The Gold King Mine Fiasco: What It Tells Us About the EPA

Power Line

 "If a private company had been responsible, the EPA would have come down like a hammer. But not this time:"

 "We have written here and here about the EPA-caused spill of three million gallons of toxic liquid into the Animas River in Colorado. Private companies that have caused environmental disasters of that magnitude (or much less) have been criminally prosecuted; in some cases, individuals have been jailed. Will the EPA face similar accountability? Just kidding.

"At Watts Up With That?, Paul Driessen has an excellent update on the Gold King mine disaster. This is what happened:

On August 5, an Environmental Restoration company crew, supervised by US Environmental Protection Agency officials, used an excavator to dig away tons of rock and debris that were blocking the entrance portal of Colorado’s Gold King Mine, which had been largely abandoned since 1923. Water had been seeping into the mine and out of its portal for decades, and the officials knew (or could and should have known) the water was acidic (pH 4.0-4.5), backed up far into the mine, and laced with heavy metals.

But they kept digging – until the greatly weakened dam burst open, unleashing a 3-million-gallon (or more) toxic flood that soon contaminated the Animas and San Juan Rivers, all the way to Lake Powell in Utah. To compound the disaster, EPA then waited an entire day before notifying downstream mayors, health officials, families, farmers, ranchers, fishermen and kayakers that the water they were drinking, using for crops and livestock, or paddling in was contaminated by lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic.

Full article

inhabitat:  "The EPA just spilled 1 million gallons of mustard-colored mine waste into a Colorado river"
 

BUSTED: Leader for #BlackLivesMatter is Actually a WHITE GUY!

http://hopenchangecartoons.blogspot.com/

Progressives Today

 

"It’s the Rachel Dolezal story all over again. At least it looks that way. Shaun King, a blogger for the far left site Daily Kos is a leader within the #BlackLivesMatter movement but it turns out he’s not black at all."

From the New York Daily News:

Rachel Dolezal 2.0? Shaun King, activist for the Black Lives Matter movement, outed as a white man
It’s the second coming of Rachel Dolezal.
Shaun King, a prominent leader in the Black Lives Matter movement, may have just been outed as a white man.
Boasting a vast following on Twitter, a title as justice columnist for a social progressive website, and acquiring a full-ride college scholarship from Oprah Winfrey to Morehouse (an award designated for black men, the site alleged) are the markings which have made King, 35, a go-to source for breaking news on police brutality against African-Americans around the country.
But there seems to be one hitch: He isn’t actually black, according to recent findings from conservative news website, Breitbart.

Here’s the report from Milo Yiannopolous of  Breitbart" . . . 
 

Does #blackprivilegematter at #blacklivesmatter?
 "Do white lives pretending to be black lives matter? "

Obama: Earning Contempt, at Home and Abroad

Victor Davis Hanson  . . . "The more Britain’s Chamberlain and France’s Daladier in 1938 genuinely sought to reassure Hitler of their benign intentions, the more the Nazi hierarchy saw them as little more than “worms” — squirming to appease the stronger spirit. Both were seen as unsure of who they were and what they stood for, ready to forfeit the memory of the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of their own on the false altar of a supposedly mean and unfair Versailles Treaty. 

"Hitler perversely admired Stalin after the latter liquidated a million German prisoners, and hated FDR, whose armies treated German POWs with relative humanity. In matters big and small, from Sophocles’ Antigone to Shakespeare’s King Lear, we see the noble and dutiful treated worse by their beneficiaries than the duplicitous and traitorous. ". . .  Read more

A Great Solution To End Police Shootings Of Black Youths

Joshuapundit
It happened again today. Two white policemen in north St. Louis shot and killed a black man...

. . . "The locals don't like the police, to put it mildly, and I'm sure that the police themselves don't enjoy going into neighborhoods where their attempts to do a difficult job are looked upon by a significant number of the inhabitants as the provocation of racist interlopers.

"Mr. Fred Price points the way to a win win resolution that will please everyone. Let's indeed give the residents of north St. Louis and other similar areas a way to keep the police out of their neighborhoods.

"Let the residents take a vote on making their neighborhoods off limits to police. If such a vote passes, let the residents make their own arrangements for crime prevention or policing should they see fit to do so,and offer property owners a discount on their taxes based on this city service they would no longer be using.

"Police would be limited to enforcing the perimeters of such neighborhoods, so that thugs and criminals would be prevented from leaving these neighborhoods during certain hours. But inside the perimeter, the residents themselves would take responsibility." . . .
. . .
" Like I said, a win win. The inhabitants of these neighborhoods would get the kind of policing they deserve, and those vicious police killers would have no opportunity to practice their racism."

 

Coulter: FOX NEWS ANCHORED IN STUPIDITY ON 14TH AMENDMENT

 

Ann Coulter    "Based on the hysterical flailing at Donald Trump -- He's a buffoon! He's a clown! He calls people names! He's too conservative! He's not conservative enough! He won't give details! His details won't work! -- I gather certain Republicans are determined to drive him from the race.

"These same Republicans never object to other candidates who lack traditional presidential resumes -- Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson, Newt Gingrich and Herman Cain, to name a few. I'm beginning to suspect it's all about Trump's opposition to mass immigration from the Third World.

"Amid the hysteria, Trump is the only one speaking clearly and logically, while his detractors keep making utter asses of themselves.

"By my count -- so far -- Fiorina, Chris Christie, Rick Perry and the entire Fox News commentariat are unfamiliar with a period of the nation's history known as "the Civil War." They seem to believe that the post-Civil War amendments were designed to ensure that the children of illegal aliens would be citizens, "anchor babies," who can then bring in the whole family. (You wouldn't want to break up families, would you?)

"As FNC's Bill O'Reilly authoritatively informed Donald Trump on Tuesday night: "The 14th Amendment says if you're born here, you're an American!"

"I cover anchor babies in about five pages of my book, Adios, America, but apparently Bill O'Reilly and the rest of the scholars on Fox News aren't what we call "readers."
"Still, how could anyone -- even a not-very-bright person -- imagine that granting citizenship to the children of illegal aliens is actually in our Constitution? I know the country was exuberant after the war, but I really don't think our plate was so clear that Americans were consumed with passing a constitutional amendment to make illegal aliens' kids citizens." . . .

 

 

You Will Never Be a Better Dad Than You Are a Husband

Michael T. Hamilton

 

"All the time I hear people lampoon others by opening with a caveat like “So and So’s a good guy,” followed by “It’s just that he….” Commence butchering.

. . .

"This kind of caveat doubles as both a way to talk about someone without feeling like you’re gossiping, and as a handy way to excuse someone’s incompetence, ignorance, or negligence.

"On one side is fraud, pretending to respect a person so that you will not look so bad when you trash him or her. On the other is rationalization, performed to justify behavior you don’t want to confront in others–or in yourself.

. . .  “So and So is a good guy, but he is completely out of touch with students or what it was like to grade papers 25 hours a day.” At my next school, teachers used the other edge of the sword. All you have to do is invert the sentence structure. “He is completely incompetent, lacks all passion, and is incapable of relating to the people who work for him on anything resembling a human level. But he’s a good guy with a good heart.”

"Maybe he has a great heart. Or maybe it’s rotten. Caveats and excuses reveal more about those who use them than about anyone else. This is especially true of parents. Most people who have ever worked a job they hated or had a friendship go south have used these. But there is one category of people whose experience extends to expertise: dads." . . .