With climate denier Scott Pruitt poised to take over the Environmental Protection Agency, the states are going to play an important role in determining whether America continues to take bold steps to both reduce carbon pollution and hold the fossil-fuel industry accountable–and the industry and its elected lackeys know it: Concerned about what he calls […]
carbon tax
Posted inPolitical Animal
A Worsening Political Climate
Sometimes, you just have to appreciate the small things. Ten years ago Monday, George W. Bush–you know, the last Republican to slide into the Oval Office without winning the popular vote–delivered his second-to-last State of the Union Address, and for the first time in a Bush SOTU speech, he acknowledged the reality of a problem […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Orange Alert
Maybe Donald Trump had better things to do that morning. Perhaps the science-scorning scoundrel would have learned something 35 years ago today, if he had read the report in the New York Times about the crisis that would threaten his city three decades later in the form of Superstorm Sandy–a crisis he would shamefully deny […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Thought Process
C’mon, John Kerry’s just doing his job. The outgoing Secretary of State knows that the man nominated to replace him, ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson, isn’t qualified to cut the White House lawn, much less represent the Trump administration internationally. As a longtime climate hawk, Kerry also knows about ExxonMobil’s decades of deception on climate change, […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Governing Principles
November 7, 2017 will give us the clearest indication yet of whether the Democratic Party has its groove back. If the party wins the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial elections, it will demonstrate that Democrats still have plenty of fight left in them. Remember how the mainstream media hyped the Republican victories in those two […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
In the Court of Public Opinion
Sometimes you can just tell when an effort is doomed. Such is the case with a peculiar proceeding in Oregon this past week, where an effort to get the federal courts to do with the Obama administration allegedly will not is guaranteed to down in flames–the height of irony, as the court case in question […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Welcome Back
Thank God. I’m sure I wasn’t the only person who had that reaction to the news that GQ had hired Keith Olbermann to discuss the demented dynamics of the 2016 presidential election. It has been five long years since Olbermann was controversially forced out of MSNBC; Olbermann’s departure was profoundly painful for those who appreciated […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Crimes and Misdemeanors: Part III
Back in April, I suggested that Rep. Lamar Smith’s (R-TX) harassment of climate scientists should become a focus of discussion in the 2016 presidential election. Smith’s abuse of his position as head of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, and his attempts to destroy the lives of those who have tried to raise […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Riders on the Storm
In late-December, and again in late-June, I noted that if Paul Ryan’s worst nightmare comes true, and Democrats regain control of the House and Senate on November 8 thanks to Donald Trump’s hot mess of a presidential campaign, there will be a full-court press by progressives and climate activists to take care of the biggest […]
Posted inPolitical Animal
Journey to the Center
Who knew that Bernie Sanders’s appointees to the Democratic platform committee were into self-mutilation? How else does one explain their willingness to cut off their noses to spite their faces? I don’t quite understand the logic of trying to force the platform to adopt every last one of the Vermont Senator’s preferred issues, in particular […]
