Every trade has two sides. Someone has to sell you the options contract. No one is out there selling “free money” contracts. Why wouldn’t they just give you the money and skip the song and dance?

To everyone else: please don’t trade options if you don’t understand them, there is no quicker way to drain your savings.

Unfortunately most of the world’s cobalt comes from the DRC, so I doubt any automaker’s supply chain is clean of child labor.

I guess we’ll call it even after the US provided support for the Judicial coup of Rousseff in 2016 which is the main reason Bolsonaro’s party came to power in the first place.

A longer read, but worth the time:

https://theintercept.com/2020/03/12/united-states-justice-department-brazil-car-wash-lava-jato-international-treaty/

The DEA issue will never get resolved since any lawmaker that tries to reign them in will be accused of fueling the drug crisis.

I don’t think this type of scheme is even illegal which is the main problem.

Yeah there’s this push to equate “moderate” with “unbiased” and therefore above the fray of politics. But you’re spot on with your assessment.

Their operations aren’t so brazen as they used to be but, they played a significant role in the jailing of Lula in Brazil (I link the intercept again since they were the ones to publish the leaks):

https://theintercept.com/2020/03/12/united-states-justice-department-brazil-car-wash-lava-jato-international-treaty/

This one is pretty bad since Lula was a very popular leader, democratically elected and was even reelected after it came to light that he was jailed on a sham trial. To make matters worse the investigations also targeted Petrobras which is the semi-state-run oil conglomerate in Brazil so you know exactly what the US was concerned with.

Edit: I’d also like to add that the implicit threat of use of force and sanctions makes a secret meeting with Pakistani military leadership more coercive than what’s being let on in this conversation. That said I think the Pakistani military wanted Khan gone regardless. Just my 2 cents on the situation.

2 deaths from a machine starting up during maintenance? Plant needed to be shut down after the first one.

Eh, I’d say there’s something here, they beat earnings on Monday, but the stock plunged specifically reacting to that earnings call. You’re right that it’s a blip on the long term charts, but it’s worth looking into how the market reacts to things, and it clearly did react negatively to the call.

1 year chart to show it is in fact a blip.

Hmmm looks like all the Tesla speculators jumped on the Nvidia train. Always the danger of gambling on these tech hype stocks.

Not sure how hard it would be, but if it’s possible the FCC really needs to get telecom companies to secure their systems to prevent number spoofing.

FYI: CNN on the credibility of Steele’s sources.

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/18/politics/steele-dossier-reckoning/index.html

There are plenty of confirmed crimes committed by Trump. No reason to continue to cling to this.

Rtskhiladze later admitted he had been told the tapes were fake

What am I missing here?

ETA: What I’m saying is if the tapes were fake how could they have been used as blackmail. For blackmail to be effective you need to prove it exists.

Yeah you’re right that there is nothing definitive. I’ve always found Manafort’s actions to be the most suspicious though. Maybe “almost certainly” is too presumptive.

Let me do my penance here and acknowledge that there almost certainly was some level of collusion between Trump and Russia running up to the 2016 election. That said, the Steele dossier is National Enquirer level of tabloid bullshit. It’s so divorced from any sort of evidence that I wonder what case Trump could possibly have here even if he met the deadline to file. If I make a bunch of baseless claims about someone I have not violated their privacy.

This doesn’t even make any sense, these are problems with the manufacturers not the airlines themselves.

Yeah a much more plausible explanation of why Dems outperformed polling was new voters after the overturn or Roe. Similar to when Trump brought out new voters for Republicans which made them outperform polls. Of course we can’t know the true reason for sure and there are many competing factors, but this all seems very likely to me.

The other thing we have to realize is that Republicans still won the House popular vote by about 3% so the Rep count paints a rosier picture than the actual reality of the raw count.

All that said I still expect Biden to slightly outperform polling in 2024 due to new Roe-inspired voters.

Trump tried judicial and legislative coups. A military coup has gotta be the next logical step were he to get back in power. There’s evidence he looked to this possibility while still in office. While there are safeguards here, like appointments having to pass through congress, this will be the most important thing to focus on if he gets back in office. If Trump starts getting his goons into military leadership, it’s go time for mass protests and civil disobedience before it’s too late.