It’s Kept Me Going
Retirement isn’t always a breeze, especially as you get older. As we age, health problems can get worse, income becomes more limited, and it seems like access to high-quality, affordable health care gets harder and harder to come by. That’s why, for me at least, Medicare Advantage has been a godsend.
The recent analysis by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget regarding the 2025 Medicare Trustees’ Report highlights the looming challenges with Medicare and Social Security, but it only scratches the surface of the deeper fiscal issues our country faces. To understand the full financial reality, we must go beyond trust fund “solvency” and examine the actual commitments the federal government has made—and continues to make—without fully accounting for them. As the Congressional Budget Office has noted:
“In the public debate, ‘solvency’ means keeping the trust funds from exhausting their balances and ensuring the ability of the funds to finance promised benefits. Defined that way, however, trust fund solvency is not a meaningful measure of the government’s ability to meet its future obligations.”
In other words, solvency in this context is more of a political or legal benchmark than an actual measure of financial health.
Multiple media outlets are reporting President Donald J. Trump has announced publicly the conflict between Israel and Iran will be declared over by midnight Wednesday. Israel and Iran have agreed to a cease-fire, declaring the beginning of an end to what President Trump referred to as “the 12-Day War.”
“It has been fully agreed by and between Israel and Iran that there will be a Complete and Total CEASEFIRE … for 12 hours, at which point the War will be considered, ENDED!” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth Social platform just after 6 p.m. EDT.
The president wrote that both sides would wind down their final military operations within six hours and begin what he expected to be a “peaceful and respectful” cease-fire on both sides. After 24 hours, the conflict will be declared over, Trump said.
“Iran has officially responded to our obliteration of their nuclear facilities with a very weak response, which we expected, and have very effectively countered. There have been 14 missiles fired — 13 were knocked down, and 1 was “set free,” because it was headed in a nonthreatening direction.
The construction of the proposed Golden Dome missile defense shield — a strategic defense system that would neutralize ballistic missiles in space — is a “no-brainer” for William R. Forstchen, Ph.D. Forstchen is a world-renowned expert on electromagnetic pulse (EMP) weapons, which he considers the single greatest threat to the United States.
A nuclear electromagnetic pulse (“Nuclear EMP”) is a burst of electromagnetic radiation created by a nuclear explosion. The resulting rapidly varying electric and magnetic fields may couple with electrical and electronic systems to produce damaging current and voltage surges.
Citing the country’s already vulnerable energy grid, Forstchen said an EMP attack would wipe out power and set off a cascade of deadly events. The first necessity people would lose is water, followed by food supply and medication. Then, disease would set in. Long-term survival, he added, would depend on being in the right place at the right time with the right food supply.
Today’s inflation report brought more welcome news that prices are down and wages are up — and that progress will be supercharged with President Donald J. Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill.
Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent told Congress how the One Big Beautiful Bill — the largest tax cut in history — will boost that progress for middle-class Americans and the private sector without fueling inflation:
