Loving yourself is an act of rebellion

October 18-25 2024.

President Biden issued the first presidential apology on behalf of the federal government to America's Native American population for the Indian boarding school policy. For 150 years the federal government operated a system of schools which aimed to destroy Native culture through the forced assimilation of native children. At these schools students faced physical, emotional, and sexual abuse, and close to 1,000 died. The Biden-Harris Administration has been historic for Native and Tribal rights. From the appointment of the first ever Native American cabinet member, Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, to the investment of $46 billion dollars on tribal land, to 200 new co-stewardship agreements. The last 4 years have seen a historic investment in and expansion of tribal rights.

The Biden-Harris Administration proposed a new rule which would make contraceptive medication (the pill) free over the counter with most Insurance. The new rule would ban cost sharing for contraception products, including the pill, condoms, and emergency contraception. On top of over the counter medications, the new rule will also strength protections for prescribed contraception without cost sharing as well.

The EPA announced its finalized rule strengthening standards for lead paint dust in pre-1978 housing and child care facilities. There is no safe level of exposure to lead particularly for children who can suffer long term developmental consequences from lead exposure. The new standards set the lowest level of lead particle that can be identified by a lab as the standard for lead abatement. It's estimated 31 million homes built before the ban on lead paint in 1978 have lead paint and 3.8 million of those have one or more children under the age of 6. The new rule will mean 1.2 million fewer people, including over 300,000 children will not be exposed to lead particles every year. This comes after the Biden-Harris Administration announced its goal to remove and replace all lead pipes in America by the end of the decade.

The Department of Transportation announced a $50 million dollar fine against American Airlines for its treatment of disabled passengers and their wheelchairs. The fine stems from a number of incidences of humiliating and unfair treatment of passages between 2019 and 2023, as well as video documented evidence of mishandling wheelchairs and damaging them. Half the fine will go to replacing such damaged wheelchairs. The Biden administration has leveled a historic number of fines against the airlines ($225 million) for their failures. It also published a Airline Passengers with Disabilities Bill of Rights, passed a new rule accessible lavatories on aircraft, and is working on a rule to require airlines to replace lost or damaged wheelchairs with equal equipment at once.

The Department of Energy announced $430 million dollars to help boost domestic clean energy manufacturing in former coal communities. This invests in projects in 15 different communities, in places like Texas, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Michigan. The plan will bring about 1,900 new jobs in communities struggling with the loss of coal. Projects include making insulation out of recycled cardboard, low carbon cement production, and industrial fiber hemp processing.

The Department of Transportation announced $4.2 billion in new infrastructure investment. The money will go to 44 projects across the country. For example the MBTA will get $400 million to replace the 92 year old Draw 1 bridge and renovate North Station.

The Department of Transportation announced nearly $200 million to replace aging natural gas pipes. Leaking gas lines represent a serious public health risk and also cost costumers. Planned replacements in Georgia and North Carolina for example will save the average costumer there over $900 on their gas bill a year. Replacing leaking lines will also remove 1,000 metric tons of methane pollution, annually.

The Department of the Interior announced $244 million to address legacy pollution in Pennsylvania coal country. This comes on top of $400 million invested earlier this year. This investment will help close dangerous mine shafts, reclaim unstable slopes, improve water quality by treating acid mine drainage, and restore water supplies damaged by mining.

Data shows that President Biden's Inflation Reduction Act (passed with Vice-President Harris' tie breaking vote) has saved seniors $1 billion dollars on out-of-pocket drug costs. Seniors with certain high priced drugs saw their yearly out of pocket costs capped at $3,500 for 2024. In 2024 all seniors using Medicare Part D will see their out of pocket costs capped at $2,000 for the year. It's estimated if the $2,000 cap had been in effect this year 4.6 million seniors would have hit it by June and not have had to pay any more for medication for the rest of the year.

The Department of Education announced a new proposed rule to bring student debt relief for 8 million struggling borrowers. The Biden-Harris Administration has managed despite road blocks from Republicans in Congress, the courts and law suits from Republican states to bring student loan forgiveness to 5 million Americans so far through different programs. This latest rule would take into account many financial hardships faced by people to determine if they qualify to have their student loans forgiven. The final rule cannot be finalized before 2025 meaning its fate will be decided at the election.

The $billions that seniors don’t have to pay for out-of-pocket drug costs? They want that in their pockets.

The $millions invested into infrastructure? That could have gone into their companies.

The student loans that will be forgiven if Harris wins? They want all the interest they could collect on that money.

The $billions for conservation and infrastructure and tribal lands? They want that in their investment portfolios.

If voting for democracy and against fascism doesn't move you...

...

Both of those assertions are wrong.

Polls are notoriously unreliable (and getting less reliable), and things are close. I honestly have no idea who's going to win. But right now, fivethirtyeight.com (which is the best overall politics predictor in the US, and has been for the last several election cycles) has Harris ahead by 1.3 points. So, no, Trump winning is not inevitable.

But especially with things this close and the election this close, this is the least likely time for people to be publicly talking about contingency plans for a Trump win. The more people think Trump is going to win, the less likely Harris voters are to show up at the polls ... which means that Trump is more likely to win. Talking about how awful a Trump presidency would be if he got elected can motivate people to vote, when paired with "but voting for Harris can help prevent that!" Talking about what to do after he wins (if he does) is much more concrete and much more likely to convince people that there's no point in voting, we need to move on to the next step of preparing for the inevitable. But it isn't inevitable! Not even close!

Organizations at all levels--political groups, advocacy groups, charities, legal aid groups, etc.--have been preparing all along. But the more you talk about those contingencies in public, the more likely you are to actually need them.

