– Josh Billings, US humorist writer

Many of America’s presidents have found friendship and solace in their pets. It’s a tradition that goes all the way back to our first president and founding father, President George Washington, the founding father who was also the first president to have bred foxhounds.

As of today, 46 U.S. Presidents have had pets while they resided in the White House. And, like many of us today, the pets became part of their families, offering courage, patience, forgiveness, comfort and unconditional love, particularly during stressful periods in office.

President Barack Obama and First Lady Michele, accepted a puppy as a gift from Senator Edward Kennedy. The dog was a Portuguese water dog that they named Bo. Then in 2013, the Obamas brought home a second Portuguese water dog, name Sunny.

White House Animal Paths

Historically, the pets at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have mirrored national trends in animal ownership. Early presidents had working animals such as hounds for hunting and horses for transportation, but a wider variety of animals soon made their way to the White House.

In the 1920s, President Coolidge’s animals included a bobcat, a donkey, lion cubs, ducks, a wallaby pygmy hippo, and a raccoon named Rebecca, who walked on a leash.

From William Taft’s cow, Pauline Wayne, to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Scottish terrier, Fala, and George H. W. Bush’s English springer spaniel, Millie, many White House animals have achieved celebrity status.

US Presidents with the Most Pets

Tabby and Dixie were cats, and Abraham Lincoln once remarked that Dixie is smarter than my whole cabinet.

James Buchanan received a herd of elephants from the King of Siam.  But as elephants are the largest land animals alive today, Buchanan found them to be too large for the White House, and sent them to the zoo.

Misty Malarky Ying Yang was Jimmy Carter’s daughter’s pet Siamese cat. An Elephant was given to her, but again too big to fit in the White House rooms, and was sent to the National zoo, too.

The True Story of Teddy Roosevelt and the Teddy Bear

In 1902, Teddy Roosevelt accepted a hunting invitation from Mississippi governor, Andrew Longino, and they traveled with their guide, who was determined to find a black bear for Roosevelt to shoot. It was easy for the guide to corner an old bear, and decided to tie the bear up, making the shot easier for Roosevelt to fire.

When Roosevelt realized what the guide had done, he was astonished and fired back in anger and said that such an act would be unsportsmanlike to shoot such an old and vulnerable creature. The news of Roosevelt’s act of compassion spread across globe, and in his honor that is why we have the Teddy Bear.

Our 26th, President Theodore Roosevelt began his presidency in 1901, along with six children and more animals than the White House had ever seen before. The Roosevelt children’s family of pets included a small bear named Jonathan Edwards; a lizard named Bill; guinea pigs named Admiral Dewey, Dr. Johnson, Bishop Doane, Fighting Bob Evans and Father O’Grady; Maude the pig; Josiah the badger; Eli Yale the blue macaw; Baron Spreckle the hen; a one-legged rooster; a hyena; a barn owl; Peter the rabbit; and Algonquin the pony. President Roosevelt loved the pets as much as his children did. Algonquin was so beloved that when the president’s son, Archie, was sick in bed, his brothers Kermit and Quentin brought the pony up to his room in the elevator. But Algonquin was so captivated by his own reflection in the elevator mirror that it was hard to get him out!

The Theodore Roosevelt family were dog lovers as well. Among their many canines were Sailor Boy, a Chesapeake retriever; Jack the terrier, Skip the mongrel, and Pete, a bull terrier who sank his teeth into so many legs that he had to be exiled to the Roosevelt home in Long Island. Alice, his daughter, had a small black Pekingese named Manchu, which she received from the last empress of China during a trip to the Far East.

Alice once claimed to have seen Manchu dancing on its hind legs in the moonlight on the White House lawn, though it has never been determined if there ever was an elephant dancing on its hind legs in the White House rooms. But, apparenty, there is one today in a very different kind of room.

Another Kind of Elephant in the Room

As of late, fake news outlets have been on fire due to a particularly large elephant in their broadcast rooms with the recent release of South Dakota Republican Governor Kristi Noem’s ghostwritten book, No Going Back.

South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem takes a cheap shot at “fake news” for the backlash against her killing an untrainable 14-month-old wirehair pointer, named “Cricket,” 20-years-ago in a gravel pit on her family property, moments before her children arrived from school!

But, later, she had the courage to hurry back to her pickup, grabbed another shell, went back to the gravel pit, and put him down; “Him” being the demon goat, which had a wretched smell, who often chased and knocked Noem’s children around.

I’m aware that a parent who knocks their kids down is the greatest sin ever committed by a parent, who deserves a one-way ticket to a lifetime in prison. But should an owner who knocks down a kid goat deserve less? And the one with a such a wretched smell, something I never seemed to notice when I petted the kid, Billie Goat, at Seattle’s Woodlawn Park Zoo, when I was a kid, too.

Noem said to her ghostwriters in her ghostwritten book. No Going Back, which includes the fictional meeting with North Korean dictator, Kim Jong Un. The North Korean dictator who she’s sure he underestimated me, having no clue about my experience staring down little tyrants (I’d been a children’s pastor, after all), which she now blames on her ghostwriters, but refuses to walk them back and retrack the words she commanded her ghostwriter’s to ghostwrite in her ghostwritten book.

Oh, how I kid South Dakota Republican Governor Noem, why I only heard about her on Fox News TV, where she informed viewers that she was on a mission to tell us the REAL meaning of Thanksgiving: Here the poor Pilgrims were close to starving and they shared their last food with Native-Americans (the 25 Tribal Nations of the Wampanoag People) it was all part of God’s Divine Providence.

“God’s Divine Promise” fulfilled, and illustrated in “The First Thanksgiving,” a reproduction of a painting by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris, courtesy of the Associated Press.

Did the Pilgrims use “God’s Divine ‘Providence” as an excuse to sit in Plymouth Harbor and wait on the Mayflower for the final act of “God’s Divine Providence” to be done? Were they just too excited and couldn’t wait to siege the Wampanoag People’s Tribal Land for just a few more days? When they arrived there were many felled fields to plant, but surround by many dead bodies of the 25 Tribal Nations of the Wampanoag People. Apparently “God’s Divine Providence” was first issued to the Spanish Conquerors, who shared no food, but only European diseases which the Wampanoag People had no immunity from. But with no gold to be found, the Spanish Conquerors left Plymouth, leaving only endless Wampanoag dead bodies scattered around, some still alive, desperately crawling on the ground. The few people that manged to stay alive, where left for the Pilgrims to fulfill “God’s Divine Providence” and get the job done.

The next Thanksgiving celebrated was 1637 when Massachusetts Colony Governor John Winthrop declared a day of thanksgiving after volunteers murdered 700 of the Tribal Nation Pequot People. As we remember the celebration of Thanksgiving, sharing indigenous food from the New World, I recall that the American-Indian Tribal Nations consider it as a Day of Remorse.

Historians are hailing Congress to elevated Ulysses S. Grant to the military’s highest rank, calling it a rehabilitation of his political and racial legacy. Photograph courtesy of Newsreader1.com.

On June 18, 1870, our eighteenth president, Ulysses S. Grant, signed into law the Holidays Act that made Thanksgiving a yearly appointed federal holiday. Grant preferred horses above all other animals as pets, but he and his family members did have other pets with them in the White House, including two dogs. One was a Newfoundland named Faithful, but the other was a dog named Rosie, who was rumored to be a black-and-tan dog of no determinate breed. According to Seymour Reit in Growing Up in the White House, Grant would often take dinner in the stables and talk to both the horses and to Rosie while he ate.

Fala: The Most Famous Dog in America

President Franklin D. Roosevelt had a lifelong affection for dogs. They were a constant presence in his life from his early childhood. FDR owned a number of dogs during his lifetime, but his best-known was Fala, the Scottish terrier he was given in August 1940.

Fala quickly became his constant companion. He slept in a special chair at the foot of FDR’s bed and every morning had a bone that was brought up on the President’s breakfast tray. Fala is buried in a marked grave about ten yards behind the Roosevelt tombstone in the Rose Garden at Springwood, beside Chief (1918–1933), the Roosevelts’ German Shepherd.

The first U.S. President with pets who maintained a farm was George Washington

Like South Dakota Republican Governor, Kristi Noem, George Washington was a farmer who had pets, though it’s never been determined if he had the courage to put any of his pets down in a gravel pit. I have many friends and families who are farmer with pets, who are aware that their pets were once wild animals, but they chose to domesticate their wild critters into something more profound. And once this transition was completed, the pets loved them and they loved them back. I read somewhere that there is no such thing as a bad pet dog, only a bad owner, who made them be like that. Was there a reason why Noem’s 14-month-old pet Cricket, didn’t love her; is it possible she never loved him, and that’s why he never loved her back?  

Washington’s pets included, Sweetlips, Scentwell and Vulcan – American Foxhounds; Drunkard Taster, Tipler and Tipsy – Black and Tan Coonhounds; an Andalusian donkey (a gift from King Charles III of Spain); Nelson and Blueskin – horses ( that were Washington’s wartime mounts); Snipe – parrot (said to have been owned by First Lady Martha Washington); and the Stallions, Samson, Steady, Leonidas, Traveller and Magnolia.

Cornwallis was a greyhound, named for British General Cornwallis, though not sure if the stallion served as a trophy due to General Washington’s victory at Yorktown, or an homage to the man he defeated, giving up any chance of winning the Revolutionary War.

Pushinka (Russian: Пушинка), known to us as ‘Fluffy’

Pushinka was a dog who was given by the Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev to the President of the United States, John F. Kennedy in 1961.

Words taken from White House dog handler Traphes Bryant

“Pushinka (which the Kennedy family now refers to as Fluffy), struck up a romance with the Kennedy’s Welsh terrier, Charlie. In June 1963, Pushinka had puppies. Caroline and John-John named them Butterfly, White Tips, Blackie and Streaker. JFK referred to the puppies as pupniks since Pushinka was the daughter of a dog who had been to space on the Russians’ Sputnik 2. When the puppies were two-months-old, the First Lady picked two children from the thousands that had written to the White House asking for one of the pups. That’s how Butterfly and Streaker got adopted. The other puppies were given to family friends.”

“The father of the puppies, Charlie, was large and in charge. He bossed the other dogs around and made sure he got first dibs at dinnertime. When given the chance, he showed humans who was boss, too. If a visitor ignored him, Charlie peed on that person. Although he was not an official watchdog, he growled if someone got too close to JFK.”

Bryant describing events in the Oval Office during the Cuban missile crisis:

“I was there in Jack Kennedy’s office that day. Everything was in an uproar. I was then feet from Kennedy’s desk as Pierre Salinger ran around the office taking messages and issuing orders while the President sat looking awfully worried. There was talk about the Russian fleet coming in and our fleet blocking them off. It looked like war. Out of the blue, Kennedy suddenly called for Charlie to be brought to his office. After petting Charlie, his Welsh terrier, the president relaxed, returned Charlie to the kennel keeper, and said, ‘”I suppose that it’s time to make some decisions.”“

In his book American Legacy: The Story of John and Caroline Kennedy, author David Heymann relates a story from White House nanny Maud Shaw: “Caroline and her nanny encountered Pushinka as she was being walked by a kennel worker on the White House grounds. As Caroline reached to pet the dog, Pushinka growled.”

