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How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled

How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled thumbnail

Note: An audio version of this story aired on NPR’s Planet Money. Listen to the episode here.

Laura Leebrick, a manager at Rogue Disposal & Recycling in southern Oregon, is standing on the end of its landfill watching an avalanche of plastic trash pour out of a semitrailer: containers, bags, packaging, strawberry containers, yogurt cups.

None of this plastic will be turned into new plastic things. All of it is buried.

“To me that felt like it was a betrayal of the public trust,” she said. “I had been lying to people … unwittingly.”

Rogue, like most recycling companies, had been sending plastic trash to China, but when China shut its doors two years ago, Leebrick scoured the U.S. for buyers. She could find only someone who wanted white milk jugs. She sends the soda bottles to the state.

But when Leebrick tried to tell people the truth about burying all the other plastic, she says people didn’t want to hear it.

“I remember the first meeting where I actually told a city council that it was costing more to recycle than it was to dispose of the same material as garbage,” she says, “and it was like heresy had been spoken in the room: You’re lying. This is gold. We take the time to clean it, take the labels off, separate it and put it here. It’s gold. This is valuable.”

But it’s not valuable, and it never has been. And what’s more, the makers of plastic — the nation’s largest oil and gas companies — have known this all along, even as they spent millions of dollars telling the American public the opposite.

This story is part of a joint investigation with the PBS series Frontline that includes the documentary Plastic Wars, which aired March 31 on PBS. Watch it online now.

NPR and PBS Frontline spent months digging into internal industry documents and interviewing top former officials. We found that the industry sold the public on an idea it knew wouldn’t work — that the majority of plastic could be, and would be, recycled — all while making billions of dollars selling the world new plastic.

The industry’s awareness that recycling wouldn’t keep plastic out of landfills and the environment dates to the program’s earliest days, we found. “There is serious doubt that [recycling plastic] can ever be made viable on an economic basis,” one industry insider wrote in a 1974 speech.

Yet the industry spent millions telling people to recycle, because, as one former top industry insider told NPR, selling recycling sold plastic, even if it wasn’t true.

“If the public thinks that recycling is working, then they are not going to be as concerned about the environment,” Larry Thomas, former president of the Society of the Plastics Industry, known today as the Plastics Industry Association and one of the industry’s most powerful trade groups in Washington, D.C., told NPR.

In response, industry representative Steve Russell, until recently the vice president of plastics for the trade group the American Chemistry Council, said the industry has never intentionally misled the public about recycling and is committed to ensuring all plastic is recycled.

“The proof is the dramatic amount of investment that is happening right now,” Russell said. “I do understand the skepticism, because it hasn’t happened in the past, but I think the pressure, the public commitments and, most important, the availability of technology is going to give us a different outcome.”

Here’s the basic problem: All used plastic can be turned into new things, but picking it up, sorting it out and melting it down is expensive. Plastic also degrades each time it is reused, meaning it can’t be reused more than once or twice.

On the other hand, new plastic is cheap. It’s made from oil and gas, and it’s almost always less expensive and of better quality to just start fresh.

All of these problems have existed for decades, no matter what new recycling technology or expensive machinery has been developed. In all that time, less than 10 percent of plastic has ever been recycled. But the public has known little about these difficulties.

It could be because that’s not what they were told.

Starting in the 1990s, the public saw an increasing number of commercials and messaging about recycling plastic.

“The bottle may look empty, yet it’s anything but trash,” says one ad from 1990 showing a plastic bottle bouncing out of a garbage truck. “It’s full of potential. … We’ve pioneered the country’s largest, most comprehensive plastic recycling program to help plastic fill valuable uses and roles.”

These commercials carried a distinct message: Plastic is special, and the consumer should recycle it.

It may have sounded like an environmentalist’s message, but the ads were paid for by the plastics industry, made up of companies like Exxon, Chevron, Dow, DuPont and their lobbying and trade organizations in Washington.

Industry companies spent tens of millions of dollars on these ads and ran them for years, promoting the benefits of a product that, for the most part, was buried, was burned or, in some cases, wound up in the ocean.

Documents show industry officials knew this reality about recycling plastic as far back as the 1970s.

Many of the industry’s old documents are housed in libraries, such as the one on the grounds of the first DuPont family home in Delaware. Others are with universities, where former industry leaders sent their records.

At Syracuse University, there are boxes of files from a former industry consultant. And inside one of them is a report written in April 1973 by scientists tasked with forecasting possible issues for top industry executives.

