Venezuela news

The slow motion disaster that is Venezuela is fascinating to watch from afar. Up close, I am sure it is a dystopian hellscape.  The concept of paying laid off workers in tires is just amazing.

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China’s carrier woes

Looks like China might be having trouble coming up with the money to pay for its next carrier.  Frankly I think the current US administration is using trade pressure as one way to deprive the Chinese of money to invest in their defense.  I think this is a wise move, even if it means more expensive goods here.

Taxing online

Looks like Chicago is going the extra mile to squeeze every last ounce of revenue from its beleaguered citizens.  What a bunch of crooks.

The decline of Russia

Russia continues to lose population.  My prediction is this leads to an attempt by China to grab part of the Russian far east at some point.

The price of beer

A report on the price of a pint of beer in different cities all over the world.  I am surprised that the second most expensive was Oslo.

Tar and feathers

Any bureaucrat who shuts down a kid’s lemonade stand needs to be tarred and feathered.

Where do bookstores go from here?

B & N is laying off hundreds of employees to try and stave off losses.  However, as this article points out, more than at a lot of other retail companies, the employees are an integral part of a bookstore’s success.  Is this the end of the mass market book chain store?  Will we be left with just independents and online?

Starving Russia

This op-ed talks about the financial difficulties that the Russian armed forces are facing.  Regular readers of this blog will remember that I previously mentioned this problem in a post.

Russian Military collapse

I’ve been saying this for a number of years.  Russia wants to be a superpower, but it doesn’t have the money to do so.  That is why I said the other day on Facebook that I doubted that the Russians would really follow thru on plans to build 36 new Tu-160s.  They can’t afford them.

Communists are idiots

but you read a story like this and you almost think they might have a point.