08/14/24

Good morning! It’s Wednesday, August 14th.

National Financial Awareness Day

No thanks.

And now, the news.

Biden Cancer Moonshot Bill

-via CBS News

Let’s start with some cool news! On Tuesday President Biden announced up to $150 million in awards to eight different teams developing technology to allow for more successful tumor-removing surgeries.

It’s a part of his new Biden Cancer Moonshot initiative, which he announced two years ago with a stated goal of preventing 4 million cancer deaths by 2047. Currently, an average of 600,000 people die every year from cancer. And as anyone who has lost someone to cancer knows… it’s absolutely awful. Because you hear 600,000 and you think wow, that’s a lot. But it doesn’t feel like 600,000. It feels like one, or two, or three. It feels like this gap in your life that just stays a gap forever. A little bigger sometimes. A little small sometimes. But always there.

And if there’s a way to prevent more people from dying from cancer? $150 million is nothing. It’s worth it.

Abortion in America

-via AP News

In Indiana, the state’s attorney general has dropped a suit accusing the state’s largest hospital system of violating HIPPA when a doctor told a newspaper that a 10-year-old girl traveled out of state for an abortion.

So… that’s a story with a lot of failures.

First and foremost, a ten-year-old survivor of rape was forced to go out of state for an abortion.

How does that not make you stop and say, it’s time to do some reevaluating here?

The suit was filed by Republicans. Not because they care about the patient’s privacy, but because this story makes their pro-birth stance look terrible. Well, no sorry that’s not true. It’s brings to light the horrors of their terrible policy.

A ten-year-old girl has just had the worst crime committed against her, and your abhorrent laws exist to just… retraumatize?

It should be noted that the doctor in question did not share personally identifiable information with the reporter. However, the suit was dropped after the hospital proved it had taken all necessary steps to ensure this doesn’t happen again.

Elon and Trump

-via CNN (UAW), NPR (Twitter Ads), Washington Post (FBI), and Salon (plane)

And now for a couple stories I’m going to put into one because Elon and Trump deserve nothing nice… which is why we’re pairing them together.

Starting with Elon Musk!

Despite just last year telling advertisers that leave Twitter that they can go… fluff themselves (literally, he said they can go F themselves on stage) – he is now trying to sue the World Federation of Advertisers, as well as member companies like CVS, for, well, listening to him and leaving the platform.

He claims the company are conspiring to deprive the company of advertising money.

Imagine! Imagine buying one of the world’s largest social networks, running it into the ground, renaming the incredibly well-known brand after a letter in the alphabet just because you’re a dork, post your support of Trump as well as other white nationalist propaganda… and then thinking it’s CVS that’s preventing ad money from flowing in.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… it just can’t be that hard to kind of invent part of things.

But he is good at ruining things. For example, on Monday night Trump finally had his triumphant return to Twitter (who cares, honestly) and it was supposed to be celebrated with a live audio session between Trump and Elon.

It started 45 minutes late because of what Elon said was a server attack. Which apparently affected no one else? Sure babe.

And then of course it was just innate rambling and lying.

But it did include a little gem of Trump praising Elon for his anti-union stance. In one part of their BFF chat, Trump said: “I look at what you do, you walk in and you just say, ‘You want to quit?’ They go on strike – I won’t mention the name of the company – but they go on strike, and you say, ‘That’s okay, you’re all gone. You’re all gone. Every one of you is gone.”

Well uh-oh – you’re not allowed to do that! So on Tuesday the United Auto Workers union, who just recently endorsed the Harris campaign, announced that that they are filing federal labor charges against Trump and Musk for threatening to intimidate striking workers.

This is just so funny to me. It’s too anti-labor dummies trying to suck up to each other and lo-and-behold… consequences for actions!

Yes please!

There is also, I guess, kind of news about what the Trump campaign says is a hack. The FBI is investigating attempted hacks of both the Trump and Harris campaigns. It appears that the Trump campaign may have been the victim of a phishing attempt by… Roger Stone!

This began back in June, but the Biden, and now Harris, campaign didn’t take the bait (literally).

It’s believed that the attempted hack was done by Iran.

So we’ll see what happens there, but I am still convinced that there is a mole of some sort in the Trump campaign working against them.

Case in point? After Trump’s plane (which he calls Trump Force One) experienced mechanical issues, he started traveling around in another plane. The previous owner? Jeffrey Epstein! They say it’s a coincidence but like… how? How on earth would that happen by coincidence?!

Anyway, yuck to Trump. Yuck to Musk. Yuck to all.

And that’s it. That’s the news.

I’m proud of… money. Seems could. Would love some.

But more than that, more than money… because you exist… I’m proud of you.