Recycling plastic, it told the executives, was unlikely to happen on a broad scale.

“There is no recovery from obsolete products,” it says.

It says pointedly: Plastic degrades with each turnover.

“A degradation of resin properties and performance occurs during the initial fabrication, through aging, and in any reclamation process,” the report told executives.

Recycling plastic is “costly,” it says, and sorting it, the report concludes, is “infeasible.”

And there are more documents, echoing decades of this knowledge, including one analysis from a top official at the industry’s most powerful trade group. “The costs of separating plastics … are high,” he tells colleagues, before noting that the cost of using oil to make plastic is so low that recycling plastic waste “can’t yet be justified economically.”

Larry Thomas, the former president of the Society of the Plastics Industry, worked side by side with top oil and plastics executives.

He’s retired now, on the coast of Florida where he likes to bike, and feels conflicted about the time he worked with the plastics industry.

“I did what the industry wanted me to do, that’s for sure,” he says. “But my personal views didn’t always jibe with the views I had to take as part of my job.”

Thomas took over back in the late 1980s, and back then, plastic was in a crisis. There was too much plastic trash. The public was getting upset.

Garten Services, a recycling facility in Oregon, where paper and metals still have markets but most plastic is thrown away. All plastic must first go through a recycling facility like this one, but only a fraction of the plastic produced actually winds up getting recycled.

Laura Sullivan/NPR

In one document from 1989, Thomas calls executives at Exxon, Chevron, Amoco, Dow, DuPont, Procter & Gamble and others to a private meeting at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington.

“The image of plastics is deteriorating at an alarming rate,” he wrote. “We are approaching a point of no return.”

He told the executives they needed to act.

The “viability of the industry and the profitability of your company” are at stake.

Thomas remembers now.

“The feeling was the plastics industry was under fire — we got to do what it takes to take the heat off, because we want to continue to make plastic products,” he says.

At this time, Thomas had a co-worker named Lew Freeman. He was a vice president of the lobbying group. He remembers many of the meetings like the one in Washington.

“The basic question on the table was, You guys as our trade association in the plastics industry aren’t doing enough — we need to do more,” Freeman says. “I remember this is one of those exchanges that sticks with me 35 years later or however long it’s been … and it was what we need to do is … advertise our way out of it. That was the idea thrown out.”

So began the plastics industry’s $50 million-a-year ad campaign promoting the benefits of plastic.

“Presenting the possibilities of plastic!” one iconic ad blared, showing kids in bike helmets and plastic bags floating in the air.

“This advertising was motivated first and foremost by legislation and other initiatives that were being introduced in state legislatures and sometimes in Congress,” Freeman says, “to ban or curb the use of plastics because of its performance in the waste stream.”

At the same time, the industry launched a number of feel-good projects, telling the public to recycle plastic. It funded sorting machines, recycling centers, nonprofits, even expensive benches outside grocery stores made out of plastic bags.

Few of these projects actually turned much plastic into new things.

NPR tracked down almost a dozen projects the industry publicized starting in 1989. All of them shuttered or failed by the mid-1990s. Mobil’s Massachusetts recycling facility lasted three years, for example. Amoco’s project to recycle plastic in New York schools lasted two. Dow and Huntsman’s highly publicized plan to recycle plastic in national parks made it to seven out of 419 parks before the companies cut funding.

None of them was able to get past the economics: Making new plastic out of oil is cheaper and easier than making it out of plastic trash.

Both Freeman and Thomas, the head of the lobbying group, say the executives all knew that.

“There was a lot of discussion about how difficult it was to recycle,” Thomas remembers. “They knew that the infrastructure wasn’t there to really have recycling amount to a whole lot.”

Even as the ads played and the projects got underway, Thomas and Freeman say industry officials wanted to get recycling plastic into people’s homes and outside on their curbs with blue bins.

The industry created a special group called the Council for Solid Waste Solutions and brought a man from DuPont, Ron Liesemer, over to run it.

Liesemer’s job was to at least try to make recycling work — because there was some hope, he said, however unlikely, that maybe if they could get recycling started, somehow the economics of it all would work itself out.

“I had no staff, but I had money,” Liesemer says. “Millions of dollars.”

Liesemer took those millions out to Minnesota and other places to start local plastic recycling programs.

