Civil Commotion

Certainly, this has the purpose of undermining the Mueller investigation, and ought to spark a revolt in Congress.

Apparently Michigan’s brand new Attorney General plans to revisit the already-misguided response to the Flint water crisis.

The votes are in and Democratic candidate Dana Nessel will be the next attorney general of Michigan. Nessel is set to replace Republican Bill Schuette, who lost his bid to be the next governor of Michigan. Now, the Democrat is set to tackle marijuana legalization and civil rights issues, as well as the myriad of environmental problems facing Michigan, including the ongoing Flint water crisis investigation.

[ … ]

“I have long been a critic of the way in which Bill Schuette has handled the Flint water crisis investigation,” Nessel told Bridge, a news site run by the Center for Michigan, a nonprofit think tank. “He is merely an opportunist who has used the crisis to further his political ambitions via a series of politically charged show trials.” As attorney general, Nessel promised to “re-evaluate” the investigation and any pending cases “as the entire process has been highly suspect.”

The biggest problem confronting the investigation is that the investigators have no idea how engineering work is done.

The Associated Press captured and reported the exact moment when everything went awry.

Mike Glasgow, the plant’s laboratory supervisor at the time, says he asked district engineer Mike Prysby of the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality how often staffers would need to check the water for proper levels of phosphate, a chemical they intended to add to prevent lead corrosion from the pipes. Prysby’s response, according to Glasgow: “You don’t need to monitor phosphate because you’re not required to add it.”

Recalling the meeting Tuesday in an interview with The Associated Press, Glasgow said he was taken aback by the state regulator’s instruction; treating drinking water with anti-corrosive additives was routine practice. Glasgow said his gaze shifted to a consulting firm engineer in attendance, who also looked surprised.

“Then,” Glasgow said, “we went on to the next question.”

Both EPA regulations, and the actual condition of the water supply, required the addition of phosphate. If Prysby were competent, or if the consulting engineer or Glasgow had stepped-up to their ethical duty to resist Prysby’s incompetence, there would have been no tainted water supply or Legionnaires outbreak, there would have been no cover-up, there would be no second-guessing the Emergency Manager’s decision to change the water supply. Everything arises out of that meeting.

What steps have been taken by the state to properly partition designers’ responsibilities? There has been nothing about it in the newspapers, and I doubt that politicians and lawmakers have done anything. Given the preoccupation with bashing former Governor Snyder, and bashing the Attorney General, it appears they don’t actually understand yet what happened.

Nominally, I suppose, the good guys eked out a small win. After all, the House of Representatives flipped to the Democrats, and seven statehouses changed hands. Republicans picked-up Senate seats, however, and will be more resolutely backward-looking and vengeful — Trumpian — than they already are.

But we can no longer deny or escape that racism is, and will remain, a living and corrosive presence in American life; if it were not, Trump’s frenetic rallies of the past week, coupled with that appalling advertisement that even FOX News refused to broadcast, would have been fatal. The fact in plain sight is that a lot of Americans resent being expected to treat blacks/hispanics/gays/non-WASPS/et cetera with ordinary decency.

It’s clear, too, that a lot of Americans have no problem with Trump’s ignorance and garish pathological lying. Let’s be clear here: Trump doesn’t merely shade things; he makes up ‘facts’ out of thin air that have no correspondence with reality, I don’t believe that Trump’s supporters don’t know that; they ignore that because … why? My best guess is that Trump hates the same well-educated and accomplished people that they do, the same people in whose circles they will always be outsiders. Trump, like them, has never quite managed to scrape the shit off his shoes.

It will undoubtedly become more dangerous than it already is to be a journalist. After all, there will be efforts to hold Trump accountable for his misbehaviors, and those efforts — duly reported by the ‘fake news’ — will undermine the mad, malice-eaten, feverish fantasy-world that Trump and his supporters inhabit.

Simultaneously, Trump will ratchet-up the rhetoric against his enemies, and that means his abuse of the media is going to intensify. Just as there are people out there ready to mail pipe bombs to Trump’s enemies, and people who fantasize about killing Jews and blacks, there are people seething about journos and who would gladly kill a bunch of them.

The good news, I imagine, is that Trump will have no more to say about that caravan of hungry peasants headed our way.

That’s the spirit that made America great.

BREAKING! Citizen militias heading to border!

With the upcoming invasion of thousands of migrants coming with the intention of crashing our borders and virtually taking over our country, it was astonishing to hear that the White House said the military would be sent to protect our border, BUT, now hear this, they would not have live ammunition! WHAT???

So how will the military protect our country? Perhaps they would throw their rifles and handguns at the intruders hoping to knock them out. Sure. This columnist could not imagine President Trump giving such an order. But that is what has been reported on the “Mainstream Media.”

This column suggested that if ever there was a time for citizen militias to suit up, this would be it. THIS IS WAR! Make no mistake about it. Those in the caravan have the goal of sabotaging America, which is part and parcel of Hungarian Jewish Communist George Soros who has been planning for this and financing it for a long time.

Lots of crazies out there.