“Instead of recoiling, Caroline stepped behind the dog and gave it a swift kick to the rear end,” Heymann writes. “Emitting a howl, Pushinka turned tail and raced off into the night.”

When Shaw related the story to JFK, the president smiled at his daughter and said, “That’s giving it to those damn Russians!”

Animals in Judaism & Christian Theology

The photograph above is a Peruvian school’s Nativity Scene, taken by former Peace Corp. Volunteer, Alex Brouwer. The Nativity Scene depicts the Virgin Mary and Joseph solemnly looking down at the infant, Jesus, the new king of Israel, surrounded by an array of different animals, for he is their New King, as well, and they will inherit the earth, too.

Saint Francis of Assisi & the Nativity Scene

Saint Francis of Assisi, the Patron Saint of Animals, is credited with creating the first live Nativity Scene in 1223 in order to cultivate the worship of Christ. He had recently been inspired by his visit to the Holy Land, where he’d been shown Jesus’ traditional birthplace in Bethlehem. Saint Francis’ pantomime of the Nativity Scene is the first real symbol of Christmas. The scene’s popularity spread throughout the world, inspiring other countries to stage similar Nativity Scenes.

To find out more about St. Francis and the Nativity Scene, why the Roman holiday of Saturnalia became the Happy Holy Days (Happy Holidays) and the Mass of Christ (Christmas), CLICK HERE.

Do animals praise the name of the Lord?

Psalm 148 commands all of creation to praise the Lord, including animals: “Wild animals and all cattle, small creatures and flying birds, kings of the earth and all nations, you princes and all rulers on earth, young men and maidens, old men and children. Let them praise the name of the Lord, for his name alone is exalted; his splendor is above the earth and the heavens.” (vv. 10-13).

What would Jesus do?

Don’t give holy things to dogs, don’t throw your pearls to pigs, lest they trample them under their feet and, turning, tear you to pieces. – Matthew 7:6. (English language translation by Francis Bacon).

What would Reverend Billy Graham say?

God will prepare everything for our perfect happiness in heaven, and if it takes my dog being there, I believe he’ll be there.

Heaven-bound persons who are offended at the thought of dogs and cats frisking on the golden streets will have a difficult time with the odd beasts gathered around the throne as described in the Book of Revelation.

Or Mark Twain?

The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven not man’s.

President William Jefferson Clinton first arrived at the White House with Socks, who in 1991 was reported to have jumped into the arms of daughter, Chelsea Clinton after piano lessons while the Clintons were living in the Governor’s Mansion in Little Rock. He was later joined in 1997 by Buddy, a Labrador Retriever, who was named after a longtime Clinton family friend who died around the time they adopted the dog.

During President Clinton’s second term, the two reportedly did not get along, with Bill Clinton later saying, I did better with the Palestinians and the Israelis than I’ve done with ‘Socks and Buddy.’

Presidential Pets and the Media

The first White House dog to receive regular newspaper coverage was Warren G. Harding’s dog, Laddie Boy.

When FDR’s Fala’s fame spread, he became the subject of books, including this 1942 picture book titled The True Story of Fala. He even starred in two MGM newsreels shown in movie theaters: Fala, the President’s Dog and Fala at Hyde Park.

Fala’s growing popularity is reflected in the thousands of letters he received from the public, where they are all preserved today among the papers stored at the Roosevelt Library.

The book, Dear Socks, Dear Buddy: Kids’ Letters to the First Pets was written by First Lady Hillary Clinton, and later appeared as cartoons in the kids’ section of the first White House website.

Millie was an English springer spaniel that was the first President Bush’s family pet. She gave birth to Spotty, who moved into the White House with the second President Bush. H. W. also had two Scottish terriers named Barney and Miss Beazley, but Spotty was the only pet to live in the White House during two administrations

“Study hard, and you might grow up to be President. But let’s face it: Even then, you’ll never make as much money as your dog.” — President George H. W. Bush, to a graduating class, referring to Millie, his dog, who earned $889,176 (about $1,979,459 today) in book royalties.

George H. W. Bush and First Lady Barbara’s Millie is the only first pet to actually write a book, Millie’s Book. And their son, George W. Bush’s Scottish terrier, Barney had his own website and appeared in Barney Cam videos.

Presidents and Pets: Bits & Pieces

• President Thomas Jefferson bought his dog, Bergere, in France. She had two puppies onboard the ship heading back to the United States.
• James Buchanan is the only president who never married. His large Newfoundland, Lara, kept him company in the White House.
• Woodrow Wilson, in office 1913-1921, owned a pet ram, named Old Ike, who was known for chewing tobacco and cigars, which makes sense as North Carolina is often referred to as the Tobacco State.

• Top Five Dog Names of 2023
  
  Girl: Luna, Bella, Daisy, Maggie and Willow
  Boy: Max, Charlie, Cooper, Teddy and Milo
  
• Goat on the Loose!
  
  Benjamin Harrison, our 23rd President ran down Pennsylvania Avenue holding on to his top hat and waving his cane, but his pet goat kept running, only stopping later after numerous Washington, D.C., residents had seen the Commander-in-Chief chasing the runaway goat.

Commander & Chief, President Joseph R. Biden

The Bidens added a puppy named Commander to their family, following the death of their beloved German Shepherd, Champ, who passed away at the age of 13. But in 2018, all the abandoned pets throughout the U.S. rejoiced when the Bidens adopted the German shepherd, Major, from the Delaware Humane Association.

Major arrived at the White House to great applause, but his time at the White House was short, after a series of biting incidents. Major was sent to Delaware in April 2021 for training, and then the White House announced that Major’s permanent home would be elsewhere, a decision based on consultations with veterinarians, dog trainers and animal behaviorists.

While it may have disappointed those hoping Major would usher in a new age of presidential shelter pets, Major’s story shows that shelter dogs, like any other pet, need time and patience to adjust, and sometimes need to find a better match.

Andrew Jackson, had a pet, a grey parrot named Polly, who learned how to swear. She later attended Jackson’s funeral but had to be removed due to loud and persistent profanity. Perhaps Polly had not forgotten that Jackson had forced thousands of American-Indian Tribal Nations to leave their ancestral homeland in his illegal Indian Relocation Act, which led to countless deaths on the Trail of Tears. And remember, like the remaining tribal nations have never forgotten, never use a twenty-dollar bill as the tyrant, Old Hickory’s face is on it.

The Cherokee People and their pets and animals on the “Trail of Tears.” Painting by Robert Lindneux, courtesy of National Geographic.

It seemed curious at first that the U.S. President Trump selected Jackson as his favorite among our past presidents. But as his years in the Oval Office progressed, it became clear that they were both cut from the same white cloth.

For more on Jackson’s illegal Indian Relocation Act, the Trail of Tears and the plight of the Cherokee Tribal Nation, CLICK HERE.

The state which has the strongest animal abuse laws

For the second year in a row Maine maintains its first-place rank, followed by Illinois (2), Oregon (3), Colorado (4) and Rhode Island (5).

New Mexico remained in 50th place, with Idaho (49), Mississippi (48), Alabama (47) and Utah (46) rounding out states with the weakest animal protection laws.

“BONNER COUNTY, Idaho — The Bonner County Sheriff’s Office (BCSO) has filed charges for animal cruelty and abandonment against 45-year-old Jacob M. McCowan and 31-year-old Jessica L. Smurtwaite, after 31 Husky-type dog were found across North Idaho.”

“Sugar” is pictured resting after being adopted by Heather Toliver. The medical team from “Better Together Animal Alliance” believes she was a week to days away from dying based on her condition when she arrived at the facility in mid to late January.  Photograph courtesy of Heather Toliver, “a modern-day Patron Saint for abused animals.”   

California’s Animal Cruelty Penal Code §597(a) makes it a crime to intentionally maim, mutilate, torture, wound, or kill a living animal. Violation of CPC §597(a) can result in three years in a state prison, a fine of up to $20,000, or both a prison term and a fine.

The penalty for abuse was much worse in Ancient Egypt, where killing a cat, even accidentally, was punished by death.

The White House Wall of Shame: Presidents with no Pets

Donald J. Trump, James K. Polk and Andrew Johnson did not have any official pets while in office. But Andrew Johnson reportedly left flour out at night in his bedroom for a family of mice.

The worst presidential pets in the history of the US goes to President John Quincy Adams’ First Lady, Louisa Catherine Adams. According to one of Adams’ diary entries, she kept several hundred silkworms that she raised herself for their silk. Silk is nice, but let’s face it: Silkworms make terrible pets. They are, after all, worms. And technically, they’re caterpillars, too.

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
— Mahatma Gandhi

It is much easier to show compassion to animals. They are never wicked.
— Haile Selassie

Millard Fillmore named his two horses after the surveyor Jeremiah Dixon and astronomer Charles Mason, who guided them both to the new land of America, and created the Mason-Dixon Line. The border marked the line between Maryland and Pennsylvania, which was significant during the War Between the States, as it is significant today, drawing a line between the politics of the Northern and Southern states.

Let’s close on a happy, nonpartisan note, which I did cross the line a couple of times, and listen to Mark Knopfler’s tribute to Mason and Dixon with his song, Sailing to Philadelphia, which includes the voice of James Taylor in a duet of the song.

Attention: T-Boy Readers, Friends and Families

We hope you enjoyed Presidents and Pets, Part I:  A T-Boy Odyssey Into Why They Loved One Another. Please consider sending us photographs of your own sacred pets, including those who passed, but will never be forgotten. Your photographs will be included in the T-Boy article: T-Boy Readers and Their Pets. We can also include your name, address and narrative about your life with your pet. But it’s up to you if you’d like to do that, and we promise to send you a proof to revise. Please send to **@tr**********.com , and we will be excited upon seeing them.  

Stay tuned for Presidents and Pets, Part II: A T-Boy Odyssey Into Why They Loved One Another

Abraham Lincoln & Fido, who once had the most popular dog name in the U.S; Plantation Farmer, Thomas Jefferson & Peanut Farmer, Jimmy Carter; Lessons learned by Marine Corp’s Louis Boitano, a man with a disdain for cowardly flag wavers, in particular for ones who never experienced a real battle; Reagan Rex’s White House dog house; and (How Much) is that Doggie in the Window.

The post Presidents and Pets: A T-Boy Odyssey Into Why They Loved One Another – Tales of nonpartisan, unconditional love appeared first on Traveling Archive.

1. They are terrified of Trump, his base, his threats, his violent followers, and afraid of being slammed with primary challenges from the far right Trumpian maniacs in their next election cycle.
2. They are cynical opportunists, cashing in on the fund raising frenzy, duping and gouging the pathetic, gullible and frightened conspiracy believing American subset, ramping up their own 2024 presidential campaigns by sucking up to the Trump base and entertaining the QAnon, OAN, Trumpian fantasies as, My God!, maybe…true?
3. They are deeply and perversely ignorant, racist, anti-democracy, neofascistic cretins who have been disgorged from the sewers and dumpsters of America, courtesy of their Enabler in Chief Donald Trump, and they are woefully unable to grasp the very basic essence of fact, integrity and decency.

