About the Joe Biden document scandal.

 Personally, if you are going to wag your finger at other people, you better make sure you have your own shit in order.

So, this steady barrage of document finds on Biden properties is going to hurt and may hurt big time. AS SOON AS the Trump document scandal arose, I would have had my people scour every inch of my properties and lawyer's offices to make sure nothing would come back to bite me. Instead, Biden gloated about the scandal surrounding Trump, and now is eating crow.

My humble opinion aside, there is absolutely NO equivalency, as Biden is co-operating where as Trump was obstructing. That may end up being Biden's saving grace. 

Still, excuses are excuses. Not "knowing" about those documents is not going to fly. Doesn't the buck stop at the top?

Here is a more positive spin on the document story (and yes I take some of the following as "spin")

Why I Am Not Worried About The Biden Document "Scandal" And You Shouldn't Be Either

https://m.dailykos.com/stories/2023/1/14/2147059/-Why-I-Am-Not-Worried-About-The-Biden-Document-Scandal-And-You-Shouldn-t-Be-Either-Saturday-s-GNR

Key arguments:

First, most people don’t care about this.  Yes, Twitter is having  a meltdown, but as we learn in election after election after election, Twitter is not the real world.

From the author of the article:

Second, I know an awful lot about Biden.  I wrote an entire 100 part series about why he should be our president before the election of 2020.  I read every book there was to read about him and read every interview.  The man is clean.  I have a really hard time believing that he stole those documents on purpose and/or has or had some nefarious purpose for them. 

Third, this just isn’t the same thing as Trump’s case.  Based on what we know, Biden is unlikely to face charges but Trump is likely.

Fourth, the special counsel on this may end up being great for us.  It may protect Biden from GOP witch hunts.

Fifth, this shows that Democrats walk the walk. If there is something that needs to be investigated — whether it is on our side or theirs — it should be investigated.

Sixth, we aren’t near an election and stories have a very very short life.

Do you feel better?  I hope so.

Again, a little too rosy a picture in the comments by the author of the article, but hey, some valid points as well. 

Do you think the author has got it right, or will this end up hurting Biden more than we want to admit?

From the well duh! Files: Scientists prove ExxonMobil climate denials were lies

ExxonMobile is the foremost giant carbon energy company among brass knuckles capitalists and their ruthless propaganda. The Journal Science published an analysis of what ExxonMobile publicly claimed, what it actually knew and how accurate its knowledge was. Not surprisingly, ExxonMobile lied repeatedly for decades too the public and government. The article blandly comments, as reputable scientists usually do:

For decades, some members of the fossil fuel industry tried to convince the public that a causative link between fossil fuel use and climate warming could not be made because the models used to project warming were too uncertain.  

Climate projections by the fossil fuel industry have never been assessed. On the basis of company records, we quantitatively evaluated all available global warming projections documented by—and in many cases modeled by—Exxon and ExxonMobil Corp scientists between 1977 and 2003. We find that most of their projections accurately forecast warming that is consistent with subsequent observations. Their projections were also consistent with, and at least as skillful as, those of independent academic and government models. Exxon and ExxonMobil Corp also correctly rejected the prospect of a coming ice age, accurately predicted when human-caused global warming would first be detected, and reasonably estimated the “carbon budget” for holding warming below 2°C. On each of these points, however, the company’s public statements about climate science contradicted its own scientific data. 

Many of the uncovered fossil fuel industry documents include explicit projections of the amount of warming expected to occur over time in response to rising atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations. Yet, these numerical and graphical data have received little attention. Indeed, no one has systematically reviewed climate modeling projections by any fossil fuel interest. What exactly did oil and gas companies know, and how accurate did their knowledge prove to be?

Our results show that in private and academic circles since the late 1970s and early 1980s, ExxonMobil predicted global warming correctly and skillfully. Using established statistical techniques, we find that 63 to 83% of the climate projections reported by ExxonMobil scientists were accurate in predicting subsequent global warming. ExxonMobil’s average projected warming was 0.20° ± 0.04°C per decade, which is, within uncertainty, the same as that of independent academic and government projections published between 1970 and 2007. The average “skill score” and level of uncertainty of ExxonMobil’s climate models (67 to 75% and ±21%, respectively) were also similar to those of the independent models.

Moreover, we show that ExxonMobil scientists correctly dismissed the possibility of a coming ice age in favor of a “carbon dioxide induced ‘super-interglacial’”; accurately predicted that human-caused global warming would first be detectable in the year 2000 ± 5; and reasonably estimated how much CO2 would lead to dangerous warming. 

 

Historically observed temperature change (red) and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration (blue) over time, compared against global warming projections reported by ExxonMobil scientists.

