As the campaigns heat up...

Congress closed out 2015 bragging that they actually negotiated a pragmatic and executable budget bill, for the first time in about a decade. Even though it contained more GOP-demanded tax gifts for the rich, the fact that any bill passed at all still enraged the far-right.  But don't worry, culture warriors. The House & Senate did manage to adjourn without voting on a slate of finance- or banking-related nominees put forward by the Obama administration, a stalemate with no recent precedent that is hobbling work at some government agencies that try to prevent the financial sector from doing the kinds of foolish things that led to the Great Recession.  

This obstructionism – unprecedented in the history of the republic – was so extreme that even the Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal denounced it, calling President Obama’s nominees “qualified” and their tasks “necessary.”

One more reason to note that Rupert Murdoch and the Saudi co-owners of his media empire have lost control of the radicalization hysteria that they deliberately stirred on the American right.  Chillingly similar to when the 1920s and 1930s German business moguls and Junker-class lords stoked populist-radical fervor in order to suppress socialists – and wound up reaping a whirlwind they had sown.

Have the lords given up?  Never! The political network overseen by billionaires Charles G. and David H. Koch plans to spend close to $900 million on the 2016 campaign.  And the tally has gone way up, since this article was published. Yep. A. Billion. Dollars. That's how much the aristocracy intends to lavish, in order to buy a continuation of their lock on America.  I'd draw more parallels with 1932... but we need to look forward and just prevent it.

What can you do about this? 

You can do plenty, like helping to get out the vote in 2016.  But for some of you, there will be opportunities to act on the front lines by peeling away just one or two members of the cult.  Seek out - as if you are proselyte-missionaries - those otherwise-intelligent men and women who are clinging -- barely -- to their lifelong loyalty to an American conservatism that has been brutally hijacked.  "Ostrich republicans" who refuse (so far) to admit what lies before their eyes... the utter demolition of a movement that once featured towering intellects like Buckley and Goldwater and Hayek, all of whom denounced (before they died) the trend toward know-nothing anti-science dogmatism.

Sure, most of the new wave of confederates are immune to facts, by now.  But when you come across one whose frenzied denial seems fragile have at hand the facts that will yank their heads out of the sand. And oh... facts are now so biased.

== This is why they hate science, so ==

All politicians lie: some worse than others: This article by the editor of PolitiFact makes an earnest effort to explain how fact-checking works and offers optimism that large swathes of the public are now taking seriously the fact-checking of politicians.  The bad news? That fiercely partisan people leap to dismiss any fact-checking service as partisan, just as soon as their favorite shiboleths are exposed. 

This sad state of affairs is worsened by the blatant way that outright and openly-proud lying has taken wing in one of the two US political parties, where radical narratives no longer even need a figleaf or string-tether to objective reality. Under these conditions, the most assiduously neutral fact-checking service is going to seem partisan-titled, as you’ll see in the article’s accompanying chart.

There are potential solutions! Here's just one proposal: Let every candidate pick three “sages” from their home states or districts — with criteria that the choices must be “widely accepted as mature, smart, wise and minimally political.” These nominees of all major candidates - from both parties - would serve on the Board of Supervisors of a new political fact checking service.  

Sure, some candidates will pick rabidly partisan supporters.  But that fact will be clear and it will harm them, and will insult their home state. It will say: “where I’m from, there are no folks who are mature, smart, wise and minimally political.” What an insult to your home district.

No, it won’t happen — unless a debate moderator extorts a pledge, on-stage.  And so? Then we must use the facts as we can.

For example, when I show folks the starkly huge difference in Actual Outcomes - measurable metrics of US national health - across the spans of Republican vs Democratic administrations.  A difference so amazingly diametric, and so free of “left-right” dogmas, that — thinking only about pragmatic outcomes — any citizen would have to be delusionally insane to trust one of those two parties with a burnt match.

But let’s zoom in one of the best of the new breed of “screw-the-truth” masters. Alas for poor Ted Cruz. His prime (cheating-lying) talking point is unraveling. This year is going to smash 2014 as the warmest year on record. Nine out of the 11 months last year were the warmest in history for that month. 

November’s average temperature across land and ocean was an exceptional 1.75 degrees above the 20th century average, exceeding the previous record set in 2013 by 0.27 degrees. The November temperature departure — 1.75 degrees — was the second highest out of any month in NOAA’s 136-year period of record. The highest was just set one month before in October, at 1.79 degrees.

To be fair, Cruz isn't the only GOP pol to use Roger Ailes's (Fox) trick -- pegging the "before" comparison on 1998 - the previous record holder. That let them claim "there's no warming!" ("since 1998"), which was an El Nino spike. Comparing oranges to apples, a wretched trick that they can no longer pull off. In fact, the trends have ALL been sharply upward.

Meanwhile -- the Greenland Ice Sheet has lost about 9,013 gigatonnes of water ice from 1900 to 2010 – and it’s dropping mass today at an increasing rate, an international team of scientists say. From 2003 to 2010, the ice sheet lost mass at a rate more than twice the rate during the entire 20th century, a new study shows.

