Pandemics Coming Soon! Vaccines, Not So Much. Courtesy of Bobby Brainworm, Jr:
Trump To Let Polluters Off The Hook For Cleaning Up ‘Forever’ Chemicals?:
Early this year, Steven Cook was a lawyer representing chemical companies suing to block a new rule that would force them to clean up pollution from “forever chemicals,” which are linked to low birthrates and cancer.
Now Mr. Cook is in a senior role at the Environmental Protection Agency, where he has proposed scrapping the same rule his former clients were challenging in court. His effort could shift cleanup costs away from polluters and onto taxpayers, according to internal E.P.A. documents reviewed by The New York Times.
Last month Mr. Cook met with industry groups that are still challenging the rule in court. By the next business day after the meeting, the E.P.A. office that oversees toxic cleanups had reversed its internal recommendation on the rule, the documents show, to advise repealing instead of upholding it.
“It’s outrageous,” said Tracey Woodruff, a researcher at the University of California San Francisco who studies environmental health, particularly the effects of chemical exposures on pregnant mothers and their babies. “If they overturn this, it would leave the public responsible for cleaning up, not the companies that knowingly polluted the land.”
Mr. Cook’s actions are the latest example of regulators who had close industry ties playing a major role in oversight of businesses they previously represented.
A separate division of the E.P.A., which evaluates chemical safety, now includes two former executives of the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s main trade group. One of the two, Nancy Beck, said recently that the agency would probably reconsider most efforts to strengthen chemicals regulations taken by the Biden administration, which had made chemical safety a priority.
More broadly, the agency is preparing to repeal dozens of environmental regulations, including limits on pollution from tailpipes and smokestacks and protections for wetlands. This year Mr. Zeldin said he was reframing the E.P.A.’s mission to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business.”
Any bleats from any Democrats out there? Just look at the first two articles here. Why aren’t Democrats screaming from the rooftops?
‘Narcissistic Mortification’. He is exhibiting all the signs:
The bruises tell a story. So do the desperate pleas about heaven.
At 79, Donald Trump isn’t just showing physical signs of decline—he’s exhibiting the psychological collapse of a malignant narcissist confronting his own mortality. And that makes him more dangerous than ever.
The recurring dark bruises on Trump’s hands have become impossible to hide, even with makeup. The White House claims it’s from “frequent handshaking and aspirin usage,” but medical experts note the pattern suggests something more serious. Add his diagnosed chronic venous insufficiency—a condition causing leg swelling when veins fail to pump blood properly—and you’re looking at a man whose body is betraying him in real time.
More telling than the physical symptoms are Trump’s recent existential confessions. “I want to try and get to heaven, if possible. I’m hearing I’m not doing well,” he told Fox News. This from a man who once bragged about being “the healthiest president that’s ever lived.”
The shift is stark. Trump’s suddenly fixated on legacy, mortality, and divine judgment—classic signs of what psychologists call “narcissistic mortification.” When malignant narcissists face their own fragility, they don’t fade quietly. They escalate exponentially.
G’Bye, Alligator Alcatraz. We Hardly Knew Ye:
Florida’s immigration jail known as “Alligator Alcatraz” will probably be empty of detainees within days, a state official has said, indicating compliance with a judge’s order last week that the facility must close.
The Republican governor Ron DeSantis’s administration appealed the order by federal court judge Kathleen Williams that the tented detention camp in the Florida Everglades, which attracted criticism for its harsh conditions, must be dismantled within 60 days.
But in an email reported Wednesday by the Associated Press, Kevin Guthrie, executive director of the Florida department of emergency management, which operates the jail on behalf of the federal government, appeared to confirm it would be shuttered.
“Alligator Alcatraz” was touted by Donald Trump as a holding camp for up to 3,000 undocumented immigrants as they awaited deportation. The jail, he said, was reserved for “the most vicious people on the planet”.
Wonder how much money was wasted on this sinkhole.
More Port Kerfluffle Stuff. Hello, New Jersey?: A good summation for those seeking the history and the current situation. (I had more priceless prose written, but the ‘technical difficulties’ excised it.)
What do you want to talk about?