Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun...

[Ghengis Jon]

I wouldn't expect anything different from a dyed-in-the-wool Progressive.

Ouch. That was mean.

[lineygoblue]

There is actually hope for Strangelove, seeing that he has recognized the musical genius that is Terry Jacks.

Winnipeg's own song bird.

[THE_WIZARD_]

There is no hope for dsl...dumbass...and the fact you think that...leads me to believe there is no hope for you...

Now kindly shaddup

[lineygoblue]

You stfu, or I'll blow the whistle on you ...

[Mike]

However, he is responsible (you can argue how much) for the Flint Water disaster (there are still quite a few homes that have lead issues in the water to this day).

Um. NO. No. No.... and hell no.

First, one must understand why the city was under an emergency manager - which was not Flint's first time. The reason is because of decades of malfeasance and neglect. Dayne Walling was mayor at the time of the water switch but the reason they were managed by a state financial manager was because his predecessor, convicted felon Don Williamson, (Flint's own Trump) diverted 10s of millions of dollars from the water fund - that was meant to maintain the water treatment and sewage plants - to pay for city services. Because while revenues were plummeting, the city couldn't bear the idea of keeping spending in line with revenue. So Williamson created a shell game to keep up city services and stay in office. Keep in mind, this is a guy that used to go up to the north end and hand out bags of cash to the pastors of black churches as "city grants". LOL.

So it was around this time that state auditors realized the books were cooked - well done, at that. So that's a little of the back story of why Flint was under an emergency manager and why they needed to cut spending. For decades they got their water from Detroit but the expiring contract was being negotiated and Detroit was charging a lot. Flint decided (correctly, IMO) to join the new Keregondi line that would bring water from Lake Huron into Flint and Genesee County, essentially cutting out the middle man. The problem was Detroit got pissed and terminated the contract leaving Flint very little time to find an alternate source as the KWA line was still being constructed. This is where everything goes off the rails.

At this time in 2013/14, the city hadn't updated its master plan since the 1950s! Because Flint. The existing master plan from the 1950s called for using the Flint River as the back-up water source. I can't imagine the river was very clean back then either. For those unfamiliar, the there were huge GM plants all along the river dating back to the early 1900s. It is little more than an industrial sewer. I just moved back to Michigan when this switch was taking place and I 100% thought it was a joke when someone told me about it. How could anyone in their right mind think this was a good idea?

Allow me to introduce some of the geniuses running the city prior to and during the water switch. Wantwaz Davis served 20 years in prison for 2nd degree murder and was elected to City Council a year after his release. His term was ended prematurely when he was busted for drunk driving with dope in the car and was sent back on parole violation. Then there's long time councilman Eric Mays. Here's a very short clip of some of his antics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D1oKfzJlEXA

He is routinely led out of council meetings by the police. In fact, the department had to have an officer assigned to council meetings just to babysit him. He pawned his city-issued laptop 9 times and was arrested for drunk driving when he was found going the wrong way on the expressway with 4 flat tires. For real. You can't make this stuff up.

The emergency manager at the time was Darnell Earley. This is the basis for the narrative of "its the State's fault" because he was appointed by Gov. Snyder. So, yeah, I guess I can understand the outrage stemming from the Republican governor sending in one of his rich frat buddies to run the city. Probably a hedge fund manager type that hates poor people. KIDDING! Darnell Early was a former Flint City Administrator and was elevated to mayor when Woodrow Stanley was recalled due to rampant mismanagement. From his wiki page:

In April 2001, Earley was appointed the city administrator of Flint, Michigan.^[2] After the recall of the Mayor Woodrow Stanley, Earley became temporary mayor from March 5 to August 6, 2002.^[2] Part of his term was under an emergency financial manager, Edward J. Kurtz. He continued as city administrator under James W. Rutherford until July 2004.^[2]

He also served as Natural Resources Commissioner under Gov. Granholm from 2005 - 2008. So to summarize: Governor Snyder appointed a black Democrat with deep ties to the city to become his Emergency Manager - the 2nd time Earley held the post. It was Darnell Earley who ultimately made the call to use the Flint River but City Council had also voted 7-1 in favor of leaving the Detroit system and switching to the Keregnondi line knowing full well that the Flint River was the back-up plan. They have done a nice job deflecting blame to the state and under the law (at the time) their decisions did not carry weight without the EM's approval. Following Earley in the role of Flint Emergency Manager was Ed Kurtz. You may recall him from the snippet above. Notice a pattern? It was also his 2nd time in the same role. These were not guys sent in from the basement of the Heritage Foundation. They are lifelong democrats with years of experience in Flint City government.