But then he ran into the same problem all the industry documents found. Recycling plastic wasn’t making economic sense: There were too many different kinds of plastic, hundreds of them, and they can’t be melted down together. They have to be sorted out.

“Yes, it can be done,” Liesemer says, “but who’s going to pay for it? Because it goes into too many applications, it goes into too many structures that just would not be practical to recycle.”

Liesemer says he started as many programs as he could and hoped for the best.

“They were trying to keep their products on the shelves,” Liesemer says. “That’s what they were focused on. They weren’t thinking what lesson should we learn for the next 20 years. No. Solve today’s problem.”

And Thomas, who led the trade group, says all of these efforts started to have an effect: The message that plastic could be recycled was sinking in.

“I can only say that after a while, the atmosphere seemed to change,” he says. “I don’t know whether it was because people thought recycling had solved the problem or whether they were so in love with plastic products that they were willing to overlook the environmental concerns that were mounting up.”

But as the industry pushed those public strategies to get past the crisis, officials were also quietly launching a broader plan.

In the early 1990s, at a small recycling facility near San Diego, a man named Coy Smith was one of the first to see the industry’s new initiative.

Back then, Smith ran a recycling business. His customers were watching the ads and wanted to recycle plastic. So Smith allowed people to put two plastic items in their bins: soda bottles and milk jugs. He lost money on them, he says, but the aluminum, paper and steel from his regular business helped offset the costs.

But then, one day, almost overnight, his customers started putting all kinds of plastic in their bins.

“The symbols start showing up on the containers,” he explains.

Smith went out to the piles of plastic and started flipping over the containers. All of them were now stamped with the triangle of arrows — known as the international recycling symbol — with a number in the middle. He knew right away what was happening.

“All of a sudden, the consumer is looking at what’s on their soda bottle and they’re looking at what’s on their yogurt tub, and they say, ‘Oh well, they both have a symbol. Oh well, I guess they both go in,’ ” he says.

Unwanted used plastic sits outside Garten Services, a recycling facility in Oregon.

Laura Sullivan/NPR

The bins were now full of trash he couldn’t sell. He called colleagues at recycling facilities all across the country. They reported having the same problem.

Industry documents from this time show that just a couple of years earlier, starting in 1989, oil and plastics executives began a quiet campaign to lobby almost 40 states to mandate that the symbol appear on all plastic — even if there was no way to economically recycle it. Some environmentalists also supported the symbol, thinking it would help separate plastic.

Smith said what it did was make all plastic look recyclable.

“The consumers were confused,” Smith says. “It totally undermined our credibility, undermined what we knew was the truth in our community, not the truth from a lobbying group out of D.C.”

But the lobbying group in D.C. knew the truth in Smith’s community too. A report given to top officials at the Society of the Plastics Industry in 1993 told them about the problems.

“The code is being misused,” it says bluntly. “Companies are using it as a ‘green’ marketing tool.”

The code is creating “unrealistic expectations” about how much plastic can actually be recycled, it told them.

Smith and his colleagues launched a national protest, started a working group and fought the industry for years to get the symbol removed or changed. They lost.

“We don’t have manpower to compete with this,” Smith says. “We just don’t. Even though we were all dedicated, it still was like, can we keep fighting a battle like this on and on and on from this massive industry that clearly has no end in sight of what they’re able to do and willing to do to keep their image the image they want.”

“It’s pure manipulation of the consumer,” he says.

In response, industry officials told NPR that the code was only ever meant to help recycling facilities sort plastic and was not intended to create any confusion.

Without question, plastic has been critical to the country’s success. It’s cheap and durable, and it’s a chemical marvel.

It’s also hugely profitable. The oil industry makes more than $400 billion a year making plastic, and as demand for oil for cars and trucks declines, the industry is telling shareholders that future profits will increasingly come from plastic.

And if there was a sign of this future, it’s a brand-new chemical plant that rises from the flat skyline outside Sweeny, Texas. It’s so new that it’s still shiny, and inside the facility, the concrete is free from stains.

Chevron Phillips Chemical’s new $6 billion plastic manufacturing plant rises from the skyline in Sweeny, Texas. Company officials say they see a bright future for their products as demand for plastic continues to rise.

Laura Sullivan/NPR

This plant is Chevron Phillips Chemical’s $6 billion investment in new plastic.

“We see a very bright future for our products,” says Jim Becker, the vice president of sustainability for Chevron Phillips, inside a pristine new warehouse next to the plant.

