Amy Goodman, of Democracy Now, And Rachel Maddow, of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, In Talks About Merging Their Broadcasts

Amy Goodman left, Rachel Maddow right

It’s not like `continental drift’ although there is a `drift’ to be gotten, . . . and it is drift on a truly monumental scale.  People talk about `watching grass grow’ or ‘watching paint dry’ when they talk about things happening slowly so as to go unnoticed.  `A watched pot doesn’t boil,’ but when your tea kettle starts whistling, you know that something’s happened.

These are the words of Democracy Now’s Amy Goodman letting the cat out of the bag about her talks with Rachel Maddow about merging their shows based on the things they increasingly have more in common.  Goodman seems very happy to be the one giving the exclusive `cat out of the bag’- or is it `trial balloon’?- interview.

“Look,” says Goodman, “change is part of life.”  Goodman seems more relaxed than usual, as though allowing herself to wax philosophically this way is allowing her to speak her thoughts more truthfully in a liberating way.  She continues:

Yes, change is part of life.  It was when Rachel was doing Air America radio with Al Franken as a “left–wing,” albeit poorly funded, counter to the likes of Rush Limbaugh, that people got to know who she is.  That was then. [2004] Now she, like us, has regular headlines that track well with the lead you can get from the New York Times.  Rachel, us, and also pretty dependably the New York Times, we’re true blue behind the powerful narratives of the Democratic Party. When I say that those narratives are powerful, I don’t mean that they are inspiring or attuned to the populace, or to the directions for leadership our populace may yearn and hunger for, what I mean is the power of Democratic party coming from the corporations that the party aligns with and, of course, coming from Wall Street.  It’s those alignments that give the selective narratives of the party extraordinary force as they are deployed and can be insisted on.  And I am very happy about the whole identity politics thing.

If, with some migration of platforms, Democracy Now and the Maddow show are going to merge, the reason for their discussion of the possibility is the growing commonality of themes.

Goodman points out that the nation’s had an era where the awfulness of Donald Trump made it easy to find common ground, “I mean Donald Trump’s awfulness was so important, that you didn’t need to pay attention to really anything else.”  And, she points out there have been a lot of things tying into Donald Trump’s awfulness that were consequently easy to agree on: Russiagate and the way that Russians are nefariously interfering to make this country worse and make Trump more dangerous, January 6th and the way we have to stop insurrectionists from taking away our democracy, which we are realizing really needs to be revered (“January 6th sort of taught me that word `insurrectionist’ and got me thinking about it, before then I doubt I’d thought to know what it meant– did you know it’s right out of the constitution?- Though no law under it yet”- interjects Goodman parenthetically), the way we have to censor hate speech (including anything an insurrectionist or any of those election deniers might have to say, and then there’s need to regulate speech in our social media Town Squares so that people don’t get depressed by conversational downers.

Goodman sips her green tea and goes on: “Rachel is very much against hate speech,” she says, “she’s a firm counter the bad kind of hate speech we both deplore.”  Blowing on her tea, she continues:

We are also aligned by being both on the right side of those divisive cultural issues that the Trump presidency made even easier to checklist for future segment coverage.  Thank God Trump changed his position on abortion, thankfully 180 degrees, before taking on his role as a supremely obnoxious president, otherwise it could have been confusing!

We were also both perfectly aligned on the Covid narrative thing: "Wear a mask, wear two masks," we told our Democracy Now audience, "it’s an act of love.'  (We didn’t get to adding the eye visor thing, but thought about it.- Oh maybe we did)  While Rachel was beautifully firm and emphatic: "Now we know that the vaccines work well enough that the virus stops with every vaccinated person."!

The whole Covid thing, the crazy need for lock-downs meant there were a lot of fearful things, numbers and statistics to tumble out before the public in a stream; for a while Democracy Now even changed its mantra slogan from "the war and peace report? to the "quarantine report."  When it comes to history and wars waged, history, when it doesn’t repeat itself, at least rhymes.

But that Covid fear and what to do about it, that’s another thing where we both agreed about how important it was to be saying the right thing and make sure that people were not allowed to say the wrong thing– That Joe Rogan! Talk about people who need to be stopped in their tracks with a dose of good old healthy censorship and centrally managed social opprobrium- Imagine saying good things about the `horse paste’ Ivermectin,

 Mentioning Rogan and Ivermectin Goodman wrinkles her nose in disgust.