Now it's coming out that the severity of the problem wasn't nearly as bad as thought in the first place!

https://www.mlive.com/news/flint/202...st-feared.html

we’ve found that lead levels in the water were not as bad as first feared,” the commentary says. “Water lead levels did increase sharply during the first few months of the water crisis, but for most of the time the city was receiving its water from the Flint River, the average levels of lead in drinking water were indistinguishable from those before the switch.”

A few months, huh? Another of the initial researchers from Flint's Hurley Hospital has changed the terminology from "lead-poisoned" to "lead-exposed" due to the far lower amounts of lead as initially thought. Then there's this:

71 Michigan Water Systems Have Higher Lead Levels than Flint - that's from 3 years ago and the levels have been consistently dropping.
https://www.mlive.com/news/flint/201...stems_had.html

Which probably has something to do with this:

The city has failed to test enough valid water samples for lead and copper levels in the first half of this year, the third such violation of the Safe Drinking Water Act since 2019.
https://www.mlive.com/news/flint/202...d-samples.html

I wonder why they didn't want to submit the samples? Maybe it had something to do with this??

State of Michigan settles with Flint for $600 million.
https://apnews.com/article/be582ed78...ab29cd1132558e

That $600 is for citizens that were subjected to the shitty water. The city has also received somewhere between $600 - $800 million from the state and federal government for lead line replacement and infrastructure upgrades. But... Flint's gonna Flint...

A Full Third of Flint's Emergency $390 Million Water Funds Did Not Go to Clean Water
https://dailycaller.com/2020/01/15/f...oney-spending/

About $129 million was spent on economic development and “social development,” nearly as much as the $144 million spent on safe drinking water, according to the state budget tally

And then there's this:

EPA says $87 million banked for Flint water crises still hasn't been spent. This article is from March of this year.
https://www.mlive.com/news/flint/202...een-spent.html


So all totaled, Flint has been allocated monies for various activities for water infrastructure and related health issues in the neighborhood of $1.2 - $1.4 BILLION. This is in a city of slightly less than 100,00 people with an annual operating budget around $60 - $65 million. And with all this money, they put themselves behind schedule through sheer incompetence and trying to funnel contracts to minority-owned businesses at the expense of the citizens they are supposed to serve. I can post about that in-depth as well if you are interested. But wait! That's not enough!

Flint Residents Sue Banks, Accuse Them of Helping Creating Water Crisis. It's the BANKS' FAULT! There is an actual lawyer that filed this case. Presumably one who graduated law school and passed the bar exam.
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/ne...it/5912871002/

People around the rest of the state are a little sick and tired of sending their tax dollars to a city that is so tragically mismanaged. If Flint is unhappy with their lot in life, they need to look in the mirror.

[THE_WIZARD_]

You stfu, or I'll blow the whistle on you ...

I'm sure that post was inadvertent...

[lineygoblue]

Good information, Mike.

Flint has been horribly run since the mid 70's.

GM started leaving in the 80's and most people felt that in doing so, GM was giving Flint the middle finger for the old sit down strikes back in the 30's. While that may have been true to some degree, I think GM just decided to leave a city that was obviously dying from mismanagement. I'm sure there were other reasons as well, but the leadership mismanagement had to be part of the thinking.

Between the crooks Woodrow Stanley and Don Williamson, Flint was thoroughly raped and left for dead. Stanley and Williamson were the Flint versions of Kwame Kilpatrick

If it weren't for U-M Flint, the downtown area would be a ghost town.

[THE_WIZARD_]

So that phrase "In Like Flint" is just a bunch of hooey?

[Dr. Strangelove]

A member of the Boogaloo Bois charged by the Feds with setting fire to, looting, and firing upon that police station in Minneapolis that burned.

Hunter was communicating that night with a fellow Boogaloo Boy out in California named Steven Carillo. Hunter boasted that he had helped burn down a police station. Carillo responded that he had done better; hours earlier he had murdered one federal officer and wounded another at the Federal building in Oakland, CA.

https://www.startribune.com/charges-boogaloo-bois-fired-on-mpls-precinct-shouted-justice-for-floyd/572843802/

[THE_WIZARD_]

...

[Jeff Buchanan]

If their reporting is to be believed, and that is certainly in question, China has achieved elimination of the virus as measured by the number of tests that it takes to discover 1 new infection. When it gets above 250 (Germany started easing restrictions at that point) the virus is considered controlled (that is the same thing as saying the % positivity rate is 2.5%.) China recently reported they were, on average within their states, 1000 tests to find 1 positive (1% positivity). That is eradication.

