Worst

Today we congratulate George W. Bush who is no longer the worst President in United States history. Let's give Fuckface von Clownstick all the respect the Republicans afforded Barack Obama during his term in office.

The End of Wishful Thinking

My candidate didn't get nominated and yet the actual nominee said she supported many of the same issues. The polls were good and I'd hoped we would be spared the worst. It does somehow seem selfish to think that with a "reasonable" President, we wouldn't have to face the stark reality of our predicament for a few more years. No need to think about it if you believe someone is taking care of things.

But even though we won, we end up losing. And the signs were there all along for those who would look. In Democracy Incorporated, Sheldon Wolin describes the precariousness of democracy and where we've been heading for a long time.

A government responsive to the deepening distress of the Many, to ever-widening class disparities, to impending environmental crises, would need sufficient autonomy to defy corporate wishes. The fact that government rarely challenges corporate power allows capital to define the political terrain to fit its own needs.

... 

By fostering an illusion among the powerless classes that the party can make their interests a priority, it pacifies and thereby defines the style of an opposition party in an inverted totalitarian system. In the process it demonstrates the superior cost-effectiveness of inverted totalitarianism over the crude classic versions.

... 

Antidemocracy, executive predominance, and elite rule are the basic elements of inverted totalitarianism. ... Citizens are encouraged to distrust their government and politicians; to concentrate upon their own interests; to begrudge their taxes; and to exchange active involvement for symbolic gratifications of patriotism, collective self-righteousness, and military prowess.

...

A politics of dumbed-down public discourse and low voter turnout combines with a dynamic economy of stubborn inequalities to produce the paradox of a powerful state and a failing democracy. 

In the essay (also included in his new collection Low Dishonest Decades) What Is to Be Done?, George Scialabba examined several authors who contended that Republicans retain electoral advantages despite their (then recent) 2006 setback. We know now the results of 2010, 2014, and 2016, but Scialabba had hoped for something better.

[I]f we want a durably decent society, we have to improve the quality of political discussion.  ... Otherwise, public life will become wholly a marketing competition, and nothing more.

And unfortunately, who knows marketing better than an expert con man?

Update (February 26):  Anis Shivani argues that "moral disengagement" might be the best response to the current situation.

Why do I think that resistance makes fascism worse? Because it creates the illusion, for a while (as under the Obama administration), that things are getting better, but they only get worse. Resistance legitimizes, and fascism, especially, thrives on it.

[B]ecause America already possesses total capacity to destroy any entity, internally and externally, ... resistance only strengthens the fascist regime. Resistance gives that regime something to fight against. Fascism needs an enemy to build itself against, but what if the enemy were to retreat and disappear? What would it fight against then?

Hottest Year (Yet Again)

In news that surprises no one who is paying attention, NASA announced that 2016 is the warmest year in the temperature record at 0.99 degrees Celsius above the 1951-1980 average. NOAA reports 0.94 degrees Celsius above the 20th century average, which was 0.04 degrees higher than 2015.

Joe Romm is obviously concerned.

Yet while human-caused warming is now as undeniable as the health dangers from smoking, and although the entire world desperately banded together in one last ditch effort to avoid catastrophe in 2015, we are hours away from the inauguration of the most science-denying administration in U.S. history, one dedicated to stopping U.S. and global action.

Update (June 17):  Ah ha! May was only the second warmest on record. I knew it was all a hoax.

Update (June 29):  The official high temperature in Ahvez, Iran today was 53.7 degrees Celsius (128.7 Fahrenheit). Just short of the (most reliably measured) all time record of 54 degrees from 2013 and tied in 2016.

Update (July 4):  The Middle East and North Africa is especially vulnerable to facing uninhabitable weather conditions.

Update (July 6):  It's worth noting that Syria has been severely impacted by drought attributed to climate change.

Syria’s worst drought in 900-years lasted 5 years just prior to the onset of armed conflict, driving 1.5 million farmers and herders off their parched land into the cities, migrating/searching for sustenance. Ever since war started, they’ve been re-migrating out of the cities to Turkey, Mediterranean states, and all across Europe, except for Poland, Hungary, and Czech Republic, which refuse. Global warming/armed conflicts cause people to do crazy things.

Update (October 8):  I may have missed some climate stories this year, but September seems to be a record-setter. It's the warmest non-El Nino month and had the greatest hurricane activity.

