Month: August 2019

Doctor who exposed the Flint water crisis identifies the true cause…or does she?

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An opinion piece in yesterday’s New York Times deserves a look. It’s written by Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha who became nationally known when she was the key person to expose the Flint lead crisis in 2015. She did a fantastic job in going public with her findings and standing up to harsh criticism from the city of Flint and the State of Michigan for doing so. This post is not meant to criticize the Dr., only to highlight what she’s missing as so many often do in these scenarios. I can’t overestimate the importance of this because her goal is to prevent another water crisis such as Washington D.C., Flint and now Newark, yet without recognizing the cause she’ll always fail. So read her the entire piece as it gives a good refresher as to how this happened.

Dr. Attisha makes this statement.

Flint and Washington and Newark are all viewed as black cities and have a shared history of segregation, redlining, race riots, white flight, economic decline, violence, a pernicious drug epidemic and a loss of local control. Newark’s water crisis, like Flint’s and even Washington’s, is an obvious case of environmental racism, a case of blindness to the people, places and problems we choose not to see.

She was doing so well until she fell into the liberal trap of blaming environmental racism. Whenever we have a health crisis, or any social crisis for that matter, in a minority urban area the default blame falls to racism in some manner. That is missing the forest for the trees. This isn’t hard. Democrats control all urban areas of the country. Their quest for power leaves their districts and constituents in ruins. It’s a chicken and the egg scenario. The poor and minorities are most afflicted because they continually vote the same liberal leadership into power. They simply keep getting more of what they ask for. If Flint were made up with a majority of white, rich, nun convents then they would also reap what they sow and experience lead poisoning. It has nothing to do with the race, ethnicity, culture, religion or economic status of the people except for the correlation that they keep voting for their own peril.

The Doctor did an awesome job in exposing the Flint lead poisoning. It shines a bright light on a corrupt government and what value they truly place on their citizens. It’s a shame that she won’t really look at the real cause. She has the credibility amongst all Flint citizens required to actually start making meaningful changes to the vicious cycle people in urban areas are stuck in. There is no hope to prevent future crises when people are so short sighted as to believe this is merely a case of systemic racism. As always, when you start out on the wrong premise, everything that follows is then wrong. Let’s hope the good people in this world doing the right thing like Dr. Hanna-Attisha will someday realize the true enemy they face so their efforts won’t be for naught.

Andrew Luck’s legacy all about the timing

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Every sports fan on the planet knows about the Indianapolis Colt’s quarterback Andrew Luck choosing to retire at age 29 due to health and mental issues. Fair or not he will go down as another Barry Sanders. Fact is Sanders retired on July 27th during training camp nearly a full month earlier than Luck. Sanders was scorned by Lions fans for years and many will never forgive him for bailing on the team when it was too late to make any meaningful alternative plans. Football is a team game first and foremost. It isn’t a group of individuals with the same goal. I’m a vet myself. Any vet will tell you when you are part of team for it to be successful, you must put the team first. Football has the same thought process even though it is just a game. The best pure football players on the planet will fail with a poor team. Look at Sanders. Always considered a great individual performer but one who played on crappy teams so he wasn’t a winner.

The question people have is obvious. What happened in the last few weeks that was so different for Luck? Why couldn’t he have made the decision during the off-season when the team, yes the TEAM again, had a chance to make a move to recover from the loss of Andrew Luck. Again, fair or not, it’s a team game and every action you take as a player affects the rest of the team. Other players reacting seem to have a common theme when responding to the news. Good for you Andrew Luck. Do what you have to do for you and your family. Your health and well being is most important. And to all the non-players commenting like me? Just shut up. We never played the game so we couldn’t understand. The same argument you hear when any layman has an opinion on any profession. However in the same sentence they will tell you each player knew the risks before they ever signed a contract so they don’t want pity. Huh. Sounds like BEFORE they signed that contract they were no different than me. They had heard about the risks but you never really know until you play the game. Point is you can have an informed opinion without actual experience.

Players need the fans. No fans, no payday. Fans have a vested interest in seeing their team succeed. Players come and go. The team goes on. Simple fact is both the players and the fans support the team. You’ll see some elite players take discounts on their value in order to free up money for the team to bring in better players. Why? Easy, they want to win. Players play to win and you only win in a team sport by having each member of the team do their part of the overall scheme. All professional team sports are predicated on fans supporting their team so everybody gets paid. Have I mentioned yet it’s all about the team?

