The latest Fantastic Four reboot movie is coming, and this weekend the Falcon takes over for Captain America.
Is Cap’s shield made from indestructible Adamantium or energy-absorbing Vibranium? Both?
This is my idea of Cap.
Joe Sinnott shall always be #1, but that was one incredible, masterful inking job done by Chic Stone.
There’s no need to be as pessimistic as C3PO. What do these five partisan political hacks know, anyway?
Five Former Treasury Secretaries: Our Democracy Is Under Siege
They lack training and experience to handle private, personal data — like Social Security numbers and bank account information. Their power subjects America’s payments system and the highly sensitive data within it to the risk of exposure, potentially to our adversaries. And our critical infrastructure is at risk of failure if the code that underwrites it is not handled with due care.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/10/opinion/treasure-secretaries-doge-musk.html
The fact is, I have a problem with Rubin, Summers, and Geithner. In 1999, with Ayn Rand disciple Alan Greenspan taking the lead, they got Bill Clinton to go along with the disastrous idea that the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933 was no longer needed. Nine years later, America’s barely regulated financial markets would have self-destructed Capitalism if not for a government-sponsored dose of Keynesian Economics. It was Geithner who lobbied Obama to not punish the Wall Street bankers who created the mortgage-backed securities mess. Anger over Wall Street’s excesses is where I saw overlap between the liberal Occupy Wall Street crowd and the conservative Tea Party that morphed into the MAGA movement after Trump took advantage of the Tea Party’s refusal to accept a Black president. So now, with Trump’s approval and encouragement, the world’s richest man is calling the shots.
Bill Clinton left office with a budget surplus greater than $200 billion. That could have been the seed money to start a sovereign wealth fund like the one Trump is suggesting. Instead, George W. Bush blew it on a windfall refund to taxpayers. The way things are, with the Treasury spending far more money than it takes in, the only way to start a sovereign wealth fund would be to use some of the country’s assets as loan collateral. That money would be outside of the national debt, so if the government were to default on a loan, the lender would take, let’s say, the Grand Canyon in payment.
I meant to post this a few days ago when it was a fresh podcast, but it’s still relevant.
Highlights from Project 2025, presented in words and pictures. At the moment the site seems to be, like the Republican view of billionaires, overtaxed.
The old gas grill cover tore. They all do that eventually, especially in freezing weather, with the good ones lasting a few years. With a big snow storm forecast for tomorrow night, I wanted to get a new cover. I usually get grill covers at Ocean State Job Lot, but this time I went to Lowe’s, because it’s closer. Lowe’s ended up being a longer distance.
The first cover I bought today was supposed to be the right size, but it was too small. I returned the cover and got a refund. A bigger one of the same type was 15 bucks more, $45 vs. $30, so I bought a cheaper large cover for $25. The size was good, but it didn’t last a minute, because it ripped immediately. Back to Lowe’s I went for another refund and to buy the $45 cover. Tt’s okay, except it doesn’t have the side handles as shown on the box. All I care about is it fits and doesn’t get torn.
So, let’s see. That’s three 9-mile round-trips, for a total of 27 miles, compared to the almost 20-mile round-trip to the Job Lot. Can you tell I couldn’t think of anything else to write about?
Well, nothing, that is, other than Trump and Musk. Why are there kiddie programmers, with no financial system experience or expertise, looking at the Treasury’s payment system, unless they intend to do some coding. To what end?
