Sometimes friends will ask what I talk about with other people who have community sites and we talk about everything actually. But when Stan and I talk, we talk comic books.
We both remember the tail end of comics being available at drug stores, grocery stores and 7-11s.
And we also remember the little paperbacks that would come out. He's written about the SHAZAM paperback book he had as a kid. I had that one too. I think we bought up every one we saw back in the day. I also had the SPIDER-WOMAN book he had that collected all the early issues of the comic book series, we both THE FANTASTIC FOUR and I had a Hulk that he didn't have.
I was at a bookstore in my area, independent and they have used and new products, and a friend at the counter told me he was holding something for me. It was BATMAN'S VILLAINS.
It's a small paperback that was part of a series known as THE BEST OF DC and this was the number 14, July issue. I recognized the cover immediately but couldn't figure out if I had it and that's why I'd recognized it or if it was one that I wanted to get but didn't have the money for. There was a huge issue -- like LIFE magazine size, if you can remember those -- that I saw in the first comic book store I ever went to. It was THE LEGION OF SUPERHEROES and Saturn Girl and Electric Lad got married in it. I didn't have the money. I was told we'd come back next week and get it.
We did not go back the next week.
It was a month later when we went back and, of course, it was gone.
I remember that to this day.
At any rate, I bought the book this month. For two bucks. It was 95 cents originally.
So the book contains five stories. Each is on one villain.
I should note that I learned to spell the word "villain" from comic books. I'm not joking. I learned a lot from comic books. At the start of second grade, we were drawing in a class and I drew people and labeled one side "Heroes" and the other "Villains." My teacher was so impressed that I knew the word villain and could spell it. So don't knock comic books.
The five are Joker, Penguin, Riddler, Two Face and Catwoman.
I remembered the book when I read the Harvey Dent story where he becomes Two Face but it wasn't until I read the Catwoman story that I was sure I'd had the book as a kid and hadn't just looked at it in a store or the library.
The cover proclaims, "5 CLASSIC TALES Featuring the VILLAINS YOU LOVE TO HATE!" -- and the upper and lowercase in parenthesis is how it reads on the cover, I didn't just suddenly forget to hold down the shift key.
Found the cover online, here it is.
Joker was always my favorite of the bad guys in the Batman world. Penguin was my least favorite in the comics. He just didn't seem threatening. He had henchman, he was small and he didn't seem to have much of anything while Joker was a maniac. After Joker, my favorite was Two Face who was another cray maniac. They kind of did a Two Face story in a Robin comic I read when I was a kid. Tim? It was some kid, I think in college, and he turned bad because his face was disfigured. But when Robin finally saw the guy's face, all he had was this scar that was about the length of a finger nail and not wide at all. In other words, and this was the point of the story, that scar was more visible to 'Tim' than it was too anyone who saw him.
I also liked the Riddler and that was mainly because I was always trying to figure out his riddles -- I never could. Not as a kid. I was always trying though.
Catwoman?
I didnt like her. In the comic books, I found her boring.
In the TV show? I liked Eartha Kitt as Catwoman but Julie Newmar bored me, she was always so desperate to get Batman.
I really didn't love Catwoman until BATMAN RETURNS. Michelle Pfeiffer reworked Catwoman and brought her to life as a full bodied character. Everyone who's followed in the role in films or animated cartoons -- even in the comic books now -- owes a huge debt to the way Michelle portrayed her.
In the book? I found Penguin's story boring and Catwoman's was -- as per the time it was written -- the sort of nonsense you might find in a CASPAR AND WENDY comic book. The stories about Joker, Two Face and Riddler made the book. It was also interesting to notice something.
I used to draw all the time. MAD MAGAZINE and comic books being my inspiration. Some of those old cartoons are still around -- including in a few yearbooks where my teachers would grab something I drew and put it in the yearbook. But there's one my grandmother framed when I was in first grade. It's Batman and I look at it and think, "Oh, she really loved me." I can tell it's Batman but it's not even 'good for his age.' And one thing I really slam myself for is the ears on Batman which go so high up.