“We still have significant differences, Rachel’s show and mine” says Goodman, “so I don’t know where that takes us.”

She mulls:

Rachel is more provincial, addressing herself more specifically to what riles Americans living locally in this country, more specifically, her kind of Americans.  Democracy Now has an increasingly worldwide audience and worldwide sensibility, for instance, Rachel hasn’t caught up to match me with things like my guttural pronunciations, like when I say“Afghanistan,” or introduce my co-host Nermeen Shaikh.  It just isn’t her style, and we can’t expect it.

But Democracy Now can’t leave its worldwide audience behind it.  If this thing is going to happen, we have to take that worldwide audience along with us in the merger.  We at Democracy Now, also spend more time feeling for the victims in this world, which is not exactly the way Rachel likes to keep the energy up, especially when those victims come from far-flung places in the world that Americans have rarely heard of.  When the time comes, we at Democracy Now are better positioned to do truly convincing ‘worthy victim’ stories.

Some things are going to be very problematic.  Democracy Now was originated out of, was incubated out of WBAI, out of the Pacific network of station.  We are still carried on that family of stations, still with a reasonably hefty listenership.  We’ve established ourselves and Pacifica has cast its lot reporting, with a fair amount of honesty, about the Israeli state’s vile and horrendous treatment of Palestinians.  That honesty, on our part and many other Pacifica carried programs, has been determinative in the loss of a certain appreciable amount of funding for Pacifica.  Unlike perhaps some other things, that’s something where we can’t now leave our audience behind by backtracking or denying our core DNA. . .

    . .  But you can imagine what a problem this would be for Rachel.  Even if our meld is only accomplished by doing back-to-back shows that could be a toxic proximity for her.  The solution, if the time comes, may be to take our cue from her.  She deep-sixes those kinds of stories and that kind of reporting.  So you also don’t hear anything about our U.S. Saudi Yemen war from her.— Out of sight is out of mind.  What we could do, and might do, is just move all of out Israel/Palestine reporting and coverage to our web edition special section.  There it would be invisible to the kind of audience that never looks for that kind of thing and justifiably still there for the kind of audience that still does.  You know we are all in our individual bubbles these days.  So you always have to remember to think in those terms.

It causes Goodman to sigh.

But merging these shows is meant to take us counter to that bubble thing.  Instead of isolating bubble thinking, we’ll have more people thinking the same things when we get our shows together.  But we can’t move too fast.  Our audience has to move with us.  We do polling and focus groups to make sure we don’t get too far out in front of them.  We are alert for feedback.  And, for instance, at Democracy Now we’ve recently had to go back and do some stories to illustrate that we are still anti-war and ant-US imperialism, like what’s expected of us from our past.   Like, for instance, with that particular segment of the audience that still listens to us on Pacifica stations, those we haven’t yet pulled away to listen to us just through the disintermediation of our multiple internet platforms, it can a bit jarring right now if our content is too different from other Pacifica shows.

We want to be on the same page with Rachel and crew about things like the Ukraine war, [Goodman catches herself and doubles back]. .  The `Russian provoked’ Ukraine war, [she emphasizes], but our audience can get a little unnerved by the idea we are on the brink of possible nuclear annihilation of the world and wonder if we really are still sincerely for peace enough if we are to expect them to keep following us where we go. An easy way to offer reassurance, like we just did, is to use the 20th anniversary of the Iraq war, ahem, U.S. invasion of Iraq, and reiterate where we stood on that twenty years ago.  The past is a place where you can anchor the trust you hope to keep getting  in the future.  So people will keep following into whatever Heraclitian storms may toss us on the waves in that future.

Look, I believe that `in solidarity there is strength.’  For progressivism to win, we have to be rowing in the same direction.  When we marched into wars, the Democrats were once thought of as the anti-war party.  Now we have two war parties, but it’s clear that the Democrats are now taking the lead.  The Republicans have a few isolationists who are against our bringing democracy-enhancing regime change to other countries. . .  The name of our show is Democracy Now, something to remember, when we try to keep our bearings.

