You Heard That Blubbering Elf

I love it!

Every hour another conservative man cries on TV about Donald Trump's indictment... pic.twitter.com/bPuevvJvdg

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) March 31, 2023

Simone Biles, Eat Your Heart Out!

Have you ever seen a jump like this? pic.twitter.com/AUkHsuc70G

— Gabriele Corno (@Gabriele_Corno) March 31, 2023

Yes, Tom Cruise Really Held Onto That Plane

This is copied and pasted from a Quora entry:

Yes, Tom Cruise really held onto the side of an Airbus A400M military transport plane as it took off in the movie "Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation."

The scene, which was widely publicized and promoted as one of the film's key stunts, shows Cruise's character Ethan Hunt holding onto the side of the plane as it accelerates down the runway and takes off into the air. Cruise actually performed the stunt himself, with the aid of safety harnesses and wires, and was attached to the side of the plane throughout the take-off and landing.

While the stunt was widely praised for its realism and intensity, it also raised concerns about safety and the potential for copycat behaviour. Cruise and the filmmakers have defended the stunt, emphasizing the extensive safety precautions that were taken and the professional training that Cruise underwent to prepare for the scene.

Overall, the "plane scene" in "Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation" is a notable example of Tom Cruise's dedication to performing his own stunts and pushing the boundaries of what is possible in action filmmaking.

 

Wow! Compendium Of Trump's Misdeeds

I've copied and pasted this from a Quora entry by Richard M. Bleicher, responding to the question:

As an American citizen, can you tell me a good reason why Donald Trump failed to win his second term as president?

Well, since you ask ... click for more (much more). 

(The yellow text is hypertext -- click on it to open a new link, or just hover your cursor over it to make it more readable.)

Reposting A Tweet: "Trump and Tucker's Big Lie"

Trump, with the aid and connivance of Tucker Carlson and Fox News, is trying to rewrite history, depicting January 6 as simply a peaceful demonstration (despite the fact that 140 Capitol police were injured).

New 📺Trump and Tucker's Big Lie:

We will not allow them to rewrite history and the country knows this was one of darkest days in our history. @SpeakerMcCarthy @RepMTG and @TuckerCarlson are in charge of the @HouseGOP it’s a national security risk. pic.twitter.com/umpIc8KNs2

— Skyleigh Heinen (@Sky_Lee_1) March 19, 2023

Republican Skulduggery To Sabotage Carter's Reelection Confirmed (after 43 years)

Click here for an article in the New York Times by Ben Barnes, entitled "A Four-Decade Secret: One Man's Story of Sabotaging Carter's Re-election."

Mr. Barnes is no shady foreign arms dealer with questionable credibility, like some of the characters who fueled previous iterations of the October surprise theory. He was once one of the most prominent figures in Texas, the youngest speaker of the Texas House of Representatives and later lieutenant governor. He was such an influential figure that he helped a young George W. Bush get into the Texas Air National Guard rather than be exposed to the draft and sent to Vietnam. Lyndon B. Johnson predicted that Mr. Barnes would become president someday.

Barnes claims that in the summer, he and others went on a whirlwind tour of Middle East capitals with Barnes's political mentor, John B. Connally, Jr. The article describes Connally as:

a titan of American politics and former Texas governor who had served three presidents and just lost his own bid for the White House. A former Democrat, Mr. Connally had sought the Republican nomination in 1980 only to be swamped by former Gov. Ronald Reagan of California. Now Mr. Connally resolved to help Mr. Reagan beat Mr. Carter and in the process, Mr. Barnes said, make his own case for becoming secretary of state or defense in a new administration.

Carter supporters have long believed that his bid for reelection was sabotaged, but for 43 years it has remained an unsubstantiated rumor. Barnes is saying that the sabotage did in fact take place:

Mr. Connally, he said, took him to one Middle Eastern capital after another that summer, meeting with a host of regional leaders to deliver a blunt message to be passed to Iran: Don’t release the hostages before the election. Mr. Reagan will win and give you a better deal.

According to Barnes, Connally said:

“‘Look, Ronald Reagan’s going to be elected president and you need to get the word to Iran that they’re going to make a better deal with Reagan than they are Carter,’” Mr. Barnes recalled. “He said, ‘It would be very smart for you to pass the word to the Iranians to wait until after this general election is over.’ And boy, I tell you, I’m sitting there and I heard it and so now it dawns on me, I realize why we’re there.”

Barnes's story is hard to verify after so many years have passed and key players have died. While there have been congressional investigations into the subject, Connally's trip was private and passed under the public's political radar.