But perhaps I am too hard on these fine people?

No, I don’t think so.

I’m not worried about America. Biden will become president on January 20th and the long hard road to healing and rebuilding and restoring our country, our democracy, and saving the lives of our people from Covid and climate change will begin.

The post Loyalty, the Cult and the Incompetent Authoritarian appeared first on Traveling Archive.

You might already know Elliott Negin, whose writings I worked into with Dance with the One that Brought You — BERNIE! on NPR’s red-baiting of Bernie, and Scott Pruitt’s Doublespeak Clarifies Him, on yet another disastrous industrial strength Trump appointee hellbent on ransacking the environment. If not, it’s never too late. You can catch other writings by Elliott at the Union of Concerned Scientists, where Elliott is a senior writer, and at a number of other publications including The Huffington Post.

Elliott’s guest post below underscores that corporate behemoth Exon-Mobile, the world’s fourth-largest oil company and largest that is investor-owned, takes top honors among the world’s phonies. While its public relations people now fret about climate change and claim support for the Paris climate agreement, it continues to pour money into outfits that undermine public awareness of man’s role in global warming and that derail efforts to regulate energy and the environment. While claiming to support a carbon tax, it greases climate denying legislators who oppose it. Does Exxon-Mobil have any connections to the Dark Money sloshing about Washington? Who knows, but I’d bet on it. Recall that Exxon’s scientists warned its executives about the critical impacts of man-made climate change over forty years ago and that their scientists have since been cutting edge in climate science, their knowledge just not shared with the public.

No one is short on cynicism these days, but it’s worth considering such corporate phonies now, as Amy Coney Barrett is catapulted onto the Supreme Court with an irrevocable corporate fix. Her father was a lawyer for Shell Oil for decades and a major player in the American Petroleum Institute, the lobbying entity for 600 oil and gas corporations. Why focus on a parent? Because when Barrett was asked about climate change her reply, given while swaths of the American West were aflame, was that she had “no firm views” and couldn’t “offer any kind of informed opinion” on the causes of global warming. Most fourth-graders could best that know-nothing answer. So it sounds like Barrett will be another oil and gas tentacle, at a time the API and affiliates, including Shell, have a lot of skin in the game in cases coming before the Supreme Court.

Elliott describes other tentacles below. — Skip Kaltenheuser

ExxonMobil Claims Shift on Climate But Continues to Fund Climate Science Deniers
Courtesy of Elliott Negin, senior writer

After decades of public denial, ExxonMobil now acknowledges that “the risk of climate change is real” and says it is “committed to being part of the solution,” at least according to the company’s website and statements. To that end, the largest investor-owned oil company in the world claims it supports a federal carbon tax and the Paris climate agreement.

But the company’s recently released grantmaking report shows that it has not ended its two-decade-long campaign to stymie government efforts to address climate change. By ExxonMobil’s own accounting, it gave $690,000 to eight climate science denier groups in 2019, a 10 percent drop from 2018. In addition, it continued to fund federal lawmakers who oppose a carbon tax, despite its supposed longtime support for the idea. Forty percent of the nearly $1 million it has contributed so far to congressional incumbent campaigns during the 2019-20 election cycle has gone to 115 of the 150 climate science deniers still in office.

Sixty percent of ExxonMobil’s 2019 donations to climate obstructionist groups for “public information and policy research” went to the US Chamber of Commerce, while another 30 percent was split between the American Enterprise Institute and the Manhattan Institute, which have been receiving annual grants from the company since it began financing climate disinformation 22 years ago. All told, ExxonMobil has spent more than $37 million on climate science denier organizations from 1998 through 2019, more than any individual funder besides Charles Koch and his brother, the late David Koch, the billionaire owners of the coal, oil and gas conglomerate Koch Industries. Koch-controlled foundations spent more than $145 million on many of the same groups over roughly the same time period.

Did the top three recipients of ExxonMobil grants for climate science denier groups in 2019 toe the company’s publicly stated line on climate? The short answer is no. If actions speak louder than words, the donations call into question ExxonMobil’s commitment to seriously address the climate crisis and deserve a closer look.

The US Chamber still opposes carbon pollution standards

The US Chamber of Commerce has been a major player in blocking action on climate change going back to the 1990s, when the business lobby and Exxon were members of the Global Climate Coalition, a consortium of corporations and trade associations opposed to government policies that would cut carbon emissions.

But in 2009 — the same year ExxonMobil first announced its support for a carbon tax in a cynical attempt to derail cap-and-trade climate legislation — the Chamber’s united front began to crack. A handful of Fortune 500 companies — including Apple, Exelon Corporation and Pacific Gas & Electric — quit the Chamber over its opposition to the cap-and-trade bill while two other high-profile companies — Nike and Johnson & Johnson — retained their membership but rebuked the business lobby for the same reason. Since then, at least a dozen Chamber members, including Hewlett-Packard, General Mills, Mars, Nestlé and Unilever, have headed for the exits.

By contrast, ExxonMobil not only retained its Chamber membership, but it also pledged $5 million in annual installments to help pay for the Chamber’s $250-million renovation of its Washington, D.C., headquarters. In 2019, the company donated $400,000 for the building rehabilitation and another $15,000 to the Chamber’s Corporate Citizenship Center, bringing its total contributions since 2014 to $4.8 million.

What does ExxonMobil get for its money? Among other things, the business lobby goes to bat for it in court by filing lawsuits against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and in the court of public opinion by funding misleading climate-related reports. A prime example is the Chamber’s widely debunked 2017 report that grossly exaggerated the cost to the US economy of complying with the Paris climate agreement. President Donald Trump cited that report as his primary rationale for ignoring the US commitment to the accord, and he has vowed to officially pull the United States out in early November.

However, in 2019, the Chamber seemed to take a 180-degree turn, declaring on its website: “Our climate is changing and humans are contributing to these changes. Inaction is simply not an option.” Although one could quibble with the assertion that human activity is merely contributing to climate change when in fact burning fossil fuels is the main cause, it was a far cry from when the organization maintained in comments submitted to the EPA in 2009 that “a warming of even 3 [degrees Celsius] in the next 100 years would, on balance, be beneficial to humans.”

But the Chamber’s turnabout was not complete. Although it now concedes the reality of human-caused climate change, it is still pushing private-sector innovation as the solution to the climate crisis rather than much-needed government regulation, which historically has driven technological advances.

So, while the Chamber supports government funding for research and development of advanced nuclear reactors, utility-scale batteries, and carbon capture and storage technology, it backed the Trump administration’s rollbacks of the Obama administration’s 2015 Clean Power Plan, which would have reduced power plant carbon emissions, and its 2015 “Waters of the United States” rule, which would have protected small streams, wetlands and groundwater from toxic chemicals.

More recently, the Chamber supported the Trump administration’s weakening of the 50-year-old National Environmental Policy Act by limiting public input in the infrastructure project approval process and rescinding a requirement that federal agencies consider a proposed project’s impact on the climate.

Unlike ExxonMobil’s professed support for a carbon tax, the Chamber has no official position, but if carbon tax legislation ever made it to the Senate or House floor, it presumably would oppose it given its dim view of government regulation.

Likewise, the Chamber’s avowed support for US compliance with the Paris climate accord includes a major caveat. Dan Byers, vice president for policy at the Chamber’s Global Energy Institute, told Politico in August 2019 that it is “absolutely important for the US to remain in the Paris climate agreement” but added that the “Obama administration’s pledge was unrealistic, [and] was going to have a negative impact on our economy. And so we’d like to see that revisited.” In other words, the Chamber would like the United States to remain a party to the agreement so that it could lobby to weaken the US commitment to it.

American Enterprise Institute still downplays the climate threat

In 2019, ExxonMobil gave the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) $110,000, bringing its total since 1998 to $4.76 million — more than any other of its climate science denier grantees. The 82-year-old, free market think tank also receives generous funding from other climate disinformation network supporters, including the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation and the Charles Koch Foundation.

What does ExxonMobil get for its money from AEI? A cheerleader for fossil fuels, economist Benjamin Zycher, who — contrary to the company’s professed climate positions — argues that a carbon tax would be “ineffective” and has called the Paris agreement an “absurdity.”

In March, Zycher published a report arguing that “any plausible policy” to curb carbon emissions “would yield trivial effects while imposing large costs.” Instead, he recommended the federal government adopt a policy of “watchful waiting, adaptation over time, and ongoing investment in resilience against the future effects of climactic [sic] changes.”

How could Zycher recommend “watchful waiting” given the large costs climate change is already imposing right now? Granted, he published his report before this summer, when heat waves and wildfires burned up the West Coast and hurricanes slammed the Southeast. But last summer was not that different, and climate change-related disasters have been racking up considerable damage over the last few years. From 2017 through 2019, there were 44 unique extreme weather and climate-linked events across the country causing damages of $1 billion or more, collectively costing more than $460 billion.

Nevertheless, Zycher insists fossil fuels are indispensable. “Opposition to fossil fuels implies a reduction in policies — education, training, health care, and the like — that add to human capital and so increase incomes and the demand for conventional energy,” he wrote. “Therefore, opposition to fossil fuels is fundamentally antihuman.”

Zycher made the same argument in a May 7 column in the Financial Times, ranting that environmentalists who aim to deprive the world of fossil fuels “hate humanity, and the planet too.”

Putting aside Zycher’s ad hominem attack on the “environmental left,” he deliberately confuses the societal benefits of energy with how it is generated. At several junctures in history, humans switched from wood to coal to natural gas to warm their homes. Likewise, they switched from whale oil to kerosene to incandescents to LEDs to illuminate their homes.

Opposition to coal and kerosene in the past or fossil fuels today is not “fundamentally antihuman” when there are better, cleaner alternatives. And it turns out the alternatives — solar and wind, specifically — are now the cheapest sources of electricity, and they could have been more widely available years ago if ExxonMobil and other fossil fuel companies had not stood in the way.

The Manhattan Institute is still in love with fossil fuels

The Manhattan Institute, a New York City-based libertarian think tank, received $90,000 from ExxonMobil in 2019. Since 1998, the company has given the organization more than $1.4 million.

For the last decade, the institute’s go-to energy expert has been Robert Bryce, who, like AEI’s Zycher, is no fan of a carbon tax, ExxonMobil’s supposed pet climate solution. Before he left the think tank at the end of 2019, Bryce spent much of his time bashing renewable energy and extolling fossil fuels in reports and in the pages of the National Review, New York Post, Wall Street Journal and other publications.

Bryce routinely disparages renewables without providing context. In an August 2019 column on the conservative website RealClearEnergy, for example, he maintained that the wind industry is “facing increasing opposition” at least partly because of what he insists is the major threat it poses to eagles and other birds, an assertion he has been making ad nauseum for years. In fact, the top human-caused threats to birds are climate change, buildings, power lines, misapplied pesticides, communications towers, and oil and gas industry fluid waste pits — not wind turbines.

