May272021

Episode 354 – He Didn’t Say That

Being a nice guy doesn’t make John Cena right or any less of a coward.

The Dutch apparently don’t want energy anymore.

And an update on the Lori Vallow story I brought up last year.

But first:

 

COWARD!

John Cena, the former WWE wrestler, actor and show host, was holding an interview pushing the movie Fast and the Furious 9 (yes, there are nine of them) which he is starring in. During the interview, he called Taiwan a country. If you saw the interview, you would not have even noticed it. Well, this is a bad thing to say when your movie has made $135 million in China and China does not acknowledge Taiwan as an independent state. They see Taiwan an extension of the Chinese mainland and feel they have dominion over it.

After this was pointed out, probably by the movie studios, John Cena did the most cowardly thing. I liked John Cena but this destroyed the respect I had for him. Listen:

That’s right. Not only did he grovel for forgiveness but he did it in Mandarin Chinese. How pathetic. Let me let John in on something: Taiwan is a country. It is a democracy and has been for over 50 years. He is apologizing for something he said that was true for money.

The media, specifically Fox News, are really kind of giving Cena a pass. On Gutfeld! yesterday, Tyrus, also an actor and former WWE wrestler, defended Cena and even became angry, I think, at Greg Gutfeld, who was criticizing Cena as being “without backbone”. Listen:

I like Tyrus. He’s not a Conservative and leans a lot to liberal ideology but he is reasonable and I agree with his takes probably 80% of the time. But, here, he is dead wrong.

  • Taiwan is a country. I believe Tyrus may not know this. He doubled down on this today.
  • It doesn’t matter if John Cena is a “good guy”. What he did was grovel to a fascist dictatorship that:
    • Enslaves its people.
    • Commits genocide. Is responsible for 100 million deaths over their history.
    • Commits forced abortion and sterilization.
    • Steals technology from other countries.
    • Released, either on purpose or not, the COVID virus, killing the world economies and 2 million people.

Here’s my problem with John Cena’s apology and I will not give him a break on this. Greed has been given precedence over our virtues, ethics and values to satisfy a tyrannical regime who is looking to destroy our virtues, ethics and values.

Let me say that again:

Greed has been given precedence over our virtues, ethics and values to satisfy a tyrannical regime who is looking to destroy our virtues, ethics and values.

Our corporations are so busy chasing the almighty dollar in China that they are willing to discard the very backbone that made them successful for a regime that want to break that backbone.

Nike, Apple, Amazon, Espirit, North Face, Gap, Adidas and Puma are using slave labor in China to make their products. All are bowing down to this evil regime. And the regime is evil. Everyone talks about Hitler and Hitler was evil. But he was nothing compared to the Chinese leadership through the years. Heck, President Xi Jinping is now imprisoning Muslim Wyghers. Executions, forced abortions, forced sterilizations, rape, re-education and family separation. This is happening now and we’re ignoring it.

John Cena is a coward and he is a symbol of what is wrong with American corporations.

https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/china-83-major-brands-implicated-in-report-on-forced-labour-of-ethnic-minorities-from-xinjiang-assigned-to-factories-across-provinces-includes-company-responses/

 

Wonder How the Dutch Will Deal with No Heat?

First Shell

A Dutch court on Wednesday ruled that Royal Dutch Shell PLC is partially responsible for climate change and ordered the company to reduce its carbon emissions, a first-of-its-kind ruling that adds fresh pressure on oil-and-gas companies already facing heightened scrutiny from governments and investors.

  • The company must lower their emissions by 45% by 2030 based on their 2019 output.
  • This ruling could cause a precedence to be used in other Western countries, especially in Europe.
  • The ruling can be appealed.
  • The case was brought by a group called Friends of the Earth Netherlands, a local offshoot of the global environmental nonprofit network based in Amsterdam.
  • The court said that Shell wasn’t in breach of its obligation to reduce carbon emissions, but that there was an “imminent breach” and therefore set the reduction requirement. So they were actually lowering carbon emissions but maybe…
  • Shell argued that climate change is a broader societal issue, and that it wasn’t appropriate to ask a single private party to reduce its carbon emissions. Probably not a good idea to admit they were helping global warming.

Don’t think we haven’t heard the end of this. Watch all the lawsuits that are going to pop up in the United States from these fringe environmental groups.

Now Exxon

An activist investor won at least two seats on the board of Exxon Mobil Corp. , a historic defeat for the oil giant that will likely force it to alter its fossil-fuel focused strategy and more directly confront growing shareholder concerns about climate change.

Exxon said Wednesday a preliminary vote count showed shareholders backed two nominees of Engine No. 1, an upstart hedge fund owning a tiny fraction of the oil giant’s stock.

Exxon Chief Executive Darren Woods was also re-elected to the board along with seven of Exxon’s candidates, while two seats were undetermined, the company said.