“These are products the world needs and continues to need,” he says. “We’re very optimistic about future growth.”

With that growth, though, comes ever more plastic trash. But Becker says Chevron Phillips has a plan: It will recycle 100% of the plastic it makes by 2040.

Becker seems earnest. He tells a story about vacationing with his wife and being devastated by the plastic trash they saw. When asked how Chevron Phillips will recycle 100% of the plastic it makes, he doesn’t hesitate.

“Recycling has to get more efficient, more economic,” he says. “We’ve got to do a better job, collecting the waste, sorting it. That’s going to be a huge effort.”

Fix recycling is the industry’s message too, says Steve Russell, the industry’s recent spokesman.

“Fixing recycling is an imperative, and we’ve got to get it right,” he says. “I understand there is doubt and cynicism. That’s going to exist. But check back in. We’re there.”

Larry Thomas, Lew Freeman and Ron Liesemer, former industry executives, helped oil companies out of the first plastic crisis by getting people to believe something the industry knew then wasn’t true: That most plastic could be and would be recycled.

Russell says this time will be different.

“It didn’t get recycled because the system wasn’t up to par,” he says. “We hadn’t invested in the ability to sort it and there hadn’t been market signals that companies were willing to buy it, and both of those things exist today.”

But plastic today is harder to sort than ever: There are more kinds of plastic, it’s cheaper to make plastic out of oil than plastic trash and there is exponentially more of it than 30 years ago.

And during those 30 years, oil and plastic companies made billions of dollars in profit as the public consumed ever more quantities of plastic.

Russell doesn’t dispute that.

“And during that time, our members have invested in developing the technologies that have brought us where we are today,” he says. “We are going to be able to make all of our new plastic out of existing municipal solid waste in plastic.”

Recently, an industry advocacy group funded by the nation’s largest oil and plastic companies launched its most expensive effort yet to promote recycling and cleanup of plastic waste. There’s even a new ad.

New plastic bottles come off the line at a plastic manufacturing facility in Maryland. Plastic production is expected to triple by 2050.

Laura Sullivan/NPR

“We have the people that can change the world,” it says to soaring music as people pick up plastic trash and as bottles get sorted in a recycling center.

Freeman, the former industry official, recently watched the ad.

“Déjà vu all over again,” he says as the ad finishes. “This is the same kind of thinking that ran in the ’90s. I don’t think this kind of advertising is, is helpful at all.”

Larry Thomas said the same.

“I don’t think anything has changed,” Thomas says. “Sounds exactly the same.”

These days as Thomas bikes down by the beach, he says he spends a lot of time thinking about the oceans and what will happen to them in 20 or 50 years, long after he is gone.

And as he thinks back to those years he spent in conference rooms with top executives from oil and plastic companies, what occurs to him now is something he says maybe should have been obvious all along.

He says what he saw was an industry that didn’t want recycling to work. Because if the job is to sell as much oil as you possibly can, any amount of recycled plastic is competition.

“You know, they were not interested in putting any real money or effort into recycling because they wanted to sell virgin material,” Thomas says. “Nobody that is producing a virgin product wants something to come along that is going to replace it. Produce more virgin material — that’s their business.”

And they are. Analysts now expect plastic production to triple by 2050.

NPR



88 Comments on "How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled"

  1. More from lunatic Davyskum on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 12:32 pm 

    JuanP on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 12:29 pm

  2. zero juan on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 12:34 pm 

    Low IQ idiot:

    Germany: Muslim screaming ‘Allahu akbar’ opens driver’s car door and stabs him, critically injuring him Sep 13, 2020 1:00 pm By Robert Spencer Leave a Comment Remember: any study of how the scream of “Allahu akbar” said relates to the knife attack would be “Islamophobic…

  3. zero juan on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 12:35 pm 

    delusional and deranged juanPPee:

    More from lunatic Davyskum said JuanP on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 12:29 pm

    Lunatic Davyskum and his Socks said JuanP on Sat, 12th Sep 2020 5:58 pm JuanP on Sat,…

  4. More from low IQ idiot delusional and deranged davyskum on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 12:37 pm 

    zero juan on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 12:34 pm

    zero juan on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 12:35 pm

  5. Go Speed Racer on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 2:37 pm 

    Holy Fucking Dogshit,
    Makita, holy crap. I thought U were
    one of the Smart ones on this chat board?

