It'll get better after it gets a whole lot worse. We've prob'ly got another year or two of what could be some really bad shit.
The battlefield is still not about missiles and bombs.
May 27, 2026
Time For A Re-Work?
I think the founders were counting on honorable people, acting in good faith, to keep this little experiment going.
And maybe that turns out to be a fatal flaw, but holding each other to even loosely defined standards of decency, and honesty, and ethical behavior worked reasonably well for a coupla hundred years - certainly not for everybody, but for a lot of us anyway.
Madison and Hamilton worried out loud that what they were putting in place could be used as a guide book for exactly the kind of shitty maneuvers we've been seeing for over 50 years.
We have a metric fuck ton of hard work to do if we're going to get this thing back on the tracks and chuggin' along again.
But Wait There's More
As Americans confront a surge in prices at the pump, another inflation wave is headed for the grocery store.
The hit to US household finances from higher grocery bills is set to intensify just ahead of the November midterm elections, amplifying affordability as a defining issue. And to a greater extent than the surge in gas prices, the slower-moving food shock will be difficult to reverse quickly because the size of autumn harvests is determined by planting decisions made in the spring.
“It’s going to be a challenging year,” said Ricky Volpe, an agribusiness professor at California Polytechnic State University who previously worked at the US Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service. “Food is going to become less affordable, and consumers should be prepared for it.”
The latest USDA food price outlook, published Friday, projected a 3.2% advance in grocery prices this year, while Volpe said he expects inflation more on the order of 4% to 4.5%.
James Giese of Madison, Wisconsin said he lives on his own but is making adjustments with rising grocery prices like cutting back on prepared foods and meat. Giese, 62, is even trying to grow potatoes in his backyard to supplement his food budget.
“I’m very concerned,” he said. “I’m probably considered middle-income, but it’s starting to pinch.”
Outsize price increases so far in 2026 have reflected a mix of bad luck, trade policy and slower-moving pressures linked to climate change. The weather in particular has not been kind to American farmers, who have endured outbursts of record-breaking heat, historic cold, ping-pong size hail and wildfires.
The US saw its warmest-ever start to the year, with temperatures running about 6F (3C) above average through the end of April, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information. The early heat prompted some domestic crops to begin blossoming weeks ahead of schedule instead of remaining dormant throughout the winter, leaving them exposed to subsequent frosts, according to Brad Rippey, a USDA meteorologist.
Beef prices, among the most politically sensitive in the US, rose to a record in April thanks to the smallest cattle herd in 75 years, squeezed by drought and high production costs.
Tomato prices, meanwhile, surged 33% over the last two months after two winter storms brought widespread damage during the peak of the growing season in Florida — while shipments from Mexico were declining following the Trump administration’s imposition of duties on imports.
Heat and drought in the western and central US spell more pressures to come. California accounts for almost half of annual US vegetable and three-quarters of fruit and nut cash receipts, and diminished snowpack in the Sierra Nevada this year — to just 23% of typical levels as of mid-April — has raised concerns about irrigation supplies.
Drought has also spread across the nation’s breadbasket, where staple wheat crops that are typically used to make all-purpose flour or pasta have withered for lack of rain. As of May 19, 70% of US winter wheat production was in areas of drought, along with 25% of corn production, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
And forecasters now say an El Niño weather pattern is likely to emerge by August, with rising odds of an unusually powerful event that will persist into 2027 and push global average temperatures higher. El Niño can often steer extra rain to California, but it’s also been known to fuel drought outside the US in major growing areas for rice, coffee, cocoa and more.
Then there’s the war, which has brought a massive shock to global fertilizer markets due to the Middle East’s role as a major supplier of inputs.
Prices of fertilizer are up 20% since the war began, according to a Green Markets index for North America. That will likely mean higher prices come harvest time, and if farmers decide to scale back applications, that would also leave crops less able to withstand heat, drought or flooding.
The higher cost of fuel itself will also find its way into prices on store shelves as farmers and carriers pay up for diesel to power tractors and trucks, and petroleum-based plastic packaging becomes more expensive.
Major grocery chains have been trying to hold the line on pricing. Kroger Co.’s chief executive officer said it’s planning a price-cutting push to compete more fiercely with Walmart Inc., which has expanded its efforts to keep prices low over the last year.
Consumers are already worn out because prices have continued to climb even though the rate of food inflation has come down, said Andrew Harig, a vice president with the trade group FMI, the Food Industry Association.