But reading this book and looking at the art? Batman's ears on the cowl used to go way up. Like in my drawing.
Anyway, that's my book review.
Here's C.I.'s "The snapshot:"
Friday, May 9, 2025. Two -- count 'em -- two Chump nominees flame out
in the same day, Chump admits how weak and tired he truly is yet pulls
it together long enough to try to con people on 'deals' he's making, and
much more.
Lawrence O'Donnell broke down reality last night on MSNBC.
Lawrence
O'Donnell: And today Donald Trump surrendered and withdrew his choice
for confirmation of that position. And while he was at it, Donald Trump
admitted that, in effect, that he's just too old and too weak to do his
job.
Donald Chump: I can only lift that little phone so many times in a day
Lawrence
O'Donnell: That's how Donald Trump explained his inability to get the
fifty votes he needs from Republican senators plus the vice president to
achieve the senate confirmation. And, you know, he only had to make
one phone call to get that nomination through the Senate. That would be
a phone call to Republican Senator Thom Tillis on the Senate Judiciary
Committee who publicly came out and defied Donald Trump as we reported
to you here last night. Because Donald Trump is now so politically weak
among Republicans in the United States Senate, Thom Tillis said no
publicly -- "I will not vote for Donald Trump's choice." And today,
Donald Trump just publicly and meekly surrendered to Thom Tillis -- to
that one Republican senator who stood in his way with Donald Trump
saying "I can only lift that little phone so many times in a day." The
singelest stupid explanation a president has ever for being unable to
achieve a Senate confirmation.
To be clear, Lawrence was not talking about Janette Nesheliwat. That was his nominee for Surgeon General. Was.
Because yesterday, he withdrew her nomination and is currently going with Casey Means.
That
move resulted in low-rent courtesan Nicole Shanahan crawling out from
under her semen encrusted mattress to rail at Chump and Robert Kennedy
Junior. See the group humor post from last night:
Nicole is spitting mad.
What made Chump and Junior think she would just swallow this?
Past behavior?
Well
not this time, fellows, this time she's spitting it out of her mouth.
And she's accusing Junior of lying to her -- his former running mate
from his failed presidential bid. He lied to her. She explain that
there was a deal in place: Janette Nesheliwat gets named Surgeon General
and she, Nicole, uses all of her 'power' to back Junior for Secretary
of Health and Human Services.
All of her 'power'?
Oh,
Nicole, did you learn nothing from Heidi Fleiss? Please, please tell
us you didn't also keep a black book with clients' names in it.
Janette, like Matt Gaetz before her, is now a failed Chump nominee. And, as Lawrence O'Donnell was noting, so now is Ed Martin.
As Kat notes in "Nazi Ed Martin keeps lying," Ed couldn't stop lying. And this time, the Senate just wasn't in the mood for it. Dan Friedman (MOTHER JONES) observes:
As US attorney, Martin fired, demoted, and investigated January 6 prosecutors, threatened to prosecute congressional Democrats for hyperbolic political statements, suggested his office would investigate DOGE critics and former prosecutors faulted by Trump, and harassed medical journals, Wikipedia and Georgetown’s law school with threats to punish them over their speech.
Martin’s remarks at the community meeting justified these actions as merely the GOP-version of what Democratic prosecutors did under Biden. I don’t know if Martin really believes that, but it’s not true.
US attorneys do pursue the policies of presidents who pick them, but within legal and normative limits set by the Constitution, Congress, and longstanding practice. No US attorney, until Martin, volunteered to use his office against critics of government policies, including those who “acted simply unethically” and “chase them to the end of the Earth to hold them accountable.” No other US attorney has reportedly attempted to present a grand jury with evidence for a criminal case against the Minority Leader of the US Senate based on five-year-old criticism of the Supreme Court. Nor has a US attorney personally attempted to use criminal investigative power to seize money from environmental groups awarded contracts by the past administration without having any evidence of a crime.
Martin’s Democrats-did-it-first rationalization for debasing his office is not just his. It is the lie justifying Trump’s broader effort to weaponize the Justice Department and turn the entire federal government into an instrument of his personal interest.
