Stephan: Donald Trump is a White supremacist supported by White supremacists. He talks like a Nazi and he has stimulated racism as bad as it has been in the U.S. in decades. Happily he represents a minority position, and given that sometime in the 2040s we will become a majority minority nation it is a losing posture. But it is making America a very unpleasant place for people of color to live.
Trump is also trying to stimulate racism across Europe, only there I think he will fail. In the U.S. I'm no longer sure.
Most of the attention directed at Donald Trump’s hateful interview with British tabloid The Sun has been directed at how he back-stabbed UK Prime Minister Theresa May even as the two were chatting together in London. But there’s a portion of the interview that’s even more frightening than Trump’s eagerness to disrupt an allied government and weaken alliances going back decades.
Trump: I think what has happened to Europe is a shame. Allowing the immigration to take place in Europe is a shame. I think it changed the fabric of Europe and, unless you act very quickly, it’s never going to be what it was and I don’t mean that in a positive way.
So I think allowing millions and millions of people to come into Europe is very, very sad. I think you are losing your culture. Look around. You go through certain areas that didn’t exist ten or 15 years ago.
What’s not in Trump’s statement about immigration is important: The word “illegal.” Trump isn’t bemoaning the idea of of illegal immigrants swarming across some European border. He’s attacking immigrants, […]
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Shefali LuthraAnna Gorman, - truthout/Kaiser Health News
Stephan: Once again we have an example of what the American illness profit system is really about and it has nothing to do with the health and wellbeing of those who live in this country. There seems to be no vileness to which the American pharmaceutical corporations will not sink as long as it is profitable.
God, I wish I could find more substantive good news stories, but these are the trends that are shaping our lives.
Truvada, a drug approved by the Food and Drug Administration to help prevent HIV infection, is among the AIDS drugs filling the pharmacy shelves at the Whitman-Walker Clinic on July 19, 2012.
Credit: Astrid Riecken/MCT
Public health officials are expanding efforts to get the HIV prevention pill into the hands of those at risk, in a nationwide effort to curb infections. But the officials are hitting roadblocks — the drug’s price tag, which has surged in recent years, and changes in insurance coverage that put a heftier financial burden on patients.
Since brand-name Truvada was approved for HIV prevention six years ago, its average wholesale price has increased by about 45 percent. Now, the drug — which rakes in billions of dollars in annual global revenue for its manufacturer, Gilead Sciences — carries a list price of close to $2,000 for a 30-day supply.
Most insurers cover the pill, also known as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP. It has been shown to be more than 90 percent effective in HIV prevention when […]
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Saturday, July 14th, 2018
Chauncey Devega, Salon Staff Writer - truthout
Stephan: It's hard to tell if Trump is an active Russian agent or, as Lenin called them, "a useful idiot," although Vladimir Putin could hardly be happier watching Trump accomplish what Putin himself could not. But what is clear is that he is a White supremacist. Here is an example showing why I say this.
The G 7 Meeting
Donald Trump is engaged in a systematic effort to make the United States less powerful and less respected around the world. America is too great a country to be defeated and brought down by an outside power. Such damage can likely only be inflicted from within at the hands of a dangerous president, a feckless political party and their tens of millions of authoritarian followers.
President Barack Obama warned about this threat in his farewell address:
But protecting our way of life, that’s not just the job of our military. Democracy can buckle when it gives in to fear. So, just as we, as citizens, must remain vigilant against external aggression, we must guard against a weakening of the values that make us who we are. … So let’s be vigilant, but not afraid. ISIL will try to kill innocent people. But they cannot defeat America unless we betray our Constitution and our principles in the fight. Rivals like Russia or China cannot match our influence around the world — unless […]
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Saturday, July 14th, 2018
Stephan: The Trump base are having their lives degraded daily, as are the rest of us. During the time that Trump has been president the price of gasoline has gone up until it amounts to an additional $700 annual tax. Pollution regulations are being wiped off the books as fast as the Republicans can accomplish that, and health problems are following. Now we have this. Slowly I am being forced to conclude that about 43 per cent of the American population is too scared, too dumb, and too racist to understand what is going on.
The Kochs use their political influence and funding for efforts to repeal laws designed to support the deployment of more renewable electricity.
Credit: Photo: Air pollution via Shutterstock
The wind and the sun may be free, but Trump’s energy regulators want you to pay the same price – or more – for clean energy than what we pay for electricity from our country’s aging, dirty coal-fired power plants.
The Republican-dominated Federal Energy Regulatory Commission gave states and utilities just 60 days to weigh in on how to do this in nation’s largest wholesale electricity market serving 65 million customers in 13 states and the District of Columbia.
“We’ve never seen this kind of federal intrusion in the energy industries,” said energy consultant Rob Gramlich.
The proposed changes could cost consumers billions of dollars more. One estimate for a narrower proposal said it could cost utility users $14 billion to $24.6 billion roughly over the next 10 years. That’s between $216 to $379 for each of the 65 million people served.
Fossil fuel’s share of how much energy we consume in the U.S. […]
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