swordfish

The whole "Trump back on Twitter" thing is not the story to me. Trump's Truth Social (That is struggling to get everyone on the platform and hasn't even got an avenue for Android users like SF yet) potentially getting linked with Twitter (maybe) since Trump's endeavor doesn't seem to have the traction that Twitter does seems like a scenario that could happen to me......IDK.

Imagine that an entire story about this liver disease in both Bloomberg and the New York Times never once mentions or references this case report titled "A Case of Hepatotoxicity After Receiving a COVID-19 Vaccine." easily accessible using a quick google search.....Hmmmmm. Seems like someone doesn't really want the truth to get out maybe..... https://www.cureus.com/articles/80149-a-case-of-hepatotoxicity-after-receiving-a-covid-19-vaccine Conclusions This is a case of hepatotoxicity in a 14-year-old patient that occurred after receiving the second dose of the Pfizer/BioNTech BNT162b2 mRNA vaccine. The exhaustive clinical and laboratory evaluation failed to establish any other plausible etiology besides the vaccine. The purpose of this report is to raise awareness of this uncommon but potentially life-threatening side effect.

Don't know why I would post a story about a mysterious liver disease in children that just sprung up recently in the Covid thread....... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-24/mystery-liver-disease-in-children-spurs-urgent-investigation By Jason Gale April 24, 2022, 12:10 AM EDT WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION Private Company One child has died and more than a dozen have undergone liver transplants as a result of a mysterious outbreak of severe acute hepatitis that’s sickened children in the U.K., the U.S. and 10 other countries, the World Health Organization said. Health authorities are trying to determine the source of the liver-inflaming disease that’s afflicted at least 169 children, ages 1 month to 16 years, as of April 21, the WHO said in a statement Saturday. Typical causes of viral hepatitis have been excluded. The United Nations agency was notified on April 5 of 10 cases among previously healthy children across central Scotland with jaundice, diarrhea, vomiting and abdominal pain. Three days later, 74 cases had been identified in the U.K. As of April 21, the U.K. had 114 cases followed by 13 in Spain, 12 in Israel, nine in the U.S. and 21 more scattered among Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Italy, Norway, France, Romania and Belgium. Many were infected with a strain of adenovirus, a family of viruses that cause a range of illnesses including the common cold. “It is not yet clear if there has been an increase in hepatitis cases, or an increase in awareness of hepatitis cases that occur at the expected rate but go undetected,” WHO said. “While adenovirus is a possible hypothesis, investigations are ongoing for the causative agent.” Seventeen children, or about 10% of cases, have required a liver transplant and at least one death has been reported, the Geneva-based agency said. With more extensive searching, it’s “very likely that more cases will be detected before the cause can be confirmed and more specific control and prevention measures can be implemented,” it said. Symptoms include liver inflammation, with markedly high liver enzymes, and jaundice, preceded by abdominal pain, diarrhea and vomiting. The common viruses that cause acute viral hepatitis -- hepatitis viruses A, B, C, D and E -- haven’t been detected in any of the cases, WHO said. International travel or links to other countries haven’t revealed any clues yet either. Toxicology and additional microbiological testing is underway in affected countries, which have also initiated enhanced surveillance activities. Adenovirus was detected in more than 40% of cases. Of virus samples that underwent molecular testing, 18 were identified as F type 41, WHO said. Nineteen cases were found to have a SARS-CoV-2 and adenovirus co-infection. “Due to enhanced laboratory testing for adenovirus, this could represent the identification of an existing rare outcome occurring at levels not previously detected that is now being recognized due to increased testing,” the agency said. More than 50 types of adenoviruses can cause infections in humans, according to the WHO. Usually a cause of self-limited communicable infections, they most commonly cause respiratory illness. Depending on the type, they can also cause other illnesses such as gastroenteritis, conjunctivitis and bladder infection. Adenovirus type 41, the strain implicated in the liver-disease outbreak, typically causes diarrhea, vomiting, and fever, often accompanied by respiratory symptoms. Even though adenovirus is being investigated as a possible cause of the outbreak, it doesn’t fully explain the severity of the symptoms, WHO said. “While there have been case reports of hepatitis in immunocompromised children with adenovirus infection, adenovirus type 41 is not known to be a cause of hepatitis in otherwise healthy children,” it said.

