songbird_becca

I finally got around to pursuing a replacement of what we in the Bostoniensis Household refer to as the Lorem Ipsum card, which was itself a fiasco.

(Recap: PayPal, an organization full of people who are not as smart as they think they are and blessed with perhaps the deepest marketing reach in the US into the small business market for financial services, decided to offer to its business customers the greatest credit card deal of their lifetimes, unlimited 2% cash back on all purchases, and the market responded with all the decorous restraint of a river full of pirhana given a whole cow. Apparently we collectively took PayPal for all they were worth – I heard of small tech companies running their cloud services bills to the tune of five figures a month across on the card – until sometime in Sept 2024, when the grown-ups at PayPal discovered they were hemorrhaging money, and very abruptly shut the party down and exit the business credit card market all together. The hard inquiry on my credit report lasted longer than the actual card did. At the time, it was pretty upsetting, but now it's just hilarious.)

A couple weeks ago I decided to apply for an American Express Blue Business Cash card, which has no fees and has a cash back offer. I have to say, absolutely all the customer service agents – five now – I've spoken to have been exemplary. Yeah, alas, that's foreshadowing.

Unfortunately their IT services are demented. First there was the fact they sent me a notification saying my application had been, and I quote, "DENIED", with a link to find out why, and when I followed the link, I discovered my application hadn't been denied: it said that they couldn't run a credit check on me because my credit reports were locked (true), so I need to go unlock the specified credit report and let them know so they could continue processing my application. So I called in and did it in real time with an agent on the line and was approved on the spot. Fabulous. "Okay, you will be getting your card at your home address in three to five business days." "Uh, it's a business card, could you send it to my business address?" "Oh, no, it won't let me send your initial card to any other than your home address." "*sigh* Very well."

My new Amex card arived at my home on like the 30th or 31st, while I had my nose to the grindstone writing. Friday the 1st, I opened the envelope to find my new card, and then to activate it at the website.

I couldn't get it off the paper.

Or rather: in attempting to get the card off the paper, I wound up with a layer of glue and paper stuck on the back of the card, such that I could not read any but the first five digits of the card number, and the CVV was completely covered. It was like the paper was superglued on. It was annealed.

So I called Amex, and discovered that you can't get through the phone tree to a a customer service agent about an extant account unless you can prove you're the owner of the account with, yes, the CVV. Which I can't read. Because there's a half thickness of paper glued across it.

Also, you can't set up an account on their website without the full card number, which I also couldn't read, because there was a half thickness of paper glued across it.

So I called the number for applying for a card in the first place, and threw myself on the mercy of the sales agent, explaining why I was calling them instead of regular customer service: I can't get to customer service without knowing the CVV, and the problem I need help with is that I can't read the CVV. "I know I shouldn't be laughing," he said, "But this is kind of hilarious." He kindly set up a three-way call with customer service so I didn't wind up wandering unattended in a phone tree maze, and once I was talking to the nice people who could replace my card, he ducked out.

The customer service agent and I then discovered that Amex doesn't let you replace a card, for some reason, until an account is 10 days old. My account was, as of that moment, nine days old. She gave me a direct number to business card services in the hopes I could avoid the phone tree of doom; the agent also gave me some pointers about pressing zero to get through it, which trick I had tried on the other phone tree and it hadn't worked.

Saturday I was busy sleeping. Today, I called the phone number I had been given for business card services, and despite the phone tree trying to authenticate with the CVV, I managed to confuse the robot enough it finally found me a human. I got to explain all over again about the disfigured card, and they transferred me again to card replacement, who put the order right in.

I observed to the agent that the issue with the glue and the card might have something to do with them sending it to my home, where I have a black mailbox on a south-facing side of the building, and we had been having a heatwave, and maybe they would like to send my replacement card to my business address, where the mailboxes are indoors in air conditioned comfort? She agreed that would be a much better plan.

So now I await my new Amex. It's a 2% cash back on purchases offer, but only up to the first $50k of purchases, so companies can't use their AWS bill to bleed them dry, so maybe it will stick around a little longer than PayPal's Lorem Ipsum card.

Speaking of credit card offers possibly too good to last, for any of you sad you missed out on getting your own bite of the cow:

I recently discovered that AAA – yeah, the American Automotive Association, the roadside assistance people – has a really great credit card offer. (This may be region specific – I'm in their "Northeast" region.) Their Daily Advantage Visa Signature card has 5% cash back on groceries, no annual fee. Only the first $10k of grocery purchases per year, and then 1% thereafter – which is good, actually: it has a chance of sticking around. But that does mean up to $500/year in cash back on grocery purchases. Given what's happening to the price of food and paper goods, having a permanent 5% discount on groceries is freaking fantastic. It also has a bunch of other features (3% cash back on gasoline or electric car charging stations, e.g.) and 1% cash back on everything else (no limit).

