Climate

Democrats may sound like a broken record but bashing Big Oil sure makes them feel good.

They were in downright giddy moods on April 30 following the release in what seems like the 19th report outlining how Big Oil knew all about the role that fossil fuels played in driving the climate crisis into a civilizational emergency.

Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin made the observation that Big Oil “has always prioritized its bottom line and chosen low-road PR tactics over a high-road commitment to addressing the crisis.”

That sounds about right.

The Report claims that Big Oil’s “outright denial of climate change has evolved into a green-seeming cover for its ongoing covert operation—a campaign of deception, disinformation, and doublespeak waged using dark money, phony front groups, false economics, and relentless exertion of political influence—to block climate progress.”

The three-year probe found that ExxonMobil, Chevron, BP America, Shell USA, American Petroleum Institute and the US Chamber of Commerce worked for decades to undermine public understanding in climate change.

Nothing new there.

The Report’s name neatly sums things up. It is called “Denial, Disinformation, and Doublespeak: Big Oil’s Evolving Efforts to Avoid Accountability for Climate Change.”

PR people should give it a read.

Wingnut Marjorie Taylor Greene justified her vote against the Antisemitism Awareness Act by sputtering antisemitic nonsense. Go figure.

After tweeting that antisemitism is wrong, she posted that she couldn’t vote the AAA because it “could convict Christians of antisemitism for believing the Gospel that Jesus was handed over to Herod to be crucified by the Jews.”

Not so fast, MTG. The Gospel that I’m familiar with holds the Roman governor Pontius Pilate responsible for the death of Jesus.

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum would call MTG to task. It says blaming Jews for the death of Christ has been used to whitewash antisemitism for more than two thousand years. Et tu, MTG.

The Congresswoman, a self-described cradle Catholic who was married in the Church but stopped going to Mass following reports of sexual abuse scandals, must be aware that the Second Vatican Council in 1965 determined there is no basis in scripture for the belief that the Jewish people were responsible for Jesus’ death.

Greene is set to move on to her next PR disaster, which will be her no-shot chance to boot House Speaker Mike Johnson set for next week.

MTG is losing her mojo.

United in worry about election news…. There is one thing that Americans agree on in these highly politically polarized times.

People living in urban, suburban and rural communities are worried about misinformation in election news, according to a survey from the Media Insight Project, a collaboration of the American Press Institute and the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

More than half (53 percent) of adults are either extremely or very concerned about new organizations reporting inaccurate or unverified information.

Only 14 percent have a great deal of confidence in election-related news from national sources, and 11 percent trust local outlets.

People also feel that the media are at least partly responsible for the divisiveness that exists in the country.

About half (48 percent) of the survey respondents predict that the media will excessively focus on divisions or controversies in their coverage of the 2024 elections.

You can bet one of the major candidates will be spouting about ‘fake news’ in an effort to undermine any critical coverage of him.