Don't blame me, I voted for the other guy. (Politics General)

Dustcan
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Random news.
 
Manchin says he does not support the removal or weakening of the filibuster. Supposedly he’s also against returning it to a talking filibuster.
 
 
In case you haven’t heard of it, Florida is facing a problem with one of their artificial toxic lakes having its radioactive walls breaking so they’re draining the toxic waters into the nearby bay. Which is expected to have disastrous results on the ecosystem and a non-zero chance of getting into drinking water, as well as guaranteeing an exasperation of the already existing problem with red tides. Florida heavily relies on its beaches for much of its tourism revenue by the way.
 
Yeah. “Man made toxic lakes with radioactive walls” is a sentence we have to say in today’s America.
 
Every day the joke about following Bugs Bunny’s lead gets less and less a joke.
 
 
In more South Park news, Donald Trump’s very real digital donation pledge calls you a defector and threatens to tell Trump on you if you uncheck the weekly donation option.
 
The worst part is how effective you know this will be on his Qult.
Background Pony #A0EA
Matt Gaetz’ partner in paying for sex with underage girls is preparing to strike a plea deal, likely to roll on congressman FratBoy.
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@igotnopicks  
Not really. It was an old Phosphorous plant that has been closed. They are draining it now but the idea that it is anything super weird or crazy is misguided. It’s a byproduct of plant that has been there for years, and what they are draining into the bay isn’t radioactive. We don’t really know what the effects will be but assuming it will be but the state is reacting appropriately to this.
Ciaran
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友情は魔法だ
@igotnopicks
Not really. It was an old Phosphorous plant that has been closed. They are draining it now but the idea that it is anything super weird or crazy is misguided. It’s a byproduct of plant that has been there for years, and what they are draining into the bay isn’t radioactive. We don’t really know what the effects will be but assuming it will be but the state is reacting appropriately to this.
 
While technically correct, your reply is fairly disingenuous - especially given that this exact same thing has happened with the exact same pond in the past, and given that the reason it’s happening THIS time is because they tried to fix the acidity problems without dealing with the underlying problems with the broken liner.
 
The stack at Piney Point is a phosphogypsum stack, which contains uranium and thorium which decay into radium which decays to radon. There’s undoubtedly some polonium in there, too, because there’s billions of tons of waste involved. And because the phosphogypsum is concentrated, the stack is more radioactive than the original rock it was mined from. [source]. While it is true none of the solid waste is being intentionally diverted to the bay, the water flowing out of those stacks still may be carrying some of those byproducts. Plus, the stacks have been ‘dusting’ the surrounding area with radioactive byproducts as long as they have stood, sometimes more than originally intended because they were intentionally trying to draw down the water levels until the acidity became the primary issue.
 
More importantly, the potassium and nitrogen in the waste water, and the acidity of it, may cause extensive problems in Tampa Bay, including a red tide.
 
So, I think it’s fair to say something ‘weird or crazy’ is going on in Florida. These are not harmless piles of overburden, and DEP has been working for more than a decade to reduce the acidity of the water, and the level of the water, in the ponds (although, due to the attempts to reduced the acidity of the water in the stack they were within a foot of maximum capacity before the current leak was found). [source]
 
Happily, the evacuation orders have been lifted and it sounds like local wells have not been affected.
 
And, fwiw, this exact thing has happened before, although last tine Cadmium (a persistent toxic carcinogen) in the discharge was more of a concern than anything else.
 
Honestly, every time Piney Point springs a leak, something “weird and crazy” happens. Then the state pumps in yet more millions of dollars and ‘everything is find again’ until it leaks next time.
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@Ciaran  
Everything you said about the phsphorous byproduct is true, but state officials are reporting specifically that the water runoff is not radioactive.
 
It has elevated levels of phosphorous and nitrogen and is acidic, but does not appear to be toxic. It is not radioactive.
 
The state is monitoring the runoff into the bay to measure levels and prepare, however reports that it is already a huge disaster are premature. This is something that needs to be dealt with, and has been since I lived in the area, but the biggest concern of a break appears to be much calmer. My comment on it not being weird or crazy applies to the idea that a phosphorous plant has waste like this, that part is normal, what comes next is how it is handled. Criticizing Florida for it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
Ciaran
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@Background Pony #FECC  
Agreed.
 
It would be nice though to invent a time machine and show the boomers that thought this would never be a problem how many millions of tax dollars this is ending up costing their kids.
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@AaronMk
 
I love that these new Ulsters are angsty kids who are mad that some Northerners are pointing out the flaws of Brexit.
 
So they decided to become the Walmart off-brand bizzaro version of “babbies first IRA” and toss a couple fire bombs/spray paint a couple buildings.
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I love that these new Ulsters are angsty kids who are mad that some Northerners are pointing out the flaws of Brexit.
So they decided to become the Walmart off-brand bizzaro version of “babbies first IRA” and toss a couple fire bombs/spray paint a couple buildings.
 
when you when your wild ass loyalist blackmen/boys, but room-temp iq American conservative posters call you antifa
Zincy
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In Vino Veritas
Attacking Coke and Delta is a big risk for Republicans, since both companies have large footprints in several 2022 battleground states.
Background Pony #E201
Apparently some Cuomo staffers are saying they didn’t acually volunteer to work on his book, but had to. It’s odd that these other issues, including sexual assault cases, distract from his COVID problems. The man might have been the worst governor during the pandemic, but the focus is on other screwed up things he did. Hopefully he’ll just lose reelection and we can forget about him.
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[screams in German]
Prince Philip is dead but the Queen of England is still alive somehow. At this point, I might actually believe that she’s stealing the life force of others.
Dustcan
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@Scrabbleman
 
[Insert ‘Queen Elizabeth is immortal’ meme here]
 
 
In more “This is the voice of Conservatism” news, in a time of economic strife and general uncertainty Tucker Carlson is triggered AF that United Airlines has hired women.
 