Martin, though only an acting US Attorney, got a torrent of negative press coverage in part because he loudly volunteered himself as the leader of Trump’s crusade to use the DOJ against his political enemies. As we wrote in a March: “In a new administration defined by a mixture of malevolence and ineptitude, Martin has emerged as an avatar: a typo-spewing henchman of the moment, eager to help Trump transform the Justice Department into a political tool—and unable to shut up about it.”
The evident defeat of Martin’s nomination is a loss, though by no means a death knell, for proponents of the unitary executive theory’s claim that Justice Department prosecutors are the president’s lawyers, and have always been.
Meanwhile,
the economy remains in the toilet where Chump dropped it. So Chump's
lied about a deal with the UK. Stephanie Ruhle addressed the reality
last night on THE 11TH HOUR WITH STEPHANIE RUHLE.
"Pure theater." "Just a show." Also see Paul Krugman's "Will Trump Pretend to Fix What He Broke?."
Returning to a topic from yesterday . . .
Only a fool, radical Socialist, MAGA or idiot -- or a
working of multiples of the prior listing -- would look at DOGE as a
good thing. It has destroyed so much and it did not achieve anything
but destruction. Bryan Metzger (BUSINESS INSIDER) notes:
Bill
Gates sharply criticized Elon Musk in an interview with The New York
Times published on Thursday, calling out the Tesla cofounder's role in
cutting foreign aid as part of his Department of Government Efficiency
initiative.
The Microsoft
cofounder said that cuts made to foreign aid, particular programs
administered by the now-shuttered US Agency for International
Development, were "stunning."
"He's the one who cut the USAID budget. He put it in the wood chipper, because he didn't go to a party that weekend," Gates told the Times of Musk. "The world's richest man has been involved in the deaths of the world's poorest children."
Gates
also referred to an instance early in President Donald Trump's term in
which administration officials said that the US had been sending condoms
to Gaza via foreign aid. In reality, the US had been providing
contraceptives to a province in the African country of Mozambique.
"They
cut the money to Gaza Province in Mozambique. That is really for drugs,
so mothers don't give their babies HIV," Gates said. "But the people
doing the cutting are so geographically illiterate, they think it's Gaza
and condoms. Will they go meet those babies who got HIV because that
money was cut? Probably not."
This is what Ben Cohen is applauding. See Marcia's "MAGA and Jerry ice cream? Pass and pass on the hideous Ben Cohen"
and grasp how disgusting Ben Cohen has become. DOGE was a fake ass
scheme to destroy jobs, to destroy needed government oversight, to
destroy the economy and to allow Chump to go after the safety net. It
was all smoke and mirrors. Jessica Riedl (THE ATLANTIC) notes realities on 'savings' from DOGE:
Musk
initially promised that he would eliminate $2 trillion of the $7
trillion federal budget, before scaling back his ambitions to $1
trillion, and then $150 billion. Even that revised target is highly
improbable.
Precisely measuring the budgetary
effects of the Musk experiment remains difficult, but we can begin by
looking at the claims made by DOGE itself. In late February, its website
claimed to have achieved $55 billion in annual-spending reductions.
However, its “wall of receipts” detailed only $16.5 billion of this
total. Half of that figure came from a typo claiming $8 billion in
savings from terminating an $8 million contract. As The New York Times
has reported,
that was far from the only accounting error. Once such mistakes as
false contract cancellations, triple counts of the same reform, and the
inclusion of contracts that expired decades ago were fixed, verified
budget savings stood at just $2 billion.
The
DOGE website now claims $165 billion in savings. However, it still
details only a fraction of the supposed cuts, and earlier accounting
errors have given way to new ones. A common sleight of hand is canceling
a “blanket purchase agreement”—in which the recipient had been given
the equivalent of a credit limit to incur necessary costs on a
project—and then claiming savings of the full credit limit rather than
the (in many cases substantially lower) amount that was actually spent.
