Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Wednesday, July 1.

*Two Of The World’s Largest Countries Are Joining Forces To Fight Climate Change

*A Momentous Week, and a GOP That Needs to Change

*Poll: Majorities back Supreme Court rulings on marriage, Obamacare (“63% support the Court’s ruling upholding government assistance for lower-income Americans buying health insurance through both state-operated and federally-run health insurance exchanges.”)

*Greece fails to make key IMF debt payment

*Europe rallies behind Merkel as Greeks hit breaking point

*Resisting the gay marriage ruling would be a losing battle for the GOP

*How Chris Christie trapped himself in a political quandary

*Chris Christie is America’s biggest bully: 5 brutal facts that prove he’s unfit for higher office

*Schapiro: National politics becoming state politics (“Democrat Terry McAuliffe is nationalizing the Virginia legislative elections. So are a Republicans – by invoking McAuliffe, himself.”)

*Kaine, Warner Call on Congress to Reauthorize Export-Import Bank

*Virginia Confederacy group opposes ‘orchestrated witch hunt’ on license plates

*Good Samaritan law takes effect, will protect those who report overdoses to authorities

*Jim Webb says he’ll share his decision on a presidential run in few days

*GOP’s baffling Trump cowardice: A party too timid to denounce a bigoted gasbag

*New state laws take effect today with new fiscal year

*Examining parole ban once again

*Should Va. reinstate parole? YES, sentencing reform makes practical sense

*Our view: A GOP compromise (“By scheduling a convention, Republicans run the risk of another far-right echo chamber, such as the one that nominated the ludicrous E.W. Jackson for lieutenant governor in 2013 – effectively handing Democrats the office before the campaign even started.”)

*Beach woman petitions to move zoo’s elephants to sanctuary

*McAuliffe talks Bi-County Parkway, economy at chamber event (This monstrosity needs to die.)

*Head of troubled Fairfax elections office steps down

*Nationals hold Braves at bay, 6-1

*Severe storms with heavy rain sweep through the D.C. region

( – promoted by lowkell)

Arlington, VA – Virginia is gearing up to play a major role in U.S. progress to address climate change, a new report said today. In the next decade, the state will cut as much global warming pollution as 22 billion tons of coal burned annually.

The Environment Virginia Research & Policy Center report comes as pressure mounts on the U.S. to play a leading role in negotiations for an international climate agreement in Paris.

“The best way to lead is by example,” said Nicole Guilfoyle, Global Warming Solutions Organizer with Environment Virginia. “With Virginia’s help, that’s exactly what the US is poised to do.”

The analysis, Path to the Paris Climate Conference, documents expected carbon pollution reductions from existing state-level and federal policies by 2025, including renewable energy standards, fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks, and regional and state-based carbon caps. Solar can power Virginia 18 times over, and that resource will be expanded under the Governor’s state energy plan.

The report shows that state and federal policies underway across the country can reduce carbon pollution 27 percent below 2005 levels.

The biggest slice of these reductions will come from the Clean Power Plan, the proposed federal limits on carbon pollution from power plants expected to be finalized this summer. The plan requires an 38% percent cut in greenhouse gas emissions from power plants in Virginia, and compels state leaders to accelerate the transition to clean energy sources such as wind and solar.

However, fossil fuel interests and their allies in Congress are trying to block the Clean Power Plan, with the House voting as recently as last week to derail it.

“Unfortunately, leaders in the halls of power such as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his Polluter allies in Congress have recently tried to derail the Clean Power Plan in our recent appropriations bill,” said Guilfoyle. “That’s why we’re grateful to leaders such as State Senator Barbara Favola, Congressman Donald Beyer and Senator Tim Kaine, who continue to defend the Clean Power Plan against attack, and raise the bar on climate action. I urge Senator Mark Warner to join them in their efforts.”

“What some people don’t know is the day to day Virginian would benefit immensely from such policies. For Example, the Clean Power Plan will give Virginians benefits such as adding over 200,000 new jobs in our Commonwealth,” said State Senator Barbara Favola. State Senator Favola highlighted how it is necessary for Virginia businesses to remain competitive. On the Clean Power Plan, Senator Favola states, “Ladies and Gentlemen I think this plan is a plan for our future. This is a plan for a healthier Virginia. This is a plan for a brighter Virginia.”

“I’d like to point out that Virginia has enough cost-effective renewable energy resources to meet 127% of its energy needs,” said Scott Sklar, President of The Stella Group, a business specializing in clean energy. Mr. Sklar stated that “There are at least 80 companies in Virginia that provide services and equipment in the energy efficiency and renewable energy field,” and that there is ample opportunity to utilize these industries in the Commonwealth. Mr. Sklar also noted that the cost effectiveness, energy efficiency, and job opportunity in these industries has enormous potential, and Virginians must capitalize on these incredible resources.

