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They’re very different on policy, personality, values.
This is the kind of comparison that makes no sense.
One could say that Bill Clinton was a step in the direction of Trump.
Really it’s just seeing what one wants to see.
The blue elephant in the room.
Every living president hates Trump, W. included. That doesn’t mean there is no trend.
Every living president hates Trump, W. included. That doesn’t mean there is no trend.
There are historical events and reactions and counter-reactions to them that obviously bring us to a place that Americans would vote for Trump, first in the primary and then in the general election. I only object to the silly one-sided logic of Bush naturally led to Trump. The rejection of moderate respectable people like McCain and Romney also got us to this point.
The blue elephant in the room.
Every living president hates Trump, W. included. That doesn’t mean there is no trend.
There are historical events and reactions and counter-reactions to them that obviously bring us to a place that Americans would vote for Trump, first in the primary and then in the general election. I only object to the silly one-sided logic of Bush naturally led to Trump. The rejection of moderate respectable people like McCain and Romney also got us to this point.
Obama was a moderate and respectable person. Those moderate respectable people didn’t mobilize the Republican base. Trump did. That says something terrible about Republicans.
The Person in Question
Fair point (to both mrebo and mfm). As Barack Obama said himself, the minds of the American people (I’m paraphrasing) work like a pendulum. There is no straight line. Another part of it is a rejection of Obama’s ideals, or the liberal’s ideals, after it being what I’d call the dominant way of thinking for much of the decade.
Obama wasn’t liberal, the right-wing media and the Republican party just convinced conservatives that he was. They screamed “Socialist!” for eight years. Conservatives genuinely think that the Democratic party is liberal even though it is corporate as can be. It’s kind of socially liberal, but I have no tolerance or respect for social conservatives these days.
The Person in Question
Well, blame Reagan for that. The man created a political norm that’s existed right up until now. I’m sure historians will debate whether it ended with Obama or Trump. It’s worth remembering that when Obama was elected in 2008, being for gay marriage was actually the unpopular option. The fact that’s changed, on top of other things, is enough for there to be a debate there.
Good news: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/22/opinion/flint-lead-poisoning-water.html
The blue elephant in the room.
Good news: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/22/opinion/flint-lead-poisoning-water.html
Children were unwillingly and unknowingly taking lead, a known dangerous substance. I’d call that poisoning. It may have fortunately done no serious damage, but it is still poisoning.
Good news: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/22/opinion/flint-lead-poisoning-water.html
Children were unwillingly and unknowingly taking lead, a known dangerous substance. I’d call that poisoning. It may have fortunately done no serious damage, but it is still poisoning.
The article gives good reasons for not attaching that label.
Here’s a story from just a couple days ago: https://www.nj.com/essex/index.ssf/2018/06/60m_to_remove_lead_from_newarks_water.html
Lots of us are unaware of what’s in our water. Your local testing results should be available if you’re interested. It seems a tad overboard to say we’re being poisoned.
The blue elephant in the room.
Could have sworn that what happened in Flint was worse that the average lead problem. Perhaps I am wrong.
Could have sworn that what happened in Flint was worse that the average lead problem. Perhaps I am wrong.
That’s a point of the article: measuring the lead levels people actually had and not only what was feared to have happened.
At the time there were measurements in some homes that were ridiculously high. And fault was appropriately placed on public officials who made a hasty and ill-informed decision to switch water supplies. But statistically, this showed that there was not significantly elevated lead levels in people.
A problem identified in the article is that we don’t focus on the fact this is a national issue. We fixate on these singular events with a single identifiable decision but ignore the same issue as it happens all over all the time.
It’s the way people pay close attention to mass shootings but not the many other gun deaths.
When problems are big and diffuse I think many people have a harder time getting a handle on them.
The blue elephant in the room.
I actually agree with you. Most people like to ignore the larger problem. We don’t just have a mass-shooting problem in America, we have an enormous gun violence problem that includes murder, attempted murder, accidental death, legalized murder (stand your ground), suicide, etc. etc. But people don’t have the mental capacity to care about all that shit.
The Person in Question
Taking away all the guns would solve several of those problems!
Yep.
The Person in Question
I don’t even want to do that, I just want extremely strict regulation on who can own one and which households can have them. I think all gun purchases need to be done under the supervision of the federal government and there needs to be a concerted effort on the part of the government to round up and destroy all of the illegal weapons floating around on the black market. It’s very complicated but for now we’ll just continue to do nothing as Republicans go down the list of other things to blame like video games, pornography, atheism, evolution, parenting, rock music, too many exits, and other stupid shit.
The Person in Question
Flint is a mess, unfortunately. The fact that the problem has gone on for over a year, let alone four, is a disgrace. Michigan’s governor can’t run again, and the seat is up for grabs this year. I’ve looked at the candidates and most of them are not great. One of the Republican candidates, and a popular one, wants to increase spending to fix roads. That’s all well and good, but he also wants to eliminate the income tax entirely. What? A bit contradictory, I’d think. On top of that, he is pushing for a Pro-Life license plate, something Snyder vetoed “disgracefully”. This guy might win!
But it’s not poison…?
Indeed. Still, that was due to incompetence and negligence, not as some kind of terrible plot. I don’t think this guy would’ve handled it any better, and he doesn’t seem as, uh, sane.
The deaths from the crisis were originally reported as around 19, but this says it could be as high as 119.
Eh it’s just an extra 1.
The blue elephant in the room.
But it’s not poison…?
The article I posted said there wasn’t lead poisoning. That was a huge fear and recognized as an obvious thing authorities should have recognized.
Legionnaires and pneumonia were said to be the result of using additional chlorine in the water that corroded metals like iron that allowed bacteria to flourish.
Still bad but if we care about these issues the details matter.
The blue elephant in the room.
Ha!
But it’s not poison…?
The article I posted said there wasn’t lead poisoning.
That’s not what it said. It said the term “poisoned” inaccurately characterized the reality. It did admit that lead is a powerful neurotoxicant, that no amount of lead is healthy, and that lead in the water of certain homes was ridiculously high. But then it went on to say that reports regarding the CDC’s “reference level” of lead made people assume said reference level was a level beyond which people are poisoned and thus incur irreversible brain damage, which is grossly inaccurate; and that the majority of people in Flint didn’t have very high lead levels at all—especially compared to the whole country 20, 40, or 60 years ago.
It didn’t say there wasn’t poisoning; it said the information given needed to be more informative about the actual facts and what they really mean because the event wasn’t as bad as it sounded.
…I still don’t understand what a reference level is.
chyron just put a big Ric pic in your sig and be done with it.
