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I had another point I wanted to make in my blog about Free Checking and I realized that I forgot to say it.

Marianne Lake, the evil genius who runs Chase Bank, explained that the elimination of free checking was due to the government cracking down on banks for their late and overdraft fees. She also warned that the end of free checking was going to have the biggest impact on the people who can least afford it.

This is the standard business reaction to anything government does to help regular people. It is actually bad for regular people because business will just find some way around it. You see, Business is trying to do the right thing but Government is forcing their hand. Government is making us hurt regular people because they want to regulate the way business treats regular people. In other words, since Government is preventing banks from screwing regular people one way, banks will just find another way to screw them and it’s all Government’s fault. Lake’s concern for regular people is underwhelming.

Furthermore, who exactly does she think is paying the exorbitant late and overdraft fees now? Billionaires? Vulnerable people are already being taken advantage by her bank just in a different way. Doing away with Free Checking is just another new way to take advantage of them.

So fuck you Marianne Lake and your phony concern for vulnerable customers.

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Marianne Lake, who runs Chase Bank, announced that Free Checking is going to end for that bank and she anticipates the other big banks will follow.

I only stay with the big banks for 2 reasons — Free Checking and Free ATM’s. If this ends I see no reason to stay with the big banks. They are completely useless to me as a normal business customer because every time I use my ATM, I am taking money out of my checking account. I am guessing that means if I use an ATM, I will be charged for writing a check. This ends Free Checking and Free ATM in one fell swoop.

The big banks are useless especially to those of us on the more modest side of the pay scale. I tried getting a saving’s accounts at a big bank. It cost more money to have the account than I received in interest. CD’s are better in the sense that I don’t lose any money but when I close out my last CD with a big bank I was getting in the neighborhood of .50 cents. You heard me right — .50 cents.

The sad part of this whole thing is my leaving will not be a problem for my big bank. In fact, a clerk accidentally spilled the beans with me one day when I was trying to find the best place for my $5,000. The answer was loud and clear. I just didn’t have enough money for the bank to bother with my accounts.

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In the past few weeks, I’ve been seeing more of Tesla’s Cybertruck. Every time I see it, I have exactly the same response. This has got to be ugliest automobile I have ever seen. My jaw goes slack and I find myself staring it is so damn ugly. There must be good points about the car but I just can’t get past the ugliness.

Thinking I must be missing some modern aesthetic standard, I googled “world’s ugliest car” and sure enough the Cybertruck appeared with discussions on how damn ugly it was. It is reassuring that I have maintained my high standards of beauty but it reopens my concern about the mental state of Elon Musk. What is he thinking and can he be stopped?

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I know it is hard to believe but I am an experimental type of guy. This means I occasionally, while cursing out my household chores, think is there an easier better way to do this. So, I try something. Most of them are failures but nonetheless important information to learn as you can now skip that particular household experiment. So not all a loss in hearing about and you get to know me a little bit better and who wouldn’t want that.

So my experiment this week was trying to fill my water bottle with one hand and wiping the counter tops with my other one. I can report to you that it was a complete fiasco. It is difficult to both hold a bottle, especially one with a small entry way, under the tap and vigorously wiping the dirt off of counter tops. It is like trying to tap your head and pat your stomach at the same time. Every time you check to see how the counters look, you unconsciously move the bottle away from the tap even with 40 to 60 percent focus I was giving it. Any time you would have gained by the dual approach you lose when you go over the missed spots on the counter top and wiping the water off the bottle. So you can mark this one off of your to do list.

I know that some of you are asking why wipe off the bottle before putting it in the refrigerator, nobody will ever notice. Well, not at my house. A certain someone will discover my crime and want answers. I just don’t have a good enough reply for why I didn’t wipe the water off the bottle before putting into the refrigerator. I mean how weak of an argument is I was too lazy to do it and I thought I could get away with it without anyone noticing. Take my word for it — it is really awkward position.

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My doctor and I have been working on the best way to handle my acid reflux. Antacids work but some are better than others. The one that I have had the most success with can also damage the liver. Our discussion turned to what do I do if the new antacid fails to work. He said then I would have to make a decision – is the toxic antacid worth continuing for relieving the symptoms of my acid reflux or should I take the less effective and less toxic antacid and learn to live with acid reflux which also carries the possibility of esophageal cancer. What is the better choice then — liver problems or esophageal cancer.