So it may not be fair but Andrew Luck will always have the stigma of putting himself before his team. In a perfect world Luck would have seen the light at the end of last season and made the decision then. The fans would have embraced him forever in Indy as a great player, person and teammate. They would have understood despite being sad their team lost such a good player. Perhaps the takeaway is for all other players. When you weigh that decision of when to retire consider the team as well as your own personal situation. It is just as important to many people as your health and well being. Odds are Luck’s former teammates won’t be anywhere near as successful this year as a team. This affects their contracts and thus their personal well being. When football players like to say we fans are clueless about what they put their bodies through just to play the game, maybe they should recognize before they ever sign that big money contract how their exit strategy will affect the team and the fans. It’s a part of the game when you play a team sport.

I hope Andrew Luck has a great life. No disrespect at all. I’m not an Indy fan so I’m not vested in the team’s success or failure but I do appreciate what a good football player Luck was. I just know that if Sanders and Luck and any future players would give the same weight to the team as well as themselves when making their career decisions, we could avoid these situations and instead just talk about the game. Everyone is happier when we’re talking about what happens on the field instead of off it.

Watch “**EXCLUSIVE FOOTAGE!** CNN ANCHOR CHRIS CUOMO THREATENING TRUMP SUPPORTER!” on YouTube

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A little advice Mr. Cuomo. Crystal clear that guy was never going to take a swing at you so when you put on the silly Italian tough guy act and never fight the guy it just looks really bad. Kind of makes you look like…Fredo! All talk and no action. Next time just knock the guy out and have your lawyers pay him off. Have a little self respect. Now your going to experience a massive internet meme/gif Fredo frenzy because of how you handled it.

WaPost confirms deer are far more dangerous than guns

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At just over 22 victims per year using the Washington Post numbers in a country with a population well over 300 million you are much more likely to be killed by a deer.

As usual the liberal media tries to make a compelling gun confiscation argument and ends up merely illustrating how low the odds are you’ll ever be involved in a mass shooting. When will the left call for a mass genocide of deer to save human lives needlessly destroyed in collisions?

“Anything that would kill 200 people”-processed food from Walmart surely will but that’s a story for another day

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Watch: Man who asked Walmart clerk for ‘anything that would kill 200 people,’ explains his actions

From the story we learn a few things. Philip Attey is a racist. How do we know this? He determined that a total stranger was a white nationalist merely based upon how they looked. His claim, not mine.

What else did we learn? The media is embellishing this story. From the story.

“Can you sell me anything (or a gun) that would kill 200 people?” the man asked.

The clerk replied, “That isn’t funny,” and the man responded, “I know,” and asked again if they could sell him anything that would kill 200 people.

Notice the “or a gun” in parenthesis. The next sentence claims he asked again but the “or a gun” isn’t used. Why? Because it was never asked by Attey. He asked for “anything” the store could sell him to kill 200 people and the media added the gun emphasis. Typical fake news partisan narrative pushing.

You may say what’s the big deal? It isn’t a stretch to assume he meant a gun when talking about killing 200 people. The clerk could have simply replied ‘a lighter’. Recall the Boston Cocoanut Grove fire of 1942 which killed 492. Walmart actually sells a number of seemingly innocuous items that could be utilized improperly to cause death and destruction. The point is that the media wanted to be sure the gun narrative was included in the quote since most people don’t read beyond the headlines anyway.

In the interview he advises people to “do something”, the standard liberal talking point. He doesn’t want you to repeat his actions (that’s good) and he doesn’t want a Walmart boycott since he says it won’t work anyway. So what does he want people to do? He says calling your elected officials is a waste of time. Gee, I could follow his lead and do some very irrational speculating. He doesn’t want a boycott or phone calls which are the standard ways in which we express our opinion by contacting our elected officials or voting with our dollars. Guess I’ll just profile him and speculate that he wants us to burn down all the Walmarts. Nothing else is working right? Means you have to “do something”.

Fact is that when people get frustrated to the point Mr. Attey is and start to take matters into their own hands, the next step is anarchy. Which is where our social justice warriors are leading us. I’m sure Mr. Attey probably feels that our legislators are beholden to special interests (a.k.a. the NRA) and the only way to force change upon big corporations is social pressure as we commonly see these days. A slippery slope particularly when said corporation isn’t breaking any law, they are merely acting in a manner which opposes your political views.

What if conservatives ever start to play ball and start using the same tactics? Pressuring Planned Parenthood suppliers? Boycotts? Public disinformation campaigns? Actually start to massively fund pro-right media? Starve Hollywood of it’s funding? You can think of many ways in which to utilize the same tactics of the left and they may go too far one day and trigger the right into action. If the right neutralizes that battlefield, it’s over for the extremist progressives. They’ve never had the numbers for a majority and have relied upon the natural instinct of conservatives to be tolerant and not act. It’s a sleeping giant they don’t want to poke too hard because they can’t win. The actions of Mr. Attey are just another example that frustration on the left may lead them to cross the line.