I'm assuming they're old enough to be safe Bob....... In case you thought this move by DeSantis was solely about "Don't say Gay".......Here's an almost real dissection of the tax issue that has been brewing in FL long before the "Don't say Gay" debate....... Lloyd Blankfein, the former Goldman Sachs C.E.O., tweeted that Disney’s special tax status may not have been a good policy when it was first adopted, but DeSantis’s recent move looks like “retaliation” for the company’s stance on unrelated legislation. “Bad look for a conservative,” he said. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/21/business/dealbook/disney-florida-taxes.html Disney vs. Florida A debate over taxes is rapidly unraveling Florida’s long relationship with Disney, with broader implications for corporate America. By Andrew Ross Sorkin, Jason Karaian, Vivian Giang, Stephen Gandel, Lauren Hirsch, Ephrat Livni, Jenny Gross and Anna Schaverien Yesterday, the Florida Senate voted to revoke special benefits that, since the 1960s, have given Disney the ability to essentially self-govern a vast area around its Disney World theme park and issue tax-free municipal bonds. The state’s House, which like its Senate is led by Republicans, is expected to vote for the measure today. It’s a rapid unraveling of a long relationship. Last month, Disney C.E.O. Bob Chapek, facing a backlash from employees, spoke out against Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, which prohibits classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity until the third grade, and limits it for older students as well. Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is eying a 2024 presidential run, has hit back, calling the company “Woke Disney,” and saying it no longer deserves its long-held special status. “If Disney wants to pick a fight, they chose the wrong guy,” DeSantis wrote in a recent campaign fund-raising email. This is about more than taxes, with broader implications for Disney, Florida and all of corporate America: For Disney: The company’s theme parks are flying, thanks to looser pandemic restrictions and higher-priced ticket sales. The loss of Disney’s special tax district could put a dent in that growth, and it would also restrict the company’s ability to develop the land it owns and tap state resources to do it. For Florida: The biggest issue is nearly $1 billion in tax-free bonds that have been issued by Disney. Florida law says that if a special tax district is dissolved, the responsibility to pay those bonds reverts to local governments. Democratic state lawmakers say that the interest on those bonds equates to an additional tax burden of $580 per person for the 1.7 million residents of neighboring Orange and Osceola counties, which would also have to step in and provide many of the public services for the area that are currently funded by the company. Disney employs about 80,000 people in Florida. For corporate America: Disney’s clash with Florida is the latest example of how companies’ growing willingness to speak out on social and political issues puts them in conflict with some lawmakers. Last year, Georgia politicians threatened to raise taxes on Delta after the airline spoke out against the state’s restrictive voting laws. More recently, Texas lawmakers have said they would bar Citigroup from underwriting the state’s bonds unless the bank revoked its policy to pay for employees to travel out of state for abortions, which are severely restricted there. “I don’t think this is going to stop companies that have a strong reputation and value system,” Paul Argenti, a professor at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business, told DealBook. “It’s a real test of what is the Disney value system and what they are willing to stand up for.” Lloyd Blankfein, the former Goldman Sachs C.E.O., tweeted that Disney’s special tax status may not have been a good policy when it was first adopted, but DeSantis’s recent move looks like “retaliation” for the company’s stance on unrelated legislation. “Bad look for a conservative,” he said.

Good luck getting any changes soon - The country's largest lobby(s) is the medical field with the Pharma sector, AHA, AMA, Blue Cross combining for over $100 million in lobby dollars in 2020. Imagine that......

Yeah - Stuff like this......

Watching liberals have a hissy fit over one of the richest companies in the world having to pay 'their fare share' of taxes for the first time since 1967, and actually using loud outbursts to disrupt the vote was surreal and epic.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/04/25/twitter-shares-jump-5percent-on-reports-that-its-ready-to-accept-elon-musks-bid.html It's no longer a joke - this may happen....

Yeah - probably best not to poke the bear.......

Obviously a drunk idiot. If there is one person I would certainly NOT try to annoy - It would be Mike F-ING Tyson.....Especially after he was nice enough to take a selfie with the guy.

You sure about that BR? Crist is favored to win the Democrat primary and has the highest poling against Desantis among the other Dems, but Desantis is still up by an average of 8.8, with one poll having him up by a whopping 21 according to RCP.....See for yourself: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2022/governor/Florida.html Apparently there more intelligent people in Florida than you are aware of.......

