As usual this morning I spent the two hours between R heading out to work at 4:00am, and my “OMG gotta get ready for work!” rush-around time at 6:00am… watching “Morning Joe” on MSNBC.
Joe Scarborough (at least as he plays himself on TV) is vile. He’s a conservative boor with few brains and fewer manners. He talks over guests, brays and hoots in a theatrically over-the-top Southruhn-good-ol’-boy drawl, and bullies and berates his nominally-Democratic sidekick, the pathetic (albeit well-connected and self-satisfied) Mika Brzezinski.
The show, which features a rotating assemblage of dead-eyed conserva-hacks, superannuated toadying GOP staffers (Nicolle D. Wallace is a perfect exemplar of this type) and political talkers as panelists, is a fascinating sludge of partisan bickering, gossip about internecine Congressional wrangling, and Koch Brothers-boosterism with a strong, STRONG conservative spin.
Hillary Clinton is never mentioned except for Joe to bray about Benghazi or that “super-secret server in a bathroom in Colorado" – or for Mika to exclaim with shock! and horror! about Hillary's untrustworthiness!
Donald Trump hasn’t called in for a few days now, but there was a stretch there when he seemed to be on the horn to Joe and Mika every single day, praising himself loudly and bellowing about “making American great again!”
Bill Kristol – He Who Is Wrong About Pretty Much Everything – is a favored guest. His every banal, slimy utterance is greeted with cries from Joe of “fascinating!” or “so true!”
Senatorial snakes like the slimy “I’m so bipartisan it hurts!” Joe Manchin stop by with wearying frequency to boast that they can get stuff done, reach across the aisle, and get America back to work - all the while doing absolutely nothing of the sort.
War is good on "Morning Joe," despite some infrequent tut-tuttings about Iraq. The “deep thoughts” of the likes of slavering war-monger Tom Cotton are treated with deference.
And all of this over-talking, hooting, obsessive political horse race speculation and occasional manly talk about “NFL foo'-baw” is larded through and through with GOP talking points, misinformation, disinformation, and lies.
This morning, it was the aforementioned Joe Manchin who arrived on set to front-load the discussion on the Keystone XL pipeline with the usual half-baked, un-fact-checked assertion that the pipeline will bring “40,000 jobs” to Americans, served up with a side of slack-jawed incredulity that anyone in their right mind would find anything to be of more importance than those HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF JOBS.
Scarborough, of course, jumped right in, shouting “40,000 jobs! I mean, c’mon!” or words to that effect.
Problem is – that’s just NOT TRUE. Here’s politifact:
Despite Keystone XL supporters waxing lyrical about the prospect of thousands of new jobs, the employment picture isn’t so rosy. In short, the State Department expects that the project would only result in only a few permanent jobs that last past construction.
Many proponents, like TransCanada CEO Russ Girling, say the project will create 42,000 jobs. Girling said these jobs would be "ongoing, enduring," and we rated that claim False.
The State Department report does puts the total number of jobs at 42,100 -- but the definition of a job in this sense is a position filled for one year. This total reflects both jobs created directly as a result of construction and manufacturing for the pipeline -- about 3,900 annual positions over two years -- as well as spin-off jobs supported by construction workers who purchase materials for the project or spend their wages in the economy. Much of the construction work would come in four- or or eight-month stretches.
House Speaker Rep. John Boehner, R-Ohio, said "The nearly six-year delay in approving Keystone is costing Americans more than 100,000 jobs." He was citing a study that experts said was flawed and that TransCanada, said was "no longer relevant." We rated that statement False.
In saying the number of jobs the project would create are insignificant, Obama said the "most realistic estimates… are maybe 2,000 jobs during the construction of the pipeline." Based on the State Department report, we also rated that claim False.
The construction phase, though, is expected to take only one to two years. After construction, the pipeline would employ a lesser number, primarily for maintenance. The total number of long-term jobs: about 50.
So why is this a big deal? More below the auburn arabesque!
Of course one could argue that Scarborough is a talk-show host, not a journalist, and that it’s not the job of a talk-show host to research an issue that he’s presenting and follow up a bald-faced assertion like “40,000 jobs” with a question about its veracity.
Then again, if you google MSNBC you'll see that it touts itself as “progressive” and a deliverer of “news” (in addition to “political commentary”). So you might reasonably expect discussion of a story involving nuggets of actual information that can be checked to be, in fact, CHECKED.
And in that vein, is it too much to ask that the talk-show host/journalist/ex-politician or whatever he is who is moderating the discussion at least nod to the fact that when you say “40,000 jobs” it sounds to the average person like real jobs – jobs that last for more than a year – jobs that aren’t actually temporary?
Just doing that wouldn’t take away from the fact that, yeah, if the Keystone pipeline gets built, a goodish number of Americans will have work for a year, or perhaps more. It would simply place the number in context and be honest, rather than misinformation and spin.
But of course, misinformation and spin is what we get when we talk about issues like the pipeline, because corporate interests and the politicians they’ve purchased are dead set against the American people getting real information about what is going on.
Again, from that politifact piece:
The oil would come from the tar sands of Canada’s boreal forests. Extracting this type of dirty, thick crude oil is energy-intensive and produces a significant amount of carbon emissions. Critics say that Keystone XL will elevate greenhouse gas emissions and contribute to climate change by encouraging expansion of the tar sand development. Also, if it leaks, the oil is corrosive and difficult to clean up.
Extracting “dirty, thick crude oil” is exactly what we need to stop doing, right now, if we are even a little serious about climate change. That’s the reason that the Keystone pipeline sticks in the craw of so many environmentalists and climate change activists. “Dirty, thick crude oil” is a part of the past. It’s a 19th century technology that
must be phased out.
We are already in a perilous position with respect to the Paris climate talks next month. If every country agrees to their current intended nationally determined contributions (INDCs) – and then ACTUALLY MAKES GOOD ON THAT COMMITMENT – we will still see a global temperature rise of 3.5 degrees Celsius by 2100.
Here’s a link to a phys.org piece projecting just that – written back in 2011!
So if the talks are a rousing success, AND if every country then dutifully does what they say they will do – without little “oopsies” like Beijing’s recent admission that China has been burning 17% more coal than they first let on, to the tune of something like 100 billion additional tons of carbon emissions per year - we are on track to blow by that comforting sounding 2.0 degrees Celsius limit to warming that’s supposed to be the “magic number” for “safe warming” – and blow by it in a BIG way.
So why in the name of all that is holy are we allowing GOP spin-meisters, fossil fuel company shills, paid-off politicians and superannuated Republican members of Congress like Joe Scarborough to LIE to us so shamelessly, day after day after day, without raising a cataclysmic stink?
One reason, of course, the that if by “we” you mean most Americans – well, “we” don’t really care about this issue.
The trick, then, is to get them interested. The trick is to get Americans fired up and ready to storm the barricades. And how do we do that?
Well, I think I have a cunning plan. More on that later. Thanks for reading - and stay tuned. Surprisingly, my next diary is going to suggest that we take a lesson from our friends on the right. Seriously.