    “If you tried to use trash for fueling power plants, it would all be gone in the first year or less. Even the mountains piled in landfills”.

    “Not to mention the filtering system needed for all the carcinogenic smoke and fumes. Loading hauling, unloading, etc. A net energy loss, I am sure. And then you have to bury the toxic ash. Green techie dreams. LOL”

    Makita how can U write such totally ignorant useless false dishonest blather ???

    Trash incineration is a completely mature technology. The burn is very complete and the exhaust is all filtered to keep U liberals happy. There is literally NOTHING coming out of the stack except some CO2 and a few wisps of steam.

    I know this for a fact because of visiting the trash incinerator in Spokane WA.
    Furthermore, Youtube has plenty of video’s explaining how it works.

    If combustion is at high temperature with the right amount of oxygen, the burn is absolute and NO clouds of black smoke will occur like at a backyard Tires & Beer party.

    Incase U want to be knowledgeable about this subject, here is a link.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NGMhDqArEQ

    The link will require 18 minutes of your time, to become knowledgeable, and not be a clueless libtard liberal.

    Otherwise I have to presume U are another useless delirious clueless LIBTARD who wants to destroy America, in this case by covering the whole planet with plastic garbage that could have gone to the incinerators.

    By the way they also use magnets to pull iron out of the ashes. And they produce enough iron to build 10 golden gate bridges a week.
    Or enough iron to build an Eiffel tower that reaches all the way to the moon. U know what I mean.

    By the way, the filthy SHITBAG GOVERNOR INSLEE the SHITBAG FUCKTARD LIBERAL GOVERNOR
    of WASHINGTON

    has gone on the assault against the Spokane Waste Incinerator.

    Vote AGAINST the shitbag Governor Inslee.
    If you are in a different state, vote AGAINST YOUR SHITBAG DEMOCRAT GOVERNOR.

    Fuck All Democrats. Fuck each and every democrat. Trump 2020 and he will throw every last fucking democrat liberal into prison, starting with Hillary, Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi, and all the fucktard liberals who pulled their shit with the fake impeachment and the fake Russia hoax.

    Fuck all Democrats. Fuck Governor Inslee.
    GO Trump 2020 and GO waste incineration so that we don’t have bottles lying all over the beaches.

    LIBERALS WANT garbage to be lying all over everyplace. Because Liberals are fucked in the head. Always were and always will be.

    Fucktard liberals who riot and burn down Starbucks and throw bricks at cops. FUCK ALL LIBERALS. FOREVER.

  6. Duncan Idaho on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 3:11 pm 

    Young Republicans Begging for Food and Gas Money
    https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/9/12/1976982/-Young-Republicans-Begging-for-Food-and-Gas-Money

    The Fat Boy should do some stealing for them?

  7. Duncan Idaho on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 3:23 pm 

    And tens of millions of Americans will enthusiastically vote for this loon.

    Well, 50% of the population is below 100 in IQ.

    But you would have too be real stupid—-

  8. Duncan Idaho on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 3:28 pm 

    “The idea is that for those who lack a cognitive ability to grasp the complexities of our world, strict-right wing ideologies may be more appealing.”

    Do Racism, Conservatism, and Low I.Q. Go Hand in Hand?

    https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/millennial-media/201304/do-racism-conservatism-and-low-iq-go-hand-in-hand

  9. Davy on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 4:39 pm 

    My postings will be stupid today because my chronic delusions are elevated. This Ozark storm sally did damage to my trailer. My roof is leaking. I hope to be back at my trolling of the intelligent posters in a few minutes or so. Maybe Anonymouse can chip in an help neuter my stupidity. Thanks amigos

  10. makati1 on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 5:02 pm 

    The best way to get rid of plastic is NOT use any. It did not exist when I was a kid and the world managed to survive. We can do without it, and will, as things continue to change and the world economy shrinks. We go to the wet market with our reusable containers and buy fresh meats and fish to fill them. Ditto for veggies and fruits. Less need for “stuff” and more thought to survival.

  11. Duncan Idaho on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 5:06 pm 

    “Only 47% of likely voters told Fox News that President Trump has the “mental soundness” to be commander-in-chief.”

    Response:
    Only 47% ???!!! Good lord. I fear for our species if that many people look at this braindead lunatic in the White House and think he has the “mental soundness” to be a server at McDonalds, much less a commander-in-chief. And they are likely voters!

