Lobenthal.com

Incredibly, Democratic Sens. Heinrich and Whitehouse are now promoting a “compromise” with the Republicans on the energy permitting bill that will eviscerate environmental regulation across the board in exchange for a nominal, meaningless pat on the head to wind and solar, which, of course, the pro-extinction GOP wants to get rid of completely. The legislation as currently composed “would provide massive long-term structural advantages to the fossil fuel industry,” Common Dreams reports, “and minimal short-term improvements to electricity transmission policy that might marginally benefit renewable energy. The legislation fails to meaningfully curb the accelerating build-out of data centers and artificial intelligence.”  It will also do huge damage to the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Water Act. And it is patently anti-democracy: citizens will no longer be able to sue to stop fossil fuel projects.

What the Democratic Establishment seems to once again want to do is convince voters that there is no difference between the two parties. (And then they blame Bernie.) Instead, they should champion–that means fight for–a truly clean energy agenda.

For your kids’ sake, call your senators and say NO WAY.

He bashes the media so that it will discredited whenever it reports anything unflattering about him. There isn’t more to it than than that. His incessant jeremiads are strategic.

But Common Dreams did, demonstrating again that the future of relevant news gathering lies in alternate, independent media. Perusing almost all of the corporate media, however, you’d never know that last week Democrats released a report entitled “The Billion Dollar Deal: How the Fossil Fuel Industry Brought the Trump Administration, Cashed In, and Left Americans to Pay the Price.”

“A thuggish government and a desperate industry. . .is squeezing every last dollar out of Americans’ pocketbooks while they still can. . . The regulatory architecture built over decades to protect American families from pollution and climate change. . .Those captured agencies delivered for the fossil fuel industry.”

The report is blunt about the financial and health costs thus imposed on the American consumer. “Canceled and delayed wind and solar projects are also raising electricity prices for consumers in multiple states, sending billions to fossil fuel plants. And the EPA itself has estimated that the elimination of tailpipe emission standards will cost Americans a minimum of $580 billion in added fuel costs alone over the next three decades. Hundreds of thousands of jobs are being lost as the United States cedes its industrial competitiveness in clean energy technologies to China and Europe.”

Democrats have been running away from environmental concerns because their idiot consultants told them it didn’t help them in the 2024 election. If it didn’t help them, it’s because they didn’t message effectively–the entire 2024 Democratic campaign was a lesson in what not to do. It’s up to them to learn how to message effectively, and they have to go directly to the public, since most of the media won’t offer any assistance.

Again, why aren’t there daily press briefings by the Democrats to inform Americans and refute the lies Trump and the Republicans?

as Trump’s environmental extinction agenda ensures that their children’s futures are being foreclosed?

The Democrats need to message not only on individual issues of affordability and Trump’s corruption but on his overarching determination to take this country–and the world–to the grave with him. There are endless examples that they can cite.

In addition to all the documented risks any AI data center poses, this one will be built on land stolen from a national park, will be powered by hundreds of small nuclear reactors–what could go wrong?

The horrors of unrestrained AI development and the nuclear “revival” go hand in hand.

was embarrassed as he stood behind a Trump incontinently lying about ICE, Biden, immigrants, and any other potted talking points he can remember. And did you notice how his dementia stance is getting more pronounced? Hiss body movement, too, is now completely disjointed and random.

David Pakman brings up these things, and has a good laugh when totally immoral Trump says his new AI accord is “morally binding.” Among moguls as lacking integrity or commitment to this country’s future as he is.

Marsha Blackburn has instituted a lawsuit against Jack Smith personally that is so absurd as well as specious that it is once again clear that this Republican Party is beyond redemption.

Yes, the reliably inane Blackburn is suing Jack Smith for allegedly mocking Trump’s complexion, among other outlandish accusations, many of them already disproven.

The Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee doubled down on treason today, in their unflagging efforts to make Trump’s fantasies seem real–no matter how severe the cost to the country. They continued to demand that Trump be raised above the law, painting any attempt to bring a career criminal to justice as politically motivated. They hissed histrionic slurs at Jack Smith for committing the crime of preparing an impeccable case against Trump’s criminality. They exhibited complete indifference to the mayhem that Trump’s mob instigated and to the policeman who were brutalized on 1/6/21.

They are not for law and order.

Their accusations of DOJ weaponization are ludicrously hypocritical.

They are trying to turn the United States into a dictatorship.

They cannot even conform to the basic tenets of patriotism.

Sen. Schmitt’s big goof about where Smith was spectating is all too symptomatic of a party that no longer has any use for facts.

And they are not–hear this Hakeen Jeffries–to be coddled or presumed to be amenable to reason by the Democrats.

a reporter to ask Trump about his personal investments in AI.

That’s a valid title for any epic art work that might be commissioned to depict Thursday’s dinner honoring Xi.