Even assuming that the website’s stated savings have become twice as
accurate as they were in February, annual savings would reach perhaps
$15 billion, or 0.2 percent of federal spending.
Fortunately,
more reliable sources than DOGE’s self-reported figures exist. The best
is the Treasury Department’s monthly accounting of spending by agency
and program. Any true DOGE spending reductions should show up in these
budget totals, as should the results of other White House initiatives,
including cuts to public-health spending and the ongoing efforts to
eliminate USAID and the Department of Education.
These
spending data do not flatter the Musk project. Total federal outlays in
February and March were $86 billion (or 7 percent) higher than the
levels from the same months a year ago, when adjusted for timing shifts.
This spending growth—approximately $500 billion at an annualized
rate—continues to be driven by the three-quarters of federal spending
allocated to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, defense, veterans’
benefits, and interest costs. These massive expenses have been untouched
by DOGE’s focus on small but controversial targets such as DEI
contracts and Politico subscriptions.
We can
see this by looking at Treasury’s breakdowns of monthly spending by
agency. Short-term program spending can fluctuate greatly, and sustained
trends might not be fully apparent for several months, but the early
data are nonetheless revealing. Perhaps the highest-profile cuts under
the Trump administration so far have been to public-health spending and
foreign aid. And yet, even here, the numbers are rounding errors in the
context of the federal budget. Public-health spending, previously about
$8.2 billion monthly, fell to $7.1 billion in March, led by cuts to the
National Institutes of Health and the Health Resources and Services
Administration, the latter of which funds state and local health grants
to serve underprivileged families.
Monthly
spending on targeted foreign-assistance programs has fallen from $2.4
billion to $1.4 billion. This includes spending on “Global Health and
Child Survival” programs—which includes highly effective funding to
combat HIV, malaria, tuberculosis, and other illnesses in less developed
countries—falling in half to $400 million a month. Payments to
“International Organizations and Conferences,” such as the United
Nations, have fallen to zero. And monthly USAID spending has fluctuated
wildly but overall declined by one-third in the first quarter of 2025.
These
cuts have already been highly disruptive to beneficiaries, contractors,
and employees, and they threaten immense long-term harm. And yet, their
total monthly savings have totaled just $2.1 billion. At the Department
of Education, another shutdown target, spending has remained steady
aside from the early termination of post-pandemic funding that was
already scheduled to phase out over the next year.
Cost
reductions from laying off federal employees have been too small to
show up in the data. This is not surprising, because even laying off one
quarter of the 2.3 million federal civilian employees would shave off
just 1 percent of federal spending. To be fair to DOGE, more savings
will materialize in October, when the salaries of the 75,000 federal
employees who took a buyout come off the books. That should save
Washington $10 billion a year, or 0.1 percent of federal spending—except
even that is an overestimate, because Washington will surely end up
hiring contractors to perform at least some of the work previously
handled by those civil servants, and many contractors cost more than
employees.
DOGE was
destructive and it destroyed many people's lives. DOGE motivated
Americans across the country to take to the streets and protest. That
is the strength of democracy. I point that out -- and do so at the
start -- to remind those of us on the left that Socialist Ben Cohen is
not our friend. See Marcia's "." Grasp that he's gone to the other
side. He was a believer in The Politics of Destruction so it was easy
for him to turn around and hop onto The Politics of Destruction and
praise DOGE at his Twitter side, at the Twitter handle he created just
for DOGE and at the pro-DOGE website he started. He is not our friend.
He is not a friend of democracy.
In
2024, The Politics of Destruction made the call that it was more
important that Kamala Harris lose. So you got those working against We
The People like Jill Stein going on any outlet that would have her and
attacking Kamala non-stop while going easy on Donald Chump. Amy Goodman
was part of that campaign and played footsie with her in a ridiculous
interview. Mehdi Hasan did actual journalism and those who
attacked him for that exposed themselves for the fake asses that they
were. The people who worked to stop Kamala are not to be trusted.
