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 –…
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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.
I don’t see the kind of wall to wall coverage I might expect from the national news media if this horrific disaster Los Angeles is experiencing was taking place in the east. But I’m sure you’ve seen something about it and it’s actually much worse than you know. Luckily there is robust local news covering this so people in the area are able to get real news. They certainly aren’t on Twitter which is a total shithole during times like these since Elon fired their disaster team and Facebook is equally unreliable. Bluesky is good but it doesn’t quite have the scale to do what Twitter used to do. I was going to share some pictures here but I don’t have the heart to do it. It’s just devastating. And keep a good thought for all the animals in the mountains that are on fire here in southern California. It breaks my heart. By the way, if anyone tells you this has nothing to do with climate change and everyone should just rake the forest, they are wrong. This 2015 article in Rolling Stone by Tim Dickinson explains it well: This is the present, and the future, of climate change.
Kash Patel and Pam Bondi are being nominated to purge the “Deep State” of all people who have not pledged fealty to Donald Trump. But there’s no reason to believe the DOJ or the FBI will be emptied. There are plenty of Trump loyalists in those agencies and have been from the very beginning. Recall that James Comey revealed the “investigation” into the Anthony Weiner laptop just days before the 2016 election largely because he was aware that the NY FBI field office was full of Trumpers who were planning to leak the information. (He should have just let them and we could have called it the phony dirty trick it was. Instead it became front page news. two weeks before the election.) Now we have more evidence of Trumpers in the woodpile. Philip Bump reports: In early 2020, the coronavirus pandemic reached the United States, leaving state governments and the Trump administration scrambling to respond. Trump pushed for a quick return to normal, with his reelection bid looming. His subsequent disputes with medical experts and the increasing toll from the virus became central elements of the 2020 presidential campaign.
That is the number one cable news network in America.
Trump is fighting tooth and nail to keep Jack Smith’s report from being released to the public and you have to wonder why. He beat them all. He’s not going to be prosecuted. But as Bill Kristol points out, there is a good reason for him to want to keep it out of the public record: Trump knows how crucial his rewriting of the history of January 6th was to his victory in November. If most Republicans had held to their original judgment of January 6th as a day of shame—if they had continued to believe that it was what Trump the very next day called a “heinous attack” that “defiled the seat of American democracy”—Trump would not have been the 2024 GOP nominee. If most Americans had thought January 6th not just an unfortunate event but a disqualifying disgrace, Trump wouldn’t have won the general election. The whitewashing of January 6th was key to Trump’s political comeback. And Trump has the sense—and I think he’s right about this—that he must make sure that January 6th stays whitewashed for the sake of his political success going forward.
Nobody voted for this Many people don’t have the stomach to follow politics these days after the disappointment of the last election and the return of the Trump three ring circus to Washington. It’s depressing and nerve-wracking even if you just hear snippets in passing or read a few paragraphs of a news story about billionaires at Mar-a-Lago or strange D-list celebrity political figures being lifted into positions of great responsibility. There’s only so much you can take. But I do wish that everyone could bring themselves to watch at least some of President-elect Trump’s press conference yesterday. Yes, much of it was the standard lunacy about shower heads and whales and windmills. He always plays his greatest hits. But he’s got some new material that I think people should be aware of. I’ve been saying for years that his schtick about being some kind of peacenik was a crock. First of all, it was obvious that he adopted that pose in order to position himself as the opposite of both Bush and Obama who were criticized for their foreign policy.
The Republicans are back, baby! They sound like the warmongering assholes we’ve always known and hated. I knew it was only a matter of time. I haven’t thought about Manifest Destiny since about the 8th grade. It’s a ridiculous concept in the 21st century but then virtually everything Trump is doing and saying is about returning to the 18th and 19th centuries. I have yet to read a good explanation of where Trump and his moronic followers are getting this stuff. We know Trump doesn’t read books. And while I certainly believe that he may have come up with the idea of taking over the world all by himself, the extolling of the gilded age and McKinley and all that has to have come from someone else. In the past I would have thought it was Steve Bannon but he doesn’t have trump’s ear anymore on this kind of thing. I wonder who does? Update — It’s on! I wonder why they bothered to delete it?