I firmly believe this "Plandemic" has been a exercise to determine the next NWO moves for this group.......

Another sobering look at our POTUS during a celebration of Justice Brown's elevation to SCOTUS......wow

From your March 21 post in the political correctness thread relative to the Disney controversy....I think the Florida Governor feels the same way...... Trying to stop activists and woke capitalists from queering little children through the schools is a fight worth having.

https://news.yahoo.com/blm-silent-confronted-data-showing-153212387.html The Black Lives Matter organization was silent when approached for comment on 2020’s skyrocketing number of Black murders and experts citing BLM and the defund the police movements for contributing to the deaths. Fox News Digital reached out to the Black Lives Matter press team on April 14 inquiring if they had comment on FBI data showing there was a 32% increase in Black murders in 2020 compared to 2019, as well as a comment regarding experts such as the Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald arguing the BLM and defund the police movements contributed to the murder spike, not the coronavirus. Fox News Digital also detailed the yearly numbers of Black murders from 2010 to 2020 within the inquiry but did not receive a response from the organization as of Tuesday morning. The summer of 2020 was marked by protests and riots from coast to coast in support of the BLM and defund the police movements following the death of George Floyd. FBI data show murders across the board spiked by nearly 30% in 2020 compared to the year prior, marking the largest single-year increase in killings since the agency began tracking the crimes. For Black Americans, the murders spiked disproportionally. At least 7,484 Black Americans were murdered in 2019, according to FBI data Fox News Digital reported on Tuesday. That number shot up to at least 9,941 murders in 2020, meaning there was an increase of 2,457 Black Americans murdered over the previous year. Among White murders, FBI data show there were 7,043 White people murdered in 2020, meaning 2,898 more Black people were killed compared to Whites. An average of 6,927 Black Americans were murdered each year between 2010 and 2019, meaning Black murders shot up by 43% in 2020 compared to the previous 10-year average. Thousands of people across the country pledged their support for Black Lives Matter in 2020, including by joining protests. Support of the group also extended to corporations vowing donations to social justice initiatives, athletes wearing BLM apparel at the stadium and celebrities rushing to publicly support and donate to BLM. "Certainly, the protests and riots mid-2020 after the death of George Floyd followed a pattern of spiking violence that we've seen following past viral police incidents, such as the deaths of Michael Brown and Freddie Gray. This pattern has been termed the ‘Ferguson Effect’: police pull back while violent crime spikes precipitously," Hannah Meyers, director of the policing and public safety initiative at the Manhattan Institute, told Fox News Digital. The Ferguson effect was coined by St. Louis Police Chief Sam Dotson in 2014 after police shot and killed Black man Michael Brown, sparking widespread protests. The theory gained widespread attention in 2016 after Mac Donald wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal arguing the effect is one "where the Black Lives Matter narrative about racist, homicidal cops has produced virulent hostility in the streets." Murders in the 2010s first broke the 7,000 murder benchmark in 2015 after the high-profile deaths of Freddie Gray that same year and Brown in 2014, jumping by nearly a thousand in one year. Black murders had fallen four years prior to Brown's death, according to the FBI data reviewed by Fox News Digital. Mac Donald wrote in 2020 that the Ferguson effect was playing out again following Floyd’s death in Minneapolis, and was unfolding with even more brutality. 2020’s "violent-crime increase—call it Ferguson Effect 2.0 or the Minneapolis Effect— has come on with a speed and magnitude that make Ferguson 1.0 seem tranquil," Mac Donald wrote during the crime spike that year. She told Fox News Digital this month that the Black Lives Matter and the defund the police movements contributed to the crime spike in 2020 and had nothing to do with the coronavirus and lockdowns. Other experts have meanwhile cited the shock of the pandemic and its lockdowns for the crime spike of 2020. A University of California study, for example, estimated that more than 100,000 Californians bought guns in 2020 out of fear of the pandemic's destabilizing effects. The study argued that by aggravating "poverty, unemployment, lack of resources, isolation, hopelessness and loss," the pandemic has "worsened many of the underlying conditions contributing to violence." Meyers told Fox News Digital that the coronavirus likely aggravated the effects of the Ferguson effect in 2020, explaining that police forces were "diminished" with officers calling out sick, and young men, who are the "most likely to be involved in gun violence," left with time on their hands when schools closed businesses shuttered. "But were there more homicides in 2020 due to Covid-related hardships such as the need for food? Anecdotally, I don't know of any such murders and I'm skeptical that this was a significant contributor to the enormous surge," Meyers added. FTA: Fox News Digital reached out to the Black Lives Matter press team on April 14 inquiring if they had comment on FBI data showing there was a 32% increase in Black murders in 2020 compared to 2019, as well as a comment regarding experts such as the Manhattan Institute’s Heather Mac Donald arguing the BLM and defund the police movements contributed to the murder spike, not the coronavirus. An average of 6,927 Black Americans were murdered each year between 2010 and 2019, meaning Black murders shot up by 43% in 2020 compared to the previous 10-year average. Crickets......

