US Politics Mega-thread - Page 9857

On February 06 2018 17:37 Sermokala wrote:
Its not that insane to say that this drop should have occurred at some point during obamas years and that he prolonged the intrest rates going up in order to continue the economies growth.

Blaming the economy on one president or another is really the inane thing that goes on regardless.

On February 06 2018 17:37 Sermokala wrote:
Its not that insane to say that this drop should have occurred at some point during obamas years and that he prolonged the intrest rates going up in order to continue the economies growth.

Blaming the economy on one president or another is really the inane thing that goes on regardless.

On February 06 2018 10:22 Plansix wrote:


If anyone wants a preview of what congress is going to look like when crisis hits, watch PA. This is the current GOP brand: fuck the rule of law, win by any means necessary.

On February 06 2018 18:16 Acrofales wrote:

But then why was Trump talking about how well the economy was doing under his wise and best rule? If it was just propped up artificially by Obama's evil plot? Either you can (try to) take credit for the good and blame for the bad, or you can claim you haven't had time to change anything and it's all due to Obama. You don't get to do both.

On February 06 2018 17:37 Sermokala wrote:
Its not that insane to say that this drop should have occurred at some point during obamas years and that he prolonged the intrest rates going up in order to continue the economies growth.

Blaming the economy on one president or another is really the inane thing that goes on regardless.

On February 06 2018 20:58 Biff The Understudy wrote:
https://twitter.com/MillenPolitics/status/960632655187410944
Been waiting for it, getting those popcorns.

Meanwhile Trump lawyers are so aware that Trump has a dangerously tenuous relationship to reality that they don’t want him to talk to Mueler, because he can’t have a conversation without lying and that would open up the way to legal troubles.

Too bad it’s not forbidden to lie to the whole country, every day. That’s totally ok.

the failing New York Times. Sad!

Anchored in flood-prone areas in every American state are more than 2,500 sites that handle toxic chemicals, a New York Times analysis of federal floodplain and industrial data shows. About 1,400 are located in areas at highest risk of flooding.

As flood danger grows — the consequence of a warming climate — the risk is that there will be more toxic spills like the one that struck Baytown, Tex., where Hurricane Harvey swamped a chemicals plant, releasing lye. Or like the ones at a Florida fertilizer plant that leaked phosphoric acid and an Ohio refinery that released benzene.

Flooding nationwide is likely to worsen because of climate change, an exhaustive scientific report by the federal government warned last year. Heavy rainfall is increasing in intensity and frequency.

At the same time, rising sea levels combined with more frequent and extensive flooding from coastal storms like hurricanes may increase the risk to chemical facilities near waterways.

The Times analysis looked at sites listed in the federal Toxic Release Inventory, which covers more than 21,600 facilities across the country that handle large amounts of toxic chemicals harmful to health or the environment.

Of those sites, more than 1,400 were in locations the Federal Emergency Management Agency considers to have a high risk of flooding. An additional 1,100 sites were in areas of moderate risk. Other industrial complexes lie just outside these defined flood-risk zones, obscuring their vulnerability as flood patterns shift and expand.

The presence of chemical sites in areas vulnerable to flooding is a holdover from an age where the advantages to industry of proximity to rivers and oceans — for transportation and trade, or for a ready supply of cooling water — seemingly outweighed the risks.

“Waterfronts are changing as a result of sea level rise,” said Jeanne Herb, an environmental policy expert at Rutgers University who has researched hazards posed by climate-related flooding to industries in New Jersey. “More often than not, these are facilities are on the water for a reason,” she said. “So how do we make sure that there are protections in place? That’s the big question.”

Federal law does not explicitly require sites in floodplains that handle toxic chemicals to take extra precautions against flooding. Nor do most states or local governments have such requirements.

President Barack Obama signed an executive order in 2015 requiring planners of federally funded buildings, roads and other infrastructure to account for the impact of possible flooding from rising sea levels or more extreme precipitation. President Trump rescinded those rules last year.

