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The US Could Have Its Very Own Brexit, Samantha Bee Warns

Mother Jones

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On Monday night’s episode of Full Frontal With Samantha Bee, our host outlined some pretty scary parallels between the UK’s Brexit vote and the United States’ presidential election in November.

“While the Brits were waking up in the ruins of their nation saying, ‘Oh God, what have we done?’ a lot of Americans were looking over and saying, ‘Oh God, what are we about to do?'” Bee said, as she showed British news clips highlighting racist outbursts, directed at Muslim and Eastern European immigrants in particular, in the aftermath of the UK’s decision to leave the European Union.

In the UK and in the US, “there’s the sad conservative leader who gambled the nation’s future on his ability to control the extremists in his own party and lost,” Bee says as the screen shows photos of Britain’s disgraced PM David Cameron and US Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.

And Boris Johnson, “Europhobe and former mayor of London,” as well as the likeliest choice to become the next prime minister, is “basically Trump with his hair on backwards.”

But America is not Britain. In fact, not being British is kind of central to our brand, Bee says. While the UK is 87% white, the US is significantly more multiracial. And this diverse population is the key to ensuring that Trump not only loses the general election in November, she says, but loses “in a fucking landslide.”

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The US Could Have Its Very Own Brexit, Samantha Bee Warns

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Big Oil Can’t Wait For the New Republican Majority in Congress

Mother Jones

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Pop the champagne corks in Washington! It’s party time for Big Energy. In the wake of the midterm elections, Republican energy hawks are ascendant, having taken the Senate and House by storm. They are preparing to put pressure on a president already presiding over a largely drill-baby-drill administration to take the last constraints off the development of North American fossil fuel reserves.

The new Republican majority is certain to push their agenda on a variety of key issues, including tax reform and immigration. None of their initiatives, however, will have as catastrophic an impact as their coming drive to ensure that fossil fuels will dominate the nation’s energy landscape into the distant future, long after climate change has wrecked the planet and ruined the lives of millions of Americans.

It’s already clear that the new Republican leadership in the Senate will make construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, intended to carry heavy oil (or “tar sands”) from Alberta, Canada, to refineries on the US Gulf Coast, one of their top legislative priorities. If the lame-duck Congress fails to secure Keystone’s approval now with the help of pro-carbon Senate Democrats, it certainly will push the measure through when a Republican-dominated Senate arrives in January. (Editors’ Note: The Senate voted Tuesday night to reject the Keystone pipeline.) Approval of that pipeline, said soon-to-be Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, will be among the first measures “we’re very likely to be voting on.” But while the Keystone issue is going to command the Senate’s attention, it’s only one of many measures being promoted by the Republicans to speed the exploitation of the country’s oil, coal, and natural gas reserves. So devoted are their leaders to fossil fuel extraction that we should start thinking of them not as the Grand Old Party, but the Grand Oil Party.

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Big Oil Can’t Wait For the New Republican Majority in Congress

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