The Witness Chronicles December 13, 2023

Cop28 is meaningless and corrupt, inflation down, markets up, and the ignominious exit of Kevin McCarthy

Photo by Ahmed Aldaie on Unsplash

Yesterday Cop28, the United Nations climate conference, ended with an ‘agreement’ to limit reliance on fossil fuels, an agreement no one will pay any attention to. Hosted by the Saudis (no conflict of interest there), it was attended by no less than 160 organizations dedicated to denial and pro-oil propaganda.

Why these things get massive media coverage is beyond this writer.

Biden’s support is shrinking. Voters cry inflation but gas and unemployment are down, markets are up, a lot, and inflation itself has shrunk to 3.7% from a high of 9%. Why can’t the Biden campaign sell these remarkable numbers? Maybe because the average American ignores good news in favor of doom and gloom.

And I contemplate the exit of former House Speaker McCarthy, a two dimensional man, and that is being generous. Unfortunately his successor Michael Johnson is turning out to be a religious fanatic and bigot far beyond what anyone knew.

Meanwhile, Republicans seem to be setting the stage for World War Three by supporting Putin and screwing over Ukraine. More on that next week, but for now, know that I’m not kidding.

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The COP28 Cop Out: A LobbyFest For the Oil Oligarchs

Who are we kidding?

“More than 160 industry trade groups, thinktanks and public relations agencies with a track record in climate denialism and misleading the public have been given access to the UN climate talks in Dubai, the Guardian can reveal.”

~ the Guardian, Monday Dec 11, 2023

Every year as I skim the news about these COP climate ‘summits’ I want to vomit watching politicians, influencers, and other climate denier trash kowtow to big oil money in posh surroundings.

This year there is no longer any pretending this thing is not owned by the oil business, and is nothing but a huge PR stunt designed to make it look as though the billionaires care. If you doubt, count the super yachts docked nearby.

Bill Gates, who actually does useful things with his money, has one. Everyone who is anyone has one. They should be called super toys, huge energy pigs that like any other toy get played with once a year.

You could somehow justify a few of the private jets if their owners have real needs to get somewhere fast, over and over, which very few of them do. The boats, not so much.

The biggest story from this year’s event has not been progress (it never is) but the blatant propagandizing by Saudi Arabia and its insistence that no statement contain the concept of ending reliance on fossil fuels. Even if it means little Low Countries gradually being subsumed by rising oceans, and great big countries, like the US, regularly being hit with increasingly catastrophic disasters.

The Saudis should remind themselves that Americans are by far their biggest customers with our obsession and reliance on cars and gas guzzling trucks rarely used as actual work vehicles. 

Conferences like COP28 are nothing more than feel good crap designed for photo ops. Agreements are made, but all parties involved know the big secret is that no one pays any attention to them, not unlike most United Nations agreements.

There’s just too much money in oil, we know that. We also know autocratic religious dictatorships like the Saudis have no actual qualms about raking in as much money as they can, even when they already have more than anyone can comprehend.

Fortunately, the actual alternative energy sector is doing quite well because it’s profitable, subsidized, and allows big energy companies to leverage their energy distribution networks, the grid. 

It would be far less cynical to simply hold conferences celebrating the money to be made from clean energy (actual clean energy, not bullshit like ‘clean natural gas’, a marketing thing, not a real thing). The oil barons and sheiks now have their forum with these summits, which they essentially own.

No conflict of interest there, not that they could care.

These posh enclaves give poor journalists a chance to hobnob on the fringes of real money and in exchange they give a lot of this stuff a free pass. Hell, I’ll take a free trip to Dubai or wherever in exchange for a little media whitewashing of the experience.

It is notable that world leaders are largely avoiding attending this thing, notably Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who happens to be a billionaire. US Secretary of State Blinken was there for a blink or two but he has some real work to do nearby trying to keep Israel and the Palestinians from lobbing missiles at children.

Some world, right?

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The Markets Are Surging, Inflation is Collapsing, and Joe Biden is Not Senile

Wake up and look around, this is called reality

The stock market saw 8% gains just for the month of November, the highest one month gain in ten years. Gas prices have fallen every week for 11 weeks. Inflation dropped by 5% in the last quarter. Unemployment is at 3.7%, the lowest level in fifty years.

Biden’s economic efforts are working, though he really doesn’t have that much to do with these numbers. But the challenge he faces is that inflation at the grocery store lags the overall economy. And many sellers are keeping their higher prices even as their costs drop.

I won’t call this Bidenomics because that gimmicky term dropped with a thud, instead of convincing cash strapped shoppers. As an election strategy it’s not flying, at least not now. And high interest rates aren’t helping, though they are likely to drop next year.

The other major Biden accomplishments, specifically the infrastructure and semiconductor development acts, are making a big difference across the nation. He wisely chose not to use these as political hammers and spread them around the country equally, across both blue and red states.

Theoretically this is all good news for Dems, except that it is not taking. A lot of voters are simply not paying attention to the details in the news of the economy. But a lot of this could change before next year’s election. In fact, there may be more uncertainty about where next year ends up than ever in recent elections.

Out front are the endless trials Trump is facing which will clog the news with his mania and constant bizarre outbursts. His total lack of self-control seems likely to get tired as we get constantly bombarded with this crap. The Republican Party’s decision to do nothing and stand for nothing other than hollow investigations, reinforces their disdain for American voters.

Trump has done something impressive by convincing many that he can just cruise through all this stuff and end up at the finish line unscathed, an extremely unlikely outcome given his poor legal position and the streams of his own people turning on him in the courts.