As I get older, I’ve been noticing that a lot of my healthcare decisions are like that — the choice isn’t an obvious good versus an obvious bad. It is two imperfect choices where I have to sort through the information and weigh the good and the bad to come up with an answer for me. Which got me thinking of chronic pain and addiction. There is this default preference for living with the pain over becoming an addict.

But why, particularly if the choice is being unable to have a normal life because the pain is too great versus living with addiction and having a normal life. The important question here is what makes the person more functional. Can they enjoy their lives with the pain or is it better lived with the addiction? There is something in the American Mind which fights the idea of addiction. Addiction is bad. Addicts ruin their lives and the lives of their families. At all cost, we must avoid addiction.

But can addiction be better than the alternate.? And, importantly, can addicts lead normal lives while addicted to drugs? Surprisingly, at least to me, most addicts lead pretty normal lives. They hold jobs and they take care of families. Now I am not saying it is ideal because it isn’t. It would be better not to be addicted to drugs. Life long drug use is associated with younger death — somewhat like the experience of cigarette smokers which is an addiction that is tolerated and we get along just fine. The problem with addiction is when the addict’s drug of choice is illegal or regulated by people who want to discourage addiction (think Oxycodone). Then the addict has to deal with dangerous suppliers, unregulated doses of their drug and getting arrested. These would all go away if we just let them use it legally.

And, yes, there will be deaths but would there be more than there are now. Certainly we would have reduction in deaths to turf wars between drug lords and wrong doses. It also opens up the possibility of working with addicts to get them off drugs whenever possible. Think again about cigarettes. An aggressive anti-smoking campaign has been successful in cutting the number of smokers dramatically. All while cigarettes were legally available and easily accessible.

I know several people that have chronic pain. They are in their 70’s. Their doctors try to find a way to stop the pain without addictive pain killers. The pain is still there which leads to the question what is worse chronic pain or drug addiction. And is getting off of drugs made more difficult by the return of pain? What is the point of 70 years not getting addicted to drugs? I know very few people in this age bracket that isn’t already taking a life long drug.

Personally, I have 4 prescriptions that I will take for the rest of my life. One of these is anti-depressant which if I stop, I will have problems. I am sure I can deal with them but it would be a difficult week or two and, if I do quit, would my depression return. So am I an addict and, if the addictive drug, allows me to be lead a normal life, why would I quit. If an addictive pain killer can do this, and everything else has been tried, why keep people from an effective, but addictive, pain killer.

This is a valid choice between options. I could live in pain and be addiction free or can live in pain with a dependance on drugs to keep me that way. I suspect this is already happening in the wink, wink nudge, nudge world we live in it. Doctors and patients are already making this decision but if Medicare and the insurance companies decide to monitor this more stringently, this wink wink nudge nudge deal can end tomorrow. Why not just come clean and say sometimes drug addiction is the best option in some cases.

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The Supreme Court determined that it was legal to ban people from sleeping on city streets. This will somehow cause the homeless problem to go away, at least if they are sleeping. I am not sure what happens to them when they are awake. This just moves them along during the night time hours. It reminds me of something the city of Coronado used to do with its homeless. They gave the homeless a bus ticket to San Diego. Problem solved. Until of course a few radio personalities found out about it. They, then, gave the homeless bus tickets to Coronado.

This law is a marketing ploy to give the illusion of action. The public sees the cops taking away the sleeping homeless and think something is being done. But where are they going? What’s to stop them from sleeping outside the city limits and coming back the next day? What happens to repeat offenders? Do they go to jail for illegal sleeping? Then the homeless will have both a home and plenty of food all on the tax payer dime.

This is a waste of time for everyone involved. More work for the cops and the courts. More hassles for the homeless. The public will only have temporary relief from the homeless on their streets. Drug addiction and mental illness will still drive people out into the streets because these are difficult problems that require a bit more thinking, more energy, more money and more time. The public is being tricked into believing something is happening when nothing at all is really changing. But it is a very good trick.

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In a serendipitous bit of news, given the growing worry about humans not having enough children, good lord we can’t even have wars any more without a bunch of sniveling parents getting upset about their only child being sent to the front, along comes Elon Musk announcing the birth of his twelfth child. Does Elon Musk have to do everything? I mean the man is running Tesla and X (the company formally known as Instagram) and now he has taking on the burden of repopulating the earth. Is there anything that man can’t do?