The interest rate is usurious, so under no circumstances do you ever want to carry a balance on it. But if you are the sort of person who can reliably always pay off their balance every month on time: permanent 5% off groceries!

And, no, apparently you do not need to be a AAA member to get the card. (Though we are.)

We got one and I just finished reading the fine print. Seems reasonable. We don't know that our grocery delivery service will be recognized by the card company (it's Comenity Capital Bank under the hood) as a grocery store, but the service is run by a grocery store, and the charges have appeared on the previous card under the name of the grocery store, so here's hoping. We'll know later this week – our next grocery order is for Wednesday, and the charge typically shows up a day or two after that.

Also, we've never had a card with Comenity, so we don't really know how their IT and customer service are. The web interface for account management is very nice. We'll report back as we know more.

I'm not generally in the practice of recommending credit cards, and I can't wholly recommend this one, having not really exercised it yet to discover its landmines. But what's going on here in the Bostoniensis household is that we're cashing in on our good credit scores to take advantage of financial offers that pinch our pennies for us, as a form of hardening our household financially against inflation and other future economic vicissitudes. This has generally meant getting credit with better terms (either lower rates or higher rewards), and opening High-Yield Savings Accounts for our nest egg and my estimated tax payments as a self-employed person.

Given that eating food is a pretty universal custom and groceries are getting scary-expensive, I thought I would mention for anyone who wants to do likewise, and is in a position to do so.

Canonical link: https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1879923.html


Americans, if you are not already onboard with the Epstein files scandal, I suggest you get onboard. Non-Americans, feel free to pitch in.

For about nine years now, our side – meaning everyone who thinks fascism is bad and has been voting accordingly – has been ardently wishing any of Trump's excesses would be regarded as a scandal that would take down his presidency, and been bewildered why that wasn't happening. Well, it is finally, finally happening, so get out of the bus and come push.

But before you do, there's some things you should know.



1.

Over on Pod Save America (2025 July 25, "EXPLOSIVE REVELATION in Trump’s Epstein Files Scandal") Dan Pfeifer had some things to say about how our side responds to the Epstein files which I think are incredibly important for us to all hear:

[3:15] [Jon Favreau:] Dan, how does this explosive revelation – that we all saw coming – change the nature of this almost 3-week old scandal?

[Dan Pfeiffer:] I would hope that this changes how everyone, ourselves included, talks and thinks about this scandal.

Because we've had a lot of fun about with this. We're going to have fun about it on this podcast, I hope. It is... There's something amusing about it.

But I feel like everyone has been treating this kind of from a perspective of...bemusement? Like, "Ah, look at these conspiracy pushing grifters who've been hoisted on their own petard!" right? Where the real crime here is hypocrisy and deception. Right? That they they say they released the Epstein files but they didn't do it. Trump's breaking a campaign promise, ha! Take that! The dog that caught the car, and all of that.

But I think we do really have to to take a step back, and I know this is going to sound like hyperbole, and I know it will, but I truly believe it: that this scandal, now with this revelation, this scandal, now, should be treated like Iran-Contra, Watergate, other major political scandals.

Because what we have here is the president of the United States, the attorney general, the intelligence community, the FBI director, and the Republican Congress, all part of a conspiracy to cover up information about the President of the United States' relationship with America's most notorious child sex trafficker.

[Jon Favreau, profoundly missing Pfeiffer's point:] And lying about it, right?

[Dan Pfeiffer:] And he lied– he lied to the American people.  Whether– either by direct order or by implicit request, the intelligence community! We have intelligence professionals, like, the most– what's theoretically supposed to be the most, one of the most apolitical parts of the government, concocting a bullshit report we're going to talk about to try to distract people from the political fallout of this. You have the Republican Congress shutting down and going home, for a month because they are so afraid to vote on a measure that could shed light – once again – on the President of the United States' relationship with America's most notorious child sex trafficker.

Like this really is a giant deal. Like, we need to know what is that hearsay Trump's worried about, in the files? What is in there? What do we not know about Trump's relationship? Like, what, what other steps have been taken to try to cover this up? Have there been efforts to alter or destroy the records? Right? What what other government officials have hid it? Who else has been lied to? Like, this is a big deal and it should be treated as a big deal, in my view.

