What!? Another post about political goings-on? In a blog that isn't political? Well, these are just political times aren't they?
So here's my latest bugaboo...
A couple days ago, I watched a clip of Biden's speech that he gave at the NAACP National Convention in Las Vegas and as he bumbled along in the manner he usually does which, by the way, I'm quite forgiving of, considering his age, and the fact that, just like his opponent, he likes to go off script a bit.
Unfortunately, going off script gets a little jumbled in his brain and it comes out as a little bit of coleslaw when dispensed audibly out his mouth. C'est la vie. I for one can live with it. Audible word salad doesn't necessarily mean his brain is scrambled eggs.
But what I can't abide to is his stalwart stand on the pillar of truth and honesty, pointing to his opponent as a big fat liar while he engages in the same "squishy reality" in order to pander to any given audience. In this case, to the Black voters.
In one segment of his speech, he tries to, I guess, "get down with da homies" and express his, "I feel you ma brothas" angst over the systemic exploitation of majority Black populated areas by big corporations. The example he brings up is highlighted in the transcript below.
So here's a map of northern Delaware and the halfmoon shaped border he speaks of in his speech, and the circled area of Marcus Hook which has "more oil refineries than anywhere in the country, including Houston."
And here's a satellite view of that Marcus Hook area. Note for reference the size of the tanker indicated by the arrow, and what I would guess would be oil refineries indicated by the brown boxes.
Now, here's a satellite view of the Port of Houston. For reference again, look at the size of one of the tankers, and the sheer number of brown boxes. This is obviously a much larger area, the satellite image zoomed out quite a bit, covering many more square miles than the Marcus Hook area, as logic would dictate, since there's a heck of a lot more oil produced in Texas than Pennsylvania nowadays.
And, by the way, I didn't "creatively" crop these images. I cropped them to only show where I could clearly see evidence of oil refineries in the areas referenced by the President.
I try to give Joe some slack. I think, well maybe back when he was younger the Marcus Hook refineries were much more expansive. Indeed, when I checked out the Delaware communities to the southwest of those Marcus Hook refineries, the people I saw seem to be majority Black and likely were for generations so I could imagine that, yes, they were the most negatively affected by the pollution for years and continue to be so to this day, no doubt.
But facts are facts. And I think as president, what you say has to be factual. Especially if you're talking about the industry, infrastructure, welfare, systemic racism, and talking points for targeted voters, you need to be careful to state the truth.
The other big problem is, it appears that I'm the only one that picked up on this. I have not read anywhere that anyone, even on the far right media, have picked up on this and fact checked it. Why is that? Is it because we're more distracted with everything else going on? Maybe a little bit of that. But maybe a lot of the fact that I think we all have just become a little bit too accustomed to the bending of reality especially when it comes to what candidates tell us during an election cycle.
Some of it is they tell us what they think we want to hear whether it's truthful or not, and some of it is we hear what we want to hear whether they said it or not.
And frankly, what it all boils down to is, no amount of Google Maps sleuthing or wonky amateur MS Paint style diagramming on my part is going to change a damn thing.
EDIT: Another little boo-boo Biden made in his speech regards his lack of accuracy in the way the wind blows. According to him, the wind (from the oil refineries of the Marcus Hook area) blows to the "southeast." Well, if that's the case, then it'd be New Jersey's problem, not Delaware's. LOL. Maybe Joe (or his real speech writers) should take a gander at a map every now and then.