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Edward Luttwak suggests that declining birth rates have made countries less willing to go to war. Worldwide, families are so small that parents are unwilling to sacrifice their only child to war. Which is a startling mercenary observation to make in the continuing conservative chorus about the need for more children. If you have extra children, you won’t have to worry about losing an only child, you will always have a spare.

It isn’t because they love children and bringing more children into the world is a good thing for both parents and children. No, it is parents need to have spare children so that they won’t make a scene when their children start dying in battle. Nothing is so annoying for generals than for a bunch of parents balking at the thought of little Billy dying at the front.

Luttwak glories in Israel women who bear more than the replacement value of children. Well, yes but then is their willingness to sacrifice their children due to less then all of the than Israel is fighting for their existence. On October 7, Hamas was killing men, women and children inside of Israel. This isn’t a war of choice for them, not like, for example the Russians in the Ukraine or Macron wanting NATO troops in the Ukraine. Parents, I think rightfully, will balk at wars for no good reason.

And, isn’t that a good thing. Luttwak looks back to the past when people had more children than they could fed, and thinks isn’t it a pity that parents don’t do this any more. It is preventing armies from taking the battlefield because parents actually care if their child lives. How wonderful for both the parents and the child. If Luttwak is correct, and let’s hope he is, there will be a trickle down effect of less war in the world. Good.

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Dress shirt with short shorts, loafers with white socks, this is a fashion faux pas of epic proportions. I know there have been rumblings about Paul Mescal’s sexuality in the past but this should confirm it. Only a straight man would go out in this get up and think it was Ok.

Please no feedback about this slam of straight men. Some of my best friends are straight men. I honestly like straight men but, come on, you have to admit it, no self respecting gay guy would go out looking like this. Sorry, straight men I will stand by this.

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I have to remind myself that Conservatives believe that children actually listen to teachers and parents and that teachers and parents have some influence on what children will actually think and believe. Now I don’t mean to totally discount parents and teachers. They do have some influence to the extent that what the authority figure is saying makes sense to the child but once the adult has left the tracks, many children are apt to begin seeing life in their own way and not at all like the parents wanted. This is why I have some different ideas about the world than my Catholic parents and my Catholic school teachers despite their active indoctrination of me to become a Roman Catholic.

I think this is why so many Conservatives are afraid of sex education and Critical Race Theory. They assume that the mere mention of these things in class will influence the thinking of their children. This is why they go after the public school system with particular vigor, they think that indoctrination is possible and they want to be the ones indoctrinating and not those crazy Liberals. I wish I could assure them that children only care about their education to the extent of what is going to get them a good grade for the class. Otherwise their minds are elsewhere.

So I was amused to read Chaya Raichik and Charlie Kirk’s intention of outbreeding the Left. They think they will rid the world of pre-marital sex, gays, transexuals, abortion, birth control and, most importantly, Marxists which is loosely defined as anyone to the left of Marjorie Taylor Greene if only children heard the right things. That this didn’t work in the past should be evidence enough but somehow Raichik and Kirk believe the there were these halcyon days were people actually behaved well and listened to their elders.

Good luck with that. My parents had five children. All having, at least, 12 years of Catholic education and, much to my parent’s chagrin, they got no practicing Catholics out of the deal. Think about that. They paid extra money to the Catholic Church to indoctrinate their children so that when we reached maturity, their children would be Catholic. Well, they struck out. They had 5 children and got no Catholics after all that effort. And, to top it off, we are all to the left of Marjorie Taylor Greene.

And my parents never gave up. When we returned for the summer during college, my father insisted that we attend Mass. Despite the fact that our attendance while away was iffy at best and more accurately described as seldom to never. Arguing with him was pointless. He’d rather us sit dumbly in church, not listening to the priest, day dreaming about sex and parties or anything other than the Roman Catholic Church and Jesus than us doing something constructive like watching TV. He though that some day while we were sitting in church that a bolt of lightening would strike us and we would realize the error of our ways. It never happened to me nor did it happen my brothers and sisters.

Indoctrination doesn’t work. Even if you think it is working, even if the child is nodding their heads and passing their religion classes with A’s, you really don’t know what is going on in the mind of the child. So, using my family history as an example, instead of 5 Christian Conservatives, the Catholic schools turned out 5 people with slightly different ideas, so Raichik and Kirk can breed away but they shouldn’t be surprised if their children decide to go to the Free Palestine Rally after going to a polymorphīs orgy.