Mr. Barnes identified four living people he said he had confided in over the years: Mark K. Updegrove, president of the L.B.J. Foundation; Tom Johnson, a former aide to Lyndon Johnson (no relation) who later became publisher of the Los Angeles Times and president of CNN; Larry Temple, a former aide to Mr. Connally and Lyndon Johnson; and H.W. Brands, a University of Texas historian.

All four have stated that yes, Barnes did inform them of what the Middle East mission had done. He maintains the trip was done with the knowledge and connivance of the Reagan team, and that Connally met with Reagan's campaign chairman and future CIA director William Casey in an airport lounge immediately on Connally's return to the U.S.

An interesting sidelight is that "The term 'October surprise' was originally used by the Reagan camp to describe its fears that Mr. Carter would manipulate the hostage crisis to effect a release just before the election."

Carter supporters believed and believe to this day that if there had been no interference from the Reagan camp, Carter would have been able to secure the release of the hostages and his reelection would have been assured. 

Why is Barnes coming forward after all these years?

Mr. Barnes said he did not reveal the real story at the time to avoid blowback from his own party. “I don’t want to look like Benedict Arnold to the Democratic Party by participating in this,” he recalled explaining to a friend. The headlines at the time, he imagined, would have been scandalous. “I did not want that to be on my obituary at all.”

But as the years have passed, he said, he has often thought an injustice had been done to Mr. Carter. Discussing the trip now, he indicated, was his way of making amends. “I just want history to reflect that Carter got a little bit of a bad deal about the hostages,” he said. “He didn’t have a fighting chance with those hostages still in the embassy in Iran.”

Steve Schmidt On Donald Trump's Possible Indictment

Click here for a Substack article by Steve Schmidt entitled "Donald Trump: innocent until proven guilty."

Donald Trump disgusts me. He is repugnant.

I loathe the damage he has done to my country and its future.

I have contempt for the legion of cowards and cynics who abandoned their country in a moment of crisis to seek his favor and advance their self-interest. Whether it is the depravity of Rupert Murdoch, Jeff Zucker, who whored himself to Trump for ratings, hedge fund titans like Steve Schwarzman, who bankrolled a fascist movement for one more dollar, or Lindsey Graham, whose neediness for attention obliterated his oath of office for relevance, my contempt is immeasurable.

He goes on:

The American people elected a sick, corrupt and incompetent man to the presidency of the United States. In May 2020, I talked about the damage inflicted on the country by Donald Trump. The consequences will play out for decades to come.

I have long argued that Donald Trump is both a symptom and a cause of America’s decay. The simple truth is that no healthy democracy would ever elect such a man. A decent society doesn’t tolerate lie machines like Fox News, or conmen like George Santos in their parliaments and congresses. 

Schmidt, a founder of The Lincoln Project, is a powerful enemy ofTrump -- yet he argues that Trump opponents must respect the law, and Trump's rights as a defendant must be upheld.

Bill Maher vs. Tucker Carlson

Click here for a clip from Bill Maher's "Real Time."

Tucker Carlson played some footage from January 6 showing peaceful behavior by some of the intruders in the Capitol while describing how innocent they appeared. Maher read Carlson's exact words, but selected his own January 6 video clips to accompany Carlson's weasel words.

Robert Reich's Explanation Of The Banking Debacle; Silicon Valley Bank, etc.

Click here for Robert Reich's article, "The real story behind the Silicon Valley Bank debacle.

The surface story of the Silicon Valley Bank debacle is straightforward. During the pandemic, startups and technology companies enjoyed heady profits, some of which they deposited in the Silicon Valley Bank. Flush with their cash,T the bank did what banks do: It kept a fraction on hand and invested the rest — putting a large share into long-dated Treasury bonds that promised good returns when interest rates were low.

But then, starting a little more than a year ago, the Fed raised interest rates from near zero to over 4.5 percent. As a result, two things happened. The value of the Silicon Valley Bank’s holdings of Treasury bonds plummeted because newer bonds paid more interest. And, as interest rates rose, the gusher of venture capital funding to startup and tech companies slowed, because venture funds had to pay more to borrow money. As a result, these startup and tech companies had to withdraw more of their money from the bank to meet their payrolls and other expenses.

But the bank didn’t have enough money on hand. 

The Roosevelt administration in the 1930s brought in banking regulations that ushered in an era of financial stability that lasted until the 1980s:

when Wall Street financiers, seeing the potential for big money, pushed to dismantle these laws and regulations — culminating in 1999, when Bill Clinton and Congress repealed what remained of Glass-Steagall.

