“Has anyone seen a Slinky?”
A Slinky? Really?
Apparently one of our very young parishioners brought his Slinky with him to church and dropped it on the floor towards the rear of the church and it rolled down the slope of the floor towards the altar. His grandmother walked down the center aisle asking about the wayward toy. Said Slinky was eventually located six rows from the front and was returned to the young parishioner’s parents for safekeeping until services were finished.
Just when I thought I had seen it all…
==+++==
Is China the rising economic power that will replace the US some of the ‘pundits’ are saying it is, or is China a version of a Potemkin village writ large? Of the two, I am coming to believe it is more the latter than the former considering some of the signs I’ve been seeing.
A few of of those signs:
- A couple of trillion dollars of defaults in the real estate market, with Evergrande alone totaling just under a trillion all by itself.Is the might of China built on shifting sands? Is it facade like that seen on movie lots?
- The so-called Zero Covid measures that shut down entire cities for months which also included major manufacturing, transportation, and financial hubs. The effects of those measures are still being felt
- Increasing government control of the economy which will eventually short-circuit the market feedback mechanism.
- More companies are moving their operations out of China to places like Vietnam, Thailand, India, and Indonesia, if not ‘reshoring’ operations back home.
Only time will tell.
==+++==
Why is it I figured Social Security would not be around when I finally retired?
Because I knew the funds needed to pay out benefits wouldn’t be there. That’s something I figured out over 30 years ago.
Unless there was an actual Trust Fund to pay benefits, there weren’t going to be enough people paying into the system to fund payouts. It was expected that our population would continue to grow which meant an increasing number of workers paying into the system to fund payouts. However, that expectation turned out to be incorrect as the population in the US is not growing at anywhere near the rate expected while at the same time the labor participation rate is dropping. That does not bode well for the viability of Social Security.
Anyone depending upon Social Security for their retirement income is screwed.
==+++==
Leave it to Joe Biden to destroy Title IX, and in turn, women’s scholastic sports.
The Biden Administration has really bought into the transgender craze. So much so that, in response to states trying to protect girls and women in sports, they announced a Title IX rule change yesterday. In the interest of being FAIR, there shall be no blanket bans of transgenders in sports.SloJoe is killing off women’s sports in schools by making sure they will be unable to compete against ‘transwomen’ who are faster and stronger than biological girls. Despite claims to the contrary by many modern women, women aren’t as physically capable as men. We see the proof again and again in sports, be it in soccer, track, lacrosse, wrestling, gymnastics, MMA, and a whole host of other sports. Yet SloJoe and WRBA have decided to believe the hype from third-wave feminists and destroy women’s sports all in the name of ‘fairness’.
We don’t need that type of fairness since there’s nothing fair about it, period.
==+++==
And that’s the abbreviated Easter Sunday news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where Ice Out was declared this past Friday, boats have already been seen out on the lake, and where my boating season starts in 5 weeks!