This
country is in crisis right now because Chump is back in the White
House. I try to dole out a little reality at a time here because it is
overwhelming. The midterms matter so much. Democrats need one house of
Congress. I am pulling for both. Donald Chump is a threat to the
country and those of you on the left who refused to pull together better
STFU about us pulling together for your pet cause. You don't matter
right now if you worked to put Chump in the White House. You made that
choice. So Palestine or whatever you've lept onto in the minutes since
the election? Doesn't matter.
What matters is saving this country. To do that we need control of at least one house of Congress.
I
don't care that you want universal healthcare. I want that too. But
that's not what 2026 is about. 2026 is about getting control of at
least one House so that we can push back against Chump.
That's all it's about.
Rashida Tlaib and her groupies betrayed this country.
We
don't have time for their right now. People of color are under attack
in this country. People who are immigrants -- with the paperwork or
without -- or look like they could be immigrants are under attack.
LGBTQIA+ people are under attack.Seniors are under attack. You betrayed
all of those communities by working to put Chump back in office. You
had the gall to object to Adam Kinzingler and Liz Cheney campaigning for
Kamala. The gall. As we in the Black community have repeatedly noted
you got a different standard for Bernie. You had your pet issue and you
screwed the whole damn country.
Guess
what? Everything's on hold now. This is not Poppy Bush is in the
White House, this is not Ronald Reagan is in the White House. This is
not about someone we disagree with on basic issues. This is a deranged
convicted criminal who openly defies the Constitution and the court
system.
The
house is on fire. This is not the time for you to worry where you'd
like to put the new couch. This is the time to put out the fire. And
we do that only by taking control of at least one House.
So if that means incumbent Center Centerist who is in love with the Israeli government gets re-elected, that's what it means.
The house is on fire. We do not have time right now to focus on renovations. We have to stop the fire.
You
didn't take the threat of Donald Chump seriously in the lead up to
2024. So sit your ass down now because we can't afford more of your
'help' or more of your 'brilliance.'
Wasting
20 million dollars to defeat Democratic Party incumbents? We can't
afford your bulls**t, White boy. You're putting us a risk, not
yourself. Sit your ass down.
All
money going to the Democratic Party should be about defeating
Republicans. That means you take that 20 million and you donate to
incumbent Dems and you take that money and you donate to people like the
Democratic candidate in Arizona's sixth district. They will be running
against a weak Republican incumbent.
Arizona
has six districts. Four of those districts went to Republicans. Andy
Biggs won with 60.4% of the vote, Eli Crane won with 54.5% of the vote,
David Schwelikert won with 51.9% of the vote and Ciscomani won with
50.0% of the vote.
He
is the easiest to pick off. Until the Democratic incumbent decided not
to run for re-election in 2022, the seat was held by a Democrat. He is
the weakest Republican Arizona has in the House. He got even less
votes than Chump. Mid-terms are usually change elections if the same
party controls the House and the White House.
Currently
the candidates for 6th district's Democratic Party primary are
Johnathan Burma, Chris Donat, Mo Goldman, JoAnna Mendoza and Samantha
Severson. You want to weigh in on a primary, you can help with that
one. That's how the money needs to be spent. Not challenging incumbent
Democrats but picking off the weakest Republicans and pouring money
into their opponents.
Again,
the house is on fire. I think David Hogg's strategy is a losing
strategy but get Chump out of the White House and you can do whatever
you want and I honestly won't care. If you hadn't screwed us all over
in 2024, I wouldn't care now. If we had Kamala in the White House, you
could do whatever crazy scheme you wanted no matter how many times it
has failed in the past. But we don't have that luxury, you ensured that
when you didn't vote for Kamala in 2024.
We
can't afford you right now. In 2023, I announced here that I would be
voting for the Democratic Party's presidential candidate whomever it
was. And that's because some of us are smart enough to know that a
convicted felon who has already attempted an insurrection in his first
term is a clear and present danger to our country. You weren't smart
enough to grasp that or you just didn't care. So you really need to sit
your asses down because 'all you did' in 2024 (which was more than
enough) was hurt the country. In 2026, you might hurt yourself -- yes,
even you White Karens -- male and female -- could be harmed. Most of
you haven't been yet which is why you can be so cavalier to think that
the best use of campaign donations would be to target incumbent
Democrats. But we lose in 2026 and even the various privileges your
White skin brings you might get revoked.