To avoid devastating impacts of climate change, scientists estimate that an 80 percent cut in global warming pollution will be necessary by mid-century. As the report notes, a more rapid transition to clean energy sources, beyond those already required by existing policies, will be required to achieve these levels.

“Virginia is poised to play a major role in American progress to cut global warming pollution,” said Guilfoyle. “We must build on that progress to ensure a better, healthier future for our climate and our children.”

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“You rape our women,” Dylann Roof is reported to have declared just prior to shooting nine black people in a Charleston church. And in that, he showed a mentality that reflects something deep in the culture.

It’s not just that the idea of the black rapist has a long and sordid history in the South. And it goes deeper than that the accusation was generally a false one.

More than that, it is a mirror image of the truth. It turns things upside down. Black is white, and white is black.

While the image of the black man raping the white woman has been a powerful and deep part of the Southern political culture, the historical reality of the problem of interracial rape was the negative of that picture: i.e., the white man raping the black woman.

DNA studies have shown that perhaps as many as 35% of African-American men carry a Y chromosome of European origin.  

The meaning of that is unambiguous: in the history of this nation, many black women gave birth to children sired by white men. When the black women are owned by the white men, it is hardly voluntary. It is plain in the history of many Southern plantation families: white masters forced themselves on black women.  

The problem of interracial rape has historically been the very opposite of that mythology that drove Dylann Roof’s murderous passion.

When we combine the factual reality shown by the DNA evidence with the long-enduring and passionate antagonism of whites over the (mostly) imagined rape of white women by black men, we see a template of a most troublesome sort.

It is a template in which everything can be stood on its head. It is a mentality in which the opposite of the truth can become a central part of a worldview, and a major channel for passions to be expressed in the realm of power.

It represents a fractured relationship with reality. It is a sign of brokenness in people’s consciousness, in their relationship with and perception of themselves. It provides a door through which a force of brokenness can wreak much damage-from the Church in Charleston, to the culture of lynching black men ostensibly to protect the purity of white women, to the systematic damage being inflicted on America in the national crisis of our times.

Because this mentality is by no means confined to the matter of interracial rape, as we can see in the destructive political force that has come to center stage of American politics.

Thus it is  that in our time — when “the spirit that drove us to Civil War” has returned to take over one of America’s major political parties – that the template of the Lie is serving a force of brokenness in several identifiable ways.

We see those who proclaim loudly that they are “conservative” systematically trampling our basic American political norms and traditions.  

(Filibuster, debt ceiling, acceptance of the legitimacy of an opponent’s holding power-to name a few.)

We see that those who wave the flag most prominently, and make much show of their patriotism, damaging the nation at every turn, and regularly sacrificing the nation’s good for their political advantage.

(For example in the obstructionism, making it a priority to make the president fail even when the economy was on the edge of an abyss, then impeding legislation to revive the economy; sabotaging an attempt to solve the huge national problem of the health care system while offering no better alternative, all to keep the opponent from achieving anything.)

And we see that those who are more salient in the political arena as supposed champions of Christianity manifesting the very opposite of the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount.

(See “What Kind of Christianity Is This?”)

Such ways that brokenness begets brokenness is one of the themes developed in my new book WHAT WE’RE UP AGAINST. Advance copies of this book can be acquired here.

Great stuff from David Roberts of Grist on the “post-partisan fallacy” and the hard-core nature of the right wing in this country. First, though, some positive thoughts from Roberts about clean energy.

*”It’s going to be the growth of cleantech that ultimately forces the climate policy question, and I sort of think we’re seeing the early stages of that happening…clean energy getting so cheap that it’s starting to shift the politics, mainly at the state level.”

Roberts then talks about political polarization in the U.S., which he says “a lot of people still  have not really, fully come to grips with.”

*In Roberts’ view, political polarization is not just a “Washington DC phenomenon” or just about “too much money in politics” and that there’s “still this mass of sort-of moderate, centrist people out in the country who aren’t having their needs met, and I just think that’s wrong…the polarization in the capital reflects polarization in the country.”

*”At this point, the U.S. conservative movement has become an identity movement, and part of that identity is opposing anything that Democrats support that might indicate the need for more government programs..more taxing or spending or regulating.”