It was an enormous blow to Mr. Woods, who personally campaigned against Engine No. 1. Many viewed the vote as a referendum on Mr. Woods’ performance. Exxon lost a record $22 billion last year and was struggling to regain its status as an industry-leading profit engine even before the coronavirus pandemic crushed global demand for oil and gas.

The hedge fund called for Exxon to gradually diversify its investments to be ready for a world that will need fewer fossil fuels in coming decades. Exxon defended its strategy to expand drilling, saying demand for fuels and plastics will remain strong for years to come, and pointed to a new carbon capture and storage business unit as evidence it is taking climate change seriously.

Engine No. 1 sought four seats on Exxon’s board and argued Exxon should commit to carbon neutrality, effectively bringing its emissions to zero—both from the company and its products—by 2050, as some peers have.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/shell-ordered-by-dutch-court-to-cut-carbon-emissions-11622038961?mod=hp_lead_pos1
https://www.wsj.com/articles/activist-wins-exxon-board-seats-after-questioning-oil-giants-climate-strategy-11622050087?mod=hp_lead_pos1

 

Update

This had to be the weirdest story of 2019 and 2020. I actually did a podcast on it last year because it was so weird. So let me review:

  • 2001 – According to The Post Register, Lori Vallow married her third husband and Tylee’s father, Joseph Anthony Ryan Jr., in 2001. Joseph adopted Lori’s son Colby, who she had in her previous marriage. Joseph and Lori eventually filed for divorce in 2004. Joseph died of a heart attack in 2018 and was cremated.
  • 2006 – Lori and her fourth husband Leland “Charles” Anthony Vallow married in Las Vegas in February of 2006. The two adopted Joshua Jaxon “JJ” Vallow, who was the biological grandson of Charles’ sister Kay Woodcock, whose husband, Larry, would eventually raise concerns to law enforcement over the disappearance of JJ and Tylee.
  • 2014 – Approximately a year after the couple moved to Hawaii with JJ and Tylee, it was reported by FOX 5 NY that Lori became “obsessed” with books written by Chad Daybell, four years before the two eventually married.
  • 2018 – According the East Idaho News, Lori met Chad Daybell in 2018, when he was teaching an evening class at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which she attended. Their relationship continued.
  • 2019 – Court documents suggest that things began to unravel for the family early in 2019, when Lori was still married to Charles Vallow. The couple were estranged, and Vallow had filed for divorce, saying he feared she would kill him and that she had developed cult-like beliefs. Charles alleged that Lori claimed to be “a god assigned to carry out the work of the 144,000 at Christ’s second coming in July 2020.”
  • 2019 – The family was living in a Phoenix suburb in July when Lori’s brother, Alex Cox, shot and killed Vallow. Cox asserted that the shooting was in self-defense after Vallow allegedly came at him with a baseball bat. Police investigated, but the case didn’t go far before Cox died of a blood clot in his lung in December of 2019.
  • 2019 – Lori Vallow moved to Idaho with JJ and Tylee, getting an apartment in the small town of Rexburg and spending time with Chad Daybell. At the time, Chad was married to Tammy Daybell, a 49-year-old school librarian who helped him run his small publishing company. Tammy Daybell died in October, her obituary saying she passed away in her sleep of natural causes. The family declined an autopsy before she was buried in Utah. About two weeks later, Chad Daybell married Lori Vallow in Hawaii.
  • Tylee was last seen in September of 2019 headed into Yellowstone National Park with Lori and other family members for a day trip, and JJ was last seen by school officials several days later.
  • In November of 2019, the Woodcocks asked Rexburg police to check on the children. When officers stopped by to question Lori, they said she and Chad Daybell lied about the children’s whereabouts. When investigators returned the next day to follow up, Lori and Chad were gone.
  • While the couple slipped away to Hawaii in January, the investigation pushed forward in Idaho, Arizona and Utah. Eventually, they were found in the islands, and a judge ordered Lori to bring the children to officials to prove they were safe. She refused and was charged with child abandonment and other crimes, then extradited to Idaho.
  • On June 10, authorities said they uncovered human remains at Chad Daybell’s home in rural Idaho, as they investigated the disappearance his first wife and Lori’s two children.
  • Today, Lori Vallow Daybell was indicted by a grand jury Monday with conspiracy and murder in connection with the deaths of her two youngest children, Joshua “JJ” Vallow, 7, and Tylee Ryan, 17.
  • Her husband, Chad Daybell, the two children’s stepfather, was also charged. He was also charged in connection to the murder of his former wife, Tammy Daybell, 49, who died under “suspicious circumstances” in 2019.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2021/05/25/lori-vallow-chad-daybell-case-jj-tylee-ryan-murder-children/7438283002/
https://www.fox29.com/news/chad-daybell-and-lori-vallow-a-timeline-of-mysterious-deaths-and-missing-children

 

 

https://www.vox.com/first-person/2021/5/25/22451756/george-floyd-anniversary-remembering-rally-minneapolis-youth-activists