As for wind energy’s specific threat to eagles, Dan Ashe, a former director of the US Fish and Wildlife Service, debunked Bryce’s fallacious claim in a December 2016 HuffPost column. “Public attention on eagle loss in recent years has focused almost exclusively on wind energy,” Ashe wrote. “In truth, wind turbine collisions comprise a fraction of human-caused eagle losses. Most result from intentional and accidental poisoning and purposeful shooting. The majority of non-intentional loss occurs when eagles collide with cars or ingest lead shot or bullet fragments in remains and gut piles left by hunters. Others collide with or are electrocuted on power lines. Disproportionately and solely focusing on wind energy distorts public perceptions at a time when we desperately need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”

Cutting carbon pollution is hardly a goal that Bryce or any of his Manhattan Institute colleagues would ever publicly endorse. Doing so would certainly not please their other climate science denier benefactors, which include the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, Charles Koch Foundation, hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer’s Mercer Family Foundation, and Mercer’s daughter, Rebekah, a Manhattan Institute trustee. All have donated considerably more money to the think tank than ExxonMobil in recent years and, unlike the oil company, do not pretend to care about the climate crisis.

Maintaining the status quo in Congress

The New York Times recently ran a story pointing out that European and US oil companies are heading in very different directions when it comes to climate change. While BP, Royal Dutch Shell, and other European-based companies are beginning to sell their oil fields and invest in renewable energy, their US counterparts Chevron and ExxonMobil are betting that oil and gas will continue to make up at least 50 percent of the energy market for at least the next 20 years.

Instead of transitioning to solar and wind, the two US oil giants are spending relatively trivial amounts on unproven technologies, such as modular fusion nuclear reactors (Chevron), algae-based biofuel (ExxonMobil), and carbon capture and storage schemes (both), which so far have been costly failures. If those pipe dreams were ever demonstrated to work at the necessary scale, it would still take decades to commercialize them.

The main reason European oil and gas companies are taking baby steps to embrace renewables? Government pressure. The European Union has set a goal of net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, and seven EU countries plan to phase out vehicles powered by gasoline and diesel over the next few decades. Austria, with the most aggressive timetable, will ban internal-combustion-engine vehicle sales after 2020.

Although California recently announced it would ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035 and most diesel-powered trucks by 2045, the Trump administration has taken the opposite tack, gutting landmark Obama-era rules curbing vehicle and power plant carbon emissions, rolling back methane emission and coal ash storage regulations, and lifting bans on oil and gas drilling on public land. Congress, meanwhile, has declined to consider climate bills that have been introduced since the beginning of the 2019-20 session.

The September 21 New York Times story cited unnamed energy analysts who excused Chevron and ExxonMobil for not changing their business models. “US lawmakers,” the analysts told the Times, “have simply not given them enough incentives to make a radical break.”

A major reason Congress has not given the US oil industry enough incentives to change course is because oil and gas companies have been giving a critical mass of US lawmakers enough incentives to do nothing. As mentioned above, $401,198 of the $991,329 ExxonMobil has spent so far on congressional incumbent campaigns during the current election cycle has gone to 115 of the 150 climate science deniers on Capitol Hill. Likewise, Chevron has spent $936,489 on incumbent campaigns so far. A little more than $433,000 — 46 percent — has gone to 82 climate science deniers.

Besides making campaign contributions, oil companies spend a lot of money to keep tabs on their friends in Washington. So far, the top three oil and gas lobbyists during the 2019-20 cycle are Koch Industries, which has spent $30.72 million; Chevron, which has spent $28.54 million; and ExxonMobil, which has spent $28.36 million.

Why does ExxonMobil still support so many climate science deniers in Congress while contending to be so keen on a carbon tax? After all, just two years ago the company announced it would donate $1 million over two years to Americans for Carbon Dividends, a political action group created to promote a revenue-neutral carbon tax.

Some lawmakers are bullish on a carbon tax, but ExxonMobil largely ignores them. Since January 2019, eight representatives, two Republicans and six Democrats — and nine senators, all Democrats — have introduced 10 carbon tax bills and one cap-and-trade bill. But only one of the eight representatives and four of the nine senators received a campaign contribution from ExxonMobil during this election cycle. The total amount the company donated to the five lawmakers was $15,000 — a measly 4 percent of what it gave climate science deniers.

To be sure, ExxonMobil’s spending on climate disinformation has shrunk dramatically in recent years. The company’s 2019 outlay was less than half of what it spent in 2017 and the lowest amount since 1999, when Exxon was going through its merger with Mobil. Likewise, its campaign contributions to climate science deniers in Congress dropped from $1.1 million during the 2017-18 election cycle to only $400,000, this cycle.

But the fact remains that, while the company is saying all the right things publicly about the need to address climate change, it is continuing to fund think tanks and lawmakers who dispute the science and oppose government action. That suggests that its professed support for a carbon tax is no more than a disingenuous public relations ploy to delay government action.

The tobacco industry used the very same tactic to hold off regulations for decades, and it worked well until it didn’t, when the industry lost in court and agreed to pay $246 billion in fines to states over 25 years.

Author’s note: Besides the US Chamber of Commerce ($415,000), American Enterprise Institute ($110,000) and Manhattan Institute ($90,000), ExxonMobil gave grants in 2019 to five other climate science denier groups: Center for American and International Law ($5,000), Federalist Society ($10,000), Hoover Institution ($15,000), Mountain States Legal Foundation ($5,000) and the Washington Legal Foundation ($40,000). For an overview of ExxonMobil’s grants from 1998 through 2019, click here.

This article, which was originally published by Truthout, was produced by Earth | Food | Life, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

The post Washington’s Big League of Rank Hypocrisy appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Spring Greetings from the Staff at Traveling Boy

Trust you are all well and dealing with this dread virus appropriately. Due to State of California mandate, T-Boy has been quarantined, but we’re all alive and well working in our home offices. Direct Relief is coordinating with public health authorities, nonprofit organizations and businesses in the U.S. and globally to provide personal protective equipment and essential medical items to health workers responding to the Coronavirus (COVID-19).

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4 Ways to Protect Yourself from Disinformation

Courtesy Elizabeth Stoycheff

Even the most well-intentioned news consumers can find today’s avalanche of political information difficult to navigate.

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CLIA: A Redefinition of the Way Cruise Shipping Operates

Maritimes

Maria Deligianni, Regional Representative in Eastern Mediterranean, CLIA (Cruise Lines International Associaition) talked about the unprecedented situation cruise shipping faces due to the coronavirus pandemic, during a recent interview with maritimes.gr. Unprecedented crises require similar reaction, she said.

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Major Cruise Ship Down to 8 Passengers

There’s still one major cruise ship out there and it’s down to 8 passengers.

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JetBlue CEO anticipates improvements to make travel safer

In an interview with CNBC, JetBlue CEO Robin Hayes said widespread testing will be essential to make passengers feel secure and allow air travel to recover from the coronavirus crisis. “We’ve got to make sure that they’re safe from a health standpoint,” he said, predicting that the epidemic will result in permanent changes in cleaning and screening procedures that will make aircraft and airports safer.

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5 Ways to Support Small Businesses from Home During the Pandemic

Courtesy Caroline Morse Teel, SmarterTravel

Small businesses are really hurting during this time of isolation. Here are five simple and safe ways you can help support them so that they’ll still be there for you when the pandemic is over. (And remember — the best way you can help small business is by staying home, so that we can end this isolation period faster.)

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Corona Virus Travel Updates – Live Blog

Courtesy Big 7 Travel Team

As the coronavirus situation is ongoing, we will be updating this live blog with current travel advice, quarantines, flight cancellations and travel industry news. Check back daily for new updates and send any coronavirus travel news tips to 

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Being on the ground in over 180 countries means you get the full story.

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The Covid19 virus was a game-changer that undermined Bernie’s campaign strengths and his chances of overcoming the battery of establishment cannons arrayed against him, the pressure of which would buckle most people half his age. And unlike Perez and Biden, whatever the latest tune they whistle, Bernie wouldn’t have people risking lives in primaries in a game of Covid19 Russian roulette.  Biden has a minefield of banana peels before him, but waiting for him to slip from the grasp of his army of handlers and do a face-plant is not a political strategy that inspires. It’s understandable that someone with Bernie’s integrity would focus instead on his ideals and proposals, which to anyone not in a coma or a special interest pocket make more sense with each passing day.

As Naomi Klein has observed, “…during times of crisis, people also are risk-averse. I think the timing of this was such, with the inability to continue campaigning in person, with people just reaching for something that looked and felt safe, I don’t think it was possible to translate that shift in openness to these kinds of policies with a huge electoral swing from Biden towards Bernie, although I was certainly hoping for it up until Bernie’s announcement last night. But while hoping for it, I was keenly aware that the polls were not reflecting it, that it wasn’t happening and that people are not up for that kind of political seesaw in this moment of tumult.”

There’ve been logical, solid analyses, as by the anchors of the online political show Rising, Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti, that the Democratic establishment will eventually blow off anyone not brandishing a ball bat with nails in it, that whatever promises Bernie might elicit from making nice, they’ll be written in sand washed away by the high tide of big donors. And no matter what Bernie says or does, he will be blamed again if Trump wins, as CNN is already about the business of. As in 2016, how dare Bernie practice democracy and provide the country with a choice and an awareness of issues best left concealed from view.

Some might despair that with Bernie stepping back, the progressive movement has lost its lynchpin. Bernie countered that nicely with accomplishments noted in his statement that he was suspending his campaign, (not cremating it, as many in the media have implied), while staying on the ballot to hold and earn delegates to influence the party. Progressive candidates inspired by Bernie certainly aren’t fading away. Charles Booker, running against Mitch McConnell, stated “…make no mistake: our fight for Medicare for All, racial justice, a Green New Deal, and an economy that works for all of us is nowhere close to over.” Mark Gamba, the mayor Milwaukee, Oregon, running against incumbent Blue Dog, Kuirt Schrader, reaffirmed his goals of changing the healthcare system, boldly addressing climate change and holding corporate interests accountable for damage they cause. The grassroots movements supporting such candidates aren’t fading away either.

Here’s Biden’s statement on Bernie stepping out of the race. Pre-canned by strategists for sure, but I’d have to say it’s not a bad statement from the point of view of conning people to fill in the blanks with whatever they hope Joe is saying about health care, etc…. Trump was masterful at letting people hear what they wanted. If he’s not too addled, he may be again. But maybe Joe can limp along for awhile on a lack of specificity and a media tossing him softballs, until Biden figures out the peril of not making solid, substantive commitments and standing by them.

Maybe Biden can ride to victory atop a platform of low expectations other than not being Trump. But if Biden wins with wishy-washy, he’ll have nothing resembling a mandate, only a load of disappointed people when he turns out to be Mr. Cellophane, moved about with puppet strings by big donors to whom Bernie, with his small donor cornucopia, must have looked like one of Eliot Ness’s Untouchables. Spurning the money of big donors and owing them nothing made Bernie a dangerous man.

Howie of Down with Tyranny has repeatedly contrasted Biden’s weaknesses and Bernie’s strengths, so I’ll just offer a couple glimpses that glare out.

