soybeans

I’m not normally very taken with the “gotcha”” questions to politicians of “how much is a dozen eggs?” or “what is the price of milk?” Or (in the right locale) “what is the current price of soybeans?”  I’m not surprised or upset that HW Bush didn’t know what a supermarket scanner was,...

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  • May 12, 2021

Inside Climate News has been doing profiles on the major races this year and how climate change has been an issue in these races. One of the big races they’ve been following is the Iowa U.S. Senate race between U.S. Senator Joni Ernst (R. IA) and businesswoman Theresa Greenfield (D....

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  • September 10, 2020

So this happened earlier this week: Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst seemed to embrace on Monday a thoroughly-discredited QAnon conspiracy theory about U.S. deaths from COVID-19 being a mere fraction of what has been reported. As the Waterloo Cedar Falls Courier wrote, Ernst said she was “so skeptical” of the official death...

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  • September 5, 2020

“To Joe, I would say stop playing politics with the virus. Too serious. Partisan politics has no place here,” the president says while delivering an attack on his election opponent from the White House briefing room. Expect a brag on the Israel UAE agreement, a dodge on sabotaging the postal service,...

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  • August 13, 2020

Even as some things are becoming less clear in the repression-stunts being pulled by Trump, we can see that Trump is prepping the ground for a loss. Can he keep it up? Trump will need that support to keep himself out of prison and to galvanize the 25% dead-enders. There are...

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  • July 27, 2020

Remember that inviting the Taliban to Camp David in September 2019 was designed to draw attention from the looming problem of the Ukraine aid shake-down that led to impeachment. It was also to help cover-up any issue of the Russian bounty, because the vig would just be increased. Russia, Russia, Russia....

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  • July 1, 2020

Facebook said it has removed 220 Facebook accounts, 95 Instagram accounts, 28 Pages and 106 groups that comprise the violent Boogaloo-affiliated network. An advertising boycott is beginning against Facebook. x The real reason big brands are joining the Facebook boycott? It could be a “handy excuse” to cut ad spend,...

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  • July 1, 2020

Because liberal violence is when one gets mask-shamed and it’s claimed to be no different than burning neighborhoods. x Let a thousand Willie Hortons bloom https://t.co/kLZ7FbPB4t — Warren Leight (@warrenleightTV) June 27, 2020 x Workers removed thousands of social distancing stickers before Trump’s Tulsa rally, according to video and a...

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  • June 27, 2020

Vanity Fair got hold of an unredacted copy of Bolton’s book, or parts of it at least. And what they found goes a long way to explaining Bunker Boy’s exploding head. The redacted version is bad enough: Trump was pushing Xi Jinping to help him win reelection by buying from the...

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  • June 18, 2020

Trump’s button got pushed by Biden: x If John Bolton's accounts are true, it’s not only morally repugnant, it’s a violation of Donald Trump’s sacred duty to the American people to protect America’s interests and defend our values.— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 17, 2020 x Joe Biden was a TOTAL...

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  • June 18, 2020

There’s juicy stuff in the Bolton book even if his mercenary lust for money came before putting Trump in the vise during the Impeachment. It seems less revelatory as it might simply confirm how incompetent and dangerous Trump remains. “He then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming U.S. presidential election,...

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  • June 17, 2020

No way am I going to buy John Bolton’s book. That gruesome, caramel corn-looking motherfucker won’t get a penny from me. But, hey, the enemy of my enemy is (very temporarily) my friend, even if he looks like Wilford Brimley fucked one of Saruman’s orcs. And The New York Times...

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  • June 17, 2020

We know from the National Climate Assessment that climate disruptions to agriculture over the past 40 years has increased and, will only worsen as the climate crisis continues to unfold. Drought and flooding will increase, and heatwaves will come earlier, be more frequent and, last longer threatening the lives of...

