by Michael DePaoli

HIDING THE EPA CLIMATE PAGE 

Do you want to know why Donald Trump wants the Environmental Protection Agency to scrub its website? When you go onto the EPA website you are going to find various explanations about climate change and greenhouse gases. One of the pages is entitled “Climate Change Science.” And, as you could guess from the title, the EPA has compiled facts and evidence which you can read on this page and on the various links. This type of science reporting by a government agency is anathema to people like Trump because he does not want to admit that climate change might be real, especially when it might interfere with his own opportunities (and the opportunities of various members of his Cabinet) to make a profit. When you follow the links on the website you are going to find a report called: The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States: A Scientific Assessment. Here are some excerpts from the scientific report, which was intended to analyze health effects and make projections for the future:

“Every American is vulnerable to the health impacts associated with climate change.”

“In the next several decades, storm surges and high tides could combine with sea level rise and land subsidence to further increase coastal flooding in many regions. The U.S. East and Gulf Coasts, Hawaii, and the U.S.-affiliated Pacific Islands are particularly at risk.” 

“A warmer future is projected to lead to increases in future mortality on the order of thousands to tens of thousands of additional premature deaths per year across the United States by the end of this century.” 

So, as you can plainly see from the above excerpts, allowing the EPA to use real science in order to give facts and evidence about future health impacts from greenhouse gases and climate change is something that must be stopped.

OUR ENTIRE COUNTRY IS FEELING THE BERN

As Democrats (and even some Republicans) start to comprehend the reality of living under a sociopathic and paranoid President Trump, here is my retrospective that explains how and why Hillary Clinton lost: (1) Bernie Sanders bribed voters with his socialist/communist message of free college tuition, free health care, reverse NAFTA, break apart the largest financial institutions, tax the greedy Wall Street people. (2) The RNC and several Conservative PAC’s cheered for and actually promoted Sanders. (3) The Democratic caucus system in some states (that is used to lower vote totals so the process can be controlled by insiders) made Sanders more of a legitimate candidate. (4) While Sanders was having some moderate success, he viciously attacked Hillary Clinton and called her unqualified to be President. (5) The presence of independent and socialist Sanders in the race divided Democrats, and some Democrats began the Bernie or Bust movement. (6) The constant media attention granted to Trump meant that the sociopath was part of our lives, and his every move was followed fervently by the press. (7) Trump lied and made promises (i.e. drain the swamp) that he had no intention of keeping, and he bribed people in key states by promising new jobs (in effect, Trump was actually better at making hollow socialist type promises than even Bernie Sanders, which was bad because the people in key states had already been conditioned to receive such promises by Bernie). (8) The email non-scandal against Clinton (that received far too much press attention), the hacking of the DNC, the Feel the Bern movement, the vicious attacks that Sanders leveled agains Clinton during the primary, Bernie’s extreme reluctance to support Hillary unless the entire party could be moved in a socialist direction, and the bad faith of the FBI investigation, all gave the general appearance that the Democrats were in disarray. (9) Hillary is a woman, and our country is still sexist and discriminatory. (10) Bernie Sanders won the Democratic primaries in Wisconsin and Michigan, and he had a strong showing in Ohio, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, which ended up being the key states that propelled Trump to victory. Thank you, Bernie.

USAIN BOLT

The Telegraph (UK) reports that Usain Bolt has been stripped of a gold medal in the 4x100m race that he won in the 2008 Beijing Olympics because his teammate, Nesta Carter, was found to have committed a doping violation which was detected upon reanalysis of his urine and blood samples. The sad (or interesting) part of the story is that out of six runners who have times in the 100m race below 9.79 seconds Usain Bolt is now the only one who never has been found to have committed a doping violation.