Tucker Carlson has accused an airline of “suffering from an incurable brain disease called wokeness” after it announced a recruitment drive to hire more women and people of colour as pilots.
 
You know all those canned responses against Affirmative Action? Yeah, those comprised his entire rant.
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I’ll just put this here…
 
I understand the frustration but this kind of nonsense needs to stop. In general they[Republicans] are not evil (although some certainly are) and with the rise of Trump they are at their nadir but what they really are is the Party Against Everything You Hold Dear. That doesn’t make them evil.
Right now, on some conservative board, someone is complaining that the Democratic Party is evil because they support abortion, wealth redistribution, gun control, and minority riots. They’re just as wrong.
Sometimes I hate this enlightened centrist position more than I hate the active evil of the Trumpist movement. You think you’re offering some sort of wise outsider perspective that we can’t see, but the reality is that you’re clinging to a dogmatic position that both sides are the same no matter how much it ignores reality because it makes you feel that you’re insightful and above it all and that things are operating within the range of normal.
Let’s use this logic with another example. Let’s say 30% of our society was flat-Earthers. Genuinely believed that the Earth was flat, and everything that contradicts them is this huge conspiracy, and that everyone who believes the Earth is round is either evil and in on the conspiracy or stupid and gullible and fell for their propaganda.
Now, you have news/propaganda stations feeding into this false earth belief, and message boards where flat Earthers all talk about how stupid and gullible the round Earthers are.
Then on a message board - say, just like this one - someone makes a post ranting about how stupid flat Earthers are, and how much allowing them to spread their beliefs is damaging society by making people question the very idea of the truth, of a shared reality we all live in.
Here’s what you’d say in that thread: “Oh come on guys. People who believe the earth are flat aren’t stupid, they just have a different idea about the topic than you do that’s just as valid. You say they’re stupid but if you go over to a flat earther board, they’d have a thread like this saying you’re stupid too! Both sides think the other one is stupid and wrong and you can’t even see that that makes you both the same!”
Here’s the problem with your logic. Reality matters. The Earth IS round. The flat earthers and the round earthers aren’t equally valid, equally smart, equally dedicated to the truth.
And the same thing happens here. Non-Trumpists are far more attached to reality than Trumpists. They’re far more motivated by creating the best outcome for society rather than just trying to spite their enemies. They have a much greater dedication to seeing the truth rather than being sucked into every conspiracy theory and just deciding to reshape reality in however they want to see it. They are far more empathetic to their fellow man and want to create a functional and fair society.
Your position is dogmatic. You essentially are immune to reality. For instance, you would’ve been making this same argument 10 years ago, right? And in the last 10 years, the Republicans have absoutely changed and gone off the deep end. So how has your argument changed in the last 10 years? It hasn’t. You’re still giving us the same “republicans are just as interested in being good-faith improvers of society as you are, they just have a different perspective” logic even after witnessing them devolve into a far more hateful, less empathetic, less sane group right before your eyes. If they can change that much, and yet your position that they are just as good and valid as their opponents remains the same, then your position cannot change. It cannot adapt to, or acknowledge, reality.
If the Trumpists got 10 times worse, and just started murdering every non-Trumpist they saw, you’d still be talking about how both sides are the same and we just can’t see it. And if they created a superweapon that could destroy the entire Earth and they were just about to press the button because they were so motivated by hatred and spite of the other that they were willing to destroy the entire Earth just to kill people they hated, up until the second they pushed the button you’d be telling us how they’re good people who have opinions just as valid as ours and they think about us the same way we think about them and in no way are we superior and we’re all naive because we can’t see that… blam, Earth explodes
 
This is a post made in response to a centrist’s “both-sides” argument. Thoughts?
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@KikkoMan  
The response is pretty poor. His analogy doean’t work since he is comparing flat earth, a scientifically disproven theory, to what amounts to philosophy.
 
If you look at abortion and gun control, broadly speaking neither position is objectively evil. The real problem comes from both sides picking evidence they like and championing it as proof. Part of the issue is Democrats, Republicans, and Libertarians essentially speak different political languages. So his analogy fails.
 
The second piece, that Republicans are the ones who have significantly changed, is also wrong. It’s actually the Democratic party that has shifted more then the Republicans. That doesn’t mean they are any worse or more wrong though. One thing the Democrats moved farther left on is gay marriage, as a libertarian I am thankful they did. I think it is a good thing they moved left on this topic.
 
That post is a partisan arguing for their partison POV. In many cases Republicans are worse theb Democrats, Georgia for example, but trying to find an objective weight of good vs bad is impossible. More importantly it plays right into the hand of those people in charge. If you convince the voters that the other side is truly evil they will vote for whatever trash you put forward, this way no real change can happen.
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…that Republicans are the ones who have significantly changed, is also wrong. It’s actually the Democratic party that has shifted more then the Republicans.
Eh, I suppose that’s technically right. Republicans’ change is that they’re now more willing to say the quiet part out loud.
Dustcan
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@KikkoMan
 
I disagree with the implication he posits that “All Trumpists and Republicans are racists”, but he’s far from wrong on the rest of his assertion on Centrists.
 
Still, as one person put it “Not all Trump supporters are racist. But all of them think racism isn’t a deal breaker.”
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