Although the formaldehyde assessment has grave implications for public health, Trump administration officials refused to allow the EPA to release it.

Sharon Lerner
August 19 2021, 10:41 a.m.

A 2017 DRAFT assessment of formaldehyde that was suppressed by the Trump administration found that the chemical causes myeloid leukemia, according to several sources familiar with the document. The draft assessment concludes that 1 microgram of formaldehyde in a cubic meter of air increases the number of myeloid leukemia cases by roughly 3.5 in 100,000 people, more than three times the cancer risk in the assessment now in use. The EPA currently regulates formaldehyde using an outdated set of calculations, finalized in 1991, based on the risk of nasopharyngeal cancer. If the nasopharyngeal cancer and myeloid leukemia risks are combined, the cancer risk could be 4.5 times higher than the current value.

Although the suppressed assessment, produced by a division of the Environmental Protection Agency known as the Integrated Risk Information System, or IRIS, has grave implications for public health, Trump administration officials, including former EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, refused to allow the agency to release the assessment, several sources told The Intercept.

If the Biden EPA permits IRIS to finalize the assessment, which is among the most controversial in the agency’s history, other branches of the EPA will likely set regulatory limits based on the new risk value. IRIS values are used to determine safety thresholds for the amounts of the chemical permitted in air and water, emissions caps from industrial facilities, and guidance for cleanups. Such thresholds also alert exposed people to the dangers they face.


“This is a big, big deal. It could trigger significant interest by the personal injury bar,” said Bob Sussman, who served as the senior policy counsel to the EPA administrator during the Obama administration and deputy EPA administrator under President Bill Clinton. “Even without including the leukemia, the risk is a significant one. With the leukemia, it’s certainly a very significant public health concern.”

https://theintercept.com/2021/08/19/formaldehyde-leukemia-epa-trump-suppressed/

I’m upset, saddened and frustrated. As a physician I devote my life to taking care of people. I feel helpless right now as I watch another wave of COVID 19 hospitalizations taking over our healthcare system. Most hospitals in the region have put a halt on scheduling elective surgeries for the foreseeable future. This includes any surgeries that would not lead to death or permanent impairment if delayed beyond 72h. This means that thousands of patients with heart disease, severe joint pain, kidneys stones, cancer, etc. will need to delay their care for weeks on end. Right now, my colleagues and I are canceling almost all of our surgeries so that we have enough beds and staff to handle the influx of hospitalized COVID 19 patients. It pains me greatly to tell my cancer patients that I need to push their surgery back without any assurances about when their surgery can be rescheduled or if this will impact the outcome of treatment.

That leads me to my point… The only way we can get out of this mess is to get as many human beings vaccinated as possible. Vaccines are NOT a personal choice. Your vaccination status affects everyone around you. While there is not any guarantee that you will not contract the virus if you are vaccinated, there is a strong likelihood that you will stay out of the hospital and not need a ventilator. Those beds will allow us to treat your friend, neighbor, or family member that needs life saving surgery.
The COVID 19 delta variant is estimated to spread from a single infected person to 10 others. My ask is that anyone that reads this, please send a message to 10 other friends or family that may not yet be vaccinated to encourage them to do so. This is not meant to embarrass or “call out” anyone. A friendly phone call or text would suffice.

Thank you all.

https://www.facebook.com/nathaniel.polnaszek


( So many great human beings trying their best against the insanity of our lifetimes. )

There will likely be a return to a much more historically normal state of global affairs in which multiple players are engaged.

AUGUST 16, 2021
Written by
Graham E. Fuller

The final end of the government in Kabul is at hand as the inexorable logic of regime collapse gains momentum. It seems more of a surprise to current policymakers than to those many observers with a long-time familiarity with the country’s dynamics. It will not be pleasant to watch, but it has long been inevitable given the utterly unrealistic ambitions and poor policy execution that Washington has maintained in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, those darker, but more insightful views on the entire enterprise have long been largely stifled by our media.

The neo-imperialist neoconservatives all argue that the American departure and the subsequent collapse of the Kabul government are deeply destructive to American “credibility” as a superpower in the world. The underlying ideology of this view is of course the cherished concept that the United States must serve as global policeman everywhere and that a failure to do so is a sign of weakness and decline.

This line of thinking is precisely backwards: it is the overall decline of America domestically and geopolitically that is the telltale sign of its deeper weakness; there is an increasing international belief that the United States is living inside a fantasy bubble of denial about maintaining its global hegemony. If the 20-year U.S. military presence in Afghanistan had actually ever shown any serious concrete advancement towards concrete goals, that would be one thing. But the neocons are ever content to throw good money after bad in the blind pursuit of hegemony — even in the very heart of “the graveyard of empires.”

On a human level, of course, it indeed matters what fate the Afghans will meet under a new Taliban government. The Afghan people have been suffering under repeated and constant warfare and military intervention since 1978, starting with a domestic coup by Afghan communists, followed by the Soviet invasion, the subsequent years of fighting to expel the Soviets by U.S.-supported mujahedin groups, the subsequent civil war among the mujahideen that followed and to which the Taliban finally put an end by restoring national order and discipline — with a rough and ready kind of justice.

https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/08/16/america-leaves-afghanistan-and-the-regional-geopolitics-take-over/

Aug 13, 2021


With Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell’s first term ending in February next year, White House officials are considering Powell’s renomination and whether his actions align with Biden administration policy priorities.