Update (October 28):  Some heat records in Southern California are being broken by double-digit margins.

Top Eight and Bottom Half

In a dramatic revision of previous estimates, Oxfam reports that

Total global wealth has reached a staggering $255 trillion. Since 2015, more than half of this wealth has been in the hands of the richest 1% of people. At the very top, this year's data finds that collectively the richest eight individuals have a net wealth of $426 [billion], which is the same as the net wealth of the bottom half of humanity.

From AP:

Oxfam used Forbes’ billionaires list that was last published in March 2016 to make its headline claim. According to the Forbes list, Microsoft founder [Bill] Gates is the richest individual with a net worth of $75 billion. The others, in order of ranking, are Amancio Ortega, the Spanish founder of fashion house Inditex, financier Warren Buffett, Mexican business magnate Carlos Slim Helu, Amazon boss Jeff Bezos, Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, Oracle’s Larry Ellison and [Michael] Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York.

Update (June 15):  And now it's five.

An analysis of 2016 data found that the poorest five deciles of the world population own about $410 billion in total wealth. As of June 8, 2017, the world's richest five men owned over $400 billion in wealth. Thus, on average, each man owns nearly as much as 750 million people.

Update (July 28):  Jeff Bezos may or may not be the richest, but he and Bill Gates are the top two. And in Amancio Ortega, Warren Buffett, and Mark Zuckerberg and the (roughly) current total is $409.3 billion.

Update (October 28):  Some wealthy members of Congress aren't sure who's considered to be "rich". And Bezos is now on top with $93.8 billion after gaining $10.4 billion in stock value in a single day.

Update (November 11):  Conor Lynch discusses the Paradise Papers and the rise of the "international oligarchy".

There are two forms of populism that are currently being offered as alternatives to international oligarchy. On the right, reactionary populists present the current divide between the 1 percent and the 99 percent as a struggle between “globalists” and nationalists, and seek to divide the working class by scapegoating minorities, immigrants and foreigners for problems that have been created by global capitalism. On the left, progressives and socialists aim to create an international working class movement that challenges both capitalism and the power of global elites.

Update (November 12):  A report from the Institute for Policy Studies called Billionaire Bonanza finds that Bezos, Gates, and Buffett have as much wealth as the bottom half of the U.S. population. The median family wealth in the U.S. is $80,000.

Update (November 13):  Responsible Wealth has a message for Congress.

As the Senate and House make final tweaks to their tax proposals, over 400 of the nation's very rich individuals have penned a letter to the lawmakers with a demand that stands in stark contrast to the plans on the table: don't cut our taxes—raise them.

Update (November 25):  Paul Buchheit reports that for the second consecutive year, the wealth of a household in the top one percent increased on average by over $2.5 million.

Update (December 28):  Bloomberg reports that the "world's 500 richest people added an average of $2.7 billion to their fortunes every day in 2017"--a cumulative gain of one trillion dollars.

Unraveling

The annual Arctic Report Card from NOAA paints a grim picture. 

Another ramification of the dramatic warming of the Arctic is that permafrost is now releasing more greenhouse gases, like methane, which is 100 times more potent of a greenhouse gas than CO2, during the winter. The report notes that this is happening now at a rate faster than that at which plants can absorb the gas during the summer, which means the Arctic has now become a net source of heat-trapping pollution.

Update (December 18):  More from Andrea Thompson.

Update (January 7, 2017):  An interview with Jennifer Francis from the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University about arctic records. And Joe Romm discusses the global loss of sea ice.

Systems with amplifying feedbacks tend to have tipping points beyond which change is irreversible. In the case of the great polar ice sheets that will drive catastrophic sea level rise and ultimately inundate every major coastal city, we appear to be dangerously close to such tipping points.

Update (July 16, 2017):  "Arctic Heat Is Becoming More Common and Persistent".

Since 1979, the number of warm events has doubled and the number of days with mild air has tripled. There are now 21 days of mild weather at the North Pole in an average winter compared to just seven mild winter days at the start of record keeping.

Update (December 20, 2017):  This year's report card finds that "the region is now definitively trending toward an ice-free state".

Shortly after the beginning of the 21st Century, the Arctic began an environmental transition so extensive that it caught scientists, policymakers, and residents by surprise. The extent and duration of these transitions define the New Arctic, characterized by the lowest winter maximum in sea ice cover on record for 2017, the persistent and record warming of sea surface temperatures across the Arctic, and the downward trend in total ice mass of the Greenland ice sheet, just to name a few.