The interview can’t end without posing one obvious question: Why not PBS or NPR instead?  Goodman smiles, shaking her head as if disappointed with the quality or lack of perspicacity of such a question, even if it might be obligatory and expected as inevitable.  Goodman speaks slowly and deliberately:

Merging our audience with PBS or NPR wouldn’t be any kind of achievement.  PBS and NPR are already where Rachel and her show are, which is to say, aligned with The Washington Post and New York Times, but PBS and NPR are selling the audience the idea that they are the thinking man’s version and the cultured man’s of media consumption.  That pose already successfully siphons audience, say from Pacifica, when the audience is looking for better production values along not so obvious and time-consuming commercials that you get with `commercial’ broadcasts.  But sliding over there wouldn’t be an achievement.  Because it’s sort of contrary to their brand, PBS and NPR don’t fish for audience indignation, including the Red Team, Blue Team variety of indignation, the way that Rachel and I do,– not so overtly–  Rachel does it with her raised-to-the-sky eyebrow and cocked neck, while I put it in my voice.  I can do it with slight variations in my tone and I also pick words to drawl out more slowly.  Moreover, we at Democracy Now do subtle, not quite subliminal, editorializing with our interspersed music segments, something Rachel doesn’t do.  Bringing our audience to MSNBC with skillful drifting would be a much more real achievement.      

One last question to Goodman (but is it too rude?): And the true “achievement” to be aspired to might also be inextricably associated with handsome recompense?— Doesn’t Rachel Maddow get paid something like $30 million a year counting salary and regular bonuses?  Goodman simply smiles.

Democracy Now and The Rachel Maddow Show are not merging broadcasts just yet.  This April 1st interview with Goodman was just to preview how it’s being talked about.  Goodman was specific that if it happens it could be a year from now, say next April 1st, or two years from now on the April 1st after that.

Fossil Fuel Greenhouse Gas Pollution Blamed For Trump’s Election: New Study Teaming Up Health Scientists And Election Data Scientists Reaches Startling Conclusion

A scientific analysis that clouded thinking, i.e. CO2 clouds, led to the election of Donald J. Trump

A scientific analysis that clouded think, i.e. CO2 clouds, led to the election of Donald J. Trump.
Two heads are better than one, and two teams of scientist bringing together different areas of expertise that might never have been thought of as related can uncover and explain things that heretofore have gone entirely unnoticed. . . .

. . . That’s why we are now getting crucial new insights into some very important matters from a new study produced by health scientists studying the effects of carbon dioxide, CO2, the greenhouse house gas being pumped into the atmosphere as we burn fossil fuels, who teamed up with election data scientists who can explain exactly what accounts for often unpredictable swings of the American electorate.  It’s been more than two years, almost two and half, since Donald J. Trump was, to the great surprise of many, declared the elected president of the United States.  Now, reviewing carefully collected facts and statistics and applying a kind of analysis that nobody previously was perspicacious enough to apply, it turns out that Trump’s election can be handily explained– It's not a reason anyone thought of before.

That nobody thought of it before is probably due to the way that scientists too often operate in their own independent thought silos not realizing how their work interrelates with work that others are doing in the world.  Thankfully, we got some synergy leading to something better after two scientists from disparate specialties encountered each other in one of Harvard's faculty cafeterias and afterwards decided to bring their teams together to fashion a joint study uniting their respective areas of expertise.

For some time now scientists have known, including the work of a Harvard study confirming the findings of a little-publicized 2012 Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, that increasing levels of CO2, although colorless and odorless, can have deliver adverse health effects.  That includes “a direct and negative impact on human cognition and decision-making.”  (See- Exclusive: Elevated CO2 Levels Directly Affect Human Cognition, New Harvard Study Shows, Joe Romm, October 26, 2015.)  The effects are more pronounced in indoor environments where trapped CO2 can accumulate and rise to even higher levels, the more sealed an insulated the room is to conserve energy, the more readily the CO2 can accumulate.  That can be especially problematic in situations where rooms are well populated by the carbon dioxide-expelling breath of many human beings.

At concentrations of 1,000 ppm, human cognitive ability declines by around 21 percent.  (See: The Uninhabitable Earth- Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak — sooner than you think, by David Wallace-Wells, July 9, 2017.)  The problem is not just the better insulation of buildings that prevents air exchange; it is that with CO2 rising throughout the earth’s atmosphere, now over 400 parts per million, the baseline from which such build up starts is increasing and the outdoor atmosphere has a less restorative effect when mixed back in where indoor levels are high.

