Outstanding news for good Americans: big airline corporations tried to defeat a Biden Administration rule that would have mandated automatic refunds when airlines screw up – and not only lost, but lost big, when Congressfolk actually wrote the Biden mandate into law. “In other words,” Matt Stoller writes, “Airlines for America tried to use their clout in Congress to undercut a popular rule put forward by Pete Buttigieg, a rule designed to fix a problem they caused by screwing people during the pandemic after they got bailed out. But their plan backfired, because politicians, journalists, and policymakers were actually paying attention. So now instead of repealing a rule they don’t like, they got that rule written into law.” Ain’t that great? And if you’re one of those Americans who called your Congressfolk post-haste when you heard about it, you’re part of the reason it’s great. So go buy yourself a Buffalo chicken cheese-steak, of whatever it is you love.
Judd Legum, in “Elon Musk’s Piggy Bank,” explains in considerable detail exactly why Elon Musk doesn’t deserve the $50 billion compensation package a Delaware court invalidated this past January. They’re putting the compensation package – which they claim is necessary so that Mr. Musk “will continue to be driven to innovate and drive growth at Tesla,” how’s that for a hostage situation! – before the shareholders in June, and yes, virtually every argument every board member makes sits on a bed of corrupt self-interest. Aside from the litany of examples of how Tesla’s failing these days, I feel compelled to add that a working family still can’t afford a Model X after a dozen years. Toyota Priuses went from luxury car to working family car in half that time.
Factcheck.org gives us the lowdown on the H5N1 bird flu officials have found in our milk supply. Long story short: the chance of a bird flu pandemic is low right now, since pasteurization does a pretty good job killing it and H5N1 would have to change a lot more to reach humans – but that could always change. Not just because more folks drink raw milk now, but also because researchers have hardly looked at bovine flu – there hasn’t been that much of it, which is a bit ominous, given that H5N1 figuring out how to get to cows might make it easier to figure out how to get to people – and our FDA has apparently found more bird flu genetic material in milk than our USDA has. In the meantime, don’t drink raw milk, cook your meat and eggs well, and stay away from wild birds.
“Who Believes the Most ‘Taboo’ Conspiracy Theories?” asks Paul Rosenberg at Salon. “It Might Not Be Who You Think.” Spoiler alert: it’s white dudes with graduate-level degrees! They’re more likely to believe Sandy Hook was a “false flag” operation or that folks exaggerate Holocaust deaths “on purpose,” and while you may reasonably conclude that the experience of studying an area deeply makes some folks a bit arrogant about areas they haven’t studied very deeply, you still have to wonder why things like Holocaust/Sandy Hook denialism attract them particularly. They said a little knowledge is a dangerous thing – and they were right!
I doubt very much that Donald Trump is “disgusted” by South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s story about how she put her dog down, especially since the story mainly describes Mr. Trump being “disgusted” with Ms. Noem’s poor grasp of “public relations.” Only one time does the article depict him asking why she put the dog down, and even that is still a bit of a walk to grasping that the dog was almost certainly failed by her humans – and I still suspect he only thought to ask in the first place because he observed the PR backlash against her. With this guy, it’s never about humanity; it’s always about the drama.
Come on, Politico, is crypto really “Trump’s New Weapon Against Biden”? There are two types of Americans: Americans who think crypto is a scam, and Americans who don’t think crypto is a scam yet, and unlike anti-vaxxers, the ones in the latter group don’t need to look only to crypto to salve their desperation, since they can run plenty of other garden-variety economic scams. If anything, this gives Joe Biden another opportunity to be The Real Law and Order President, though admittedly he’s flinched from discussing such matters (particularly with regard to monopolies). If I were him, I’d always wear hats saying I put corporate criminals in jail! But Democrats have never taken my advice, to their general detriment, I’d say.
Upon hearing that the Georgia state Republican committee has voted to remove one of its vice chairs, nine-time-illegal voter and convicted felon Brian K. Pritchard, I once again feel compelled to assert that Mr. Pritchard, even though he forged checks, should never have lost his voting rights, and thus shouldn’t be facing the setbacks he’s faced lately. And that’s true no matter how much I despise his politics! Rights aren’t rights if they’re so easily lost – and values aren’t values if they’re so easily amended just to stick it to people you despise.
Finally, New Hampshire’s state legislature raises the legal marriage age to 18, but the process is not without speed bumps, as at least one Republican state legislator defends his support for underage marriage thusly: “(w)hen we do this to people who are of ripe, fertile age and may have a pregnancy and a baby involved, are we not in fact, making abortion a much more desirable alternative when marriage might be the right solution for some freedom-loving couples?” Setting aside that he uses the word “freedom” as an amulet like the rest of them, or how much he sounds exactly like the person QAnon votaries profess to hate: he frames his support as an anti-abortion stance, a less popular stance now that it’s not as theoretical, but the only reason anyone will remember him will be for describing underage girls as “ripe” and “fertile.” We’d be better off remembering the state legislator who said this: “A lot of (Republicans) say oh, we were married at 16 and we turned out great, and my marriage was great, and I always say that’s really great, but all those child marriages don’t end in a happy ending. They end with someone having bruises and cuts and being pushed down stairs and losing their kids.” As a friend of mine once said, never let the living do all the testifying.
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