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Joy

'SNL' pokes fun at Democratic presidential possibilities in ‘2020 Part 2: 2024’ horror trailer

'Sometimes the familiar face can be the most terrifying.'

via Saturday Night Live/YouTube

SNL's "2020 Part 2: 2024"

“Saturday Night Live” had some fun with the lukewarm feelings some Democrats have about President Biden over the weekend with a trailer for the mock horror film “2020 Part 2: 2024.”

The bit was funny because it mirrors the sentiments many had about Biden running in 2020. Hence, the trailer was a sequel to the fake film, “2020.”

In the sketch, a group of friends comes to terms with the fact that Joe Biden may be running for reelection at the age of 81. “I mean, I love the guy but he did his part,” “SNL” breakout star Bowen Yang says.

They try to rationalize a second term by pointing out Biden’s numerous achievements but cringe when they consider he recently crashed his bicycle. However uncomfortable Biden’s age makes them, they also have to consider a candidate who may be on the ballot if Biden decides against running again. This is where the true horror begins.

The friends ponder what could happen if the Democrats ran Beto O’Rourke, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker or Pete Buttigieg, striking fear in all of their hearts.

Finally, the group considers the most horrifying and also best-qualified choice of all. “I have the perfect candidate. A superstar who can go all the way—Hillary,” Mikey Day says as he turns into the villain from “Smile.”

While the idea of a repeat of 2020 has some Democrats on edge, a recent poll found that the majority of Americans don’t want to see it happen either. In a prospective presidential race, 64% of voters don’t want to see Joe Biden on the ballot and 68% don’t want to see Trump.

In a hypothetical head-to-head race in 2024, Biden has a 4% lead over Trump.

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Top Splash

Good job: Target has permanently raised its employee minimum wage to $15 an hour

via Mike Mozart / Flickr

Target has announced that it will raise its minimum wage to $15 an hour beginning July 5. The decision makes good on a promise it made three years ago to raise its starting rate to $15 an hour by 2020.

The move will impact over 275,000 employees in its distribution centers and retail stores.

Target's decision comes after many of America's larger retailers gave their employees temporary raises for working through the COVID-19 pandemic. However, many of those stores, including Starbucks, Kroger, and Amazon have done away with their pandemic raises over the past few weeks.

On March 25, Target moved its starting wage temporarily to $15 an hour after the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Now, it's made the decision permanent.

In addition to the raise in its starting wage, Target will give a $200 "recognition bonus" to workers on its front lines as well as additional perks including on-demand fitness classes, back up child and family care, free doctor visits, and thermometers.

"Everything we aspire to do and be as a company builds on the central role our team members play in our strategy, their dedication to our purpose and the connection they create with our guests and communities," CEO Brian Cornell said in a statement.

Target's decision comes at a time when the Federal minimum wage is woefully behind at just $7.25 an hour and hasn't been raised since 2009. Currently, 29 states and the District of Columbia have minimum wages above $7.25. Washington D.C.'s is $14 per hour while California and Washington have the highest state minimum wages at $13 per hour.

The $15 minimum wage is a special figure in the fight against poverty in America. In 2012, two hundred fast-food workers walked off the job to demand $15/hr and union rights in New York City, launching the Fight for $15 movement.

Independent, and sometimes Democratic, Senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders has been one of the biggest advocates for a $15 minimum wage, having made it a prominent part of his platform for years.

"Just a few short years ago, we were told that raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour was 'radical.' But a grassroots movement of millions of workers throughout this country refused to take 'no' for an answer," Sanders said.

"It is not a radical idea to say a job should lift you out of poverty, not keep you in it," he continued. "The current $7.25 an hour federal minimum wage is a starvation wage. It must be increased to a living wage of $15 an hour."

via Stephen Melkisethian / Flickr

Sanders' call for an increase in the wage brought this one-time radical position to the forefront of Democratic politics when in 2019, the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives passed the Raise the Wage act that would make $15 the new federal minimum wage for all American workers by 2025.

The act still has yet to pass the Republican-controlled White House and Senate, which seems highly unlikely. But, should fortunes change in November, a $15 minimum wage in five years doesn't seem too far-fetched.

While state and federal legislatures drag their heels when it comes to raising the minimum wage, we can all support the movement by shopping at places that support their employees and the economy at-large by paying fair wages.

So next time you go shopping and have the choice between Walmart — which pays a starting wage of $11 to $12 — or Target, the choice should be pretty clear.

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Well Being

Alarmingly high insulin prices are forcing Americans to flock to Canada to buy the drug

Alan Levine / Flickr

Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders led a group of Americans on a bus ride from Detroit, Michigan to Windsor, Ontario last month to call attention to one of America's biggest health issues: the out of control cost of insulin.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, nearly 10% of Americans have diabetes and 7.4 million of them must take insulin to survive.