(A) “Proprietary” 1982 Exxon-modeled projections. (B) Summary of projections in seven internal company memos and five peer-reviewed publications between 1977 and 2003 (gray lines). (C) A 1977 internally reported graph of the global warming “effect of CO2 on an interglacial scale.” (A) and (B) display averaged historical temperature observations, whereas the historical temperature record in (C) is a smoothed Earth system model simulation of the last 150,000 years.

From the NYT

Egad!! We have been fibbed to by ExxonMobile (as commented on here before). Worse, most Republican elites still claim to believe and/or actually believe, the lies are truths and truths are lies!

News bits: American style hate & bigotry goes global, etc.

Twitter has become a global hellscape of hate and fascism: 

Hate speech rises on Twitter in its

largest markets after Musk takeover

Those cuts went deepest outside North America, where more than 75 percent of the company’s 280 million daily users live and where Twitter already had fewer moderators who understood local languages and cultural references and where the political landscape could be chaotic and prone to violence.

Musk cut virtually all staff in Brazil, allowing an unmoderated surge in misinformation that helped fuel this month’s attacks on the country’s government center.

.... the platform had already been like a “sewer” in her country [Australia] before Musk let some of the worst users back on.

“You can’t expect them not to behave like sewer rats, and you probably should expect that further pestilence is going to expand to the user base,” said Inman Grant, who has written the company twice and reminded it that she can order abusive material to be taken down. “It’s becoming a cesspool.”

That is the kind of serious damage a single fascist billionaire can do to truth and democracy. Musk now ranks right up there with Rupert Murdoch and other top fascist propagandists.

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Why we will never know the truth about the origin of COVID: The WaPo reports that China has revised its official COVID death toll from 37 to 60,000. We all knew that the official death toll was a gigantic lie. Apparently the whopper became so blatant that even professional liars could not maintain it. That tells you how much you can trust about anything the Chinese government says about COVID. I bet the real death toll is at least about 200,000, but we are never going to know, are we?

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Christofascist Republican Party plans -- Exonerate Trump!!: In addition to impeaching, investigating and slandering lots of Democrats including Joe and Hunter Biden, House Christofascists are probably going to expunge the impeachment of Trump for his role in the 1/6 coup attempt. House fascist leader McCarthy commented: “But I understand why individuals want to do it, and we’d look at it.” 

Millions of well-meaning people still do not see much in the way of threat to democracy, truth or civil liberties from the Republican Party. Apparently, most do not see fascism, theocracy or brass knuckles capitalism. The next two years are going to be a real festival of fascism, theocracy and brass knuckles capitalism grounded in lies, slanders and more crackpottery than even QAnon can handle. Well, OK, Qanon can handle it.

Infrastructure alert!

We are gonna need a bigger clown car!

Vote fraud update: Republicans are guilty again

The GOP continues to howl in self-righteous moral outrage at all the massive vote fraud in elections. So far, most of what tiny little has been found has been by Republicans. Business Insider writes:

Republican candidate's wife arrested and charged with casting 

23 fraudulent votes for her husband in the 2020 election

Kim Phuong Taylor was arrested Thursday and accused of multiple counts of voter fraud.

Prosecutors say Taylor cast 23 fraudulent votes for her husband in the 2020 election.

Jeremy Taylor, her husband, is an elected Republican.

Yes indeed, one can reasonably argue that we should wait for the case to be decided in court. But in view of the last few years of Christofascist Republican politics, one can reasonably tentatively believe that Kim Phuong Taylor is guilty. Republican ideologues appear to have far less respect for the rule of law than Democratic ideologues or Democrats generally.

Compared to the ~20 alleged fraudulent votes that the radical right DeSantis allegedly found in Florida, Republican vote fraud in Iowa is much worse than in Florida. Because of that, Iowa should be stripped of its 1st place in Democratic Party primaries, while it should stay 1st in Republican Primaries.

23 fraudulent votes? The horror, the horror . . . . . LOCK HER UP!! LOCK HER UP!! LOCK HER UP FOREVER!! HECK, EXECUTE HER!!! 

That is just fair and balanced, far more than what the raging hater, blatant liar and self-professed incompetent nincompoop Tucker Carlson recently said in public about all liberals in America:

“That loathing [of liberals] clouded my judgment. I was like, ‘I dislike these people so much. What they’re doing is so wrong. It is helping so few people and hurting so many. It’s so immoral on every level that I just want it to be repudiated.’ And I wanted that so much, not because I like the Republicans — I really dislike them more than I ever have — but I dislike the other side more,” he added, saying, “I did learn that, like, I have no freaking idea what goes on in American politics.”

MAGA!! He has no freaking idea of what goes on in American politics!!