Matt Stoller tells us "How Joe Biden Engineered Apple's New Air Pods," which can, with a software update, also be used as actual hearing aids. The hate-blind will guffaw with joyless laughter at that statement, but the Biden Administration did in fact force our Food and Drug Administration, via Executive Order, to approve over-the-counter hearing aids for folks with moderate hearing loss after our FDA spent years dragging their feet (and defying our laws) on that matter. Getting hearing aids without prescriptions also breaks up the collusion between health insurance corporations, hearing aid manufacturing corporations, and hearing specialists, since most folks can adjust their hearing aids with their smartphones these days. They say the politicians don't do good things for people any more, but Joe Biden does. So of course our "liberal" media ran him out.
I am not actually sure that the Trump tax "reform" "led to a $20 billion reduction in charitable giving within a year." The evidence: that "Americans who stopped itemizing their tax deductions gave less to charity in 2018 than they otherwise would have," but if only 30% of Americans itemized their deductions before that, what of the 70% of taxpayers who weren't itemizing their deductions in the first place? We don't learn. Also, charitable giving has gone up and down over the last six years, and ended up $35 billion higher in 2023 than in 2017. The expanded standard deduction is one of the few good things about the Trump tax "reform," and though we ought to allow more working families to deduct their charitable deductions more easily, the "finding" described above isn't a reason for that. So file this under "The Flesh is Willing, But…"
Some red states – namely Nebraska, Missouri, and Alaska – will put paid family/medical leave before the voters in 2024. I suspect that voters in all three states will handily approve paid family/medical leave, since voters are generally better human beings than their representatives – but those representatives, in at least two of those states, will try their damnedest to overturn the express will of the people, and may even succeed. (I give Alaska politicians more credit than those of Nebraska and Missouri. Especially Missouri. What a political cesspool! They should all be turned out of office!)
So now we hear that the individual who first posted about "immigrants eating pets" on Facebook "was simply repeating a story she had heard from a neighbor," "who’d heard it themselves from a friend, who’d heard it from someone else" Jesus Mary and Joseph I can't even. This rumor enabled domestic terror threats against the government of Springfield, OH, which, last I looked, was composed of people, despite what right-wingers want you to think. And while I'm tempted to say people should just STFU until they know what they're talking about, I don't even believe the rumor-spreader's story. I think she knew full well what she was doing, because Trumpholes don't get the benefit of the doubt anymore. How can they, after all these years?
When I hear that Democrat politicos are salivating at all the attack ads they can run against Donald Trump just using clips from his disastrous recent debate, all I can say is: have these fuckers learned nothing from 2016? Because I remember watching negative ad after negative ad in 2016 and thinking too many independents were going to throw up their hands and stay home because "everyone's so negative," and that's what happened, and Donald Trump got elected. Democrats have lately been running ads that focus on issues and solutions; they've even run some funny ads. They need to keep doing that, so people see the difference between them and Republicans, whose ads will all be shouting at the top of their lungs about crime and immigration because what else have they got?
Finally, I feel compelled to warn you, yet again, about stories of right-wingers fighting each other over that immigrants-eating-pets fake news: just like with the recent Marjorie Taylor Greene/Laura Loomer "fight," remember that right-wingers occasionally disagree with other right-wingers just to look "sane" or "independent" every so often, so they can bring it up next time you accurately call them insane or a jackboot lockstep marcher. So don't ever get sucked in by the drama! And don't start a lot of sentences with "even so-and-so thinks." That's how they get you to normalize them, and we should never, ever, ever normalize these awful people.
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