USAPL Making Olympia Moves, Government Corruption, Expendables 4

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Getting the audio up asap, will be on my Spotify page, hit the Discord if you need a notification of when it’s up.

GM,

This week we’ve got the USAPL making moves, a new Expendables movie, and some good ol fashioned government corruption.

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At a Glance:

Entertainment

• Expendables 4

Sports

• USAPL World Cup

• Powerlifting Debuts at Olympia

Business

• Bodybuilding.com and Trifecta partnership

• Wall Street Weightlifter Calls Out Corruption

Let’s get into it.

Entertainment

Expendables 4

WE ARE SO BACK. After initially being put on hold, the fourth installment of The Expendables is officially coming back on September 22nd.

After reading the Wikipedia, it looks like Stallone left the project due to creative differences on the script and direction for continuing the franchise. This was after Expendables 3 underperformed at the box office, which was blamed on its PG-13 rating.

In a 2014 CraveOnline interview, Stallone expressed what went wrong and how they would move forward with future films.

Expendables 4 (Expend4bles) will be the final film in the franchise.

Official Trailer for All Audiences

Sports

USAPL World Cup

Last week, the USAPL posted this photo to their Instagram, announcing the first ever USA Powerlifting Open World Cup.

The caption reads:

Almost all of the comments under the post are negative referencing 1 of 2 things: The low barrier to entry for an “international championship,” and being the “Wish.com” version of IPF Worlds.

While this does seem a little silly, it makes sense if you consider what happened with the IPF and USAPL in 2021.

On November 7th 2021, USAPL announced they were going international after their removal from the IPF over differences in drug testing.

USAPL seems to already have presences set up in Australia, China, Korea, Hong Kong, England, Ireland, Netherlands, Mexico, and Portugal, according to their website.

For this to not look as crazy, the USAPL is probably in need of a name change. That being said, USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA USA.

Powerlifting Debuts at Olympia

In other USAPL news, the organization will be putting on what appears to be the first powerlifting event at the Olympia Expo in Orlando.

The caption explains dates and qualifications:

Business

Bodybuilding.com and Trifecta Partnership

Trifecta, the leading organically sourced meal delivery service in the U.S, announced an exclusive partnership with Bodybuilding.com providing exclusive deals as well as bringing engaging content to their BODYFIT members.

Wallstreet Weightlifter Calls Out Corruption

Graciano Rubio, known as Wallstreetweightlifter on Instagram, is asking important questions relating to how the city of Los Banos, CA allocated COVID funds.

From what I understand about the situation, the city received funds from the state government which came from the ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funds given by the federal government.

Then Los Banos, as all other cities did, put out applications that would allow qualifying small businesses to receive a part of this funding to offset the impact of COVID restrictions that shut down these businesses.

Here is what Rubio is alleging:

• The city allocated funds in a way that is not allowed by the treasury, putting the local economy at risk should funds be pulled

• City officials deliberately mislead the public to discourage eligible business owners from applying for funds

• There is a difference between the published guidelines and guidelines that were actually used

• City officials are refusing to release the guidelines actually used to allocate funds.

So the issue here is that because of the published guidelines, many business owners did not apply for funding because they were under the impression that they did not qualify.

Because of this, it would be logical to assume that businesses that did receive funding have city officials in their pocket, or that there is some type of unfair relationship there.

In Rubio’s address to the city council, he appears to have the full list of businesses that received the grant awards, which I have not been able to find.

Here is Graciano Rubio speaking at a city council meeting on September 6th, 2023.

Where it gets arguably worse is that a City Councilman seems to have received funds even though he did not own a business with a physical location in March 2020.

Going further, the following tweet alleges a direct relationship between the local government and businesses that offered city employee discounts. Seems pretty cut and dry.

Makes you wonder how many other cities this happened in.

Dude has a bigger platform than Monday Iron across all platforms, but figured I’d help get the word out.

Rafi’s Desk

While I was watching the Expendables trailer, a Rocky Retrospective video started on the autoplay. It’s fucking goated. This week has felt like one of those lower ones for me, this helped snap me out of it. Gonna go watch Rocky again.

Have an outstanding rest of your Sunday, let’s hit it hard tomorrow.

-Rafi