Update (December 12, 2018):  This year's report card finds that melting at both poles has been worse than previously thought. It notes that 95 percent of the Arctic's oldest ice has melted in the past 30 years.

Update (December 13, 2019):  This year's report card continues the bad news.

The Arctic could be releasing upwards of 600 million tons of net carbon per year, the report finds, potentially putting the region alongside Mexico, Canada, and South Korea as one of the world’s largest contributors to atmospheric CO2.

Hard Rain

Is Bob Dylan's poetry still relevant? Absolutely.

Update (June 7, 2017):  Dylan's recorded Nobel lecture.

Russian Hack

The Washington Post reports the CIA conclusion that Russia was acting on behalf of the Republican nominee. But does it matter? Heather Digby Parton notes that FBI director James Comey's letters swung enough late-deciding voters to shift key states.

It is very hard to escape the conclusion that Comey knew exactly what he was doing. If the Russians didn’t give us [the Republican nominee], the FBI director did.

Update (December 17):  Oh, good, the FBI now agrees with the CIA assessment. That should take care of the problem.

Update (December 18):  Andrew O'Hehir thinks we may not know all the machinations behind this year's election for a long time. And that's not our biggest problem.

Those who want to argue that American democracy is perfectly OK and the Democratic Party is perfectly OK, for example, can cherry-pick whichever marginal factors they prefer. If the only reason Hillary Clinton lost the election to a moronic demagogue and professed sexual predator was because of Russian sabotage, then there’s no reason not to keep on running candidates like her into the indefinite future.

Update (June 7, 2017):  While the hard left is highly skeptical, a leaked NSA document seems to show actual interference.

Update (July 2, 2018):  Looks like Russia had something to do with the British referendum on the European Union.

Update (July 3, 2018):  This is interesting.

The Republican-run Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday repudiated [Fuckface von Clownstick's] denials that Russia interfered to help his 2016 campaign. But the release of the report—at around 3pm, just before the July 4 holiday—suggests that the Senate Republicans are eager to keep their differences with [Dear Leader] out of the sunlight.

The report endorses the January 6, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment, or ICA, finding Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 with the goals of undermining Americans' faith in the democratic process and denigrating former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. The assessment also concludes that Russia "developed a clear preference for" [Orangeman].

Update (July 4, 2018):  It should be noted that the House Intelligence Committee reached a different conclusion than the Senate committee and that the House has been pressuring the Department of Justice to disclose information about informants. Now Marcy Wheeler has disclosed that she is one of many sources the FBI generally seeks to protect.

The Republicans' ceaseless effort to find out more details about people who've shared information with the government puts those people in serious jeopardy.

I'm speaking out because they can't — and shouldn't have to.

It infuriates me to observe (and cover) a months-long charade by the House GOP to demand more and more details about those who have shared information with the government, at least some of whom were only trying to prevent real damage to innocent people, all in an attempt to discredit the Mueller investigation.

Update (July 28, 2018):  Timothy Summers analyzes how Russia's hacking activities worked.

Update (December 20, 2018):  In an interview with Chauncey DeVega, Kathleen Hall Jamieson says it it probable, but not certain, the Russians swung the 2016 election.

The Russians were able to change the climate of communication for some voters and members of the public through social media in ways that disadvantaged Hillary Clinton. The Russians were able to change the media agenda and questions asked during two presidential debates in ways that disadvantaged Hillary Clinton. The Russians and their disinformation campaign may have influenced a consequential decision by James Comey to make public the reopening of the FBI investigation into the Clinton email server on Oct. 28, 2016, in ways that decisively impacted the election.

Update (July 27, 2019):  The Senate Intelligence Committee has produced a report:

[T]he first section of its report on 2016 Russian interference, which found that hackers likely tried to access election systems in all 50 states, confirm[s] widespread fears that America’s election system may not be secure from attack.

Not to worry.  The Major Leader is all over it.

Mitch McConnell blocked two election security measures on Thursday, arguing Democrats are trying to give themselves a "political benefit."

Update (September 29, 2019):  Among the conversations the White House has kept hidden:

[During a 2017 Oval Office meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak], [Dear Leader] purportedly said he was not concerned about Moscow's meddling in the United States' 2016 presidential election because the U.S. has done the same abroad.