The right has two attack strategies. First, implying Biden is senile, though his recent foreign policy efforts are showing that he is still 100% mentally. The second strategy is Biden’s age and it is an effective one. But a lot of political observers, including myself, believe this fades when faced with the choice between Biden and Trump.

In the interest of fairness, Biden’s support of Israel is wearing thin as we watch the nonstop destruction of Gaza. He’d be wise to back off from that but there is an entire lifetime of unwavering support there, which is hard to shake.

In contrast however, there is no unwavering support of anything by Trump other than his belief in his own wonderfulness.

By the way, we literally know nothing about Trump’s health because his doctor’s statement simply says he is healthy but gives no proof. He is not a young man any more either and he seems to be making more and more gaffes in his speeches, which might indicate actual aging issues on his part.

We can’t discount the intense stress he is under, stress that will just accelerate throughout the coming year. He does not react well to criticism and he is going to be under extremely heavy scrutiny in 2024. He could very well have a major mental breakdown, though whether that would change the minds of his core base is questionable.

It all sounds like fun to a news junkie but there is one huge problem with that. Trump has been completely open with his plans to end the Constitution, the rule of law, and use the government to enact ruthless revenge on anyone he perceived as an enemy.

The vermin, as he refers to more than half of American voters. The man intends to destroy democracy and install himself as a dictator. We know this from his own words.

There’s nothing fun about that at all.

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A Man Lost in His Own Ambition

Kevin McCarthy, going nowhere fast

A cautionary tale of a meaningless quest for power. A stunning lack of imagination and humanity. And a willingness to cower before a man without a soul, all for the sake of a title he could not handle.

McCarthy’s Republican colleagues in congress should learn from his ultimately futile time in government, 17 years of a life with no goals for the betterment of the country or even his own hometown of Bakersfield, California. We are watching those colleagues sacrifice everything for greed and power at any cost.

But when they get it, they have no ideas, no vision, no enthusiasm except for accusations, fear, and hate of those different from themselves. 

Do they revere democracy? Obviously not, as they are willing to sacrifice a sovereign democratic nation, Ukraine, to a vile dictator accused of terrible war crimes against humanity, Vladimir Putin. 

There is no obvious reason why they would do this beyond seeking a strange and self-destructive vengeance on Joe Biden and their opponents, the Democrats. Why self-destructive?

If Putin destroys Ukraine, he will turn on a NATO ally next, requiring all NATO members to declare war on Russia, including the US. The world will start taking sides and we will be in a new world war, a post-nuclear era war where destruction of the human race is a distinct possibility.

Overdramatic? Unfortunately not. Devastating wars have often been started because of the ambitions of a few small minded men.

McCarthy seems destined to disappear into his own emptiness, a place where politics is only a game based on the destruction of others for personal gain.

What we have witnessed in the past year is a party turning on its own and tearing them to pieces, a clear signal of what is to come if their leader is elected again to the presidency. Trump, with advisors Stephen Miller, Kash Patel, and Steve Bannon whispering in his ear, has made clear his intent to destroy the Constitution and the rule of law.

Weak men like McCarthy and those who destroyed him have empowered this horrifying vision of a dictatorship led by another man whose vision is only of his own glory.

Somehow all of this is apparently acceptable to a lot of Americans. It’s questionable if these voters even have any idea what these men stand for. They know what they are against: decency and civility, open mindedness and inclusion, democracy and freedom of choice.

Freedom, period.

How did things come to this? That’s a question I hear daily and, despite too much consumption of news, am unable to answer. A small minded egotistical man, inheritor of great wealth and equally great willingness to spread hatred, somehow becomes President of the United States.

And then proceeds to divide the nation, sow hatred, and encourage other soulless men and women to slavishly follow him. And, in the process creates a nation warped by fear of the others, others they don’t even know but have learned to hate.

Those of us that do not hate have less than a year to undo this pattern by returning to values and respect as defined by that Constitution, to elect men with souls, open minds and vision, and to tell the story of a great country pursuing a better future.

This isn’t hard, won’t require huge personal sacrifice, and starts with dialog, shared ideas, and a mantra of tolerance for each other as fellow humans on a beleaguered planet.

A little love for a change, unconditional love.

That’s where true power resides and these small minds obstructing it fear unconditional love beyond all things. They know that hate creates more hate until something breaks the cycle, and they embrace that hate until it consumes them.

If we don’t break that cycle we will all be consumed by it and the great experiment will have failed, all because a few ambitious men and women stopped being human in their pursuit of power.

I’m not one of them and I don’t believe you are either.

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A new year approaches and I’m not planning on doing too much reflection about 2023, a year that might be marked as the end of American Democracy. The only thing I can say about 2024 is that we have no idea what is going to happen.

Not a clue. Anyone who says otherwise is selling snake oil or, like Trump, pieces of the suit he was wearing in his mug shot. I kid you not. They go for thousands.

Knowing Trump, he bought bolts of the fabric and will sell pieces to chumps as long as he can. The man can’t resist a grift.

And that is as good an example of what next year might look like as any I can think of. If the stakes weren’t so dire, I’d be excited to watch the shitshow unfold in all its awful glory. But they are.

It’s looking like very little snow this month here in the northeast, at least in my corner of it. I grew up with a lot more snow on the ground than anything we have experienced in recent years and I’m ok without it.

But I’m not ok with why this is happening.

Thanks, Martin 

2477 words

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