Know your DNC members Over at The American Prospect, Micah Sifry has assembled a list of DNC members ahead of the election of new party officers on Feb. 1. The New York Times reported on the two front runners in November. (I have a favorite for chair.) Your state’s members might want to hear from you about yours. March for our Lives co-founder and Parkland school shooting survivor, David Hogg, is running for 1st vice chair. I haven’t followed who else is running. Sifry writes: So, while some joke that the race for DNC chair is the ultimate high school class president election, whoever holds the office will have a significant role in how Democrats respond to Trump, how they rebuild, what changes they make to their media, technology, and fundraising practices, and how the 2028 presidential selection process plays out. The problem is that the DNC member list is not publically available. Some state parties publish the list of their members (mine does), but others do not. Some you can figure out. Kinda.
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A meaningless sentence empowering him further It’s done: The historic New York criminal case against Donald Trump — the first of its kind against a former president — closed with a whimper Friday morning, with the president-elect facing no consequences for faking business documents to cover up a sexual affair from American voters in 2016. “Never before has this court been presented with such a unique and remarkable set of circumstances,” Justice Juan Merchan said from the bench. “This has been a truly extraordinary case.” However, the judge pointed out that the soft landing to such a weighty case was directly due to Trump’s impending return to office — and he reminded Trump that the legal protections sparing him what could have been a more serious sentence, which could have included years in jail, belonged not to a man but to the person who temporarily sits at the White House’s Resolute Desk. “Ordinary citizens do not receive those legal protections,” Merchan said as he delivered his sentence.
I’m having a hard time gathering my thoughts today. It’s been a couple of very long nights here in the LA area. I have friends who lost everything and having to cope with the ignorant sociopath who will soon be the most powerful man in the country again is almost too much to bear. I’m outsourcing my commentary for the moment to California native son Brian Beutler: My exact words would be a bit more profane but that’s why I’m not a public official.
The only person at the funeral who openly snubbed that miscreant was Karen Pence. Karen Pence! I’m with Murshed: All I feel is betrayal right now. It’s not rational, I know. But that’s how it is.
More at the LA Times And please spare a thought for all the animals. It’s just devastating for pets and wildlife alike. This article has many links to help for pets. Here are some instructions for how to help the wildlife. Wildlife Rescue FundSantaMonicaMountainsFundCalifornia Wildlife rescueCanine Rescue ClubPasadena HumaneSPCLA
Apparently: Putin is very eager to meet Trump face to face, the Kremlin is making no prerequisite demands for the meeting to take place. There has presumably been a lot of back channel diplomacy before this official meeting. The Russian side aims to exclude Ukraine from the process completely and present itself to Trump as the side willing to compromise, while blaming Kyiv (and Biden’s administration) for the continuation of the war. Sounds totally believable. I wonder if Trump will let anyone take notes. Two buds hands in glove.
At the end of World War 2, the Western nations were beset with paranoia about what the USSR might be planning. The West had essentially relied on the Soviet armed forces to defeat the Nazis through their efforts on the Eastern front, after Hitler had launched – Operation Barbarossa – which effectively ended the –…
I can hardly believe that this is real: There’s a nascent, concerted effort to make Oklahoma the first state to ban new renewable energy projects. And it’s picking up steam. Across the U.S., activism against wind and solar energy has only grown in intensity, power, and scope in tandem with the recent renewables boom. This is in direct contrast to hopes many in the climate movement had that these technologies would become more popular as they entered communities historically hostile to the idea of switching away from fossil fuels. If anything, grassroots angst toward the energy transition has only surged in many pockets of the country since passage of the nation’s first climate law – Inflation Reduction Act – in 2022. Nowhere is this more true than Oklahoma, which on paper resembles a breadbasket of possibilities for the “green” economy. Oklahoma is the nation’s third largest generator of wind energy, home to a burgeoning solar energy sector, a potential hydrogen hub, and maybe even the nation’s first refinery for cobalt, a rare metal used in electric vehicles.
The GOP is just getting warmed up When Republicans win elections, they celebrate and move on. When they lose, they scream foul and launch lawsuits. And insurrections. Americans marked the fourth anniversary of the Trump insurrection on Monday. Donald Trump was impeached and indicted for trying to steal the presidential election he lost in 2020. North Carolina Republicans now mean to steal 60,000 votes and an entire statewide election. In broad daylight. In court. For a Republican state Supreme Court candidate, a judge yet. Two recounts confirm that Jefferson Griffin lost his election to incumbent Associate Justice Allison Riggs by 734 votes. Griffin’s attorneys hired Republican political consulting firm Coldspark to identify potential votes for challenge. Four people I know, friends, including the former local president of the NAACP, are among the 60,000 Democrats, Republicans and independents whose votes Judge Griffin wants vacated so he can sit on the state’s highest court. Griffin means to steal the election ecumenically.
“Gulf of America” is hardly his first choice Donald Trump refuses to rule out taking military or economic actions against a NATO ally (Denmark) to take control of Greenland or to annex the Sudetenland Panama Canal. Republican strategist Kristen Soltis Anderson argues this morning that Trump is misunderstood (Raw Story): “What Donald Trump is trying to argue is that there are many other conflicts around the world where it’s not in our interest to be involved,” said Republican strategist Kristen Soltis Anderson. “We’ve gotten too overextended, [Trump says] but this is in our interest. This is in our hemisphere, this is something that is important for us to do, and in a way, I think the reason why you see Donald Trump so animated about all of this is I think he views it as a really big real estate transaction. What does Donald Trump do? Big real estate transactions, branding – the Gulf of America. I mean, this is this is just Donald Trump taking the same playbook he’s been running for decades and now trying to apply it to the U.S.