Now, it's important to understand China could have cared less about social consequences when they welded infected persons inside their apartments. Long months ago, an article appeared tha recounted the terrible toll on Chinese citizens on the ruthless way they locked their country down in January - about April. Did Xi give a shit about this? Fuck no. So, I hate it when it is crowed that China has shown the world how to defeat the virus. Fuck that, They are ruthless communists.

Each approach has costs. If you lock the economy down, the economic costs can be staggering. We're seeing how staggering in certain sectors of the US and global economy. Along with this shit, there's immense human suffering brought about by dozens of factors, e.g, mental illness, bankruptcy, poverty, homelessness, social unrest the list is long. OTH, the costs of accepting a level of infection that doesn't overwhelm hospitals, is excess deaths. The number of deaths due to C-19 are not insignificant. The math isn't with this approach either. Sure, it's 2% CFR at worse, maybe lower than that but 2% of 400 million is a lot of dead people.

Posters here have said it's shit sandwich. Indeed it is. I don't want to die. I'm not dead. There are reasons for that and some of them involve life long personal choices. That I'm an advocate for Americans taking personal responsibility for actions they have control over, you knnow where I stand on the choices America is facing.

[Hannibal]

I totally believe the CCP.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Breaking ...... J&J and AZ have both been approved by the FDA for resumption of Phase 3 Vaccine Trials. You'll recall AZ then J&J paused trials after in AZ's case, a possible adverse reaction to their vaccine, in J&J's case, a QC issue that may have caused an illness in a trial participant. AZ showed the FDA that the trial participants illness was not related to the vaccine. Same with J&J.

Two things:

(1) The FDA is doing it's job. Rumors that they aren't are untrue and these falsehoods dangerously support the anti-vaxer arguments. You want to restrict the 2021 CFB season? This is the way to do it. Be against a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine - key to developing heard immunity. That the FDA is allegedly being pressured by the WH probably is true.

(2) Operation Warp Speed is working splendidly. The Trump administration is not getting enough credit for this. If I were a fly on the wall in early strategy meetings on the pandemic response, I could imagine that the CDC and the WH argued about lock-down v. no lock-down and the heard immunity argument ...... but the heard immunity argument has more-or-less morphed into a more reasonable and attainable objective of no lock downs and let it spread in the under 40 crowd while protecting the vulnerable argument and getting a vaccine developed and distributed.

This is not a crazy idea although the fear of the virus spread by the liberal media and anti-vaxer disinformation being spread by social media has made it sound like one. Governor Desantis has articulated this approach in FL and, from what I can tell given the data available to me in the public space, it's being implemented and it is working...... if % positivity and other metrics are indicators that it is working. Other R governors might be approaching a response to the virus in this way and in their states but aren't as vocal about it. Why is that? Because they don't want to get hammered by their political opponents with axes to grind. The CDC, in the face of Anthony Fauci and the administration in the face of Donald Trump are the figure heads still arguing about which of these two approaches is the best one.

I give Desantis credit. If he could do more to get the travel and leisure sector in FL operating at a level greater than 30% of capacity, he'd really have something to crow about. He's tried but, again, people are scared to travel and the CDC has made advice about protecting yourself from contracting C-19 easy to misinterpret. They've argued that gatherings > 20 people (includes flying in a commercial aircraft, going to a theme park, attending a sporting event or cruising) are high risk for super spreader events and they are if there are no mitigation measures in place. They ARE NOT UNSAFE if those conducting such events implement mitigation measures and require those gathering to distance and mask. Not hard to understand but officials we might count on to tell us this aren't doing that.

I'm still frustrated by new case numbers driving the media narrative ....... This summary appeared in my most trusted news feed, The Economist, this morning: More than 83,000 people in America tested positive for covid-19 on Friday, smashing a single-day record set in July. There have been nearly 442,000 new cases reported in the country over the past seven days.

OK, they forgot to mention the US also tested more people in the past seven days than previously tested. While it is true that not all increases in new cases are due to increased testing and some of it is a result of community spread, failing to contextualize new case numbers is a major journalistic error. Even the Economist, an example of normally balanced journalism has learned the value of shocking it's readers. They did write this after the above ......

......The midwest—home to several battleground states in the upcoming presidential election—is driving the virus’s resurgence. Correctly noting these reports of high case numbers in the US have significant political undertones and implications for PDJT.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Re the two arguments I presented above. This is the title of the article I spoke of last week: Should covid be left to spread among the young and healthy?

It is a great article that lays out the positions of the scientists backing the Great Barrington Declaration (for) and their critics behind the John Snow Memorandum (against) —which, in essence, is an argument over whether to permit a controlled burn of the disease or to attempt to suppress it.

Worth a read if you're willing to jump through the hoops of getting to it. https://www.economist.com/science-an...arketing-cloud