Delaware Liberal

DL Open Thread Tuesday, July 30, 2024

I’ve kept up my vaccinations, so I’m immune to Olympic fever, but as a part-time resident of Paris I’ve been following organizers’ quixotic quest to have athletes swim in the Seine, always a sketchy plan because the water is often polluted. Sure enough, the triathlon, scheduled for this morning, was postponed because fecal coliform levels are too high, so they’ll try again tomorrow. What would change over the course of 24 hours? The weather. Like Wilmington, Paris has a combined sewer system. When it rains, which is fairly often there, the stormwater exceeds the capacity of the treatment plants and the overflow goes straight into the river untreated. Imagine holding a mile-long swim in the Christina, where even rowers scrub down after contact with the water.

The rushed-into-existence law instituting a budget review board for the state’s hospitals drew the inevitable lawsuit from Christiana Care in Chancery Court. Maybe the court can turn this kneejerk reaction to the government’s budget woes into something effective and workable, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

Republican propaganda makes the broad public believe lots of untrue things, but there’s one the Democrats would rather not brag about: Biden has removed more migrants than Trump did. They’re just not called “deportations” because people are turned away before they get past the entry points at the border. And while Trump wants to deport more people who’ve gotten through, he hasn’t said (and never will say) how he’ll pay to expand a deportation system that’s been operating at maximum capacity through three administrations.

Big Oil PR has been pushing carbon capture as a climate change solution for years, but internally they’ve known all along it’s bullshit, which hasn’t stopped them from taking billions in government handouts for it. Shocking, I know, from people who are usually such altruistic actors.

The floor’s yours.

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