“Not loyal.” Two years in and the President still doesn’t understand (or more likely, doesn’t care) that officials owe their loyalty to the country, not to him personally.
I had a lot of problems with Bush, his policies and his priorities, but I never doubted he understood that the job was about the nation, not about him.
This guy? He’s never given me reason to doubt the opposite: that he thinks it’s all about himself.
You’re tired of skateboarders on your street, though there are a lot fewer of them these days than there used to be. Your city/housing association won’t build a barrier at the end of the block. A lot of people don’t think the skateboarders are as big a problem, or even a problem at all…
But this is an emergency! (Even though the numbers are already declining.) So you take your neighbors’ money and put spikes across the street and their yard. Nothing on wheels is going to get through!
Meanwhile, the skateboarders keep walking in on the sidewalks, carrying their skateboards, like they’ve always done.
You’ve misappropriated funds, violated your neighbors’ property rights, blocked traffic…and yet you haven’t actually addressed how the skateboarders are showing up in the first place.
“The Senate on Tuesday passed the most sweeping conservation legislation in a decade, protecting millions of acres of land and hundreds of miles of wild rivers across the country…”
It passed the Senate 92-8.
Weirdly, I’m on several environmental groups’ mailing lists and I’ve heard nothing about this bill from them except for one specific aspect of it: The Nature Conservancy has occasionally asked me to contact lawmakers in support of renewing the Land and Water Conservation Fund (both before and after it expired last year). On Wednesday they sent me a notice that the LWCF renewal had passed the Senate and asked me to contact my Representative when it goes to the House.
But they’ve said nothing about any other aspect of the over-600-page bill, which adds over a million new acres of wilderness, prohibits mining near Yellowstone, protects 620 miles of rivers, and expands and adds several national parks and monuments. And I’ve heard nothing at all — no news, no campaigns to support it, or reject it as a trojan horse, or amend it — from any of the other groups I follow.
I guess the fact that it’s non-controversial enough for a conservation bill to pass with over 90% bipartisan support even during this administration means it wasn’t a priority for activism. Especially with all the attacks on environmental protections from the executive branch to tackle on one side, and the Green New Deal to talk about on the other.
I often see conservatives say that they see individuals where liberals see groups. But it doesn’t track. Conservatives are regularly willing to exclude whole groups of people, then allow exceptions. On the same issues, liberals often allow groups, then exclude individuals.
Put another way, liberals want to ensure everyone eligible is allowed access, and conservatives want to ensure everyone ineligible is denied access.
Voting rights, immigration, social programs… Even if they agreed on who should be eligible, the priorities are different.
Of course, we don’t agree on who is eligible, for a lot of issues. And some of those issues are who’s eligible to be treated humanely.
The polling place was full this morning. I had to drive all the way around the block to find parking (notice the line of cars), which I can’t recall ever having to do at this location. (The 2016 election used a different polling place for this area.) I wondered if I should have walked there and back instead of stopping by on my way to work.
But they had just enough voting booths to handle everyone. There was literally one person ahead of me in line to sign in. While we waited for other voters to finish with their booths, someone came in to drop off his family’s mail-in ballots and then cast his own in person.
Then a booth opened up, I marked my ballot (on paper, fill-in-the-bubble style), and went over to feed it into the box.
I was in and out in about 10 minutes.