No wonder science is so unpopular among fools. And let there be no mistake. Members of the Denialist Cult are far, far beyond being fools.  They are frantic.

== So outcomes matter == 

Are Americans getting poorer?  Is there increased wealth disparity?  Is it dangerous? This simple chart shows you that the answer is – “it’s complicated.”  

Deep, grinding poverty has inarguably declined, though less than we had hoped, across the last 40 years. The definition of “middle class” has spread widely across a huge range. But the very top-earning fraction of a percent have done spectacularly well, truly skyrocketing. And this is where human temptation can lead to cheating and the re-imposition of the class systems that almost all our ancestors knew. Indeed, our parents in the Greatest Generation knew this very well.

Is a steeply rising aristocratic oligarchy conspiring to re-install inherited feudalism? Are they human? Then of course some of them are doing that! On the other hand, note the rising upper-middle class. The smartest of the uber rich must know that the upper middle class, especially the knowledge professions, will resist when feudal trends become clear. Those knowledge castes, only some of them scientists or civil servants, are the inherent obstacle that will make returning to a pyramidal power structure difficult. And hence the biggest reason for trumping up a war on science. For the war on all knowledge castes.

So again I ask: do actual outcomes matter? In December the EPA announced that fuel economy is at record highs and carmakers have surpassed strict emissions standards for the third straight year. When the (briefly) democratic Congress passed new efficiency standards in 2009, the GOP shouted it would "end Detroit!" Instead. US auto makers are booming and long ago repaid their emergency loans. Drivers are saving billions at the pump while the air gets less polluted and US energy independence is secured.  

So will you listen again to the same screeching chicken-littles? Always wrong about everything? Is your dogma so strong that you'll pay no head to outcomes... at all?

(Like the fact that galls right-wing males more than any other... so much so that their minds eject it. The fact that Barack Obama killed... Osama.... bin... Laden. Mention that one, next time you argue with your mad uncle. Just for the dizzying carnival ride as he changes the subject.)

This comparison lays the matter of outcomes plainly… though only giving a sampler. And let’s make this clear.  Outcomes… actual-actual outcomes of governance… should be the number one thing that you weigh in politics, not whether one side or another appeals to your vanity or dogmas.

== More stuff... ==

Peter Thiel offers up an appeal for the resurrection of nuclear power as a way to reduce carbon-fuel use in the nearer term, getting us across the fairly long gap before sustainables truly take over.  Thiel isn’t alone.  Techno-modernists with deep liberal connections, like Stewart Brand, have been pointing out how vastly-better the newest reactor designs are, safe from the catastrophic failure modes like coolant failure meltdown. Thiel's appeal is cogent and - yes - a little right-of-center, but giving a respectful nod to the can-do New Dealers of the 1940s, Thiel calls for an alliance of adults to get this bridge to the 2050s built in time to help.

“Both the right’s fear of government and the left’s fear of technology have jointly stunted our nuclear energy policy, but on this issue liberals hold the balance of power. Speaking about climate change in 2013, President Obama said that our grandchildren will ask whether we did “all that we could when we had the chance to deal with this problem.”

Alas, it is precisely in order to prevent this kind of negotiation that cynical traitors have plunged us into phase 8 of the American Civil War, ensuring that politics — the art of building consensus/compromise/pragmatic attempts to solve problems — has been killed, and will stay dead in the U.S., until one side or another suffers a defeat deep enough to re-evaluate obstinacy.

== Snowden scores some points ==

My estimation of the intelligence and sincerity of Edward Snowden cranked up by a couple of notches after listening to his interview by Neil deGrasse Tyson on StarTalk... but only a couple.  Up to maybe 75% or so.  Those who reflexively call him "brilliant" and "hero" are too eager and premature. (As are those who blanket-condemn him.) Especially the brilliant part, as he clearly and vociferously buys into the most dangerous and noxious zero-sum game around -- the we must "choose" between safety and freedom.  

Sure, if there were such a dichotomy, I would agree that freedom comes first.  But the very notion of such a romantic, zero sum tradeoff is both counter to reality and in itself malignant to our Great Experiment in positive sum systems. Alas, almost everyone buys into it.

Dig it. We are living proof of the notion that a people can innovate to both have their cake and eat it... while sharing cake and watching it grow.  Only thus do we stand a chance.  It is called positive sum thinking and it is the one concept... the paramount concept... you need in order to exercise citizenship in this frenzied, hopeful and endangered modern age of transition.

Whatever else Edward Snowden is, he is what I long have called a "social T Cell." Part of our immune system against the kind of errors long made by hierarchical societies.  Individually, no T Cell is all-right. Indeed, sanctimony usually colors them and foils their accuracy.  But we need the TYPE.  And our civilization is good at making them.

And you... who are about to scream at me... you could not possibly exemplify this more.