[...]

[...] this is one of the clues that [5:44] you and I took as evidence that Trump knew his name, or at least suspected his name, was in the Epstein files, was he kept saying, "How are we going to know they're real? Maybe Comey and Biden and whoever else doctored them?" To put his name in there, right?

[...]

I mean the, the chain of events here is they were planning to release the files; they were on Pam Bondi's desk; they released that first tranche that had his name in it, that did not– that at that point they did not say We're not going to release more, because after that went out Pam Bondie said These are on my desk for review; she reviewed them, found something that she thought would be quite embarrassing to the president, and they changed their plan. And they've continued to believe that the massive amount of political fallout they've been getting now for almost 3 weeks is preferable to whatever they believe is in the files.

And:

[Jon Favreau:] How do you think Dems should [17:09] handle this issue over the next few months?

[Dan Pfeiffer:] I think our goal should be to keep the issue in the news as much as possible without putting too much spin on the ball. Right? I've seen other testing which shows that the most effective online posts are not Democrats talking about it. It is clips of Republicans or people who previously supported Trump – you know, podcasters, influencers – criticizing Trump for this. That's the most effective medium.

When we think about how we, like, if we are messaging– if you're an elected official and you're thinking about how to use your platforms, that's one way to do it. If we're thinking about it in the context of how all of us are messengers, and people in our lives, and you're sharing things in your group chat, the better thing to share is the clip of Andrew Schultz talking about this on Flagrant, than it is, you know, some Democrat ranting about this on MSNBC.  Or Pod Save America, or anywhere else, right? It's like the... Think about someone who is– who's motivations are not automatically questioned even in an issue on this one where they're, they're quite sincere.

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( Please try not to forget... [4,570 words] )

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I think this is important, and really insightful. Video and slightly excerpted transcript below.

Of note, Parkrose Permaculture is a crunchy secular leftist who is, herself, an ex-evangelical, and speaks with some personal authority about the world-view and culture.

2025 July 17: ParkrosePermaculture on YT: "MAGA mom apologizes for supporting Trump. Regrets her vote. How do we respond?" [9 min 43 sec]:

[0:00] Can we talk about that viral video of that young woman who got on here and was like, "Y'all, I'm really sorry that I voted for Trump. I'm really sorry that I was MAGA. I realize now that I was wrong"? This this video:

[0:12] [stitched video, white woman speaking to camera, with title "Official apology: I voted for Trump"]

I voted for Trump and I'm sorry. I am uneducated. I grew up in, um, public school system. I believed anything a teacher and a principal told me, and I didn't question it. And I walked in a straight line and I didn't use critical thinking skills, okay? I didn't read Project 2025, I have a disabled child, I'm a single mom of three. I believed what he said in his campaigns and I fucked up. And I'm sorry, okay?

I find the responses to that video on social media quite interesting, because on one hand you have folks who are like, I don't forgive you. And I understand that. People are angry. Trumpers did incredible damage to this country. Getting Trump and Elon Musk put in positions of power in the United States is killing millions of people, right? We know that just the cancellations to USAID are going to kill 14 million people according to a new piece out in the Lancet. Trump and Steven Miller are now freely enacting an ethnic cleansing in the United States. People have a right to be really, really angry about those things.

[1:21] I've also seen a lot of other creators who have my complexion [i.e. white -- S.] and most of them are women, who have said, "It's okay, girlfriend. We all make mistakes. We all have been hoodwinkedked in the past. Yeah, people in America are very much indoctrinated. And we forgive you. We forgive you."

[1:38] And I guess I, I disagree fundamentally with both of those takes. And here's why.

We need to give Trumpers a place to land as they are deconstructing. Maybe the Epstein files [...] [2:14] And so everybody's going to have– everybody who ends up walking away from MAGA is going to have the beginning of that journey. [...] Not everybody starts from the same baseline. I guarantee you for folks watching that woman, if you wanted to judge her, then you probably didn't start with the same level of intense indoctrination, you're probably not from the same kind of subculture that she's from. And you didn't start from the same place that she's starting at. Every journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And you've got to give her space to take that step.

[3:02] So, I, I do want to give her all of the praise for getting online with her real face and doing something that's very hard to do. She was willing to swallow her pride in a culture where we very much center the self and we're not good at taking responsibility. We are not good at eating crow. We're not good at facing the music, right? She did that. [...] She deserves all the praise for that. I don't want to in any way minimize the work, the risk that she undertook in being willing to own it and being willing to say, "I was deeply wrong." Again, especially because we live in a culture where people taking accountability is not something that we are particularly good at or used to.