*The “endless quest for the bipartisan or trans-partisan or post-partisan climate message that’s going to unite everyone behind sensible policy is, I think, fruitless, has been fruitless, and was always fruitless…”

*What’s the alternative strategy other than coming together and joining hands?” “The other stratey is to beat the other side; if you can’t win them over, you beat them. You know, this is something you don’t have to explain to any Republican, but for some reason on the left, Democrats, the whole idea of winning as opposed to sort-of transcending partisan battles is still a little…alien to them.”

*There are “areas where this wall of Republican opposition has cracks in it,” and it’s usually in “cities and states,” while the fedeeral situation is “just frozen right now.” Roberts recommemnds concentrating on those cracks, be “opportunistic and ruthless” in wedging them open wider, gaining momentum from those victories until Republicans are overwhelmed, “scared” so much (“you’re not going to persuade them”) that they’ll finally come around on clean energy and climate policy.

*There should be an equivalent of the Sierra Club’s “Beyond Coal” campaign for rooftop solar that finds the cracks in the wall, swarms the local fights and spreads them to other conservative areas.

*According to Roberts, in theory there’s an intellectual basis to right and left positions, but “the actually existing left-right divide in the U.S. is a different thing;” “actually existing U.S. conservatism” doesn’t resemble in the least bit the “mythological conservatve” with “consistent intellectual views.” Instead, it’s a “completely tribal, identity-based movement.”

*For instance, if conservatives really followed their principles, they’d be “all over” removing regulatory barriers in all cases, but “what they care about is they like their kind of energy and they hate Democrats’ kind of energy and anything that’s going to help Democrats’ kind of energy they’re going to oppose — see, that’s not principled, that’s tribal.”

*”That argument between what’s the optimal policy…taxing, regulating, spending…that conversation is happening entirely within the left. There is no credible intellectual conversation about that happening on the right; the right has hardened into this sort-of reflexive, knee-jerk opposition to government as such, government doing anything, just the mention of government is bad and wrong…All the interesting intellectual discussions about climate policy…are all happening, practically speaking, within the left in the U.S…addressing this issue at all, having any discussion at all.”

*”You have to remember it’s all about priorities, and today’s Republican Party is centrally devoted to reducing taxes on the wealthy, that’s their raison d’etre, and everything else is subordinant to that,” so even if Republicans came around on the virtues of clean energy, how would that fit into their higher priority of cutting taxes on the wealthy, sharply reducing government spending, and reducing regulations.

*”The ideology of the modern-day U.S. right has gotten so hardened and knee-jerk that there’s no room left in it for credible policy on clean energy…in terms of the sort of massive movement we need, the massive industrial shift we need, you just aren’t going to be able to pull that off if you hate government taxing and government spending and government regulating; those are the three things government does.”

David Roberts nails it as he almost always does. Now, why can’t the Chris Cillizzas and other “mainstream” political analysts “get it” like Roberts does? Or are they contractually obligated to regurgitating conventional wisdom and other assorted pablum?

Here are a few national and Virginia news headlines, political and otherwise, for Tuesday, June 30.

*The Supreme Court Can’t Save Coal (“The combination of other environmental regulation, cheap natural gas and growing public concern over climate change is shrinking America’s fleet of coal plants. The EPA has only to make sure this ruling doesn’t slow that process any more than it must.”)

*Markets fall as twin defaults loom in Greece, Puerto Rico

*Supreme Court’s ruling on gerrymandering is a victory for voters

*NBC cuts ties with Donald Trump

*His star dimmed, Christie leans on truth-teller persona as he readies bid

*Supreme Court upholds use of drug in lethal injection executions (Appalling.)

*A Divided Court on Three Big Rulings

*President Obama overtime rule could raise wages for 5 million

*Ross Douthat is a clueless scold: How he just exposed the bankruptcy of conservatives’ anti-gay marriage arguments (He is truly awful, hard to believe the NY Times gives him a platform.)

*What Hillary Clinton Learned From This 2013 Campaign (“Her campaign manager, a number of staffers and her strategy all come from the successful Virginia gubernatorial race”)

*Sons of Confederate Veterans challenge Gov. McAuliffe’s authority

*Rep. Morgan Griffith: Fight against Obamacare will continue (Fanatic.)

*Lawsuit against state says livestock manure finding its way into watershed

*Dominion unveils new routes for huge power line through Prince William (“But as opposition grows, landowner tells one supervisor that Amazon will not be allowed another data center.”)

*Seven Corners residents seek to change plan to revive aging suburb (“Some homeowners argue that the current redevelopment plan would mean too much density and traffic.”)

*Williams: What are we clinging to in defense of Confederate monuments?

*D.C. area forecast: Heat, humidity and chance of storms into holiday weekend