  12. the board on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 5:27 pm 

    JuanP on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 4:39 pm

    “My postings will be stupid today because my chronic delusions are elevated. This storm sally did damage to my trailer. My roof is leaking. I hope to be back at my trolling of the intelligent posters in a few minutes or so. Maybe Anonymouse can chip in an help neuter my stupidity. Thanks amigos”

    Good Troll, you are finally honestly accepting your forum position as a disgusting troll, PPee juan. You need to be canceled.

  13. JuanP on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 5:28 pm 

    Hey Mak, how is the weather today there in paradise?

  14. JuanP on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 5:31 pm 

    “Only 47% of likely voters told Fox News that President Trump has the “mental soundness” to be commander-in-chief.”

    “Response: Only 47% ???!!! Good lord. I fear for our species if that many people look at this braindead lunatic in the White House and think he has the “mental soundness” to be a server at McDonalds, much less a commander-in-chief. And they are likely voters!”

    Come on Dumbcan, the other part of your equation is blind lying liberals locked in TDS. You yourself are a disgusting example of being mentally unfit.

  15. JuanP on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 5:48 pm 

    Blue States Slammed with Multiple Interlocking Crises

    Think about it: there are places that have been run by the Democrats for decades, with little to no opposition from the “evil” Republicans. People who have had a chance to experience the results of their leadership want none of it. Today, the way the Democrats have handled COVID and the protests, the violent part of which went largely unpunished, made locals speed up the packing. Then there were eight years of the Obama presidency that failed America domestically and internationally. Americans still remember that. Now, with Election Day less than 60 days away, why would anyone want to extend the failing leftist policies that became as obvious as Joe Biden’s dementia onto the whole nation? Obviously, the Democrat establishment and its cosmopolitan donors would, but when worse comes to worst, they’ll just move to their New Zealand mansions. Where will you go?

    https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/09/blue_states_slammed_with_multiple_interlocking_crises.html

  16. JuanP on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 5:53 pm 

    Startling anonymous post from a claimed Biden ex-staffer lays out the alleged depths of his dementia

    FORMER BIDEN CAMPAIGN STAFFER: Joe Biden is in the early stages of dementia and is on medication for it. “This is the big one, and the one I have the least direct experience with, but it’s been an open secret for some time. Anyone who has had a relative with Alzheimer’s or dementia can tell you, there are good days and bad days. On the good days, when Joe is at his most lucid, his campaign manager Jen will send him out for photo ops or TV interviews… make hay while the sun is shining, you know? On the bad days, Jen just tells the press pool “No Joe today,” and they’re all like, “Okay, cool!” Most of the time, he’s just a little foggy and gets really agitated. But one of my co-workers told me that back in May, there was a day where he thought he was running against Gary Hart in the ’84 primary again. Joe went under wraps for several days after that. He’s been more lucid recently because his physician, Dr. O’Connor, put him on Namenda. Jen apparently was worried about someone finding it out, because she insisted that he prescribe it under a series of phony names, and then have the interns pick it up. I bet there are a lot of pharmacists in Philly wondering why there are so many young people on Namenda. The dementia medication has had, um… unfortunate side effects. There’s no dancing around this… the medication has made Joe incontinent. Though his “good days” have increased dramatically, he can barely get through a press event without running to the bathroom. That’s why he didn’t take questions after announcing Harris as his running mate. They weren’t afraid of the questions, the press loves him… they were afraid he was going to piss his pants on-camera. Lately, Jen’s been having closed-door meetings to discuss which brand of incontinence pads would be best to purchase. Seriously, a group of paid staffers sat around and discussed which brands were the least visible, the least likely to leak, and wouldn’t audibly “crinkle.” That’s around the time I left the campaign. I can’t be a party to this sick game anymore. I never really liked Joe Biden, but he deserves better than to be thrust into the public eye when he should be in memory care. His wife should put a stop to this, but she’s way too excited about being “First Lady” to care about her ailing husband.”

    https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/09/startling_anonymous_post_from_a_claimed_biden_exstaffer_lays_out_the_alleged_depths_of_his_dementia.html

  17. the board on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 5:59 pm 

    PPee juan, will you let other people contribute you selfish asshole!

  18. makati1 on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 6:16 pm 

    JuanP, the weather here is much as always. Sunny with the temps in the low 90s by afternoon, with scattered showers or thunderstorm most every day. The air quality is excellent, as usual.

