“Everybody in the Trump Administration is a Thug”

Paul Krugman has started a YouTube channel. He seems uncertain about keeping it going, but what he says here about the Trump administration’s response to a report from the New York Federal Reserve is worthy of a debut video.

Based on LG’s pre-tariff sale price for my new washer and dryer, I estimate I paid at least $50 more per unit than I would have a year ago. Something else that’s happening at the Fed is, in contrast, undoubtedly welcomed by Trump’s people. The easing of mortgage regulations.

The decline in banks issuing mortgages was a reason why I moved most of my retirement money out of the bank where it had been. As a savings bank, it was dropped by the Depositor’s Insurance Fund, which guarantees accounts above the FDIC limit of $250,000. The bank wasn’t in any sort of legal trouble, it had simply grown too big to remain within the DIF’s “too small to fail” limit.

Home mortgages and small business loans are the life blood of that bank. I became concerned that the economic changes resulting from the Financial Crisis of 2008 — conditions that should have favored small community banks — and later the Covid pandemic, could reverse that bank’s growth. If it were ever to run into financial trouble, my retirement money would be at risk. So, being cautious (my definition of conservative) with my money, I moved more of it to another Massachusetts chartered savings bank that is still a DIF member.

From the Garage They Came

Every Big Planet Noise with Bob Irwin & Gina Bacon is a blast. Monday’s show had a tribute to someone I admit to having never heard of — Wayne Proctor, who had a band I’d never heard of, called We the People.

https://wfmu.org/archiveplayer/?show=161259&archive=283898

There shall never be, at least in what’s left of my lifetime, another fantastic explosion of musical creativity as was unleashed in the mid-Sixties. After Surf Music there was Garage Rock, and this record is a perfect example. Were We the People the American Troggs?

(Note: Bob is the founder and former owner of Sundazed Records.)

Before Jeopardy!

Once again I doff the Dog Rat tupe to Denro for finding something that’s blog worthy. It also has a personal connection for both of us. We took courses at Westfield State that were taught by Phil Shepardson.

Phil Shepardson, R.I.P.

I knew Phil well. It was thanks to him that I started working in radio. Phil hosted a TV quiz show, called As Schools Match Wits. I have to laugh, hearing and seeing Shepardson in these video clips. Yep, there he is, just as I remember him.

Colbert Bites Back

I wasn’t kidding about taking some days off. I just didn’t say whether or not they’d all be consecutive. 😉

The first time I posted something about Stephen Colbert was two weeks after starting this weblog,* during the second term of George W. Bush’s presidency. What an aggravating, time consuming struggle it was back then, capturing video and getting it to play online!

Stephen Colbert’s Alpha Squad 7

How long ago was that? For a reference, three weeks later, Google announced its intention to buy YouTube. Steve Jobs was four months away from introducing the iPhone.

Cingular AT&T

Here we are today, twenty years later, and Colbert is in the crosshairs of the petty, childish, vindictive, and incompetent yet dangerous, President of the United States. Bush was only one of those pejoratives. Stephen is righteously pissed off, and he has every reason to be.

Here is the interview Colbert wasn’t allowed to air on broadcast television.

Everyone, myself included, underestimated Trump’s ability to succeed as a con man. Obama most of all, as Peter Baker writes about in one of his typically compelling and readable reports.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/17/us/politics/obama-trump-oral-history.html?unlocked_article_code=1.M1A.RJzk.GahBUUdtfOAs&smid=url-share

* dograt.com had been live since 2002, with a set of static web pages. They were written with Microsoft Front Page, along with some HTML manual editing.