And the thing is, we know a Trump win would be bad. How bad, and in what way exactly ... depends on a lot of factors. His first term was bad, but he was prevented from achieving his goals because he is incapable of keeping competent people around, and nobody knew how to make the bureaucracy of government do what they wanted it to do. He may have fixed that problem, he may not. We know what his goals are and those of his closest allies. What we don't know is, would he be better able to carry those goals out this time if he wins, and if so, how many of them he will be able to enact. And what we, as leftists, can do in the event of a Trump presidencey depends on all of those things!

Trump's campaign and the GOP in general are doing tons of "partisan polls." Partisan polls masquerade as regular polls but lean heavily toward trying to get positive results for Their Guy, without being so biased that they get thrown out, and the Trump campaign in particular has been heavily favoring them lately because a lot of biased polls in their favor give support to the efforts they're going to make to steal the election. We don't normally see so many partisan polls.

Even good nonpartisan polls that try to be fair are usually pulling from the pool of "likely voters", which is people who voted in last presidential election. But we know enormous waves of people registered to vote for the first time when Harris announced her candidacy. Those people are not being polled. Polls of "registered voters" might not be catching people who just recently registered. And even a good poll that is based on the latest set of registered voters works by calling random people. Millennials, Gen Z: how often do you answer the phone when strangers call?

There has always been an overcount of the retired elderly who are lonely and have nothing better to do than answer the phone, in polls, and an undercount of the youth vote because young people are more likely to be working retail or food service and not available to answer phones in the late afternoon/early evening when the pollsters are trying to get the people who are off work and not yet eating dinner. And because young people's phone numbers often haven't been established as long and aren't on as many databases. But nowadays there's an even bigger imbalance, because young people simply don't answer the phone. Everyone they care about knows to text them or call them on Discord or something, and the few people who they'll still answer the phone for, those people are in their contacts so they know who they are. They don't answer the phone for strangers.

Pollsters have been trying to balance this out with text polling. But a text poll requires that you take action. Where a phone poll keeps you on the phone because after you answered it, you're too polite to hang up on the person asking questions, a text poll requires clicking on the link you were texted. If you're very security conscious you won't do that. If you're not, but you're busy and can't be bothered, you won't do that. Probably only the most partisan people are clicking on the link and answering the poll. And people like me, reliable partisan voters who vote in every election and have had the same cell phone for 24 years, get a disproportionate number of the text polls... young people probably do not for the same reasons they have traditionally been undercounted.

So a youth vote that actually turns out and votes will blow the polls away. Thus, enormous efforts are being made to discourage left-leaning young people from voting. "They're both the same." "Harris supports genocide." "There really isn't any difference." "Why bother, Trump is going to win." Every time you see one of those messages, it is either from someone who was trying to discourage left-leaning young people from voting, or it's a left-leaning young person who was successfully discouraged and is now infected with the pernicious meme, retransmitting it because now they believe it.

Recently Trump just severely pissed off the Puerto Rican voting bloc. Believe it or not, there were actually Hispanics who were considering voting for him! No, I don't know why either. But I bet a lot fewer of them are now. He's also been even more mask-off fascist lately, and many people who were his supporters and attended his rallies saw him rambling, mixing up names, doddering and dancing to music for half an hour. Those people might be afraid to say out loud that Trump has lost it because they don't want their friends and family to hear them, but some of them, in the privacy of the voting booth, will vote for Harris or a third party or won't vote at all.

"The Biden administration is proposing a rule that would expand access to contraceptive products, including making over-the-counter birth control and condoms free for the first time for women of reproductive age who have private health insurance.

Under the proposal by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Labor Department, and Treasury Department, which was announced by the administration on Monday, health insurance companies would be required to cover all recommended over-the-counter contraception products, such as condoms, spermicide and emergency contraception, without a prescription and at no cost, according to senior administration officials.

It would also require private health insurance providers to notify recipients about the covered over-the-counter products.

The proposed rule comes as the Biden administration seeks to expand access to contraceptives and as other reproductive health, including access to abortion, has become a central issue in the 2024 presidential election campaign. Republican-led states have restricted access to abortion since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. About half of states now ban or severely restrict abortion, which has coincided with steep declines in prescriptions for birth control and emergency contraception in those states."

Hephaestus: *walks into bathroom and flips light switch*

*bulb is dead*

Hephaestus: *sigh*

*goes to closet and gets new lightbulb*

*shelf falls down because of loose screws*

Hephaestus: * s i g h *

*opens drawer to get a screwdriver*

*drawer is squeaky*

Hephaestus: grrr

*goes to garage and gets WD-40*

*can is empty*

Hephaestus: GRRR.

*gets in truck to go to hardware store*

*engine won’t start*

Hephaestus: GRRR!!!

Aphrodite: Hephaestus, could you change out the lightbulb in the bathroom? 

Hephaestus: *looks up from under the hood covered in motor oil*

it depends on how you define "evolved"!

if we're using the term to mean "developed the ability due to natural adaptations gained through millions of years of natural selection, using its own body", then powered flight has evolved FOUR TIMES. (shown in order)

(may they rest in peace) <art src: Heinrich Harder>

however, if we're using the term "evolved" to mean a "developed the ability due to natural adaptations gained through millions of years of natural selection" WITHOUT the "using its own body" caveat, then powered flight has actually evolved....

FIVE TIMES.

Our DM was apparently pleased, believing the awesome power of the ship was balanced by the limiting factor of having to provide fuel for it.  Then our rogue asks:

“Does it have to be raw flesh, or is cooked okay?”

The DM thinks. “Sure, I can’t think of any reason cooked flesh wouldn’t work.”

Rogue: “Great, we have unlimited fuel!”