Recently the Biden camp conferred with Eric Holder about Biden’s campaign and his vice-presidential pick. Holder who ushered, covertly from colleagues who’d have been aghast, the pardon of finance criminal fugitive Marc Rich for Bill Clinton’s signature on Clinton’s last day in office, after which Rich’s ex-wife donated huge sums to the Clinton library. Does anyone doubt that had that happened a year earlier Clinton would have been impeached, and properly so? Holder, who prosecuted whistleblowers like John Kiriakou, a top counterintelligence agent who exposed CIA torture, just to ruin him and to send a message to others, putting this hero in prison, initially with an effort to throw away the key. Holder, who let bankers off the legal hook laying the groundwork for his law firm, and therefore Holder, to reap fortunes servicing those banks. Read what Holder did to bank whistleblower Brad Birkenfeld on behalf of foreign banks hiding Americans’ money. That’s the short list.

Holder was Wall Street’s early Manchurian candidate for President. He fizzled like a wet fuse, but he’s been waiting in the wings if opportunity knocks, raising his profile with an anti-gerrymandering organization that’s run like a campaign. If Biden hadn’t already committed to a female vice-president, I’d bet Holder would pull a Cheney and recommend himself. He’ll certainly be influential in a Biden administration, again looking out for protecting his client bankers from facing serious consequences for misdeeds and greedy maneuvers that are again setting Americans — and the world — up for another fall.

My point is that no one had to worry about Bernie consulting with Eric Holder. Instead Bernie would be throwing a wrench in the revolving door to keep Holder’s ilk out of his administration. Bernie would never have floated the idea of Jamie Dimon as a swell potential member of an administration, perhaps Secretary of the Treasury, as Biden’s camp did. Want some intriguing reading? Read a bit on Dimon here, and on JPMorganChase, courtesy of Wall Street on Parade. I’m confident that after the election, when the revolving door starts spinning, Bernie will be shouting the dangers loud and clear, channeling public anger that Biden would be a fool not to pay attention to.

By the way, Wall Street called the shots on many of President Obama’s picks, including Holder for Attorney General and Hillary for Secretary of State. That insight came courtesy of WikiLeaks, so one can sense the establishment fervor to destroy Julian Assange. And Wall Street on Parade reports that in the 2020 presidential primaries one Wall Street firm was an instrumental supporter of five different Democratic candidates. Should that leave us wondering at the impressive orchestration of the Super Tuesday endorsements, that maybe some candidates, beyond shooting for Veep or major posts, were being jockeyed to derail progressives and elevate Biden?

Both of Bernie’s presidential campaigns laid bare the hapless state of much of mainstream, corporate media. Take the Washington Post. Does anyone think Jeff Bezos bought that paper because, like Citizen Kane, he thought it might be fun to run a newspaper. The man has a Washington agenda. The Bezos Brigaiders on the editorial pages and covering the campaign are well aware of how many newspapers have hit the skids, with major staff layoffs that leave many journalists scrambling to find public relations work. They don’t have to be geniuses to figure out what the world’s richest man doesn’t like. Bezos doesn’t like antitrust enforcement and close scrutiny and regulation of monopolies. He doesn’t care much for paying taxes. He doesn’t like to be embarrassed and pushed by potential legislation that would penalize him if he doesn’t raise wages and improve working conditions for expendable workers toiling in warehouses and grocery stores and delivering his goods. He doesn’t like unions. So none of the Bezos Brigaiders needs to be told he doesn’t like Bernie Sanders, whose major supporters include Amazon workers and who throws a spotlight on that company’s excesses. And so these members of the press decided squashing Bernie is worth shredding their journalistic credibility, continuing a pattern Thomas Frank wonderfully described in 2016 in a Harper’s magazine article, Swat Team.

The New York Times opinion page and campaign coverage has been as relentless whacking Bernie. One can only marvel at how the Gray Lady has become so in the tank for the Wall Street establishment it still won’t acknowledge the folly of Bill Clinton and Robert Rubin eliminating the Glass-Steagall Act, that had separated commercial and investment banking since FDR, becoming a major cause of the 2008 economic debacle. Both Clinton and Rubin were richly rewarded for that, from speaking fees and foundation contributions for Clinton to a job for Rubin with stunning compensation. In Washington, quid pro quo often takes its time, but it gets there.

Did it ever look to you like a contest between those two papers to find the most deranged and angry looking images they could of Bernie? Propaganda 101.

We’ve been treated to the comic spectacle of Comcast media players like Chuck Todd, putting their Orwellian knives into Bernie and his health care proposals between commercials for health care insurance and pharmaceutical companies. And a number of NPR reporters and analysts behaved as if they’re auditioning for Comcast, putting words in interviewee’s mouths and cutting them short if what they said wasn’t supporting the narrative. They all ought get plaques engraved with “But How Will You Pay For It?” Particularly if the big banks start tumbling economic dominoes that most media has routinely ignored.

So we can thank Bernie for making the media fix so apparent that many of us now seek out alternative media voices, voices that often represent a much better use of one’s time.

Consider corporate media’s willingness to avert its gaze from a foreign power meddling in American elections. I’m not speaking of Russia, the influence of which on the 2016 election I think greatly over-played, to the detriment of focus on critical issues and on what the Trump grifter class is up to. Whatever Russia did I doubt it had much impact next to the tabloids in the grocery store checkout line, let alone our home-grown dark money networks of the Kochs, Mercers and others from the oligarch rogues gallery. More attention should have been paid to the influence of foreign companies’ American subsidiaries, including banks.

No, I’m speaking of Israel, whose confederates and advocates in the US spent fortunes running ads attacking Bernie in the primaries, supporting the narrative of Bernie being unelectable. Just imagine if it had been Russia, how quickly those covertly undermining our democracy on a behalf of a foreign power would earn the accusation of betraying our country. Just because Bernie called for decency and morality in the treatment of Palestinians systematically oppressed in every way imaginable. That oppression was often done with American indifference or complicity, which Bernie was perceived as a threat to.

Predictably, media was then complicit with ludicrous and flimsy intelligence claims — intelligence loosely defined — that Bernie topped Russia’s wish list.

Ironically, Bernie went along a bit with the Russia narrative, something for which he’s been criticized. I’ve no idea how much he really bought into that party orthodoxy. Some purists won’t like what I’m about to say. Things are relative, and running a presidential campaign isn’t the same as seeking sainthood. Look how fast media stood Bernie before a firing squad for giving a harmless nod to educational and medical accomplishments in Cuba, painting him as a fellow traveler to discredit him, particularly in Florida.

On balance, Bernie has given it to us straight more than any other candidate. Pardon what’s almost become a cliché, but his consistent drumbeat really has changed the conversation. On healthcare, 55% of voters now support single payer health care, only 35% oppose it. Major programs to counter climate change and develop related jobs are now a top priority of many, particularly younger voters. Bernie provided an articulation of the growing wealth gap that helped people better understand what they already sensed going on around them, and the campaign finance fix behind much of it. He provided hope that there was a way to do something about it. Where would the conversation be were it not for Bernie?

While I like and respect some of those who’ve been critical of Bernie over dis and dat, no offense to them but I think Noam Chomsky is better than most in assessing the immediacy of the big picture. (Here’s some of his comments on Bernie ending his presidential run.)

Chomsky on Democracy Now:

If Trump is reelected, it’s a indescribable disaster. It means that the policies of the past four years, which have been extremely destructive to the American population, to the world, will be continued and probably accelerated. What this is going to mean for health is bad enough… It will get worse. What this means for the environment or the threat of nuclear war, which no one is talking about but is extremely serious, is indescribable.

Suppose Biden is elected. I would anticipate it would be essentially a continuation of Obama — nothing very great, but at least not totally destructive, and opportunities for an organized public to change what is being done, to impose pressures.

It’s common to say now that the Sanders campaign failed. I think that’s a mistake. I think it was an extraordinary success, completely shifted the arena of debate and discussion. Issues that were unthinkable a couple years ago are now right in the middle of attention.

The worst crime he committed, in the eyes of the establishment, is not the policy he’s proposing; it’s the fact that he was able to inspire popular movements, which had already been developing — Occupy, Black Lives Matter, many others — and turn them into an activist movement, which doesn’t just show up every couple years to push a leader and then go home, but applies constant pressure, constant activism and so on. That could affect a Biden administration.

In the end, we should appreciate Bernie for the enemies he’s chosen, domestic and foreign. And we should appreciate him for the voice he’ll provide as interesting times compound.

The post Appreciating Bernie in Our Era of Hobson’s Choices appeared first on Traveling Archive.

If you haven’t seen it, Matt Taibbi’s withering critique of journalistic folly over Russian election collusion, “It’s Official – Russiagate is This Generation’s WMD,” then trust that it is well worth your time as an exercise in grappling with media herd instinct and the folly of putting our grand papers of record at the head of the herd. It’s also a great contemplation of the journalistic ethics and cautions that have been cut adrift, the sort the Columbia Journalism Review and journalism schools across the country might take note of.

Long and carefully documented, for this slow reader, it was a pleasure hanging-in. It’s much more richly detailed than this still worthwhile summation Taibbi recently published in Rolling Stone, “As the Meuller Probe Ends, New Russiagate Myths Begin,” which also updates the next round of folly.

The one encouraging item in that piece is that the median age for CNN viewers is 60 and the median for MSNBC is 65, so I feel more youthful just for not having cable.

Coming after he set the stage with this piece on unaccountable media that enabled the WMD con that waltzed us into invading Iraq, I think Taibbi ought to earn a Pulitzer or some such for media criticism.

If you didn’t catch the Democracy Now! debate between Glenn Greenwald and David Cay Johnston, “Watch a Contentious, Constructive Debate on the Media and Political Humiliation from the Mueller Report,” it’s also sobering. It does come with the guilty pleasure of sideswiping MSNBC and Rachel Maddow  who’ve used their hot pursuits of Russia collusion to challenge FOX in taking up the task of proving Orwell’s enduring wisdom on propaganda.

I’m now bracing under forty lashes administered by this Intercept podcast which includes Ali Abunimah of the Electronic Intifada, Taibbi and Naomi Klein, a good wrap-up perspective with a transcript option, if the unseen voices of a Beckett play are unsettling.

I’ve certainly had my fun with Trump, such as Inauguration Day Weather Forecast: 54 Degrees, Cloudy, Light Wind, Chance of Golden Showers (scroll down at the link). But like many who’ve dipped into journalism, I know the comforts of having it both ways, so I also took such occasions to work in skepticism over the Russian election collusion narrative. I’ve always been of the mindset that even if true, I didn’t care what snake hands me an apple off the Tree of Knowledge as long as it gives me the straight poop. Other than interesting intrigues, I don’t much care if truth comes via a hack or a walkaway thumb drive. After all, which more greatly damaged our Eden’s already fractured democracy, the DNC’s anti-democratic thumb on the scales during the 2016 presidential primaries, or providing the public with proof confirming the weight of the thumb? I’m picking door number one. If media had been doing its job, no such choice need apply. Instead we were left to wonder at mainstream media’s devotion to the Divine Right of Queens, and if it went so far as to grease the skids for the ratings-meister who was conveniently also the opponent Hillary most desired.