The Times analysis focused on facilities on the federal toxic release database, which tracks sites handling chemicals that could be harmful to health and the environment if released. The list does not include properties like Superfund sites or wastewater facilities, or chemical sites where the predominant risks are fire or explosion, as opposed to toxic pollution.

The Times also examined reports of oil and chemical spills tallied by the National Response Center, which is run by the Coast Guard. Companies are required by law to report spills to the N.R.C., although that database has been criticized as incomplete.

Still, the data does provide a glimpse into the thousands of spills that occur across the country each year.

By the time the murky flood waters had receded from the sprawling Chevron Phillips chemical plant in Baytown, 34,000 pounds of sodium hydroxide and 300 pounds of benzene — both highly toxic — had escaped through a damaged valve. The plant, a joint venture between Chevron and Phillips 66, is one of many that filled the region’s streets with a stew of chemicals, debris and waste in the days after Hurricane Harvey and its torrential rains.

Employees later pumped some of the tainted water into 80 steel tanks. But most of the product “was lost in the floodwater,” David Gray, an Environmental Protection Agency spokesman based in Dallas, said in an email.

A Chevron Phillips spokesman, Bryce Hallowell, declined to give further details of the spill. He stressed that the plant “was at the center of this incredibly powerful storm.”

The chemical site lies in a moderate-risk flood zone, defined by the government as having a 0.2 percent chance of flooding in any year. It was at least the third time in three years that the Chevron Phillips facility blamed heavy downpours for chemical leaks.

The spills underscore the vulnerability of America’s coastal industries to rising sea levels and extreme weather. This is the case along the Gulf Coast because the country’s oil, gas and petrochemicals industries are concentrated there.

At least 46 facilities reported an estimated 4.6 million pounds of airborne emissions beyond state limits between Aug. 23 and Aug. 30, 2017, the week spanning Harvey’s approach and landfall in Texas. The Chevron Phillips plant also reported one of the largest Harvey-related emissions of chemicals into the air.

But even as flooding risks increase, chemical companies continue to build in vulnerable areas. A boom in plastics manufacturing has brought billions of dollars of investment to the Gulf shoreline. The Chevron Phillips site had been in the midst of adding a new $6 billion ethane processor, one of the biggest investments in the Gulf’s fast-growing petrochemicals industry.

Despite repeated flooding, the chemicals manufacturer still considered the site, at Cedar Bayou, to be “the optimal location” for its new ethane facility, Mr. Hallowell said. He declined to detail protections that have been considered or installed, or whether they were designed to withstand future floods.

On February 06 2018 21:40 mustaju wrote:
Fortunately, that "DOW joans" tweet is fake. Unfortunately, the "not clapping for me could be called treason, why not?" one is not. The state of political discourse looks very hard to fix right now, and not a lot of people care about fixing it right now.

If I had to guess, an optimistic timeline for centrists goes like this:
8 years to fix the institutional damage Trump has done.
8 years of bipartisan government with a conscious goal to strengthen the center.

On February 06 2018 21:40 mustaju wrote:
Fortunately, that "DOW joans" tweet is fake. Unfortunately, the "not clapping for me could be called treason, why not?" one is not. The state of political discourse looks very hard to fix right now, and not a lot of people care about fixing it right now.

If I had to guess, an optimistic timeline for centrists goes like this:
8 years to fix the institutional damage Trump has done.
8 years of bipartisan government with a conscious goal to strengthen the center.

On February 06 2018 23:13 Biff The Understudy wrote:

Is it? Should have checked, my sincere apologies to everyone here. I get mad when people transmit fake stuff without checking, that’s a lesson in humility.

On February 06 2018 23:16 Plansix wrote:
They could celebrate right up until the next pay period, when they would find out their employer couldn’t make pay roll. I’m no fan of Wall Street, but an economic implosion isn’t good for anyone.


To be fair, the dude who faked it said he should have known better given how stupid all of Trump’s previous tweets were and how hard it is to check tweets by date.