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I think Trump probably wins the primary. Too much ground for the others to make up, coupled with the fact that none of them have distinguished themselves.
The Democrats have the more interesting candidate race. Joe Biden is clearly incapable of running…well, anything. Dems don’t want him to run. I think Jill Biden is the only one who really wants him to run. If it isn’t Joe, then…who?
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Our law firm (and most large organizations) are trying to rapidly downsize their real estate footprint. At the same time, a number of organizations are attempting to bring people back to the office. Most surveys I’ve seen indicate that a hard 40% of the populace prefers to work from home, and candidly, I fit into that category. All of our offices are impacted by traffic commutes (wash DC, LA, SV, SF, NYC, Philadelphia, Chicago, etc.), and when COVID hit, frankly, it was a godsend for my team. Our content burden literally tripled, and the only way we could have handled it was to find two extra hours in every day for every person on my staff…which we did. They stopped commuting.
The staff didn’t want to come in the office. Neither did the lawyers. Near as I can tell, they’ve settled on 40% time in the office. I don’t see it getting much better.
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I’ve read that this is an El Nino year, which usually means less rainfall than normal. We’ve had La Nina conditions (water more than 3 degrees Celsius colder) since 2020, which is highly unusual and likely led to the increased precipitation in California that ended our drought.
El Niño: What to expect from the weather event in 2023 | World Economic Forum (weforum.org)
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Target is also sharply down, and expects sales to sharply decline further in Q3, 2023:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/target-tgt-q2-earnings-report-2023-cc9acf81
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Lucas Glover has made $6.1 million this year so far, he’ll probably come in at $7 million+. The top tax bracket is $693,750 for married people. His federal tax rate is 37% for his marginal earnings. The government helpfully withheld 24% ($840k) of the $3.5 million first prize. He’ll still owe 13% more, or $455,000 on that prize.
Can’t speak to his state taxes. Any income he has in Alaska, Florida, Nevada, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington or Wyoming isn’t taxed at all as those states have no personal income taxes. Golfers pay state income taxes on their earnings in the other 41 states.
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Joe can’t be bothered to comment on LaHaina’s disaster and death toll. He’s too busy taking vacation — 40% of his time in office as of a week ago.
Biden Sets All-Time Presidential Record
Incidentally…there was a time when Mrs. Mick and the family and I would go to Maui every year for about a decade. Always loved LaHaina. Terrible, terrible tragedy, and I don’t understand why the response wasn’t swifter and why there was so much death and destruction.
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That’s just the amount withheld from the gambling winnings. Same is true for lottery winners. They still have to pay the normal federal IRS taxes at the regular tax rate. Didn’t know that about pro golfer withholdings, though.
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Hillary Clinton was trying to score points because Trump offended people on the campaign trail. She sought and scheduled a Muslim gold star family member to speak. That was a difficult get, Muslims are about 0.25% of the armed forces, and there were only a handful of them. But the Muslim father of a slain American GI spoke forcefully against Trump.
Seven years later, the Democrats are not as concerned, apparently. And the nature of the withdrawal from Afghanistan virtually guaranteed additional American casualties.
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Second shoe dropped today: AB is selling off eight of their brands to a cannabis company, Tilray Brands.
The departing eight are:
- Shock Top
- Blue Point
- Redhook
- Breckenridge
- HiBall Energy
- Square Mile Cider
- Widmer Brothers Brewing
- 10 Barrel Brewing
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Interesting that overall A-B did ok financially. One wonders if their other brands benefited from the Bud Lite boycott.
I believe so, given that AB owns Modelo, which is the new number one. They own Modelo everywhere except the United States.
They did fall short of Q2’23 estimates of $15.33 billion, generating $15.12 billion. So, $210 million shy of estimate Q1’23 revenue was $14.21 billion, a 7.9% increase over the Q1’22 revenue. Also, their profits of $0.72/share beat analyst estimates of $0.68/share, so there’s that.
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I like a geopolitical strategist named Peter Zeihan. He strives for political balance, and tends to say both good and bad things about American politicians (not so Putin and Xi), so I tend to take it more seriously.
I think his take on Obama is very interesting. He calls him the “third-smartest president after Jefferson and Clinton” but says that doesn’t mean he was successful. Essentially, he thinks Obama, who never had a grown-up job, had no management skills. Says he was wildly intelligent, but didn’t care to be around others. He built up understanding of situations, but nothing ever came of it. He didn’t want to talk with Congress, his cabinet or foreign leaders. So he essentially accomplished nothing.
His take on the disconnect between Obama and the government is that Obama is responsible for the break in trust, the disenchantment between Americans and government. Check this out, just two minutes.
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Excellent post. The drive for I’m-out-for-me narcissism reeks of anti-Americanism, the kind of anti-Americanism that sounds like it comes from a petulant teenager. Megan Rapinoe is destructive, and watching her laugh off a missed penalty kick just cemented it for me.
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Now we have an answer. Bud Light revenue was down 10.5%, and EBITDA dropped 28.2%.
The company has responded by “leaning into the themes of football and country music.” Quelle surprise.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/ab-inbev-bud-q2-earnings-report-2023-90a57dee
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Interesting article. Calls out both Trump and Clinton (though not equally) for resisting the election results and lionizes Al Gore for the peaceful transition, so to speak. If memory serves, Gore fought the result in court as well in Florida.
I’m not surprised that the American public’s trust in both Congress and the medica has declined. Both parties go negative. They go negative because it works. As long as we have the majority of a voting public who votes on how they feel instead of a calculated response to specific issues that they’ve investigated, we’ll continue to circle the drain.
The public doesn’t trust the media, because the media opines, it doesn’t report. And it chiefly opines from one angle. Even when the media reports instead of opines, they collectively select the stories, which influences public opinion. And the public knows it.
As far as the government goes, politicians have been lying to the American public for centuries, but it now seems that they’re lying about important things. They’ve promised all things to all people, they’ve fallen short, and it’s very visible. Now that they can’t really work together, their all-or-nothing approach offends 80% of all voters. Tip O’Neill and Reagan compromised, why can’t the current batch of dunderheads?
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