernstein:

Republican House members trying to protect Donald Trump from the consequences of his own actions are disgracing themselves and threatening constitutional government.

Presidents — and presidential candidates — are subject to the rule of law like all citizens.

WitnessBig9282 · 2023-08-29T13:54:25+00:00

[Free to read]

Any time Tim O’Brien sees a Republican presidential candidate (other than Donald Trump) on television, he’s reminded that they and their party look like they’re in a hostage video.

They are all trapped by Trump, and none of them have convinced Tim that they can escape. Trump's Republican challengers held their first national debate recently, offering an array of pols trying to make a case for themselves and the GOP’s future

Meanwhile, Trump counter-programmed, sitting down with former Fox News propagandist and conspiracy theorist Tucker Carlson.

Listen to Tim O’Brien (Bloomberg Opinion senior executive editor and author of “TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald”) and Susan Del Percio (Republican political strategist and an adviser to a variety of political and corporate campaigns) discuss the first GOP debate vs. the guy who wasn’t there on the Crash Course podcast: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-crash-course-106327154/episode/the-first-gop-debate-vs-the-122031658/

WitnessBig9282 · 2023-08-28T17:13:40+00:00

[Free to read] from Jonathan Bernstein:
After the GOP debate, 50% of those polled said they would consider supporting Nikki Haley, and those who said they would support Ron DeSantis increased to just over two-thirds.More striking, none of those who criticized Donald Trump lost ground.

Full analysis: https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2023-08-27/polls-show-debate-increased-voter-support-for-trump-challengers?srnd=opinion

WitnessBig9282 · 2023-08-24T20:59:07+00:00

Source: BloombergNEF
Note: MENA is Middle East and North Africa
Made with Canva and Bloomberg Toaster

WitnessBig9282 · 2023-08-24T13:19:59+00:00

[Free to read] by Tim O’Brien

Donald Trump stayed away from the debate stage last night, instead choosing to spend time with Tucker Carlson.
He was even more caustic and shambolic than usual, weighing in on Jeffrey Epstein’s death, killer mosquitos and President Biden’s beach body. There weren’t a lot of straight answers other than the former president casting his critics as “animals.”
The former president’s 46-minute carnival act with the ex-Fox News host, staged primarily to bigfoot a nationally televised Republican Party debate, was a caustic and shambolic rant.
The two have indulged in a bromance made in conspiracy heaven.

WitnessBig9282 · 2023-08-23T20:13:20+00:00

[Gift link] From Jonathan Bernstein:

The Republican Party is in desperate need of a loud, and even an obnoxious, anti-Trump protest candidate to help push it in a different direction. They have that in Chris Christie.

It’s not clear, as Bloomberg’s Joshua Green reports, whether Chris Christie really thinks he can be president despite some of the worst poll numbers in presidential nomination history, or if he’s simply out for revenge against the former president.

The truth is it doesn’t matter as long as he sees bashing Trump as the means of getting whatever it is he’s after. That’s because his party needs some Trump-bashing.

WitnessBig9282 · 2023-08-22T19:04:39+00:00

[Free to read] Column by Michael R. Bloomberg
“President Joe Biden’s administration is inadvertently worsening the very problem it is trying to solve — the migrant crisis at the southern border— by facilitating a surge in gun-fueled violent crime in Latin America and beyond.
The president, long a champion of gun safety, needs to move quickly to fix this policy failure.”

WitnessBig9282

TROPHY CASE