Friday Potpourri: 21 February 2025
Today I am stymied by stupidity.
Why do Rethuglicans want to anger their constituents?
Have you ever paid an overdraft charge on your checking account or debit card? Was it outrageous?
On 30 December 2024, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a final rule greatly reducing overdraft charges for very large banks. Here it is.
A few days ago, French Hill (AR - mercenary) and Tim Scott (SC - sellout) introduced resolutions to let those rates go right back up to where they were before. This is a joint House-Senate fiasco.
Who is most likely to overdraw an account? Someone who lives paycheck to paycheck. Who is more likely to have voted for the Orange Menace and his sycophants in 2024?
For the first time in decades, Democrats received more support from Americans in the top third of the income bracket than from poorer groups, according to a Financial Times analysis of voter surveys. In contrast to 2020, the majority of lower-income households or those earning less than $50,000 a year voted for Trump this election. Conversely, those making more than $100,000 voted for Harris, according to exit polls. Full data set here.
Call me crazy, but my guess is that people who earn less than $50,000/year are more likely to overdraw an account than those earning over $100,000/year, thus THEIR OWN VOTERS.
Does this make sense to anyone? Sure, it will encourage more campaign contributions from big banks, but big banks don’t vote. Humans do.
The questions: Will Democrats message this correctly? Will they use the right channels to get the message out?
On to Montana
This is one of the things that make me shudder at the sheer idiocy of the bill. The Montana House Judiciary Committee voted to send bill HR 371 to the floor. It’s entitled “Ban mRNA vaccinations in Montana for humans”. As usual, not making this up.
My first question is: why is the JUDICIARY committee evaluating the bill? I looked up the committees the Montana House has, and while there is an appropriations committee related to health and human services, there is no regular committee looking at health, or science, or any other reasonable option. But Judiciary? Full committee list here.
If you read the bill, the “Whereas” section (it’s only 2 pages, and after “Whereas” are the penalties), you’ll notice a complete and utter disregard for science. Also, everything they presented as a “fact” is actually made-up nonsense.
I have been told over and over (and over and over) that I am NOT supposed to say that people are idiots, morons, or imbeciles. That I should get off my high horse and meet people where they are.
Let’s think this through.
While the mRNA Covid vaccines do not preclude one from getting Covid, they greatly decrease the death rate, severity, and the rate of long Covid. Covid has not gone away. In addition, we have influenza. The annual influenza vaccines are made in chicken eggs. There is a good chance that an mRNA flu vaccine would be able to be produced more quickly, and therefore be more responsive to the annual strains. Not to mention, there’s a dearth of eggs due to bird flu. Moderna is currently developing an mRNA bird flu vaccine. If the fascist regime doesn’t cut all funding, they’ll be in Phase 3 trials this year.
If the Montana House Judicial Committee is NOT comprised of idiots, morons and imbeciles, can someone else discern why they want their population to die of Covid, influenza and bird flu?
Is it just me who is confused?
…And More Morons
Special shout out to all Republican Senators, except Mitch McConnell, polio survivor. They all voted for Worm Brain to head HHS. How many votes do these idiots have to take until they realize that when they ask the Orange Menace’s nominees questions, their answers will be lies?
You’d think they would have learned from being lied to about “settled law” by Kavanaugh, Gorsuch and Barrett. BUT NO.
Bill Cassidy (LA-MD-Simpleton) who, in a prior life, was an MD who pushed vaccines because he knew firsthand their value, specifically asked what Worm Brain would do regarding childhood vaccines, and then accepted the answer that “nothing would change”. Cassidy COULD have seen through this and pulled over just two more Senators, but no, he b-e-l-i-e-v-e-d.
It took less than a week for Worm Brain to renege on that promise.
While I don’t wish death on the children, grandchildren and other family members of the Senators who voted for Worm Brain, often you reap what you sow.
In all seriousness, I’m thinking about medical tourism planning related to getting vaccinated and picking up necessary medications.
Another reason that I hate AI
Below is the information that AI printed on my medication receipt. Before AI, I never saw anything like this.
Before you look at the receipt, this is a stomach medication. It’s a pill, not a capsule, and it works IN THE STOMACH. It cannot be injected. Not to mention the math problem of 90 pills to be injected 360 times.
What I’m thinking about…
I’m thinking about Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Yup President of Turkey. Under the heading “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, I think Erdogan might actually be able to save Ukraine. Don’t get me wrong, Erdogan is not a nice guy.
But he knows history. And the Turks have detested the Russians for time immortal.
The Turkish president, addressing a joint press conference with visiting Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Ankara, said Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty are Türkiye's sine qua non. Source.
Erdogan knows that if Russia takes Ukraine (as the American and Russian regimes want), Turkey is either next, or second after Poland. A brief history, if you need it.
As an aside, in Saudi Arabia for the talks between the US and Russia was Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s Foreign Minister. Why is this interesting? Because the US has sanctioned Lavrov since 2022. He has been the voice of Moscow at the UN, where he continually blamed Ukraine for the Russian invasion.
Again, the enemy of my enemy is my friend.
And as for friends: despite what the MSM is putting out about Ukraine, my guess is that first, Europe will come together (especially if the German elections this weekend go well) with aid packages, and a commitment. Second, there is a lot of support in both the House and Senate amoungst Republicans for supporting Ukraine. Added to Democratic votes (which should be close to monolithic) there’s actually enough votes to overcome a presidential veto regarding aid for Ukraine.
I will be back on Monday (skipping the Sunday post). This is official petition season here in Pennsylvania. As the campaign manager for one of the countywide candidates, I will be circulating petitions at various petition parties, as well as knocking doors for signatures for two hyper-local candidates all weekend.
While most of my posts are about overall politics, we have races to win, HERE, where I live, and I am committed. Heart and Soul. Here in Chester County, until 2017, the county row positions, and 2/3 of the county commissioners1 were Republicans. For all of history going back to the establishment of the Democratic and Republican parties in the 1800’s.
In 2017, we swept (with 1 required minority commissioner), and we have held those positions ever since. Every race, every election. And the county has benefitted greatly from their efforts. I will not willingly give that up, and I intend to ensure that as many people as possible feel that way, too.
I walk my talk, action is where it’s at.
Have a great weekend!
By law, one of the three members of the commission must be from a different party than the 2-person majority.
It’s generous of Montana legislators to conduct medical experiments on their own constituents, in order to buttress the arguments in favor of vaccination in other states!
Have you read the article, "Rage against the Algorithm' by Lois Parshley in The Lever? It came to my email today. It's a deep read about the work of Kevin De Liban who has investigated and compiled numerous instances of AI being incorrect in making critical decisions. As AI is used in nearly half of government agencies and tRump removed existing regulations on his first day in office, it is deeply troubling. The abundant use of AI is also one of the reasons being used to fire federal employees. "We have AI, why do we need real people? They're redundant."
What could go wrong? Snark intended.