Then, of course, came the 2008 financial crisis, the worst collapse since 1929. It was the direct result of financial deregulation. Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, called it “a once-in-a-century credit tsunami,” but pressed by critics, Greenspan acknowledged that the crisis had forced him to rethink his free market ideology. “I have found a flaw,” he told a congressional committee. “I made a mistake … I was shocked.”

Shocked? Really?

The banking industry became a giant casino, with rapacious bankers reaping enormous profits, until the house of cards came crashing down in 2008, the worst financial crisis since 1929.

In the end, the Obama administration rescued Wall Street, but at enormous cost to taxpayers and the economy. Estimates of the true cost of the bailout vary from half a trillion dollars to several trillion. The Federal Reserve also provided huge subsidies to the big banks in the form of virtually free loans. But homeowners, whose homes were suddenly worth less than the mortgages they owed on them, were left hanging in the wind. Many lost their homes.

Obama thereby shifted the costs of the bankers’ speculative binge onto ordinary Americans, deepening mistrust of a political system increasingly viewed as rigged in favor of the rich and powerful.

Regulations were put into place, but they didn't go far enough and then were further weakened:

A package of regulations put in place after the financial crisis (called Dodd-Frank) was not nearly as strict as the banking laws and regulations of the 1930s. It required that the banks submit to stress tests by the Fed and hold a certain minimum amount of cash on their balance sheets to protect against shocks, but it didn’t prohibit banks from gambling with their investors’ money. Why not? Because Wall Street lobbyists, backed with generous campaign donations from the Street, wouldn’t have it.

Which brings us to Friday’s failure of the Silicon Valley Bank. You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that when the Fed raised interest rates as much and as fast as it did, the financial cushions behind some banks that had invested in Treasury bonds would shrink. Why didn’t regulators move in?

Because even the milquetoast protections of Dodd-Frank were rolled back by Donald Trump, who in 2018 signed a bill that reduced scrutiny over many regional banks and removed the requirement that banks with assets under $250 billion submit to stress testing and reduced the amount of cash they had to keep on their balance sheets to protect against shock. This freed smaller banks — such as Silicon Valley Bank (and Signature Bank) — to invest more of their deposits and make more money for their shareholders (and for their CEOs, whose pay is linked to profits).

Reich lists what he calls Four lessons from this debacle":

1. The Fed should hold off raising interest rates again until it has done a thorough appraisal of the consequences for smaller banks.

2. When the Fed rapidly raises interest rates, it must better monitor banks that have invested heavily in Treasury bonds.

3. The Trump regulatory rollbacks of financial regulations are dangerous. Small banks can get into huge trouble, setting off potential contagion to other banks. The Dodd-Frank rules must be fully reinstated.

4. More broadly, not even Dodd-Frank is adequate. To make banking boring again, instead of one of the most profitable parts of the economy, Glass-Steagall must be reenacted, separating commercial from investment banking. There’s no good reason banks should be investing their depositors’ money for profit.

 

 

 

 

Windows Keyboard Shortcuts

Click here for an article by Bob Rankin entitled "How Many Windows Keyboard Shortcuts Have You Tried?" It's a good, useful list.

Cage Diving With Great White Sharks - Gansbaai, South Africa

Here's a video entitled "Shark Cage Diving in South Africa." It takes place at Gansbaai -- that could even be the boat I was on!

Robert Reich On Stock Buy-Backs

 Click here for an article by Robert Reich (Bill Clinton's Secretary of Labor, leftie economist) entitled "Why Warren Buffet is wrong and Joe Biden is right about stock buybacks."

Buffet says (in his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders):

“When you are told that all repurchases are harmful to shareholders or to the country, or particularly beneficial to CEOs, you are listening to either an economic illiterate or a silver-tongued demagogue (characters that are not mutually exclusive).”

Reich replies:

But the Oracle of Omaha is dead wrong about buybacks being good for the country. They merely enrich people who own shares of stock (the richest 10 percent of Americans own 92 percent of the stock market) rather than add to the productive capacity of America.

Reich trashes the Norfolk Southern Railway (villain of the recent hazardous-waste train wreck in Ohio), which cut 10,000 jobs -- a third of its work force -- while boosting stockholder payouts by 4,500 percent over the last 20 years.

Last year, Norfolk Southern  spent $4.7 billion on stock buybacks -- while running fewer, longer trains (despite warnings it was worsening safety risks), failing to invest in safety equipment, and denying its workers sick leave.

Great for stockholders -- and Reich points out that "While railroads spent more on stock buybacks than rail safety, Warren Buffett’s wealth increased by $42 billion."