At the same time, household debt is rising, the personal saving rate is falling, and real average hourly earnings fell in the 12 months through April for the first time in three years. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York published data Wednesday indicating a “meaningful” increase in measures of food insecurity between October 2025 and February 2026.
“Lots of people, I think, still look at their pre-Covid grocery bill in 2019, early 2020 and say, ‘Wow, I’m paying significantly more,’” Harig said. “And so they’re feeling that stretch.”
Belle
It's amazing - over a million Americans have been caught red-handed committing fraud, but I guess the supremely sympathetic Trump DOJ just couldn't bring themselves to indict anybody for it?
Won't wonders never cease.
Proof Positive
"More people die when Republicans are in charge."
1,000 cases, and 200 dead because ebola's just a "scam".
- Stoopid MAGA
- Stoopid DOGE
The same guy also downplayed January 6 🙄
The current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda is one of the largest in recent history. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there have been nearly 1,000 suspected cases and more than 200 suspected deaths. The disease is spreading quickly, and public health workers say they have struggled to contain it because funds for the US Agency for International Development and other aid efforts have been cut by the Trump administration.
The US State Department insists that President Donald Trump’s cuts did not contribute to the delayed response to the outbreak. Tommy Pigott, a spokesman, told the New York Times last week, “It is false to claim that the USAID reform has negatively impacted our ability to respond to Ebola.”
But in March 2025, Nicholas Enrich, then an acting assistant administrator for global health at USAID, testified before Congress that funding had been frozen, protective equipment could not be accessed, and an agency leader had characterized an Ebola outbreak in Uganda at the time as a “scam.”
Enrich told the US House Committee on Foreign Affairs that in February, his requests for funds to address Uganda’s ongoing Ebola outbreak had fallen on deaf ears. Tim Meisburger, who was then the head of USAID’s Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance, Enrich testified, “specifically noted that Ebola was a ‘scam’ because there had only been ‘one death.’” Enrich attempted to “explain that Ebola was still in an incubation period, and that we should see the response through,” but to no avail. Instead, he continued, his superiors decided to “deprioritize activities related to neglected tropical diseases, MPox, Polio, Ebola, and any monitoring and surveillance activities.”
Meisburger had previously made headlines in 2021, when he was serving as a deputy assistant administrator at USAID’s Bureau for Development, Democracy and Innovation. According to the Washington Post, he had told fellow staffers during a video call that the January 6 Capitol insurrection was caused by “a few violent people” and that “several million” others had been protesting peacefully. He was dismissed from his position after those comments came to light, but he was brought back into public office during Trump’s second term.
According to Enrich, the other high-ranking official present at his meeting with Meisburger was an assistant to the administrator for global health, Mark Lloyd, who also has a history of making controversial statements. When Lloyd was named USAID’s religious freedom adviser at the end of Trump’s first term in 2020, the Washington Post reported on Islamophobic comments he had previously made on social media, including calling Islam a “barbaric cult.”
As of June 2025, Meisburger had reportedly taken a new role with the Peace Corps, while Lloyd is still with USAID’s Bureau of Global Health. The agency did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Around the same time that Enrich was meeting with Meisburger and Lloyd, SpaceX head Elon Musk, who was then leading Trump’s US Department of Government Efficiency, took to X to brag about gutting USAID. “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” he tweeted in February. “Could gone to some great parties. Did that instead.”
May 26, 2026
Johnny Bananas
It's a bit harder to play you for a sucker when you think more with the big head than you do with the little one.
Aaron Parnas
Kid's got balls. I wonder if she'd be willing to lend some to the dog-ass Republicans in Congress.
No Rest For The Wicked
As usual, I don't want anybody maimed or killed or terrorized - unnecessarily.
But don't expect me to come up with whole big bunches of sympathy for the CryptoBros either.
Crypto is rife with fraud and abuse and corruption. Nobody named Trump would be involved if it was anything but crooked.
The digital currency has prompted a rise in physical assaults against those who profit from it
The charming French town of Vierzon should have been an oasis of calm for crypto executive David Balland and his wife.
Instead, it became the scene of 48 hours of terror.
The cryptocurrency executive, who founded Ledger, was kidnapped from his home in the town by a criminal gang demanding a $10m (£7.4m) ransom.
French police launched a desperate manhunt and after more than a day, their special forces unit rescued Balland. About 24 hours later, his wife was saved.
But before he was rescued, the hostage takers had severed one of Mr Balland’s fingers.
The attack on Balland shook the cryptocurrency world. Digital coins such as Bitcoin have made many of the industry’s participants overnight billionaires.