In the meantime, AP reported yesterday, "Russia
and Ukraine both reported attacks on their forces Thursday on the first
day of a 72-hour ceasefire called by Russian President Vladimir Putin,
and Ukrainian lawmakers unanimously approved a landmark minerals deal
with the U.S." Don't know what to tell you there except when you
put a Chump in the White House, Putin's going to make a chump of the
Chump.
The
world laughs at Donald Chump and his terrible twos -- one crying fit
after another as he does his second term as president. Waaah! Waaah!
cries Chump and the world responds, "Just let him wear himself out.
We're using the Ferber method."
Unlike
David Hogg, I'm not the queen of tiddly winks. While I'm not a sports
fan, I did go to my children's games and root for their teams. So I
know at least that you don't decide in the middle of the game to toss
out all the plays that you've practiced and instead just have everyone
do whatever they feel like.
Hogg
has no plan. He has only a sketch and he wants to ignore reality and
past performance and history because he just knows he's right. We can't
afford his lack of education or lack of experience. He needs to go
find a closet, hide in there and text and make videos. He can handle
that, if nothing else.
Dear David Hogg, white men, ProHammies, SJD, far left populists and antisemites:
May 6, 2025 at 7:51 AM
We'll wind down with this from Senator Elizabeth Warren's office:
Trump administration abused Death Master File to purge at least 6,300 Social Security numbers, including children and seniors
Letter to SSA Acting Commissioner | Letter to SSA Assistant Inspector General for Audit
Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), along with Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and 11 Senate Democrats, slammed the Social Security Administration (SSA) for transferring thousands of Social Security numbers associated with immigrants to the SSA’s Death Master File, marking them as dead to pressure “self-deportation,” and demanded the agency’s watchdog launch a full investigation into the decision.
Exploiting Social Security’s Death Master File to terminate the SSN of living individuals without full due process violates bedrock constitutional rights. The Trump administration’s actions, which amount to falsifying government records, also violate the Privacy Act. Even Trump’s lawyers reportedly agreed.
“This decision will result in the ‘financial murder’ of living individuals improperly placed in the file, with everything from their credit cards and banking to their ability to access healthcare and housing being ripped out from under them,” wrote the senators.
The senators also called on the SSA Office of the Inspector General to launch a full investigation into the agency’s decision to begin using the Death Master File for this purpose, including how an individual gets targeted, who at the agency has decision-making authority, and how those who have had their SSNs nullified through this process can get it fixed if there is a mistake.
The Trump administration’s abuse of Social Security and its flagrant violation of constitutional guarantees of due process set a precedent that could endanger the rights of all Americans. It also undermines the accuracy of the Social Security Administration’s data, which could lead to more mistakes that limit a person’s access to benefits, regardless of their immigration status.
“The purpose of SSA is to provide for the welfare of number-holders and their dependents, not to serve as an arm of President Trump’s immigration enforcement agenda. This move degrades the solvency, reliability, and accuracy of SSA systems and programs. It is as cruel as it is thoughtless—the impact will be felt in communities across the country and in the future of SSA programs themselves,” concluded the senators to Acting Social Security Commissioner Leland Dudek.
The letter was signed by Senators Peter Welch (D-Vt.), Mazie Hirono (D-Hawai’i), Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Angus King (I-Maine), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.).
###
Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Stop Fingering My Corn Bread" went up last night. The following sites updated:
I’m Not Dead
2 hours ago
New Music Friday: The best albums out May 9
5 hours ago
Kash Patel gets called out
11 hours ago
Streaming
11 hours ago
Tuna Grilled Cheese in the Kitchen
11 hours ago
Chump is the threat
11 hours ago
Linda McMahon and Fetty Crap
11 hours ago
The dream team's breaking up!!!
11 hours ago
Maybe her pimp will protect her?
11 hours ago