https://nypost.com/2022/04/18/easter-bunny-stops-biden-from-answering-reporters-question/ You really should worry when his own staff dresses as the Easter Bunny to be able to rescue the guy from those nasty reporters asking questions ..... The confused look on his face and the instant almost fearful obedience from POTUS is remarkable.....

SF has done his part supporting local breweries during this pandemic (so long as they offer a dark stout - if you can see through your beer, it ain't beer IMHO). Glad to have many of the old local haunts opening back up that survived this plandemic........

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10720467/Anyone-Biden-sticks-hand-appears-shake-air.html Footage from the Thursday event shows Biden ending the speech in Greensboro, North Carolina, with the signoff 'God bless you all' before turning to his right and seemingly saying something to the empty space behind him and miming a handshake. The Democrat proceeds to frantically look around the stage with a bewildered look on his face before beginning to wander aimlessly around the crowded auditorium. He then bizarrely turned his back to the audience, looking lost on the stage as music rolled, marking the speech's conclusion. The strange behavior from Biden - the latest of several brain lapses by the president in recent years - instantly sparked a firestorm online, with many, including Texas Senator Cruz, 51, pointing to the politician's most recent display of possible cognitive deterioration. In a post published minutes after the speech's conclusion, Cruz re-shared the clip of Biden - the oldest-ever US president - with a caption that included a wide-eyed emoji. Others called Biden's actions at the end of the speech 'elder abuse' and questioned his mental state. 'Where are the White House and Biden family handlers whose job it is to make him look good?' wrote Harmeet K. Dhillon, former vice chairwoman of the California Republican Party following the display. 'This is truly bizarre,' the Republican lawyer went on, 'unless they WANT him to look like a dementia patient.' Politician Robby Starbuck, who is running for Congress in Tennessee's upcoming Republican primary, remarked: 'Oh man. The music makes it 10x worse. This man is unfit to be President. Period.' The president had been visiting Greensboro to see North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University as part of an effort to apply pressure on Congress to approve the Bipartisan Innovation Act, which aims to increase funding for domestic production of semiconductors. He again blamed the record-high inflation on Russian leader Vladimir Putin's decision to invade Ukraine. 'What people don't know is that 70% of the increase in inflation was the consequence of Putin's Price Hike,' he said. Inflation soared to a 41-year high of 8.5 percent in March, according to the latest figures from the Labor Department. The Consumer Price Index increased 1.2 percent in March just from the previous month. The speech also saw Biden bizarrely claim that he used to be a 'full professor' at the University of Pennsylvania. 'I've been at a lot of university campuses, matter of fact for four years, I was a full professor at the University of Pennsylvania.' Biden, from nearby Delaware, was named Benjamin Franklin Presidential Practice Professor, the first person to hold the role, in 2017. He did not teach regular classes but made about a dozen public appearances on the campus, mostly at big-ticketed events, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. He collected a pay check in 2017, 2018 and early 2019. In all, Biden reaped nearly $1 million from the university after being given a vague role and teaching no regular classes. Wow - just wow....... I can accept the premise that any POTUS is ruthlessly attacked by the opposition on any given occasion and can look at this POTUS through that lens and forgive alot of actions, but this clip actually worries SF about the man.

Feels like it may be true......