    I guess you are getting some rain from the forming hurricane on Florida’s west coast? Not looking good for hurricane alley. The other one there is hitting Bermuda and may head for the east coast next week.

    We have not had a serious typhoon this year, so far. They seem to be forming north and hitting Japan. Maybe the La Niña?

  19. JuanP on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 6:39 pm 

    Mak, is it OK to go to the wet market these days or has the virus kept it closed?

  20. The Board on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 6:44 pm 

    The Bored Lunatic

    demented davy (not JuanP) said:

    Mak, is it OK to go to the wet market these days or has the virus kept it closed?

  21. makati1 on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 7:15 pm 

    The wet market here is always open. No closing. The people here go about their lives much as always. Everyone in town knows everyone else so it is one big family.

    The is a lockdown, but it is not enforced much. There has been exactly TWO deaths that have been attributed to C19 and they were old people with a lot of other health problems. Those TWO are out of a population of about 70,000.

  22. REAL Green on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 7:29 pm 

    “PPee juan, will you let other people contribute you selfish asshole!”

    PPee juan has not made one comment hear in over 6 months Davy. All of the juanPPee post are us.

    Schizophrenic Lunatic

  23. Go Speed Racer on Sun, 13th Sep 2020 9:54 pm 

    Makita Wrote:

    “…The best way to get rid of plastic is NOT use any. It did not exist when I was a kid and the world managed to survive…”

    Well gee Makita when I was a kid, the candy bars were wrapped in wax paper. And not only that, the candy bars tasted good too.

    Now they are all wrapped in plastic, and taste like a dog turd. But hey Makita guess what it is 2020 not 1972. SO. What R U gonna do about it?

    Saying “dont use any” is laughable. The goal is get rid of the plastic. The plastic manufacturers are tripling their production capacity RIGHT NOW building more plastic factories. Even if YOU sit in the basement carefully NOT using any plastic, nobody else gives a shit they pile up more and more plastic throwing their plastic Slurpee cups into the roadway.

    It is impractical to say “dont use plastic” everytime I buy something on Amazon, it shows up with a bunch of stupid stinking plastic all over it.

    This is why U must now agree Makita that U R wrong in all your comments and the answer is TRASH INCINERATION.

    C’mon Makita U were the last hope for intelligent life on this chat board.
    So U could not even be bothered to watch
    the 18 minute video about trash incineration?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NGMhDqArEQ&t=5s

  24. DT on Mon, 14th Sep 2020 12:13 am 

    The above video is another fine example of corporate capitalists putting the onus of plastic trash disposal (all trash for that matter) on the consumer. AKA externalizing the costs on to the consumer/public, not the corporate manufacturers that produce the toxic mix of crap that is put on the market for sale mostly as single use non recyclable/reusable garbage.

  25. zero juan on Mon, 14th Sep 2020 4:02 am 

    nightly lunatic by JuanP

    ochen787 said USA just started Opium War 3.0 and Full Iron Curta…

    DT said The above video is another fine example of corpora…

    bochen787 said USA just started Opium War 3.0 and Full Iron Curta…

    Davy said Your just jealous wak. Cus I have a personal jet a…

    REAL Green said “PPee juan, will you let other people contribute y…

    makati1 said The wet market here is always open. No closing. Th…

    The Board said The Bored Lunatic demented davy (not JuanP) said:…

  26. JuanP on Mon, 14th Sep 2020 4:55 am 

    “Candace Owens tells LeBron James: ‘If you’re suffering through racism, please give me some of that’”

    “In a weekend interview on “Life, Liberty, & Levin,” Owens noted that the Los Angeles Lakers superstar — who has spoken out about his “tough” life as a Black man in America “lives in a one hundred million dollar mansion in Bel Air.” “I always say, if you’re suffering through racism, please give me some of that,” she told Mark Levin. BEN SHAPIRO SLAMS LEBRON JAMES FOR ‘DISGUSTING’ SUGGESTION FOLLOWING KENOSHA POLICE SHOOTING “He’s got a White gardener, a White chef, all various White people that work for him, White driver,” she continued. “So if that’s racism, LeBron, please, please share some of that with the rest of us.” Owens, the author of the recent book “Blackout: How Black America Can Make Its Second Escape from the Democratic Plantation,” later described a newfound support among celebrities and high profile figures who avoid publicly discussing their personal politics for fear of public backlash amid racial tension in the country, she told Levin.”

    https://www.foxnews.com/media/candace-owens-lebron-james-racism-life-liberty-levin

  27. archives' of a lunatic on Mon, 14th Sep 2020 6:12 am 

    JuanP on Wed, 14th Sep 2016 9:59 pm
    I struggle with the fact that I belong to the same species; I find myself emotionally and intellectually incapable of accepting the fact. That is why I consider myself a sui generis individual rather than a human animal.

