Echoes

Over fifty years of data show a peak in PFAS (also known as "forever chemicals") content in seabird eggs in the 90s, followed by a decrease as regulations went into effect. The most recent findings show a 70% decrease of most common PFAS.

We are making genuine progress! Producers are dramatically altering how much they use PFAS and how much gets released in effluent, but also there's a lot better understanding of how to remove PFAS from the environment!

In the primary election, your voters are either all registered Democrats (closed primary) or voters who habitually lean Democratic (open primary). You'll sometimes get a Republican voting Democratic in an open primary just to ratfuck, but not by huge margins. Primary voters are much more engaged and politically aware than the general electorate.

Much as they may deny it, these bozos are clearly all trying to emulate Obama. Barack Obama's win in 2008 was a fluke, and I don't think leftists realize that. I was a teenager and had a front-row seat to how bad shit was, although I didn't understand it all at the time (I have since read research about his campaign and he was underwater before key endorsements). George W. Bush was considered a national disgrace. "Fannie Mae" and "Freddie Mac" were household names, the housing bubble was bursting, and we were on the brink of the Great Recession. And EVEN SO, Hillary Clinton had so much support that he could have lost the primary. I know this because I helped campaign for him the summer and fall of 2008, and someone I cold-called said she was never voting for him after he "did Hillary like that," and she hoped I wasn't expecting to "give him no money." EVEN SO, we were all terrified that McCain might win, and before the crash in Fall 2008, he looked like he had a fighting chance.

My dad was working with rural individuals in a neighboring county that year. He told me, not too long before the election, that someone he talked to told him Obama was a "[N-word]," but they were voting for him because of the economy. He was a populist hero ONLY in the eyes of young Democrats because he seemed like one of us. The rest of the country saw him as their last hope to pull them out of an economic hole after Dubya crashed the Clinton surplus into the ground and put us in a pointless war. And when he couldn't singlehandedly do that, they turned on him. There are states that went blue on Election Night 2008, but haven't voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since. (No one thinks of Indiana as anything other than a red state anymore.)

The ACA? Obama's triumphant piece of legislature, the crown jewel of his political career, the law that ended his supermajority, the thing any leftist would cry to be able to pass? It lost him Congress in the midterms. "Why didn't he codify Roe into law?" He couldn't. The supermajority only passed the ACA because all of the Dems agreed with it, and not all of them would support blanket nationwide legalization of late-term abortions. "He didn't codify gay rights into law -" HIS SUPREME COURT STRUCK DOWN THAT PART OF THE DEFENSE OF MARRIAGE ACT WHEN HE WAS A LAME DUCK. THAT IS WHY THE SUPREME COURT IS IMPORTANT. I was in my twenties and openly bisexual, with a girlfriend. The absolute infants screaming about neoliberalism today were in elementary or middle school. They have no idea how good they have it, because not even Trump has been able to resurrect DOMA.

And here's the thing. Even if Obama really had been a populist hero, a living avatar of hope and change, every politician has to compromise. The much-vaunted El Sayed is already softening his stances, just like I thought he would. Hong backed off her previous statements (and no doubt would have done so even more if she won), and it wasn't enough to get her elected. Troy Jackson is white and he's going to lose because he's a pugilistic moron who's Groping Platner's bestie, but even he will probably be conciliatory about his positions closer to the election.

its fun

i can do literally whatever I want

cons of writing