But the hostage crisis has forced many to confront that they are also now potential targets for violent criminals.
The kidnapping of Balland is the most high-profile example of a so-called “wrench attack,” which is becoming a growing threat to crypto executives.
The name derives from an internet cartoon from 2014, which envisions two goons plotting to batter someone with a wrench to get the victim’s computer password.
Billions of dollars in cryptocurrency are stolen every year in cyber attacks, scams and frauds. In 2025, about $3.4bn in digital currency was stolen, according to blockchain experts at Chainalysis.
But in 2026, physical assaults are on the rise.
A report from Certik, a crypto security business, found there had been 34 physical attacks on industry figures in the first three months of 2026, a 41pc increase on 2025.
These attacks resulted in publicly reported thefts of more than $101m in cryptocurrency.
In total, last year, there were 81 publicly recorded attacks that resulted in the loss of $52m in cryptocurrency. These records, based on police reports and public news stories, are thought to significantly underestimate the problem.
Gart, a personal security business, has documented 340 wrench attacks worldwide in the past decade, with the vast majority occurring in the last three years.
In one high-profile incident in New York last March, William Duplessie and John Woeltz, two crypto investors, were arrested after allegedly drugging and applying electric shocks to a man they held hostage in an apartment to force him to give up his Bitcoin password. The case is ongoing.
Gart has also recorded at least 26 fatal crypto-linked attacks.
In December, two Ukrainian men were arrested in Vienna in connection with the death of a man who had been lured to an underground garage.
The victim’s teeth were knocked out and he choked to death on his own blood after surrendering his cryptocurrency encryption keys. His body was found burned in the boot of his own Mercedes.
The UK is also the third-worst country for physical crypto thefts, accounting for 24 in total.
Last week, Hertfordshire police announced that four men had been sentenced for between three and six years for the kidnap and false imprisonment of a 36-year-old man from London. A fifth man was sentenced on money laundering charges.
According to police, the man was followed home by four men after a night out. He awoke beaten and with no memory of the night before, with £10,000 drained from his accounts.
The police were alerted after Coinbase, the digital crypto exchange, noticed unusual activity using the funds.
Unsurprisingly, crypto influencers are uncomfortable discussing the disturbing trend. “It’s advertising me as a risk,” says one entrepreneur.
‘The global epicentre’
While the UK has had its share of attacks, France has an attack every 2.5 days this year.
According to Certik, Europe has a “hyper-concentration” of attacks and France is the “global epicentre”. In February, the French chief executive of Binance had his home invaded in a failed robbery attempt. The thieves left when they discovered he was not home.
French politicians have pledged to crack down on crypto criminals.
According to Certik, France has been worst hit because of a concentration of major businesses and a “culture of flexing” among crypto influencers, who openly flaunt their wealth on social media.
The country has also been badly hit by data breaches that have exposed personal details of crypto holders.
Criminals are not just targeting crypto bros themselves.
In April, a mother and her 11-year-old child in Burgundy were kidnapped as attackers tried to extort the father, a crypto entrepreneur, for $400,000.
Cryptocurrency experts say wrench attacks are not just becoming more common. They are growing in sophistication.
Ari Redbord, head of global policy at blockchain intelligence business TRM Labs, says there has been a “shift from opportunistic targeting to something more structured”.
Prosecutors are now finding organised criminals are arranging the raids, conducting “pre-operational surveillance and the use of encrypted platforms to recruit foot soldiers while insulating organisers from direct exposure”.
Crypto billionaires have claimed that disclosures about their personal wealth can put them at risk of being attacked.
In a lawsuit filed against Bloomberg, Justin Sun, the crypto billionaire behind the digital currency Tron, claimed that the financial website planned to disclose details about his personal holdings, which created a risk of “kidnapping, torture, and other physical violence (‘wrench attacks’), to force the transfer of crypto funds”.
Mr Sun dropped the case in May this year without prejudice.
Security firms have also warned that sophisticated criminals have been attempting to use past data breaches from crypto exchanges to find names, personal details and addresses for potential targets.
In the wake of the Ledger heist, crypto giants have also been ramping up their spending on security for their senior executives.
According to US filings, Coinbase spent $8.7m on security for Brian Armstrong, its chief executive, in 2025, up from $6.2m a year earlier.
Redbord, of TRM, notes that official police and media reports are likely capturing just a small number of the total crypto assaults being carried out around the world.
“Incidents get logged as standard robberies or burglaries – the crypto connection disappears from the record,” he says.
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