"Americans are paying $300 for insulin. In Canada they can purchase it for $30," Sanders said in a tweet. "We are going to end pharma's greed."

The increasing number of Americans going to Canada for cheaper insulin has caused alarm among some Canadians who fear there isn't enough of the drug to go around.

"There absolutely is some degree of risk," Barry Power, Director of Therapeutic Content with the Canadian Pharmacists Association, told The Huffington Post.

RELATED: Trump's plan to 'lower drug costs' is a bait-and-switch that leaves seniors paying more

"If you look at the disparity in the populations, a small percentage of Americans coming to Canada is a disproportionate increase for services and supplies that are earmarked for Canada," Power continued.

The price of insulin in America doubled between 2012 and 2016 when the average annual costs for users jumped from $2,864 to $5,705.

The major reason for the massive price discrepancy is because Canada has socialized medicine and its Patented Medicine Prices Review Board ensures the price of patented medicine sold in Canada is not excessive and is "comparable with prices in other countries."

The U.S. has a market-based system where pharmaceutical companies can manipulate patents to prevent cheaper, generic drugs from coming to market. They can also raise the price to whatever they want.

Medicare, the nation's largest buyer of prescription drugs, is actually barred from negotiating with pharmaceutical companies.

RELATED: John Oliver explains just how shady drug companies really are

"They are [raising prices] because they can," Jing Luo, a researcher at Brigham and Women's Hospital, told Vox, "and it's scary because it happens in all kinds of different drugs and drug classes."

The effects of the rise of insulin costs means that one in four Americans who need the drug to survive are now skimping on their use of it because they don't have the money.

"It's an embarrassment for those of us who are Americans," Sanders said while exiting a pharmacy in Canada. "We love our Canadian neighbors and we thank them so much, but we should not have to come to Canada to get the medicine we need for our kids to stay alive, we can do that in America."

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How has the world changed since 'An Inconvenient Truth' premiered?

In the past decade, a lot has changed in our fight against climate change.

In a recent Q&A with Sen. Bernie Sanders published in The Guardian, former Vice President Al Gore pinpointed "two big things" that have changed since his groundbreaking documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" hit theaters in 2006.

Photo by Neilson Barnard/Getty Images for The New York Times.

One is rather promising. The other? Not so much.

1. First, the bad news: There's been a jaw-dropping increase in extreme weather that was considered relatively rare in 2006.

"The climate-related extreme weather events are way more common now, and way more destructive," Gore told Sanders. "Here in the U.S., in the last seven years, we’ve had 11 so-called 'once-in-a-1,000 year' downpours."

"1,000-year" is an official term used by organizations like the NOAA National Center for Environmental Information to describe the probability that such an event will happen in a given year. South Carolina's record-breaking October 2015 flooding — which The Weather Channel deemed "catastrophic" — was one of those events.

A man in Columbia, South Carolina, cleans up his home after much of it was destroyed in the floods that ravished the region in October 2015. Photo by Sean Rayford/Getty Images.

Upward of 2 feet of rain blanketed many regions of the state in under 24 hours, causing massive (and expensive) damages and taking over a dozen lives.

These events have become disturbingly normal, Gore said. On the other hand, we've also normalized many of the innovative solutions that help drastically cut back greenhouse gas emissions.

Which brings us to...

2. The thing that'll make you feel optimistic: When "An Inconvenient Truth" released in theaters over a decade ago, many solutions to reduce carbon emissions were still out of reach.

Not anymore.

"In a growing number of cities and regions, electricity from solar and wind is cheaper than electricity from burning fossil fuels," the former vice president said. "Electric cars are becoming more commonplace. Efficiency technologies are coming down in cost."

In other words, going green has become good business.

Workers install solar panels in Las Vegas, Nevada, in 2016. Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images.

After President Donald Trump pulled the U.S. out of the historic Paris climate agreement to dramatically lower the world's carbon emissions, many have argued the country will reach its targets anyway as sustainable technologies continue to boom.

An analysis by Morgan Stanley found that the economic benefits to switching to renewable energies is outweighing the pros to keeping up the status quo:

"By our forecasts, in most cases favorable renewables economics rather than government policy will be the primary driver of changes to utilities’ carbon emissions levels. For example, notwithstanding president Trump’s stated intention to withdraw the US from the Paris climate accord, we expect the US to exceed the Paris commitment of a 26-28% reduction in its 2005-level carbon emissions by 2020."

As Gore put it, "The problems are worse, but the solutions are here."

We can't assume progress will happen, though; we have to work for it.

"All over the country activists are being energized," Gore said. And it's those activists — not just politicians in Washington — who will make the difference. "We are counting on people at the grassroots level."

Gore sat down to chat with Sanders to promote his new film on climate change, "An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power," which opens in theaters on July 28, 2017. Watch a trailer below:

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