Ehlana and Ethan:
Day two of our football and cheer squad tryouts has been awesome, and this update is early because we need to get to the park for our Pizzeria pizza picnic dinner and ball practices; and then we’re going to bring our best friends home with us for the rest of the night and a co-ed sleepover.
Tai Chi by the river and breakfast with Mom and Dad had our day off to a great start; the weather was perfect again except for a short afternoon shower that we actually appreciated for the cool-off opportunity; and I’ll report that Ethan was the top player at the football tryouts – to the minor annoyance of the older players. The cheer squad tryouts were good too; and we’re sure about the picks that will be made tomorrow morning. That is pretty much all we have for our news so far, but we’re expecting the rest of the day to be really great too. We don’t have much time left to get to the park, though, so let’s do a quick world news report and then we are out of here.
Tariffs and economic sanctions continue to be the story of the week, and while the threats escalate to include cutting countries off from the U.S. dollar systems for any country that defies our demands; the markets fluctuate on every news report whether true or not; and it is like watching bad jugglers trying to keep all of the balls in the air and waiting for the total collapse. The trade war with Canada is escalating fast; President Trump added fifty percent tariffs on Canadian-assembled cars; and he is apparently clueless because doing that will do as much damage to American parts suppliers; since that industry is integrated to a high degree with our own auto industry! Customers certainly would not be interested in the price increase at the dealership level, and while that production could be transitioned to American factories eventually; it would literally take years to resolve that one issue; and that doesn’t get into the retaliatory options that Canada has available to them. One threat that already has been voiced is shutting down electricity transfers to the United States; and that is a significant; comparatively-inexpensive energy source that helps to power the north-eastern States and cities. Shutting down oil sales would be bad too – and we are sure that China would be more than happy to buy those millions of barrels per day from Canada instead! We don’t need to get into any details, but will point out that it really is getting hard for our allies to distinguish the difference to how they’re treated compared to America’s enemies! Before we move on, though, let’s add that Canada also holds a notable amount of our government debt; so selling that off would be an option for them too and a serious fiscal danger to our government finances.
The wars in Ukraine and the Middle East haven’t changed very much, but in Ukraine; they’ve been celebrating their thirty-fifth birthday since gaining independence from the former Soviet Union. We couldn’t watch those reports with any seriousness; since the supposedly-independent Ukraine is entirely dependent on their western backers because they are bankrupt and spend around one-hundred billion dollars per year – or a lot more – of funding from Europe and the united States; they’ve taken on huge debts that they will never repay; and even if the war ended today; they would then need trillions more to rebuild their country and decades to do that work. Compare that to when they were ‘set free’ by the Soviet Union when they left without any debt on the government books because all Soviet Union debts were forced on Russia. How is siding with the west looking for the people there now?
Okay, we really need to get to the park and I took that further than planned – as usual; so that’s it and we’re out of here and back to all of the fun and adventures with our family and friends!
Until next time, live with love, fellow Magi of the Light!