I’ve also never bought into the significant impact so many claim Putin’s Nightriders had on the election. Whatever they might have done, I could never imagine that results from their puny efforts were anything but miniscule next to impact of Internet mischief and other dark deeds fueled by millions in dark money expenditures by America’s homegrown election vandals.

If something later comes along regarding explorations I’ve long thought had greater potential, such as if there were violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act or, as Howie Klein has often underscored, potential money laundering via real estate portals and other foreign players, etc…, then great, to the ramparts. But should they occur, most enlightenments would be better left to the remedy of elections, not coveting President Mike “End of Days” Pence.

Meanwhile, I hope the Democrats can now fully focus on explaining the dangers of galloping venality in this godforsaken presidency, of which Howie has supplied a cornucopia. Topping the list is the risk that the financial sector is again exposing the country to after those trusted with oversight again willfully take their eyes off the ball. Catch up on that queasy feeling by perusing the topics at Wall Street on Parade, I’m pleased to note that after a brief absence that site has fired up again. It is not a cure for insomnia.

Given the invasion of Iraq, the current drumbeat on Iran by the usual suspects and the weird alliances with Saudi Arabia which 60 Minutes alleged uses Israeli spy technology to monitor dissidents like murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Israel’s and Saudi Arabia’s influence has always seemed more of a fright than Russia’s. But we’ll not likely see either party’s leadership seriously push investigations of those actors. The bipartisan construction of a pillory for Rep. IIhan Omar at the recent AIPAC extravaganza in Washington was as disgusting and as disheartening a political spectacle as I’ve ever seen. Stop it. Apart from the injustice of it, the politicians who partook looked like a parade of frightened fools.

By the way, last Friday there was a uniquely contrarian conference, on the Israeli lobby’s influence on American policy, for which video, and audio are now available, with transcripts coming along. Which is a great thing, because you won’t hear a peep out of mainstream media. I scribbled on it here (scroll down at the link). Take a breath and consider that in adjusted dollars we’ve spent far more on foreign aid to Israel than we spent under the Marshall Plan rebuilding Europe after WWII. Now tell me it’s not all about Benjamins flowing freely.

Beyond her undeniable cat-wrangling skills, one of the big selling points for Rep. Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker was her fundraising ability with big donors. For me her fundraising prowess was a red flag about whom she might be quietly mortgaging worthy Democratic Party values to, from Big Money to Big Tech to those looking to gloss over America’s soul-numbing complicity in the plight of the Palestinians. And what can one say about Chuck Schumer, Wall Street’s Manchurian Senator? For too many Democratic politicians, and for those in the growing military-industrial-fundraising-consulting complex that enables them, Russia was a great distraction from attending to issues on which those politicians and enablers are as for-sale as Trump. Trump is not Washington’s only distraction artist.

The silver lining is that maybe Russia’s creaky ship and the poisoner/kleptocrat at its helm will now stop sucking the air out of the room. That will enable Bernie and the like-minded to better spotlight their critical issues and keep coaxing the party to sail on better currents. And as important, they can now step out of the background noise to make their case to the independent voters they will have to win over to succeed at the ballot box. That goes hand in hand with beating back America’s worst impulses as embodied by Trump and the Republicans, now busy about the game of whittling down health care and all aspects of government that diminish inequality and the wealth gap. Highlighting the contrast has always been the best route to take Trumpster to the dumpster. It’s the cure for the Mueller hangover

So bon voyage, Russia, and for now, good riddance.

The post A Cure for the Mueller Hangover appeared first on Traveling Archive.

Attending as press, alas, not as a member, I first crossed paths with the Patriotic Millionaires several years ago at one of their events in Washington. At a dinner they hosted afterwards, I had the added treat of Alan Grayson at my table, and was mighty impressed with both the group and with Grayson’s witty comments about naked influence-peddling on the Hill and Congressional hypocrisy. I can’t speak on the whole roster of the group, but those I met were not better-heeled because they started out as trust-funders. They’d combined their abilities with hard work and the businesses they ran represented a wide cross-section of the economy. Many started out as small business entrepreneurs. Usually not glamorous businesses, but clever ideas that bed-rocked well-run operations that after considerable effort had turned out decently well for them. Perhaps that fires their alarm at a deck stacked evermore against the little guy by the big money and complicit politicians taking in what in any sane society would be labeled as bribes. The group knows that as the playing field tilts, the opportunities they enjoyed diminish for others, and that bodes ill for America’s economic future.

The group relishes the label “traitors to their class.” The three-legged stool on which the group sits is formed of equal political representation, a guaranteed living wage for all working citizens and a fair tax system.

Trump’s outrageous budget proposal motivated this essay by Morris Pearl, a former managing director at BlackRock, Inc. and chair of the Patriotic Millionaires.

Budget for a Nightmare America

By Morris Pearl                                                                                             

“President Trump recently released his 2019 budget proposal, a plan that outlines a series of massive cuts to vital public programs in the ludicrously titled “A Budget for a Better America.”

While this is just a list of funding ideas that mean nothing without Congressional approval, it outlines Trump’s vision for our economic future — one that allows us already wealthy people to get even richer, at the expense of everyone else. The chief targets of the budget are a proposed $845 billion cut from Medicare over the next decade, reductions to welfare programs and Social Security, and sharp cuts to agencies that keep us safe like the Environmental Protection Agency and State Department.

Strangely, while the President can’t seem to find the money to fund these programs, he thinks the government coffers have more than enough to fund $8.6 billion in border wall funding and a nearly 5 percent increase to the Pentagon’s budget.

It’s no secret that Republicans have been trying to gut public services for years, so what makes this new plan particularly heinous? It’s not just the immediate spikes in healthcare costs or the loss of crucial welfare assistance. It’s not even the fact that slashing those vital public services that will leave the majority of our most vulnerable citizens in an even more precarious position long-term.

It’s the shameless hypocrisy that comes from the President claiming we don’t have the money to fund all these services when he just gave his friends (and himself) a massive $1.5 trillion tax cut barely over a year ago. You would be hard pressed to find anyone outside of the White House who believes that the country is better off with more tax cuts for millionaires and less funding for Medicare.

To add further insult to injury, Trump’s budget proposal is the largest in federal history, at a total budget of $4.75 trillion. There was clearly no real attempt to limit federal spending, and this budget is going to be dead on arrival in Congress, which leads to the question: what’s the point?

With no chance of this budget becoming law anytime soon, it’s likely, then, that this serves as a blueprint for Trump’s re-election promises. That future is the true danger of Trump’s budget. Even if this is just a posturing plan right now, one that’s completely unrooted in reality, it serves as the economic vision that Republicans will propose to voters in 2020, and one they will try to deliver if elected.

When someone tells you who they are, believe them. If Trump and his Republican counterparts in Congress say they want to cut Medicare, believe them. If they tell you that they want to continue giving tax breaks to the wealthy while that happens, believe them. And you should believe me when I say this vision is bad economics — bad for business, bad for workers, and even bad for us millionaire investors and business people, who depend on healthy and happy consumers and workers to drive growth.

Conservatives rely on the constant refrain that spending is out of control and that cuts are needed to rein it in and balance the budget. But as this budget shows, the cuts come from everywhere except the people and corporations that have the most to give back to the system that allowed us to rise in the first place. It exacerbates our existing inequality by slashing these services and giving us millionaires even more opportunity to avoid paying our fair share. A better America is one that invests its dollars in its own citizens and ensures an equality of opportunity that benefits us all. A budget designed by robber barons to benefit the few, at the expense of everyone else, will not deliver that dream.”

While I can’t imagine Trump’s budget flying much faster than a lead balloon, it’s a gift to opponents seeking Exhibit A on the hypocrisy of Trump’s campaign claims of helping those in the country who are hurting. How rotten the proposal is was underscored by Pulitzer-winning journalist David Cay Johnston, editor of DCReport.org. Interviewed on Democracy Now!

…this budget is budget lessons I learned, as Donald Trump learned, from dictator Kim. So, the first thing you do is you take care of your military. You pour every dollar you can into a military that is bigger than you need. And that’s your number one goal, to make sure that you have loyalty and stay in power.

Then what you do is you take the disabled and the poor on Medicare, and you cut close to a trillion dollars over the next 10 years out of care for them. You take SNAP, which provides nutrition to pregnant women, children and elderly people and the disabled. “Hey, let’s slash that!”

Education. There were all these students who were ripped off by for-profit colleges that cost four or five times what a community college did, and gave you a lousy education, and some of them went broke. “Make them pay every penny!” They, in fact, say it isn’t fair unless these students pay it back. So they’re taking the side of the bankers against the students.

Housing. Let’s cut money for housing, people who are disabled, people who are on aids, people who are poor. We’re going to cut that. And to New York and New Jersey, by saying, “We are not going to fund the replacement of the 110-year-old tunnel,” through which thousands of commuters and people traveling up and down the East Coast travel every day, tunnels owned by the federal government’s Amtrak —

…what’s important here… is a budget is a statement of values. And Donald Trump has revealed his values. He has the values of a dictator. That’s why I said budget lessons from dictator Kim. And all of his claims about “I love the cops,” and then he took away their ability to take as a tax deduction buying uniforms and guns and dry cleaning and paying union dues; “I love the students,” and he wants to take away the subsidized loans and make people who got for-profit college educations that failed — colleges that failed — to make them pay. Donald Trump has no regard for anyone but himself. And so long as we treat him as if he’s a serious person who has real policies, we’re going to get nowhere. What we need to do is mock him and make fun of him. He’s not very smart, and he doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Johnston also mentioned some of the disturbing reality of Trump’s tax cut:

“…the economy is already slowing down. And 10 years into this market, which began under President Obama, you would expect it, at this point, to begin to slow down. So, we only saw 20,000 jobs last month. You know, Trump goes around talking about “I have the biggest employment in American history.” That’s not the measure. Job growth is a good measure. Job growth has been about 20 percent lower under Trump than under Obama since the economy turned around. Tax revenues in the last 90-day period were 2 percent lower, which goes right to the heart of how this tax cut for the rich is not paying for itself. And, you know, little-known fact: Donald Trump’s tax law gave 8-year loans at zero interest to all the multinational companies that had siphoned profits out of the country, and it also gave them a discount. So, I’ve written about how Apple alone — just Apple — will turn a $120 billion profit off the Trump tax law, $120 billion.”

If the Democrats play their cards right, they can use Ice Pick Donald’s budget to help sink him in 2020, and to take the Republican Senate down with him. Consider how this budget will play in the critical counties in the states Trump flipped, where exasperated voters who voted for Obama twice, hardly racist deplorables, stood Trump up as their default middle finger to the Washington establishment. These are voters in areas where, in the immortal words of Wall Street’s Manchurian Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, people “foamed the runway for the banks.” These are areas where good jobs rusted out, leaving people scrambling in futile efforts to stay even, where affordable educational opportunities for their children faded away. These are communities where families shoulder disproportionate tragedies from America’s endless wars, and from the pharmaceutical assaults of opioids.

In many of these communities Bernie outperformed both Hillary and Trump in the 2016 primaries. For these citizens, Bernie’s well-articulated and steady message will continue to resonate.