So much for the "Green" harvesting sector of the "Green" lithium battery industry for all the new "Green" electric vehicles.......Stomping on the Native Americans, contaminating ground water for up to 300 years, all in a process using gas powered behemoths that will consume more gasoline than the minerals they mine will be able to offset, especially when (come to find out) "Fossil Fuels" are not running out and instead these minerals are not replaceable anytime soon..... - pretty ironic that the left-wing liberals seem to be OK with this....... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/06/business/lithium-mining-race.html Atop a long-dormant volcano in northern Nevada, workers are preparing to start blasting and digging out a giant pit that will serve as the first new large-scale lithium mine in the United States in more than a decade — a new domestic supply of an essential ingredient in electric car batteries and renewable energy. The mine, constructed on leased federal lands, could help address the near total reliance by the United States on foreign sources of lithium. But the project, known as Lithium Americas, has drawn protests from members of a Native American tribe, ranchers and environmental groups because it is expected to use billions of gallons of precious ground water, potentially contaminating some of it for 300 years, while leaving behind a giant mound of waste. “Blowing up a mountain isn’t green, no matter how much marketing spin people put on it,” said Max Wilbert, who has been living in a tent on the proposed mine site while two lawsuits seeking to block the project wend their way through federal courts. The fight over the Nevada mine is emblematic of a fundamental tension surfacing around the world: Electric cars and renewable energy may not be as green as they appear. Production of raw materials like lithium, cobalt and nickel that are essential to these technologies are often ruinous to land, water, wildlife and people. That environmental toll has often been overlooked in part because there is a race underway among the United States, China, Europe and other major powers. Echoing past contests and wars over gold and oil, governments are fighting for supremacy over minerals that could help countries achieve economic and technological dominance for decades to come. Developers and lawmakers see this Nevada project, given final approval in the last days of the Trump administration, as part of the opportunity for the United States to become a leader in producing some of these raw materials as President Biden moves aggressively to fight climate change. In addition to Nevada, businesses have proposed lithium production sites in California, Oregon, Tennessee, Arkansas and North Carolina. But traditional mining is one of the dirtiest businesses out there. That reality is not lost on automakers and renewable-energy businesses. “Our new clean-energy demands could be creating greater harm, even though its intention is to do good,” said Aimee Boulanger, executive director for the Initiative for Responsible Mining Assurance, a group that vets mines for companies like BMW and Ford Motor. “We can’t allow that to happen. Just in the first three months of 2021, U.S. lithium miners like those in Nevada raised nearly $3.5 billion from Wall Street — seven times the amount raised in the prior 36 months, according to data assembled by Bloomberg, and a hint of the frenzy underway. Some of those investors are backing alternatives including a plan to extract lithium from briny water beneath California’s largest lake, the Salton Sea, about 600 miles south of the Lithium Americas site. At the Salton Sea, investors plan to use specially coated beads to extract lithium salt from the hot liquid pumped up from an aquifer more than 4,000 feet below the surface. The self-contained systems will be connected to geothermal power plants generating emission-free electricity. And in the process, they hope to generate the revenue needed to restore the lake, which has been fouled by toxic runoff from area farms for decades. Businesses are also hoping to extract lithium from brine in Arkansas, Nevada, North Dakota and at least one more location in the United States. The United States needs to quickly find new supplies of lithium as automakers ramp up manufacturing of electric vehicles. Lithium is used in electric car batteries because it is lightweight, can store lots of energy and can be repeatedly recharged. Analysts estimate that lithium demand is going to increase tenfold before the end of this decade as Tesla, Volkswagen, General Motors and other automakers introduce dozens of electric models. Other ingredients like cobalt are needed to keep the battery stable. Even though the United States has some of the world’s largest reserves, the country today has only one large-scale lithium mine, Silver Peak in Nevada, which first opened in the 1960s and is producing just 5,000 tons a year — less than 2 percent of the world’s annual supply. Most of the raw lithium used domestically comes from Latin America or Australia, and most of it is processed and turned into battery cells in China and other Asian countries “China just put out its next five-year plan,” Mr. Biden’s energy secretary, Jennifer Granholm, said in a recent interview. “They want to be the go-to place for the guts of the batteries, yet we have these minerals in the United States. We have not taken advantage of them, to mine them.” In March, she announced grants to increase production of crucial