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  • January 13, 2020

Trump is losing his trade war and what’s worse is that he’s clueless about the reason for the losing. The prevailing truth is that stupidity has given way to irrationality. “The truth, however, is that there has seldom been clearer proof that Trump is in fact the world’s worst negotiator....

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  • November 25, 2019

Maybe Lindsey’s idea to convert himself into Trump’s boot licker wasn’t such a hot idea idea after all.  Although Lindsey Graham is still currently the favorite to win in this safe Trump state, he is trending downward after several major embarrassments. On the flip side, Democratic challenger Jamie Harrison has been steadily...

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  • October 19, 2019

Apparently, the metric shit-ton of manure Donald Trump spread over the Midwest while running for president has not materially improved the outlook for the region’s farmers.  They’re worried, anxious, and increasingly pissed off, as Trump’s agriculture secretary, Sonny Perdue, learned today during a panel discussion at a fair in rural...

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  • August 7, 2019

As the trade war limps along exactly as you’d expect a policy launched by a failed casino owner would, real people are taking it on the chin. One of those folks is a farmer from a reliably red state that voted for Trump by a more than 2-to-1 margin. Yahoo! Finance:...

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  • August 1, 2019

Trump starts a trade war with China.  The Chinese hit our farmers with tariffs in retaliation.  Trump throws some money at the farmers to compensate them for their losses.  There is supposed to be a “federal cap” on how much money a farmer receives in compensation.  Turns out that the...

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  • July 16, 2019

From Axios: Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) told Axios' Mike Allen on Thursday that President Trump's trade war with China has caused the price of his state's soybeans to plummet 20%, costing South Dakota half a billion dollars. Why it matters: Data show America's farmers have gone through significant economic pain as a...

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  • June 13, 2019

There is so little good information about what is going on with farmers, especially in KY, if you are not plugged into a rural community that is (I’m a city boy in Louisville).  But I came upon this report that came out before the Chinese trade talks tanked.  Why this...

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  • May 19, 2019

I wouldn’t be so sure about farm country coming out in droves for Donald J. Trump in 2020. Many farmers wanted Trump to get tough on China, but the guy who mysteriously lost money running casinos surprisingly has no idea what he’s doing when it comes to complex trade agreements. And...

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  • May 14, 2019

In the wake of media reports that China imported exactly zero U.S. soybeans in November (down from 4.7 million tons in November 2017) because of Donald Trump’s regrettable trade war — and following yesterday’s Trump-induced stock market plunge — Asian stocks took a tumble today. Seems Trump’s Christmas gift to the...

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  • December 25, 2018

I know I am picking at a fresh wound here, but NPR had an interview with a soybean farmer — Josh Gackle – in North Dakota who sits on the American Soybean Association’s board of directors about the effect of Trump’s tariffs on soybeans.  You could tell that Gackle didn’t want to...

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  • December 8, 2018

It must really suck for Kentuckians who are getting hurt by Trump’s tariffs that they do not have two Republican U.S. Senators to fight for them on Capitol Hill. “Nobody wants a trade war,” McConnell said in a July 13 news conference on the steps of the Gene Snyder U.S....

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  • August 17, 2018

FAIL! The top Senate candidate’s website is replete with Getty stock images from around the globe, from Serbia to Indonesia, Hungary to the United Kingdom, to illustrate his made-in-America political views. One notable shot: Cramer, a staunch ally of Trump who has campaigned heavily on a border-security crackdown, uses a stock...

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  • August 10, 2018

It will still take a lot of damage before farmers who voted for Trump to think — not publicly admit — that they bet the farm and lost, but the vice president of the American Soybean Association appears to have stopped drinking the Kool Aid when it comes to Trump’s tariffs and...

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  • July 25, 2018

You know that Trump voting farmers were mule headed, and I think the economic pain from Trump’s trade war needed to happen sooner to dappen the enthusiasm for Trump on the farm. President Donald Trump’s trade disputes with China, Mexico and Canada are already eroding the value of American agricultural...

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  • July 18, 2018