12/09/25

Good morning! It’s Tuesday, December 9th.

International Anti-Corruption Day

That oughtta do it. You’re welcome.

And now, the news.

Earthquake in Japan

-via BBC

Starting in Japan, where a 7.6 earthquake hit the north-east coast of the country just before midnight on Sunday, prompting tsunami warnings (that were lifted) and an order for 90,000 residents to evacuate.

So far 23 people have reported injuries, and luckily it appears there have been no deaths.

Here’s something interesting: Japan is one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world, and experiences a shake at least every five minutes.

Farmer Bailout

-via ABC News

On Monday President Trump announced that $12 billion in funding, paid with the money made from tariffs, will go towards helping farmers.

Why do they need the funding?

Because of Trump’s trade policies and tariffs.

For example: last year China purchased $12.6 billion in soybeans from America. They were our biggest customer.

But Trump is out here playing trade games with all of these countries, including China, and it’s not thrilling to those countries. China, for example, does not love it. And so, this fall, they completely stopped buying soybeans from the US. And instead, they started buying them from Argentina.

In late October, Captain Art of the Deal got China to agree to purchase 12 metric tons of soybeans from America by the end of the year. So far, they’ve only purchased about 2.2 tons.

Here’s the problem – We have a president who backs down from everything. Who turns against everyone and is loyal to no one.

Obviously, I, too, want ten metric tons of soybeans to be purchased in the next three weeks. Would do it myself if I could!

But why would another country be loyal to someone who has yet to be loyal to them? Or anyone?

So anyway, now he’s going to bailout the farmers. Great. We should help farmers.

…with their own money?

I mean… you know… I guess money is money but he’s so proud to say it’s partly from tariffs. That’s taxes! That’s money these farmers, as well as the rest of us, already paid!

Good stuff. Only the best and the brightest.

One Company to Rule Them All

-via Axios

Moving to entertainment!

Last week Netflix announced that it would like to purchase one Warner Brothers please! For the low low price of $83 billion.

Let me tell you something… that’s not a real number.

That’s not anything. When you’re saying $83 billion, you are saying fake things. That is no different than saying Netflix would like to purchase Warner Brothers for 75 leprechauns and one horse that tells you interesting stories about its childhood.

Anyway – So Netflix makes this announcement, and then Paramount, which was just purchased by Skydance and so now it’s actually Paramount Skydance thank you very much… Paramount Skydance, on Monday, launched a hostile takeover bid! This bid would see Paramount Skydance buying WB’s assets at $30-a-share.

Where will they get the money? Part of it comes from Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners.

Uh oh!

As a reminder, Skydance Media is owned by David Ellison, who is friends with Trump – to the extent his personality allows him to create personal bonds and friendships. Ted Sarandos, the owner of Netflix, has also praised Trump, but hasn’t called him a friend. Ellison clearly has ties, as evidenced by the president’s son-in-law being a pretty big part of this hostile takeover bid.

For what it’s worth, Netflix says they feel confident their deal is done and the Paramount Skydance bid is a cow’s opinion.

Listen – As a child of divorce and former tour guide who just left a Warner Bros show to now drive to Paramount every day… just wake me up when this deal is done.

Here’s something fun, a little WB fun fact for ya… the Warner Brothers were four, of 12, real brothers. And their original last name? Wonskalser.

SCOTUS Poised to Help Trump

-via AP News and SCOTUS Blog

Hey, have you ever looked at Trump and thought… how can we give this guy more power?

Well – the Supreme Court has, apparently.

On Monday the Supremes heard arguments in Trump v Harris/Wilcox, a case that centers around whether Trump was within his presidential rights to fire two women from the boards of independent federal agencies based on… vibes.

Ruling in Trump’s favor would overturn a 90-year-old decision, which is meant to allow these federal agencies to be, not unlike Kelly Clarkson, Miss Independents.

And it appears they are poised to do so.

According to Justice Kavanaugh, the problem is that the officials who direct the agencies “are exercising massive power over individual liberty and billion-dollar industries” and no one’s in charge.

Okay well… certainly there has to be a solution that isn’t the president. Certainly, at best, the president is too busy to also be in charge of HR, right? I mean, not this one. This one’s never heard of HR. I’m just saying in general, this shouldn’t fall to the president. That’s a dumb argument.

But also – so now the president has yet more power and we’re not just talking about little agencies that affect things you’ve never heard of. We’re talking about agencies that regulate product safety, nuclear energy, labor relations.

They directly affect you and me. But they also, and this is key, produce regulations that affect corporations. Corporations that could, mayhaps, have enough money to whisper in the ear of a president and now suddenly that president is firing the president of a federal agency because someone retweeted him or something.

As she is wont to do – Justice Jackson summed it up quite nicely: “Having a President come in and fire all the scientists and the doctors and the economists and the PhDs and replacing them with loyalists and people who don’t know anything is actually not in the best interest of the citizens of the United States.”

But it sounds like the six conservative justices were like… yeah, we don’t really care about that. We’re not… those people sound poor. Are they poor? Some of them are probably poor. We don’t care about those people.

So you can expect that this one will probably pass.

More power to Trump. Great.

President of Peace

-via USA Today

And finally, because I can’t stress this enough… this podcast is very popular with soccer fans. It is a show that pops up when people search for soccer, somehow. Not in America, but in other countries (it’s because of the Ted Lasso references, I guarantee). But now that this is a soccer podcast, I gotta give the people what they want. So this one’s for my soccer-heads.

And also… my fans of peace.

Last week, Donald Trump became the inaugural winner of the FIFA Peace Prize.

All this man wants is an Emmy. That’s it. Well, no, a time machine so he can have a hug and a catch. But he can’t have that – an Emmy. But he no longer has a show, so now all he’s wanted is a Nobel Peace Prize. And it’s truly unknowable as to how the man who has been found liable for sexual assault, who incited an insurrection, who told Israel to finish the job in Gaza is Hamas doesn’t agree to their ceasefire, who encourages violence at his rallies, and who just two weeks ago called a female reporter “piggy,” we’ll never know how a prince like that hasn’t won the Nobel Peace Prize.

One of life’s great mysteries.

But fear not – FIFA, in a genuinely brilliant business move, just invented this peace prize and then gave it to Trump. Who called it, “truly one of the great honors of my life."

Please, I beg you, if you’re not watching on YouTube – go look at a picture of him picking up the medal. He looks so weird.

This is like… and I know he believes he won this, too.

What a bozo.

Anyway… That’s your soccer update.

Sports by Kim!

And that’s it.

That’s the news.

I’m proud of Anti-Corruption Day.

Can you believe we solved corruption? All it took was just inventing that one day? Crazy!

Sorry corruption, you never stood a chance.

But more than corruption, because the only thing corrupt about you, is how you straight up stole my heart… I’m proud of you.