minerals. “This is a race to the future that America is going to win,” she said. So far, the Biden administration has not moved to help push more environmentally friendly options — like lithium brine extraction, instead of open pit mines. The Interior Department declined to say whether it would shift its stand on the Lithium Americas permit, which it is defending in court. Mining companies and related businesses want to accelerate domestic production of lithium and are pressing the administration and key lawmakers to insert a $10 billion grant program into Mr. Biden’s infrastructure bill, arguing that it is a matter of national security. “Right now, if China decided to cut off the U.S. for a variety of reasons we’re in trouble,” said Ben Steinberg, an Obama administration official turned lobbyist. He was hired in January by Piedmont Lithium, which is working to build an open-pit mine in North Carolina and is one of several companies that have created a trade association for the industry. Investors are rushing to get permits for new mines and begin production to secure contracts with battery companies and automakers. Ultimately, federal and state officials will decide which of the two methods — traditional mining or brine extraction — is approved. Both could take hold. Much will depend on how successful environmentalists, tribes and local groups are in blocking projects. On a hillside, Edward Bartell or his ranch employees are out early every morning making sure that the nearly 500 cows and calves that roam his 50,000 acres in Nevada’s high desert have enough feed. It has been a routine for generations, but the family has never before faced a threat quite like this. A few miles from his ranch, work could soon start on Lithium Americas’ open pit mine that will represent one of the largest lithium production sites in U.S. history, complete with a helicopter landing pad, a chemical processing plant and waste dumps. The mine will reach a depth of about 370 feet. Mr. Bartell’s biggest fear is that the mine will consume the water that keeps his cattle alive. The company has said the mine will consume 3,224 gallons per minute. That could cause the water table to drop on land Mr. Bartell owns by an estimated 12 feet, according to a Lithium Americas consultant. While producing 66,000 tons a year of battery-grade lithium carbonate, the mine may cause groundwater contamination with metals including antimony and arsenic, according to federal documents. The lithium will be extracted by mixing clay dug out from the mountainside with as much as 5,800 tons a day of sulfuric acid. This whole process will also create 354 million cubic yards of mining waste that will be loaded with discharge from the sulfuric acid treatment, and may contain modestly radioactive uranium, permit documents disclose. A December assessment by the Interior Department found that over its 41-year life, the mine would degrade nearly 5,000 acres of winter range used by pronghorn antelope and hurt the habitat of the sage grouse. It would probably also destroy a nesting area for a pair of golden eagles whose feathers are vital to the local tribe’s religious ceremonies. “It is real frustrating that it is being pitched as an environmentally friendly project, when it is really a huge industrial site,” said Mr. Bartell, who filed a lawsuit to try to block the mine. At the Fort McDermitt Indian Reservation, anger over the project has boiled over, even causing some fights between members as Lithium Americas has offered to hire tribal members in jobs that will pay an average annual wage of $62,675 — twice the county’s per capita income — but that will come with a big trade-off. “Tell me, what water am I going to drink for 300 years?” Deland Hinkey, a member of the tribe, yelled as a federal official arrived at the reservation in March to brief tribal leaders on the mining plan. “Anybody, answer my question. After you contaminate my water, what I am going to drink for 300 years? You are lying!” The reservation is nearly 50 miles from the mine site — and far beyond the area where groundwater may be contaminated — but tribe members fear the pollution could spread. “It is really a David versus Goliath kind of a situation,” said Maxine Redstar, the leader of the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribes, noting that there was limited consultation with the tribe before the Interior Department approved the project. “The mining companies are just major corporations.” Tim Crowley, a vice president at Lithium Americas, said the company would operate responsibly — planning, for example, to use the steam from burning molten sulfur to generate the electricity it needs. “We’re answering President Biden’s call to secure America’s supply chains and tackle the climate crisis,” Mr. Crowley said. A spokesman noted that area ranchers also used a lot of water and that the company had purchased its allocation from another farmer to limit the increase in water use. The company has moved aggressively to secure permits, hiring a lobbying team that includes a former Trump White House aide, Jonathan Slemrod. Lithium Americas, which estimates there is $3.9 billion worth of recoverable lithium at the site, hopes to start mining operations next year. Its largest shareholder is the Chinese company Ganfeng Lithium. A Second Act The desert sands surrounding the Salton Sea have drawn worldwide notice before. They have served as a location for Hollywood productions like the “Star Wars” franchise. Created by flooding