The post Ice Pick Donald appeared first on Traveling Archive.

The Doomsday Clock was set last year at a two-minutes until midnight, (midnight being the endgame), and there it now remains. There’s little comfort to be had in standing on what University of Chicago astrophysicist Robert Rosner characterized as a precipice we’d best quickly leap back from. Bulletin president and CEO Rachel Bronson stressed that the clock remaining where it is, the closest it has been to world catastrophe, is not stability, but “a stark warning to leaders and citizens around the world.”

William Perry said the organization views our current situation as precarious as it was in 1953, in the gloom of the Cold War while the Korean War still raged. Jerry Brown said, “ The blindness and stupidity of the politicians and their consultants is truly shocking in the face of nuclear catastrophe and danger….the business of everyday politics blinds people to the risk, we’re playing Russian Roulette with humanity,” with the danger of an incident that will kill millions if not igniting a conflict that will kill billions.

Brown told journalists while they may love the Trump tweets and news of the day, “the leads that get the clicks,” the final click could be a nuclear accident, a mistake. “It’s hard to even feel or sense the peril and danger we are in, but these scientists know what they’re talking about, and I can say, based on my understanding of the political process, the politicians, for the most part, do not.” Referring to Congress’s inaction on related matters, Brown called it “massive sleep walking all over the place.” He committed to spending the next few years doing everything he can to “sound the alarm and  get us back on the track to dialogue, collaboration and arms control.”

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and the Doomsday Clock are creations of a group of scientists who participated in the Manhattan Project. The clock’s current position was determined by a group of scholars and scientists that includes fifteen Nobel Laureates. These are serious people. It is heartening to see their avoidance of political talking points or partisan tilt in favor of Joe Friday’s focus on “just the facts, ma’am.” Just the chilling facts that let the chips fall where they may. About thirty-three minutes into the conference Jerry Brown gave a Dutch uncle talk to Democrats who maintain the attack mode on Putin on all matters without holding open the option for nuclear dialogue. It brought to mind the discussions of Washington’s bipartisan War Party prompted by William Atkin’s recent critique of NBC and MSNBC.

The Bulletin has been criticized for going beyond the original nuclear realm to include a number of other perils. But it seems if there is one thing we’re learning now from climate and polar ice studies and being slapped around by extreme weather events, it’s that seemingly unrelated factors cascade and overlap, interacting and accelerating in ways we hadn’t understood. No doubt more surprises will come. Certainly the impacts of climate change on food and water supplies, on ocean health and on migration will bear on political systems and on future tensions and conflicts. Perhaps it’s too far afield, but a case could be made to include prospects of financial meltdowns from bankers behaving badly. Economic calamities have lit a lot of fuses.

Stanford cyber expert Herb Lin focused on the ongoing debasement of institutions that hold leaders accountable. While nuclear risks and climate change lead the concerns, that witches brew is now put into the blender by the misinformation on steroids enabled by the Internet. Says Lin, “Events in 2018 have helped us to better understand an ongoing and intentional corruption of the information environment.  Our leaders complain about fake news and invoke alternative facts when reality is inconvenient. They are shamelessly inconsistent.”

So we have Information warfare combining with information overload to compromise the public’s ability to absorb and analyze critical issues. Among other things, information warfare delegitimizes the values and truths embodied by science, causing a cheapening and distrust of all information, opening a Pandora’s Box of distortions that allow the public and politicians to avoid grappling with the serious issues before them.

Fine by me if the experiences of the past few years inoculate the public with a healthy cynicism, offering some protection from the Gatling guns spewing talking points. But if the public discards the legitimacy of scientific thought and proof, not so good.

Here’s a few excerpts from the Bulletin statement on the Doomsday Clock.

Humanity now faces two simultaneous existential threats, either of which would be cause for extreme concern and immediate attention. These major threats — nuclear weapons and climate change — were exacerbated this past year by the increased use of information warfare to undermine democracy around the world, amplifying risk from these and other threats and putting the future of civilization in extraordinary danger.

In the nuclear realm, the United States abandoned the Iran nuclear deal and announced it would withdraw from the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), grave steps towards a complete dismantlement of the global arms control process. Although the United States and North Korea moved away from the bellicose rhetoric of 2017, the urgent North Korean nuclear dilemma remains unresolved. Meanwhile, the world’s nuclear nations proceeded with programs of “nuclear modernization” that are all but indistinguishable from a worldwide arms race, and the military doctrines of Russia and the United States have increasingly eroded the long-held taboo against the use of nuclear weapons.

On the climate change front, global carbon dioxide emissions — which seemed to plateau earlier this decade — resumed an upward climb in 2017 and 2018. To halt the worst effects of climate change, the countries of the world must cut net worldwide carbon dioxide emissions to zero by well before the end of the century. By such a measure, the world community failed dismally last year. At the same time, the main global accord on addressing climate change — the 2015 Paris agreement — has become increasingly beleaguered. The United States announced it will withdraw from that pact, and at the December climate summit in Poland, the United States allied itself with Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait (all major petroleum-producing countries) to undercut an expert report on climate change impacts that the Paris climate conference had itself commissioned.

Amid these unfortunate nuclear and climate developments, there was a rise during the last year in the intentional corruption of the information ecosystem on which modern civilization depends. In many forums, including particularly social media, nationalist leaders and their surrogates lied shamelessly, insisting that their lies were truth, and the truth “fake news.” These intentional attempts to distort reality exaggerate social divisions, undermine trust in science, and diminish confidence in elections and democratic institutions. Because these distortions attack the rational discourse required for solving the complex problems facing humanity, cyber-enabled information warfare aggravates other major global dangers — including those posed by nuclear weapons and climate change — as it undermines civilization generally.

Worrisome nuclear trends continue. The global nuclear order has been deteriorating for many years, and 2018 was no exception to this trend. Relations between the United States and both Russia and China have grown more fraught. The architecture of nuclear arms control built up over half a century continues to decay, while the process of negotiating reductions in nuclear weapons and fissile material stockpiles is moribund. The nuclear-armed states remain committed to their arsenals, are determined to modernize their capabilities, and have increasingly espoused doctrines that envision nuclear use. Brash leaders, intense diplomatic disputes, and regional instabilities combine to create an international context in which nuclear dangers are all too real.

A number of negative developments colored the nuclear story in 2018.

First, the United States abandoned the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the multilateral agreement that imposed unprecedented constraints on Iran’s nuclear program and allowed unprecedented verification of Iran’s nuclear facilities and activities. On May 8, President Trump announced that the United States would cease to observe the agreement and would instead launch a campaign of “maximum pressure” against Iran. So far, Iran and the other parties have continued to comply with the agreement, despite the absence of US participation. It is unclear whether they will keep the agreement alive, but one thing is certain: The Trump administration has launched an assault on one of the major nuclear nonproliferation successes of recent years and done so in a way that increases the likelihood of conflict with Iran and further heightens tensions with long-term allies.

Second, in October the Trump administration announced that it intends to withdraw from the INF Treaty, which bans missiles of intermediate range. Though bedeviled by reciprocal complaints about compliance, the INF agreement has been in force for more than 30 years and has contributed to stability in Europe. Its potential death foreshadows a new competition to deploy weapons long banned. Unfortunately, while treaties are being eliminated, there is no process in place that will create a new regime of negotiated constraints on nuclear behavior. For the first time since the 1980s, it appears the world is headed into an unregulated nuclear environment — an outcome that could reproduce the intense arms racing that was the hallmark of the early, unregulated decades of the nuclear age even as arms control efforts wane, modernization of nuclear forces around the world continues apace. In his Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly on March 1, Russian President Vladimir Putin described an extensive nuclear modernization program, justified as a response to US missile defense efforts. The Trump administration has added to the enormously expensive comprehensive nuclear modernization program it inherited from the Obama administration.

Ominous climate change trends. The existential threat from human-caused global warming is ominous and getting worse. Every year that human activities continue to add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere irreversibly ratchets up the future level of human suffering and ecosystem destruction that will be wrought by global climate disruption. The key measure of improvement on the climate front is the extent of progress toward bringing global net carbon dioxide emissions to zero. On this measure, the countries of the world have failed dismally.

Global carbon dioxide emissions rates had been rising exponentially until 2012 but ceased growing from 2013 to 2016. Even if this emissions plateau had continued, it would not have halted the growth of warming. Net emissions need to ultimately be brought to zero to do so, given the persistence of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere for up to thousands of years. The ominous news from 2017 and 2018 is that world emissions appear to have resumed their upward climb.

Even nations that have strongly supported the need to decarbonize are not doing enough. Preliminary estimates show that almost all countries contributed to the rise in emissions. Some countries, including the United States and some members of the EU, increased their emissions after years of making progress in reducing them.

The United States has also abandoned its responsibilities to lead the world decarbonization effort. The United States has more resources than poorer nations have; its failure to ambitiously reduce emissions represents an act of gross negligence. The United States stood alone while the other G20 countries signed on to a portion of a joint statement reaffirming their commitment to tackle climate change. Then in 2018, at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poland, the United States joined with Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait — all major oil producers — to undercut a report on the impacts of climate change.

The threat of information warfare and other disruptive technologies. Nuclear war and climate change threaten the physical infrastructure that provides the food, energy, and other necessities required for human life. But to thrive, prosper, and advance, people also need reliable information about their world — factual information, in abundance.

Today, however, chaos reigns in much of the information ecosystem on which modern civilization depends. In many forums for political and societal discourse, we now see national leaders shouting about fake news, by which they mean information they do not like. These same leaders lie shamelessly, calling their lies truth. Acting across national boundaries, these leaders and their surrogates exacerbate existing divisions, creating rage and increasing distrust in public and private institutions. Using unsupported anecdotes and sketchy rhetoric, denialists raise fear and doubt regarding well-established science about climate change and other urgent issues. Established institutions of the government, journalism, and education — institutions that have traditionally provided stability — are under attack precisely because they have provided stability.

In this environment, communication inflames passions rather than informing reason.

Many countries have long employed propaganda and lies — otherwise known as information warfare — to advance their interests. But a quantitative change of sufficient magnitude qualifies as a qualitative change. In the Internet age, the volume and velocity of information has increased by orders of magnitude. Modern information technology and social media allow users easy connectivity and high degrees of anonymity across national borders. This widespread, inexpensive access to worldwide audiences has allowed practitioners of information warfare to broadcast false and manipulative messages to large populations at low cost, and at the same time to tailor political messages to narrow interest groups.

By manipulating the natural cognitive predispositions of human beings, information warriors can exacerbate prejudices, biases, and ideological differences. They can invoke “alternative facts” to advance political positions based on outright falsehoods. Rather than a cyber Armageddon that causes financial meltdown or nationwide electrical blackouts, this is the more insidious use of cyber tools to target and exploit human insecurities and vulnerabilities, eroding the trust and cohesion on which civilized societies rely.