When it comes to the Fed’s impact on the climate, new data suggest a clear answer: Powell’s policies have helped the biggest fossil fuel companies borrow more money more cheaply, propping them up to fight another day.

According to new data compiled by BailoutWatch:

114 fossil fuel companies have borrowed $177.7 billion from bond investors since March 2020, when the CARES Act established temporary Fed programs used by Powell to bail out bond markets

In the first three months of 2021 alone they borrowed nearly $40 billion — the fourth-biggest quarter ever for fossil bonds — showing Fed programs’ impacts linger even after they were wound down

The biggest borrower was Chevron Corp, which issued $17.7 billion in new bonds. During the same period, Chevron acquired Noble Energy in an all-stock deal worth more than $4 billion

Exxon, BP, Occidental and MPLX each issued at least $6 billion in bonds

Oil and gas companies have used their new, Fed-supported financing to acquire competitors, expand production, and refinance out of higher-interest debt that had limited their profits. The money extends their ability to continue business as usual for a few years longer and contributes to increased oil extraction, despite clear evidence the industry is in long-term decline.

https://bailoutwatch.org/analysis/fed-chair-powells-policies-fuel-fossil-borrowing-binge?utm_content=176375362&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter&hss_channel=tw-456864723

https://twitter.com/DanielLDavis1/status/1426654164537516032












( Excellent thread and a great question, who will ever be held accountable? )

https://twitter.com/SenMarkey/status/1425168445788901381






One of the very best Senators.

https://twitter.com/StevenTDennis/status/1425305472270221315









Good morning all, it is a very good day for America. Thank a Democrat.

George W. Bush, the architect of our 9/11 wars, is trying to tell us how to think and feel about the Afghanistan withdrawal.

AUGUST 10, 2021
Written by
W. James Antle III

As America’s longest war finally seemed to be inching toward a conclusion, one of its main architects briefly emerged from a comfortable Texas retirement to lament the fact.

“I think the consequences are going to be unbelievably bad and sad,” former President George W. Bush told the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle when asked in an interview this summer about whether he believed U.S. and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan was a mistake.

The same could be said for Bush’s foreign policy. According to an estimate by the Watson Institute of International and Public Affairs at Brown University, the forever wars launched under the 43rd president’s watch cost $6.4 trillion, led directly to the deaths of 801,000 people, and displaced another 21 million.

Iraq in particular inflamed the extremism it was launched to combat, left us at heightened risk of another disastrous war with Iran, and destabilized the Middle East in an attempt to disarm Baghdad of weapons of mass destruction it did not even possess. And in Afghanistan, should we join Bush in celebrating “how that society changed from the brutality of the Taliban,” or should we believe him when he says in the next breath that that country is 2,000 U.S. troops away from a dystopian nightmare?

Bush left office with a 34 percent job approval rating, according to Gallup, after briefly uniting an unfathomably high percentage of Americans behind him in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But the next three presidents of both parties repudiated his approach to foreign policy and tried, with varying degrees of commitment and success, to disentangle America from the endless interventionism he set in motion.




https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/08/10/dont-throw-the-baby-out-with-the-orange-tinted-bathwater/


DO NOT RESUSCITATE.

He would do better to flip a coin than rely on his own poor and wavering judgement


Patrick Cockburn
@indyworld
Friday 23 July

Boris Johnson turns out to have privately yearned to adopt the same approach as Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro who publicly favoured allowing Covid-19 to rip through his nation. “Stop all this fussing and whining,” Bolsonaro told Brazilians, some 543,000 of whom have died in the epidemic. “How long are you going to go on crying?”

With similar callousness, Johnson is reported by his former chief adviser Dominic Cummings to have rejected a second lockdown last October after learning that the median age of the dead exceeded average life expectancy. “So get Covid and live longer,” he joked.

On 23 July 2019, two years ago today, Boris Johnson was elected leader of the Conservative Party, defeating the former health secretary Jeremy Hunt. Had Hunt been chosen instead, or almost anybody other than Johnson for that matter, then tens of thousands of people in Britain would not have died and hundreds of thousands of others would have escaped severe illness and long Covid.


Down the centuries, Britain has generally been lucky in its leaders in times of crisis. In calmer periods, it may not matter much who is nominally in charge of the country. But during the last two years of permanent crisis over Brexit and Covid-19, Britain has been led by a man of such poor and wavering judgement that it is difficult to find a figure of comparable incompetence in British history.

https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/boris-johnson-covid-mistakes-deaths-b1889383.html

( Good for her. Stay strong )

Prince Andrew has been reportedly sued in New York by an alleged victim of Jeffrey Epstein.

According to People and ABC News, Virginia Roberts Giuffre filed a lawsuit against Prince Andrew for "sexual abuse under the Child Victims Act" saying she was "trafficked to him and sexually abused by him" when she was 17.

This isn't the first time Giuffre has alleged that she was sexually abused by the prince.

In a federal lawsuit in 2015, Giuffre alleged she was forced her to perform sex acts with several prominent men, including Prince Andrew in 2001.

In 2019, Andrew announced that he was withdrawing from his royal duties amid renewed attention of his friendship with Epstein and Giuffre's claim that she had several sexual encounters with the prince starting when she was 17.

In 2015, Giuffre filed a defamation lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell for her repeated denying of abuse against Giuffre.

https://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/national/prince-andrew-reportedly-sued-by-alleged-victim-of-jeffrey-epstein-in-new-york