What can this look like indoors?  In examples the 2012 LBNL-SUNY article gives:

In surveys of elementary school classrooms in California and Texas, average CO2 concentrations were above 1,000 ppm, a substantial proportion exceeded 2,000 ppm, and in 21% of Texas classrooms peak CO2 concentration exceeded 3,000 ppm.

The Harvard health scientists noted that when cognition and decision-making are impaired by high CO2 levels, thinking becomes more primal and what has, in politics, been termed the “lizard brain,” that operates out of the brain’s more primitive limbic system and its amygdala, asserts itself.  The effects on politics and political outcomes of the “lizard brain” have already been widely discussed and analyzed by those concerned with political dynamics, prediction and calculations.

Trump rise psychology? - The "lizard Brain"

Predicted voting behaviors= matrix

What the teamed up scientists were able to do was create a matrix of predictive behaviors for cohorts of voters across all spectrums.  This was coupled with replicative testing involving focus sessions about how these cohorts would vote.  Overlaid was testing of the predictive shifts based on the brain and cognitive effects of the current amounts of extra CO2 pollution that they were able to research and determine that different cohorts of voters were experiencing and how with impaired cognition they would let their lizard brain impulses surface and ultimately control their choice. . .

The result was a range of predicted outcomes from the assessed influence that CO2 pollution was already having through cognitive impairment on U.S. voting behavior in 2016.  The scientists said that it was impossible to tell exactly where within this determined range the effect might actually have been on the election, but that no matter where it fell, it was clear that the effective decision making impairment was enough to account for swinging enough voters to get Trump “elected” in each and every set of determined probabilities.

As an example of how the effects were taken into account, information about how much time different groups of voters generally spend inside also had to be considered.  California voted very blue in the national election and that was accounted for partly by the amount of time Californians spend outdoors, often at the patios of outdoor restaurants where patrons are kept warm with outdoor gas burning space heaters.

While the results of the study only reached conclusions about the direct cognitive impairment effects of CO2, the paper also noted for future analysis a number of other ways the researchers have already begun to study that increased CO2 pollution in the atmosphere could have affects on the election as well.  As OSHA, the United States Occupational Health Administration, notes, high CO2 levels can also leave human beings lethargic.  The researchers feel that this probably affected voter turnout.

The researchers further pointed out that high CO2 levels also affect human cognition (and generate listlessness) indirectly via a reduction in the nutrients in the food human beings are eating.  See: Rising CO2 Is Reducing The Nutritional Value Of Our Food, by Fiona McMillan, May 27, 2018 and How More Carbon Dioxide Can Make Food Less Nutritious, by Brad Plumer, May 23, 2018.

With CO2 levels still rising in the planet's atmosphere, the scientists predict that in future elections will reflect even more exaggerated swings in the voting electorate of this nature.

The scientists said that they had hurried to get the results of their study out in time for the unfolding of the next national election cycle.  They said that they regretted not having been able to do their research and release information even sooner.  They said they would have been able to produce results sooner, but that they had a hard time being taken seriously when they proposed their study for funding.  This was because so many of their potential funders believed that other reasons provided a more probable explanation for Trump’s election.

The researchers admitted that other factors were highly influential in turning the election Trump’s way.  They said that included various forms of voter suppression, unreliable voting machines and votes that likely went uncounted. However, they said what really derailed their ability to get to bottom of what turned the election was something else. . 

The researchers said that, at one point, funding they had lined up for their study was diverted when their funder decided that a better use of the funds would be to send it as an unsolicited bonus to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow to encourage Ms. Maddow to do more of her Russiagate investigation reporting.  The researchers pointed out that the unsolicited bonus must have been the very teeniest drop in the bucket given Ms. Maddow’s astronomical multi-million annual salary.
                                   
The irony is that the researchers, who are now at work on documentation respecting a new analysis, say that the cognition-impairing effects of CO2 pollution, which are indiscriminate, almost certainly account for the nation’s long distraction by the Russiagate probe championed by Maddow.

First publication of the researchers study and documentation is to be put up on Facebook on April 1st.