Ocasio-Cortez: the sky is falling, climate change is war, and we're all going to die in 12 years

[80zephyr]

On a serious note, this is obviously a generational issue. Oldsters, especially comfortable ones, don't care about climate change. They'll be dead, anyway.

Thats bullshit. We love our children and grandchildren more than we care about ourselves.

The difference is that we are realists.

Mark

[Newman]

On a serious note, this is obviously a generational issue. Oldsters, especially comfortable ones, don't care about climate change. They'll be dead, anyway.

A lot of American Elders have grandchildren, and they do indeed care about the environment.

They also care about this Republic, and the freedoms that make it possible.

AOC will be eligible to run for President in 2024, after Trump's second term. (She'll turn 35 right before the vote.) Her second term would run through the twelfth anniversary of her prediction, so maybe she's right! Or maybe at least our Republic and the ideas of liberal Western Democracy will be buried!

[Michele]

A lot of American Elders have grandchildren, and they do indeed care about the environment.

They also care about this Republic, and the freedoms that make it possible.

AOC will be eligible to run for President in 2024, after Trump's second term. (She'll turn 35 right before the vote.) Her second term would run through the twelfth anniversary of her prediction, so maybe she's right! Or maybe at least our Republic and the ideas of liberal Western Democracy will be buried!

I've noticed that on here and with some in general, democrats are pushing this war between the generations. Parents vs children. Grandparents vs grandchildren. It's exceptionally disgusting and despicable.

[80zephyr]

I've noticed that on here and with some in general, democrats are pushing this war between the generations. Parents vs children. Grandparents vs grandchildren. It's exceptionally disgusting and despicable.

Its their MO. Rich against poor. Black against white. The only way that any of their arguments make "sense" is if they can get people to fight each other.

Mark

[Tom Servo]

Twenty posts and no one's picked up that what she said was hyperbole? I guess not, some of you are the same nutcases that mocked Obama's 57 states joke.

[Newman]

Twenty posts and no one's picked up that what she said was hyperbole? I guess not, some of you are the same nutcases that mocked Obama's 57 states joke.

I don't think so, Tom. Could be, maybe, and I don't want to be the humorless twit who believed Trump was seriously asking the Russians to find Hillary's email at a campaign presser.

But I think it's more likely she had in mind the "tipping point" headlines of late, such as this one from October:

We have 12 years to limit climate change catastrophe, warns UN

The world’s leading climate scientists have warned there is only a dozen years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5C, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the risks of drought, floods, extreme heat and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.

The authors of the landmark report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released on Monday say urgent and unprecedented changes are needed to reach the target....

[Celeste Chalfonte]

I could use a little global warming right about now. It's 39 degrees here, and I'm freezing!

[80zephyr]

I could use a little global warming right about now. It's 39 degrees here, and I'm freezing!

39 degrees would be shorts and tee shirt weather here.

Mark

[Celeste Chalfonte]

39 degrees would be shorts and tee shirt weather here.

Which would be only one of MANY reasons I'd never live in Wisconsin.

[Michele]

Twenty posts and no one's picked up that what she said was hyperbole? I guess not, some of you are the same nutcases that mocked Obama's 57 states joke.

Yeah, she's using that excuse too.

How's your health crisis of ringworm there in Alabama?

[Gingersnap]

Yeah, she's using that excuse too.

How's your health crisis of ringworm there in Alabama?

Mr. Snaps went to grade school in Minnesota, I did in Wyoming. We both got ringworm.

I did not have to have the whole thing shaved (Mr. Snaps did). It was treated with a dandruff shampoo available at any drugstore and religiously washing all bedding in hot water for a few weeks.

Not sure why the government needs to be involved.

[Celeste Chalfonte]

Mr. Snaps went to grade school in Minnesota, I did in Wyoming. We both got ringworm.

I did not have to have the whole thing shaved (Mr. Snaps did). It was treated with a dandruff shampoo available at any drugstore and religiously washing all bedding in hot water for a few weeks.

Not sure why the government needs to be involved.

Weekly Reader (or some such publication) told us that poor children in Florida and Alabama went to school barefoot and got hookworm, especially if they played in mud puddles on the way home. I worried about them a lot, especially our former neighbors who had moved to Florida. We weren't really certain that Alabama was part of the US, and I didn't know anybody who lived there except Uncle Cecil, and he was old and didn't play in mud puddles. It was a smaller world in 1961.

