Lobenthal.com

Nuclear power is the most apocalyptically dangerous non-solution to the climate crisis we could imagine.  One nuclear accident could take out most of a continent. Germany knows this, and that’s why they’re winding it down together with fossil fuels.

Trump’s death-dealing climate agenda was on view last night, as he lied and said that Germany was abandoning its commitment to renewable energy.

Germany talked back. “Like it or not: Germany’s energy system is fully operational, with more than 50% renewables. And we are shutting down – not building – coal & nuclear plants. Coal will be off the grid by 2038 at the latest. PS: We also don’t eat cats and dogs.”

Trump was less manic at the debate than I expected–although he did descend into hysteria toward the end. Which leads me to believe that on this occasion he had been given sedatives rather than stimulants in the vain hope that he could stay calm.

Trump will be drugged at tonight’s debate. Higher than a kite, he will be a study in obstreperous mania. He won’t answer any of the rmoderators’ questions, but will steer everything back to his two or three talking points:

The Southern border. Point out t that he he never talks about the Northern border, because White people do most of the crossing there. Point out how he has exploited the border issue to launch endless streams of Hitler-esque hate rhetoric.

Afghanistan. Explain how his disastrous withdrawal plan did spell disaster.

The economy. Remind viewers of the way it was destroyed by Trump due to his sabotage of our COVID recovery. 

You also need to keep reminding the debate audience that Trump has not answered any of the questions posed to him.

A new report issued by Village Preservation demonstrates the way that NYC landmark designations have ground to a halt; there are fewer under the Adams regime than any under any previous mayor since the Landmarks Presevation Commission was established in 1965.

To cover its ass, today’s Landmarks “Preservation” Commission has devised a bait-and-switch whereby, as Village Preservation director Andrew Berman writes,  the LPC is now ” focusing on sites that face no immediate or foreseeable threat, while those that do are passed over.”

In The Guardian, Rebecca Solnit writes that “The first thing to say about the hate and scorn currently directed at the mainstream  US media is that they worked hard to earn it. They’ve done so by failing, repeatedly, determinedly, spectacularly to do their job, which is to maintain their independence, inform the electorate, and speak truth to power.”

A.G. Sulzberger takes to the pages of the Washington Post to insist that when the Times is asked to practice journalism, it is actually being asked to practice electioneering. That’s now become the go-to dodge for the corporate media when it comes to parrying evidence of their flagrantly permissive coverage of Trump.

By way of explaining that he does really, really understand how ominous is Trump’s praise of Viktor Orban, Sulzberger resorts to a familiar rationalization for why his paper treats Trump’s  panegyrics as effluvia.

Sulzberger: “I disagree with those who have suggested that the risk Trump poses to the free press is so high that news organizations such as mine should cast aside neutrality and directly oppose his reelection.”

Jamison Foser in his newsletter zeroes in on the hustle that Sulzberger is plying:  “That’s a straw man Sulzberger invents because he does not dare engage our actual argument, which is that the Times is not neutral, and does not even define the term correctly, and the paper often deploys double standards and false equivalencies that benefit Trump and the Republican Party.”

Remember, this is  the publisher of the New York Times talking,  and that would be the newspaper that directly aided Trump’s victory in 2016 by its absurdly over-credulous, grotesquely disproportionate and always prominently placed coverage of the Hillary Clinton non scandal. 

And we will never forget what the Times did to Joe Biden in service to its protectionism toward Trump.

at the demented babble that gushed out of Trump during their “interview.” But Levin didn’t dare interrupt, which just made it all the more damning for Trump.  He demonstrated that it is time for him to go into Assisted Living–not anywhere near the White House.

No, Mr. Trump,American Jews do not recognize Netanyahu as their president. And a significant percentage of Israelis realize that he’s not their president, either.

Jack Johnson at Common Dreams reports that “The strike was called by Histadrut, Israel’s largest trade union. Arnon Bar-David, the union’s chairman, said ahead of the action that “this is not a matter of right or left; it is a matter of life and death.”

No, he’s not just urning his head from to side to read (haltingly, because he’s functionally illiterate) the teleprompter. He can barely face America head on, or maybe he can’t control his head movements or he’s too dilapidated to hold up his  head.   Those weird, wandering head slumps may also in some way indicate that he knows every word he says is a lie, and he’s tired of having to go through the same sham motions over and over again.  The twitchy, spastic temper of those movements is a further sign of his condition.  

We could go on.

or the Dems will be wiped out in the 20226 midterms, the way they were in 1994 and 2010.

Contrary to how the corporate media and Establishment Dems spun those losses, they occurred largely because both Clinton and Obama abandoned in major ways the progressive agendas on which they had run. (In Obama’s case, as well, he was so demoralized by GOP attacks on Affordable Care that he just gave up campaigning to save his House majority.)