  28. joe on Mon, 14th Sep 2020 6:53 am 

    Biggest Scams/Lies
    1. The Lottery is fair
    2. China is our friend and theye are not
    ‘real communists.
    3. Democrats and Neocons are different.
    4. Bush/Regan era Republicans were conservative.
    5. Liberalism is not radical.
    6. Liberalism is not warlike.
    7. They only spy on ‘bad folks’.
    8. You are not under 24 hour brainwashing
    efforts by all companies and governments.
    9. Your government thinks you are part of the solution
    10. Privately owned Central Banks are sustainable forever.
    11. You will have a long and safe life and a well funded retirement.
    12. Only whites, not the elite deepstate is privileged.
    13. White people don’t suffer
    14. Only brown people suffer.
    15. Annual widfires are caused by global warming

    (drone setting forests on fire)

    https://youtu.be/36EKX5FGxHA

    16. Government of any type has the solution to YOUR problems

    17. World peace and middle east peace is impossible, because of reasons.

    18. Democrats would never be corrupt
    19. War is only caused by Republicans
    20. More taxes is part of the solution
    21. China is a benign peaceful country
    22. Tick tok is not subverting and distracting kids
    (China kids 12 hrs a day study, western kids (all races) 12 hrs a day on tick tok, doing stupid dances and dressing like whores)

    23. Only technology and surveillance has the answer.

  29. we can harvest our muzz to help look at the alternative it's no good on Tue, 15th Sep 2020 10:49 pm 

    LONDON: Hezbollah provided the New IRA with finances and shipments of weapons, according to an undercover agent who infiltrated the Irish terror group.

  30. LONDON: Hezbollah provided the New IRA with finances and shipments of weapons, according to an undercover agent who infiltrated the Irish terror group. on Wed, 16th Sep 2020 6:19 am 

    if we don’t harvest our muzz like chian does

    the consequences;

    we’re blown up

    plastic goes unsorted

  31. everything i say has 1400 years of muzz history to back up on Wed, 16th Sep 2020 6:21 am 

    that history is the same as was 1400 years ago.

    recent history baghdadi
    muzz selling darkies in libya

    u can trigger all u want but u have no facts

  32. zero juan on Wed, 16th Sep 2020 6:26 am 

    OH, dear, the lunatic widdle juan is back at it:

    everything i say has 1400 years of muzz history to back up said that history is the same as was 1400 years ago. re…

    LONDON: Hezbollah provided the New IRA with finances and shipments of weapons, according to an undercover agent who infiltrated the Irish terror group. said if we don’t harvest our muzz like chian does…

  33. More than 730,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh that year following the launch of a sweeping security campaign that refugees said included mass killing, gang-rape and arson on Wed, 16th Sep 2020 7:56 am 

    oh good
    they need to be with other muzz but they’re best harvested

  34. zero juan on Wed, 16th Sep 2020 8:27 am 

    Widdle juanPPee, you are an idiot

    More than 730,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh that year following the launch of a sweeping security campaign that refugees said included mass killing, gang-rape and arson said oh good they need to be with other muzz but they&#…

  35. ebay went full muzz love sucking muzz ck on Wed, 16th Sep 2020 9:07 am 

    mocking (((supremetard))) ok but won’t allow merch about mohumad the pedifiler

  36. two FGM NASTY muzzed CHAMCHAMAL, Iraqi Kurdistan region,— A Kurdish man has killed his two daughters in the town of Chamchamal in Sulaimani governorate in Iraqi Kurdistan Region, the police said. on Wed, 16th Sep 2020 9:10 am 

    d

  37. muzz report on Wed, 16th Sep 2020 9:12 am 

    remember this FGM NASTY was muzzed?

    im sure u do

    https://egyptianstreets.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/2b1Rm-1024×576.png

  38. bochen777 on Wed, 16th Sep 2020 9:51 am 

    we harvest our muzz so we deserve to be powerful and take over the world

    simple as that.

    enjoy this pic of FGM NASTY who was muzzed just recently

    https://egyptianstreets.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/2b1Rm-1024×576.png

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