from the Colorado River more than a century ago, the lake once thrived. Frank Sinatra performed at its resorts. Over the years, drought and poor management turned it into a source of pollutants. But a new wave of investors is promoting the lake as one of the most promising and environmentally friendly lithium prospects in the United States. Lithium extraction from brine has long been used in Chile, Bolivia and Argentina, where the sun is used over nearly two years to evaporate water from sprawling ponds. It is relatively inexpensive, but it uses lots of water in arid areas. The approach planned at the Salton Sea is radically different from the one traditionally used in South America. The lake sits atop the Salton Buttes, which, as in Nevada, are underground volcanoes. For years, a company owned by Berkshire Hathaway, CalEnergy, and another business, Energy Source, have tapped the Buttes’ geothermal heat to produce electricity. The systems use naturally occurring underground steam. This same water is loaded with lithium. Now, Berkshire Hathaway and two other companies — Controlled Thermal Resources and Materials Research — want to install equipment that will extract lithium after the water passes through the geothermal plants, in a process that will take only about two hours. Rod Colwell, a burly Australian, has spent much of the last decade pitching investors and lawmakers on putting the brine to use. In February, a backhoe plowed dirt on a 7,000-acre site being developed by his company, Controlled Thermal Resources. “This is the sweet spot,” Mr. Colwell said. “This is the most sustainable lithium in the world, made in America. Who would have thought it? We’ve got this massive opportunity.” A Berkshire Hathaway executive told state officials recently that the company expected to complete its demonstration plant for lithium extraction by April 2022. The backers of the Salton Sea lithium projects are also working with local groups and hope to offer good jobs in an area that has an unemployment rate of nearly 16 percent. “Our region is very rich in natural resources and mineral resources,” said Luis Olmedo, executive director of Comite Civico del Valle, which represents area farm workers. “However, they’re very poorly distributed. The population has not been afforded a seat at the table.” The state has given millions in grants to lithium extraction companies, and the Legislature is considering requiring carmakers by 2035 to use California sources for some of the lithium in vehicles they sell in the state, the country’s largest electric-car market. But even these projects have raised some questions. Geothermal plants produce energy without emissions, but they can require tens of billions of gallons of water annually for cooling. And lithium extraction from brine dredges up minerals like iron and salt that need to be removed before the brine is injected back into the ground. Similar extraction efforts at the Salton Sea have previously failed. In 2000, CalEnergy proposed spending $200 million to extract zinc and to help restore the Salton Sea. The company gave up on the effort in 2004. But several companies working on the direct lithium extraction technique — including Lilac Solutions, based in California, and Standard Lithium of Vancouver, British Columbia — are confident they have mastered the technology. Both companies have opened demonstration projects using the brine extraction technology, with Standard Lithium tapping into a brine source already being extracted from the ground by an Arkansas chemical plant, meaning it did not need to take additional water from the ground. “This green aspect is incredibly important,” said Robert Mintak, chief executive of Standard Lithium, who hopes the company will produce 21,000 tons a year of lithium in Arkansas within five years if it can raise $440 million in financing. “The Fred Flintstone approach is not the solution to the lithium challenge.” Lilac Solutions, whose clients include Controlled Thermal Resources, is also working on direct lithium extraction in Nevada, North Dakota and at least one other U.S. location that it would not disclose. The company predicts that within five years, these projects could produce about 100,000 tons of lithium annually, or 20 times current domestic production. Executives from companies like Lithium Americas question if these more innovative approaches can deliver all the lithium the world needs. But automakers are keen to pursue approaches that have a much smaller impact on the environment. “Indigenous tribes being pushed out or their water being poisoned or any of those types of issues, we just don’t want to be party to that,” said Sue Slaughter, Ford’s purchasing director for supply chain sustainability. “We really want to force the industries that we’re buying materials from to make sure that they’re doing it in a responsible way. As an industry, we are going to be buying so much of these materials that we do have significant power to leverage that situation very strongly. And we intend to do that.”

The million billion dollar question I guess. I would assume yes, especially since the President of Russia still has his account on Twitter and the Former US President would probably be good for business. The question then is if the President of Russia will get banned. If that happens, then is Twitter a true "free speech" platform or is Elon Musk just looking to be the next Zuckerburg censorship monitor cop instead of the Free Speech advocate? IDK. What's your take on this?