The Enlightenment sought to establish reason as the foundational pillar of civilized discourse. In this conception, logical argument matters, and the truth of a statement is tested by examination of values, assumptions, and facts, not by how many people believe it. Cyber-enabled information warfare threatens to replace these pillars of logic and truth with fantasy and rage. If unchecked, such distortion will undermine the world’s ability to acknowledge and address the urgent threats posed by nuclear weapons and climate change and will increase the potential for an end to civilization as we know it. The international community should begin multilateral discussions that aim to discourage cyber-enabled information warfare and to buttress institutions dedicated to rational, fact- based discourse and governance.

Particularly regarding the 2016 election, Russia and fake news have become inseparable to many. My lingering view remains that any impact from Internet mischief the Russians did during elections was a blip next to all the rot that’s been flying about for years, much of it funded by homegrown dark money and most of it owing to good old-fashioned American lack of integrity. On the other hand, I don’t have a cell phone, am not on cable and have never been on Facebook, so maybe I’m just clueless about how easily people are significantly swayed by a select few of the gazillion bits of information firehosing them, even those bits that people happily cobble into personal echo-chambers. But it seems that folks who are birthers and such don’t have to depend on the far flung for nonsense readily available and riding down a hotel escalator. The American realm of carefully calculated election misinformation from incognito sources is wonderfully underscored by the POV film Dark Money. It shows how dark money, ramped up by Citizens United, distorted elections in Montana, targeting both Democrats and Republicans who didn’t do a sufficient kowtow to the big money. Not to Putin’s druthers, but to the big money, to polluters, Koch brothers allies, ALEC objectives and such. But I digress, because that’s the beauty of a blog post.

Back to bombs. According to the Federation of American Scientists, nine nations together have about 15,000 nuclear bombs, most far more powerful than those used on Japan, 1,800 of those possessed by the US and Russia are kept on high-alert status. Ride along with Major Kong here, and sing along with Vera Lynn here on “We’ll Meet Again,” as humanity exits stage left. Here’s a version picking some of the 331 atmospheric tests the US conducted from 1945 to 1962. Try the comfort of the largest bomb exploded, the Tsar Bomba, aka Ivan, aka Vanya. If you’d like to explore the impacts of a single one megaton bomb, (eighty times larger than the Hiroshima bomb but tiny compared to some modern bombs), as well as the global impacts of an exchange of 100 Hiroshima-sized bombs, perhaps a conflict between Pakistan and India, here you go. Perhaps pass these along to George W. Bush so he has a better idea of how to look for a WMD, maybe at a correspondents dinner.

By the way, do you think kids in the Fifties might have had a few issues to work out later?

Actions and statements by Trump figure significantly in the clock’s advancement in 2017 to two and a half minutes before midnight. A then-incoming President Trump made alarming statements regarding nuclear proliferation, the prospect of using nuclear weapons and his opposition to US commitments on climate change.

And in 2018 he helped move the clock ahead thirty seconds by announcing his intent to scrap the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) that for decades was a lynchpin for global arms control. He also pulled out of the agreement with Iran. By the way, that latter idiocy was greased by nuclear power Israel, Sheldon Adelson and their American neocon minions like John Bolton. Invading Iraq wasn’t enough horror.

I do wish Trump luck for a good follow-through with North Korea that might relax the minute hand a bit. The world needs a win.

Trump recently reincarnated the illusion of a global defense system. A worthy critique by Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, is his essay “Donald Trump’s Mission Impossible: Making His Unrealistic Missile Plan Work.”

That man behind the curtain has nothing on Trump. Now we have the news of Trump’s latest misdirection, Venezuela. In 1975 I traveled overland to South America. Two impressions of Venezuela linger, the startling transition over a few hours going from snow in the Andes to the streamy tropics below, and the surreal feel while waterskiing between the oil derricks in Lake Maracaibo. Like slicks on the water, oil money was everywhere, a pleasant-looking lifestyle for many of the privileged youths darting about in convertibles filled with cheap gas. I can’t grasp the changes since then. Whatever way out of the miseries of a failed state might be found, it’s hard to imagine lighting the fuse for a civil war would prove beneficial. Perhaps Venezuelans will come knocking seeking asylum, quoting Trump’s description of their plight, never mind contributing US pressures. In any case, Venezuela should give us pause at how fast things can change.

Tick Tock.

The post Haven’t Enough to Keep You Awake at Night? Try the Doomsday Clock for a Truthful State of the Union appeared first on Traveling Archive.

I Have Met Santa Claus … And His Name is Norman

Norman is part of the FORBS (Fraternal Order of Real Bearded Santas). Last Saturday, I was in a kid’s Christmas event at the Whittier Museum plugging the book: “Tom the Mouse” (You haven’t bought it yet? What are you waiting for?). In between his duties, Norman and his wife, Linda (Mrs. Claus), and I chatted about his seasonal adventures. He said he had so many Santa stories that he might write a book. Of course I told him if he needed any help with production and illustrations, I knew someone who was excellent in getting his ideas together [wynk! wynk!]

He shared a story about an angry little girl whose arms were crossed and  looked at him accusingly. Norman wondered if he did something to offend her. She opened up: “So … where’s the Barbie Doll House I wrote you about? All I got last year was a cheap stocking stuffer!”

There was this little black sweetheart who ran to him excitedly and hugged him like they were old friends. “I knew it! I knew it! You’re the REAL Santa!” she said as she tugged at Norman’s beard. “There’s a fake BLACK Santa running around in our neighborhood! You’re the REAL Santa!!!

There was a little boy who couldn’t stop talking. “My brother was so good he [did this and that] …” After a while Norman realized the boy was avoiding something. So he asked the kid: “Your brother sounds like a good little boy but what about you?” The boy just kept babbling more about his saintly brother. “But how about you?” Norman insisted. More talk about his brother until finally he stopped and put his head down. “Aw, gee!” he said, “I guess you won’t be bringing me that bicycle again this year, huh?”

Oh, the imagination of young people. So precious. So innocent. Remember when you sat on Santa’s lap? Where did the years go? Aren’t you glad you are allowed to become a kid every year when we celebrate the birth of God-made-Man?

I like Santa but I do have to point this out: If you haven’t figured it out yet, Norman is a fake Santa. Surprise! Surprise! Do you realize the power he holds comes from children who want to believe and their parents who feed their imagination? Lots of fake stuff going around in this world today. Some good. Some bad. Like Santa, the power of pretension (fake news, fake smiles, fake ads, etc.) exists because of people’s belief system. It’s an open debate whether adults should lie about Santa or not. Personally, my wife and I never lied to our kids. We told them to respect and not to ruin the game of other families. They always knew the truth ahead of their contemporaries. They never felt deprived of their childhood, never had to transition from a lie, and they’re all the better for it. But that’s just our family.

I know some of you celebrate the season in different ways. But if I’m not mistaken everyone buys presents for their loved ones. Isn’t it wonderfully amazing that we all experience this genuine exchange of love towards each other? I know I’m going to make a mistake in this greeting but what the heck! — Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! Happy Hanukah! Happy Diwali Day! Happy Bodhi Day and Happy Ramadan! May God bless us all. Peace on earth. Goodwill to man!

“My idea of Christmas, whether old-fashioned or modern, is very simple: loving others. Come to think of it, why do we have to wait for Christmas to do that?”— Bob Hope

TGIF people!

Joke of the Week

Heavenly Business

Shared by Tom of Pasadena, CA

Videos of the Week

Donald and Hillary Sing a Christmas Duet
Sent by Don of Kelowna, B.C.

I thought this was very funny and well done. No, it isn’t political .. just funny.

WATCH VIDEO

A Social Media Christmas
Sent by Charlie of New Jersey

Here’s something I got right after Christmas … last year! I’ve been saving it all this time. It’s still pretty good.

WATCH VIDEO

Just Say Christmas
Sent by Don of Kelowna, B.C.

WARNING: RELIGIOUS/POLITICAL video: Skip if this bothers you

In this politically correct world, do you say “Happy Holidays” when you really want to say “Merry Christmas?” This Jew’s perspective  makes you think.

WATCH VIDEO

Don’s Puns

From Don’s collection of puns

Christmas Fun

Sent by Don of Kelowna, B.C.

Parting Shot

Thanks to Tom of Pasadena, CA who shared this photo

Hey, do me a favor. Get your copy of the brand new Traveling Boy Joke Book. It’s pocket size and is perfect for a stocking stuffer. It’s about $10 only, unique and … ideal for your office mate or business friend.

The post Heavenly Business appeared first on Traveling Archive.

This Saturday I will be volunteering at the Buena Park Jr High Campus, California, for my second Relay for Life event. For those who are not familiar, Relay for Life is a program sponsored by the American Cancer Society to help fund research for Cancer.

Two weeks ago was my first time to help this non-profit organization which was held at La Mirada, CA where I helped raise over $200 doing caricature sketches of people. Of course, I gave everything to the group.

At first nobody came to my booth because I was a complete stranger. But after my first “victim” showed it around, the people started coming in. Perhaps the most intriguing person I drew was a High Schooler who was emboldened to ask me a special favor. She wanted me to draw her with a singer who was part of BTS, the hot Korean Boy Band. She had his picture on her smart phone. She giggled all throughout the posing. She even gave me a hug after she saw the finished work. Later the event organizers told me she called them to get my name so she could properly credit me on her Facebook account. What a sweetheart.

I would have continued if not for an appointment with some church friends. The interruption was a blessing because my back was hurting badly after sitting there for just a few hours.

I think I’m getting too old for this live 5 minute sketch. My eyes aren’t as sharp anymore. And my fingers are beginning to shake. I might shift from pen and ink to digital. So if you are in the area, come on by this Saturday. You may be one of the last people to have a live caricature done by me. It’s for a good cause.

When I was young my Mom cautioned me about becoming an artist because she knew artists didn’t get paid enough. Sure, money is always nice, but Mom was wrong. To share my gift of art to so many people is plenty payment for me.

What’s your gift? If it comes naturally, if it comes easy, it’s meant to be given freely.

But this is just me.

“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life“
— Pablo Picasso

TGIF people!

Insults Between Husband and Wife

Shared by Mel of Washington, D.C.

CAUTION: NOT FOR THE SENSITIVE ONES

Donald Trump Needs a Date
Sent by Art of Sierra Madre, CA

Art found this old Candid Camera footage of Donald Trump doing a cameo appearance with his Playboy persona. This isn’t political but I know some of you can’t stand the guy so just skip. This may also not be for the sensitive among you. Hard to believe this is our President.

WATCH VIDEO

John Mayer Cheap Viral Video
Sent by Peter Paul of South Pasadena, CA

If you know John Mayer, you know he’s a superstar guitarist. He and his marketing team couldn’t agree on a budget to make his MTV video. So he went to a local video store that mainly does weddings. Wouldn’t you know it. this video went viral. Certainly dispels the myth that you need a big budget to market well.

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TEDx Canada: How to Succeed
Sent by Art of Sierra Madre, CA

How do you measure success? Is it finances? Is it relationships? I’m sure we have different ideas about it. Next question, how do you achieve it?

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Don’s Puns

From Don’s collection of puns

Parting Shots

Thanks to Don of Kelowna, B.C. who shared this photo

I hope I’m not being too mean here but it really begs the question: “Why doesn’t anyone of her status get any honest feedback about how she dresses up?” — Raoul

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