speak easy
speak easy's JournalA BFD: Finally Medicare will be able to negotiate Prescription Drug Prices with Big Pharma
A one page summary of 'The the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022' is here
https://www.democrats.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/inflation_reduction_act_one_page_summary.pdf
• Lowers ACA health care premiums for millions of Americans [funded through to 2026]
The Medicare changes will save the budget $288 billion over ten years.
An analysis of the Bill by Maxine Joselow is here
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/07/28/what-what-out-manchin-surprise-climate-deal/
What's in and what's out of [the] surprise climate deal
While the new agreement, dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, would make some concessions to Manchin on fossil fuel production, it still represents the largest piece of climate legislation in the nation's history.
“This is the most significant action we’ve taken on climate, that we will take on climate and clean energy, ever,” said Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), one of Congress's most vocal climate hawks.
• In: Tax credits for electric vehicles
• In: Tax credits for clean energy
• In: Methane reduction program, green bank
• Out (for now): Reform of rules governing pipelines and infrastructure
[not possible via budget reconciliation]
• Out:The Clean Electricity Performance Program
[which would punished electric utilities that didn't deploy more clean energy]
Shell Posts Record Quarterly Profit of $11.5 Billion. Exxon and Chevron Are Next.
Source: Barrons
Shell , the United Kingdom–domiciled energy giant, posted record quarterly earnings Thursday a day before U.S. rivals Exxon Mobil and Chevron issue their quarterly updates.
Strong performance at Shell ’s (ticker: SHEL) refining and gas trading divisions fueled adjusted earnings of $11.5 billion in the second quarter, more than double the $5.5 billion in the same period the previous year, and up from $9.1 billion the previous quarter.
Shell SHEL +0.26% also announced plans to buy back a further $6 billion of shares. Shell’s U.S.-listed stock rose 1.89% in premarket trading to $52.39.
Big oil has been a beneficiary of soaring energy prices triggered by economies rebounding post-Covid from booming demand, and more significantly sanctions on Russia restricting supply following its invasion of Ukraine.
Read more: https://www.barrons.com/articles/shell-earnings-record-profit-exxon-chevron-51659002041
At CPAC next week: Victor 'pure Nazi' Orban rails against 'mixed-race'
After making 'a purely Nazi speech worthy of Joseph Goebbels' that prompted PM Orban's closest Jewish advisor to quit, Putin's 'best friend in Europe' is heading to CPAC. “Let’s listen to the man speak,” Matt Schlapp, chairman of CPAC said.
Orban's 'pure Nazi' speech triggers political earthquake
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is not known for his restraint, but he may have finally gone too far with a speech railing against "mixed-race" populations. A close adviser has stepped down — and fallout continues.
In a speech Saturday in Baile Tusnad, Romania, where Orban addresses a school program every summer, the prime minister's remarks were especially polarizing. He carped about "mixed-race" populations and the "flooding" of Europe with non-European migrants, and referred to the racist concept of "population exchange."
''There is a world in which European peoples are mixed together with those arriving from outside Europe,'' he said. ''Now, that is a mixed-race world.'' In the Carpathian Basin, however, people are not mixed-race, he said: ''We are simply a mixture of peoples living in our own European homeland. ... We are willing to mix with one another, but we do not want to become peoples of mixed-race.''
Pure Nazi text: The remarks triggered a political earthquake in Hungary. Zsuzsa Hegedus, a close friend of Orban's who was his special representative on social inclusion and modernization, has resigned. Jewish and the daughter of parents who survived the Holocaust, the sociologist Hegedus said the speech was a ''pure Nazi text'' and the discourse was one of clear ''racial hatred.'' She called it not only discriminatory, but ''completely unacceptable.''
https://www.dw.com/en/orbans-pure-nazi-speech-triggers-political-earthquake/a-62619164
A hero of the Trump right shows his true colors: Whites only
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/07/27/viktor-orban-cpac-conservatives-welcome-racism/
Time to put Loving back on the table?
The Russians are continuing to shell Ukrainian wheat fields
570 acres was burnt out overnight in the Mykolaiv region.
Source: Ukraine Now on Telegram
Russia expands its Ukraine goals, now seeks to oust Zelenskyy's 'absoluely unacceptable regime'.
Source: msn
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, speaking to envoys at an Arab League summit in Cairo late Sunday, said Moscow is targeting the "absolutely unacceptable regime" of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Russian troops swept into Ukraine on Feb. 24 and rolled toward Kyiv before bogging down on the outskirts of the capital. The Kremlin then hit reset, focusing its efforts on the industrial Donbas.
“We will definitely help the Ukrainian people to free themselves from the regime that is absolutely anti-people and anti-history,” Lavrov said.
Zelenskyy was unbowed, pleading to win "this war for independence" and to keep Ukraine on a course towards full membership in the EU and becoming one of the most modern states in the world.
Read more: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, speaking to envoys at an Arab League summit in Cairo late Sunday, said Moscow is targeting the "absolutely unacceptable regime" of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
As if Putin's endgame as ever changed. Russia will march into Kyiv as soon as it get the chance. The only rational strategy is the total defeat of Moscow's barbarians.
NYT: 'No Redemption for Trumpers' - by Michelle Goldberg.
The Myth of the Good Trump OfficialRepublican Representative Liz Cheney, the Jan. 6 committee’s vice chair, has been perhaps its most prominent voice. At Thursday’s prime-time hearing, the last until September, she painted die-hard believers in Trump’s big lie as noble victims. “Donald Trump knows that millions of Americans who supported him would stand up and defend our nation were it threatened,” said Cheney. “They would put their lives and their freedom at stake to protect her. And he is preying on their patriotism. He is preying on their sense of justice. And on Jan. 6, Donald Trump turned their love of country into a weapon against our Capitol and our Constitution.”