[4:04] And so I very much appreciate the other creators who are saying, "Come over here with us," – Right? – "I'll be a safe landing spot for you. It is never too late to admit that you were wrong."

But I also think when we're looking at MAGA, who has caused tremendous, tremendous harm in this country, right? They have contributed to the rise of fascism. They have supported the takeover of this nation by a fascist dictator. I understand a lot of them were ignorant. They chose to be willfully ignorant. I understand a lot of them come from a background where they are taught to deny their own intuition, to subvert their own will, to listen to and unconditionally obey what an authority figure is telling them. I know that so many of these folks go to churches that are telling them that Donald Trump is God's anointed, that he has God's favor, that he is doing the Lord's work. I understand the heaviness, the intense pressure, the hard sell of the subcultures that these folks belong to, and I understand the strength of character that it takes in that context to admit that you were wrong and say, "I shouldn't have done this, and I'm sorry."

[5:11] But I would encourage all of those mostly white women creators who are telling this young woman, "It's okay, girl. We forgive you. Everybody makes mistakes": this was not a mistake. And it doesn't really matter that there were extenduating circumstances and indoctrination. Doesn't matter that somebody caused great harm without understanding the full depth and breadth of the trauma and the suffering they would inflict by supporting this regime.

I know I have brought it up many times since the election and it continues to be one of the most relevant books when we are discussing people leaving MAGA, when we are discussing people deconstructing from Trumperism, when we are discussing how it is that we fold these folks back into society, and that book is called The Sunflower by Simon Visenthal. It is an incredibly important and relevant book in these times.

The subtitle of the book is "On the Possibilities and Limits of Forgiveness." It is a book about a young Nazi soldier who is dying and he wants to be forgiven the sins that he committed in the Holocaust. But he is asking forgiveness of somebody who is not his victim. And the question that is being posed to all kinds of faith leaders and philosophers in this book is who has the right to extend forgiveness, and what does it mean to extend forgiveness and what does it mean to ask for forgiveness?

[6:35] And I know I've said this in other videos and I just I think it's so important to continue to reiterate it when we're looking at ex-Maga. I appreciate their apology. I appreciate their contrition. I appreciate that they have realized how much harm they've caused and that they want people to know they no longer support the things that they once voted for. Really important.

But at the same time, if we are not the injured party, do we have a right to forgive? And also, there's so much more to earning forgiveness, working to be forgiven, than just saying, "I'm sorry."

[7:12] I know in evangelical Christian culture it's like if somebody says "I'm sorry", it's like, "oh, we forgive you! That's what Jesus would do!" Other religions don't view it that way. But also I personally think if somebody is truly truly sorry for what they've done, they need to work to repair the harm that they've inflicted.

If somebody voted for Donald Trump and they now realize that they were wrong, [if] they now are asking you to forgive them, they need to demonstrate changed behavior. They need to now go volunteer for a Democratic campaign in the midterms. They need to commit to evangelizing on behalf of democracy and against the fascist regime of Donald Trump to all of the people in their subculture, in their community, all of the MAGA that they know. They need to go actively work for immigrants rights. They need to contribute financially to organizations like the ACLU, to progressive Democrats in the midterms, to organizations that are engaged in mutual aid for all of the people who are suffering because of what MAGA has done.

[8:27] It takes a measure of risk to get on the internet and say, "I'm so sorry. I regret my vote for Donald Trump." Yeah. And we want to acknowledge that they have taken that risk. We want to acknowledge the work that is done. We want to acknowledge how hard it is to take that first step on that journey. Absolutely true. But at the same time, they need to put their money where their mouth is.

They need to work to repair the harm that they have done. They need to work now. They need to sacrifice now. They need to demonstrate changed behavior because at the end of the day, words are cheap. People are suffering and dying. Now, if you truly understand the ramifications of what you have supported and what you have done, you must work to fix it.

[9:10] So, to that young woman and any other person who has left MAGA, who has taken that first step on your deconstruction journey: I applaud you. That's wonderful, that's wonderful. If your conscience is eating you up? If you have loads of regrets? The best way you can work to find peace in your heart, to find peace with the people you have harmed, is to get to work – fixing it. Because there's so much work for everybody to do. Join the resistance. Yep, come join the party. Yeah, we'll take you. We are a safe landing spot. We have lots of work for you to do here.