My mother was a bit of a germ freak. We almost never contracted anything that required skin-to-skin contact for contagion, as we were drilled incessantly not to try on other people's clothes/hats/shoes, not to use anyone else's brush or comb, not to share food/drinks/glasses/utensils with anybody, and to carefully line the toilet seat with paper. The invention of Lysol wipes was like the Second Coming from Mom's point of view. We're the only family I know of in which no child for at least 3 generations has ever had head lice.

With Mom around, who needed government?

[Michele]

Mr. Snaps went to grade school in Minnesota, I did in Wyoming. We both got ringworm.

I did not have to have the whole thing shaved (Mr. Snaps did). It was treated with a dandruff shampoo available at any drugstore and religiously washing all bedding in hot water for a few weeks.

Not sure why the government needs to be involved.

Because billionaires.

Ocasio-Cortez, being the IT goddess that she is, got it wrong. It's hookworm which is very serious and real in Lowndes County, Alabama...ground zero for the parasite and where mostly Blacks live in poverty. There are a lot of articles out there to read about the seriousness of the situation.

What OC said was that we shouldn't have billionaires in our country while "parts of Alabama where people are still getting ringworm because they don't have access to public health." Of course, access to public healthcare is not why the people are getting hookworm.

[Tom Servo]

Because billionaires.

Ocasio-Cortez, being the IT goddess that she is, got it wrong. It's hookworm which is very serious and real in Lowndes County, Alabama...ground zero for the parasite and where mostly Blacks live in poverty. There are a lot of articles out there to read about the seriousness of the situation.

What OC said was that we shouldn't have billionaires in our country while "parts of Alabama where people are still getting ringworm because they don't have access to public health." Of course, access to public healthcare is not why the people are getting hookworm.

The CDC came out to Lowndes County and couldn't find a single person with hookworm, and there's some suspicions that there's a problem with the data the researchers gathered. They (the original researchers) only sampled 55 people out of a county-wide population of over 11,000.

Now, there IS a problem with people living with open sewage pits in their yards because a lot of the poor people there (and elsewhere in the south) have straight pipes leading raw sewage out into the yard because they either don't have sewer or a working septic system.

Alabama is what I call a "low tax and no benefits" state. We pay little in state taxes and in return the state provides few government services beyond the absolute basics. And that is how people here mostly prefer it.

Part of that is having lots of rural communities with no sewer service at all, and few ADEQ and ADPH workers to go around and fine violators spilling sewage into people's yards. As it's noted in that Circa article, they can only afford to respond to complaints, and if no one in the rural communities complain, there's nothing they can do to cite lawbreakers.

These people can't afford the thousands of dollars needed to fix or install septic systems, so they live with the squalor.

Of course, it's not like this everywhere in Alabama. Where I live, the county with the second highest income levels in the state, even rural neighborhoods like mine are on sewer systems and they're fairly robust (although lift station spills during heavy rains are a monthly occurrence, even in my neighborhood.)

The problem is the people in the richer parts of the state don't want to pay more taxes to benefit poor blacks and whites in the sticks. Which, last time I checked, was a pretty common problem everywhere in the US, not just Alabama.

[Michele]

The CDC came out to Lowndes County and couldn't find a single person with hookworm, and there's some suspicions that there's a problem with the data the researchers gathered. They (the original researchers) only sampled 55 people out of a county-wide population of over 11,000.

Now, there IS a problem with people living with open sewage pits in their yards because a lot of the poor people there (and elsewhere in the south) have straight pipes leading raw sewage out into the yard because they either don't have sewer or a working septic system.

Alabama is what I call a "low tax and no benefits" state. We pay little in state taxes and in return the state provides few government services beyond the absolute basics. And that is how people here mostly prefer it.

Part of that is having lots of rural communities with no sewer service at all, and few ADEQ and ADPH workers to go around and fine violators spilling sewage into people's yards. As it's noted in that Circa article, they can only afford to respond to complaints, and if no one in the rural communities complain, there's nothing they can do to cite lawbreakers.

These people can't afford the thousands of dollars needed to fix or install septic systems, so they live with the squalor.

Of course, it's not like this everywhere in Alabama. Where I live, the county with the second highest income levels in the state, even rural neighborhoods like mine are on sewer systems and they're fairly robust (although lift station spills during heavy rains are a monthly occurrence, even in my neighborhood.)

The problem is the people in the richer parts of the state don't want to pay more taxes to benefit poor blacks and whites in the sticks. Which, last time I checked, was a pretty common problem everywhere in the US, not just Alabama.

So...no hookworm health crisis? I also read that you don't have good soil for absorption when it comes to a septic field...is that true?