It is a sign of the committee Democrats’ love of country that they have allowed the hearings to proceed this way. They are crafting a story about Jan. 6 as a battle between Republican heroism and Republican villainy. It seems intended to create a permission structure for Trump supporters to move on without having to disavow everything they loved about his presidency, or to admit that Jan. 6 was the logical culmination of his sadistic politics.
If you believe, as I do, that Trump’s sociopathy makes him a unique threat to this country’s future, it makes sense to try to lure Republicans away from him rather than damn them for their complicity. There is a difference, however, between a smart narrative and an accurate one. In truth, you can’t cleave Trump and his most shameless antidemocratic enablers off from the rest of the Republican Party, because the party has been remade in his image. Plenty of ex-Trump officials have come off well in the hearings, including the former deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger, the former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and, in video testimony, the former White House counsel Pat Cipollone. That shouldn’t erase the ignominy of having served Trump in the first place.
I have a lot of respect for Cheney, who is likely sacrificing her future in Republican politics in her attempt to hold Trump accountable, and for the bravery of witnesses like Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified despite the Trump camp’s reported attempt to intimidate her. But whatever they say now, the witnesses who worked for Trump enabled his mounting authoritarianism. Each contributed, in his or her own way, not just to Jan. 6, but also to eroding our democracy so that Jan. 6 may be just a prequel. Each helped bring us to a point where, according to a recent survey, more than half of Americans believe a civil war will erupt in the United States in the near future.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/22/opinion/jan-6-trump-official.html
Exclusive: Russia's Gazprom tells European buyers gas supply halt beyond its control
Source: Reuters
LONDON, July 18 (Reuters) - Russia's Gazprom has told customers in Europe it cannot guarantee gas supplies because of "extraordinary" circumstances, according to a letter seen by Reuters, upping the ante in an economic tit-for-tat with the West over Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.
The Russian state gas monopoly said in a letter dated July 14 that it was retroactively declaring force majeure on supplies from June 14. The news comes as Nord Stream 1, the key pipeline delivering Russian gas to Germany and beyond, is undergoing 10 days of annual maintenance scheduled to conclude on Thursday. read more
The letter added to fears in Europe that Moscow may not restart the pipeline at the end of the maintenance period in retaliation for sanctions imposed on Russia over the war in Ukraine, heightening an energy crisis that risks tipping the region into recession.
Known as an "act of God" clause, force majeure is standard in business contracts and defines extreme circumstances that release a party from their legal obligations. The declaration does not necessarily mean that Gazprom will stop deliveries, rather that it should not be held responsible if it fails to meet contract terms.
Read more: https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/russias-gazprom-declares-force-majeure-gas-supplies-europe-2022-07-18/
Known in Russia as an "act of Putin".
G20: Canada claims Russian delegation are personally responsible for 'war crimes' in Ukraine
Source: The Guardian
Canada’s finance minister, Chrystia Freeland, has told Russian officials at a meeting of G20 finance ministers that she held them personally responsible for “war crimes” committed during Russia’s war in Ukraine, a western official said.
Freeland directly addressed the Russian delegation taking part in the meeting of the Group of 20 major economies, telling them on Friday: “It is not only generals who commit war crimes, it is the economic technocrats who allow the war to happen and to continue,” the official said.
Freeland, whose maternal grandparents were born in Ukraine, told the opening G20 session that the war was the “single biggest threat to the global economy right now”, the official said.
A day before the meeting, the US Treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, set the tone, calling Russia’s war in Ukraine the “greatest challenge” to the global economy and saying members of Putin’s government “have no place” at the talks. "We are seeing negative spillover effects from that war in every corner of the world, particularly with respect to higher energy prices and rising food insecurity,” she said.
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/15/g20-canada-says-russian-delegation-is-personally-responsible-for-war-crimes-in-ukraine
Merchants of death.
this is not going to win me any friends or favors but when
on 15 August 2021, the Taliban walked (not marched) into Kabul, not a shot was fired by the well equipped and well trained Afghan Army charged with defending their country, their city, and the hopes and dreams of their women and girls. Not a shot. 20 years of US. support and training came to nothing when it came to the crunch. A fiasco of cowardice and indifference. President Biden made the right call and then some.
On 24 February, 2022, when Russia's armed forces marched into Ukraine, President Zelensky's militias contested every inch of territory. In the days, weeks, and months that have followed, each U.S. shipment of arms have been followed by spectacular defeats, set backs and slaughters of the Russian invaders The bravery of Ukrainians, from tractor drivers to special forces, is being written into legend.
Six months after the fall of Afghanistan, the last thing the Biden Administration wanted was to be drawn into another shooting war. But when President Zelensky and Ukraine argued their case for democratic sovereignty, a (capital D) Democratic Administration, burned by the cases of Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan still went the extra mile to support light (over Putin's darkness)
So, who are our friends? A: Those who are prepared to live free or die (yes I know). Same as it ever was.
Afghans, like their President fleeing Kabul, showed cowardice - the Ukrainians, like their President, bravery. Horses for courses. The Biden Administration made the correct calls. Slava Ukraini.
Hubble v James Webb: 'The Cosmic Cliffs', Carina Nebula, 7,200 light-years [hi-res images]
Hubble Space Telescope, 2012
James Webb Space Telescope, 2022
“This is only the beginning. It’s beyond what we had expected— it’s beyond our dreams,” Chris Packham, Professor Astrophysics, UTSA.
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