Day: April 29, 2017

I wanted to attend the People’s Climate March (starting at 11 am), but my attitude soured when I realized it would be happening in Banning Park, which is mired in the ugly, godforsaken town of Wilmington, just north of San Pedro. I realize, yes, that Wilmington was chosen because it harbors the third-largest oil field in the U.S., but…okay, I get it. I just don’t want to go down there. I hate the smell.

It’s not oil production per se that I’m against as much as the Trump administration’s blindness to scientific fact, heavy investment in fossil fuel industries and less than ardent interest in clean energy.

On top of which I have to drive out to Burbank IKEA and buy some velour curtains and curtain rods. Seven sections, 94.5″ tall and 46 inches wide. Olive drab. A guy is coming over to do most of the work. I’m fairly handy with carpentry and whatnot, but hanging curtains is a two-man job.

This newly released image shows Peter Parker (Tom Holland) channelling Leopold Stokowski or Seiji Ozawa — leaning back, arms outstretched, revelling in it. Looking up and giving thanks: “Bless you, Kevin Feige, Amy Pascal and Columbia Pictures…not just for rebooting the franchise for a second time but for allowing me to romp and fly through this formulaic, cool-as-shit Marvel realm. To be a shrimp but at the same a figure of great power!” The only thing Holland needs is a baton. 

For the 117th time: why is it spelled Spider-Man with a hyphen instead of just plain old Spiderman? Because Marvel believes in hyphens and the D.C. Comics guys don’t. No Bat-Man or Super-Man for them. If I had Feige’s job, I would obliterate those Marvel hyphens so fast your head would spin.

In her new book “This Fight Is Our Fight,” Sen Elizabeth Warren repeats an assessment that Robert Reich and Jacob Kornbluth made in their 2013 doc, Inequality For All. She explains that economically speaking, the American middle-class was in a steadily improving, much better place from 1935 through 1980, and has been in a gradually worsening condition ever since.

In short, as N.Y. Times columnist Paul Krugman explained in a legendary 5.31.09 column, “Reagan Did It.”

“The more one looks into the origins of the current disaster,” Krugman wrote, “the clearer it becomes that the key wrong turn — the turn that made crisis inevitable — took place in the early 1980s, during the Reagan years.

“Attacks on Reaganomics usually focus on rising inequality and fiscal irresponsibility. Indeed, Reagan ushered in an era in which a small minority grew vastly rich, while working families saw only meager gains. He also broke with longstanding rules of fiscal prudence.

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