I’ve been sheltering in a secure, low-news bunker since Robert Mueller handed over his report to Attorney General William Barr last week. That’s so I can avoid getting caught up in the powerful cyclone of spin put out by Trump’s propaganda machine and amplified by mainstream pundits.

For the record, Mueller explicitly stated that the evidence does not exonerate the President regarding obstruction of justice. His investigation, besides concluding that Russia definitely meddled in the election, yielded 34 indictments, with several close Trump associates pleading or being found guilty and facing time. It’s also been a money-maker for the United States, netting more in fines and forfeitures than the investigation cost.

But what are facts in the age of spin?

I had fortified myself in advance thanks to Pod Save America’s Dan Pfeiffer, who offered a pre-report rant before he himself disappeared into his hidey-hole.  Pfeiffer predicted that unless the Mueller report resulted immediately in Nancy Pelosi donning her sunglasses and sauntering from Capitol Hill to the Oval Office in her new role as President following the Constitution’s prescription for succession, the media would declare a huge victory for Trump and a huge loss for the Democrats. As the Pod Save hosts have been reminding listeners since just about forever, defeating Donald Trump and his Republican enablers will require the hard work of organizing to win the 2020 election—in House, Senate, and state races as well as the White House. It was never going to be through a Deus Ex Muellercha.

In any case, with my news consumption down as I wait for the Total Exoneration Bullshit Storm to pass, I’ve freed up a lot of time for other things. If you, too, want to limit your exposure to the Mueller Report Obsession, here are some suggestions:

1. Do your taxes. Ready or not, April 15^th is just around the corner. Why not just get it over with? Be sure to think about how Trump’s biggest legislative accomplishment has been to pass a $1.5 trillion tax cut benefiting mostly the super rich and big corporations while blowing up the deficit Republicans pretended to care about under President Obama.
2. Schedule a doctor’s appointment. You might want to do this really soon, since once again the Republicans are going after your healthcare with a vengeance, not just via death by a thousand cuts, but with wholesale elimination.
3. Calculate how long it will be before you’re eligible for Medicare. Oh, silly me! Republicans do care about deficits again, which is why they are now threatening Medicare, Social Security, food stamps, and other vital social programs.
4. BTW, just as you shouldn’t have been holding your breath for the Mueller Report to save us, don’t hold your breath for Medicare-for-All anytime soon. Be sure to instead work toward it via any of the avenues being proposed by Democrats, but for heaven’s sake don’t insist on any purity tests!
5. Have sex! Following the news is not only a time-suck, it’s a libido-killer. Put that device down and snuggle up! But if your time until Medicare eligibility is substantial, first make sure to . . .
6. Stock up on birth control. Already the Trump Administration, under the guise of “religious liberty,” has made it easier for employers to refuse to provide free contraceptives as required by the ACA. The aforementioned threat to the ACA will only make things worse in the family planning department.
7. Speaking of which, make a donation to Planned Parenthood to counteract the Republicans’ war on the organization. Bonus activity points for donating in Mike Pence’s name.
8. Be careful, though! If you don’t want to have a baby but followed #5 while failing to follow #6, you may find yourself needing an abortion. This has become more and more difficult and is about to become even more so as states like Georgia pass so-called “heart-beat bills.” Besides banning most abortions, often before a woman realizes she’s pregnant, the goal of these clearly unconstitutional laws is to trigger a Supreme Court hearing with the hope of overturning Roe v. Wade.
9. Ah, yes! Remember the Supreme Court? One of whose seats was stolen by Mitch McConnell? The branch of government that motivates Republicans to vote more than Democrats? When I made calls to Nevada for the 2016 election to see if people supported Clinton or Trump, one man told me, “I think they’re both idiots, but I’m a conservative, and I want conservative justices on the Supreme Court so I’m voting for Trump!” Impeccable logic. People who are alarmed by the rightward lurch of the Supreme Court might try it. Planking in honor of Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s 86^th birthday is nice, but insufficient.
10. Hug your children. Give thanks that they have not been wrested away from you and put in cages. Spare a thought for those who have.
11. Take a hike. It’s good to get out in nature. Do it while it lasts–it won’t be too much longer if Trump and his fellow climate deniers remain in charge.

Refreshed by your alternative activities to reading about Trump’s “exoneration” by Robert Mueller as interpreted by Attorney General Barr? Here are a couple of other suggestions once you’re ready to emerge from your bunker:

1. Call for the release of the Mueller report.. But please, relinquish any vestigial hopes for a savior. Instead,
2. Roll up your sleeves and get to work.

This Vox article describes how people did just that for the 2018 mid-terms. They knocked on doors, made phone calls, registered voters, and talked to people about their concerns. Contrary to what you may have heard about Democrats in disarray because they’ve been taken over by wild-eyed lefty purists, they did so with a high degree of pragmatism and personal engagement. As someone who’s knocked on a lot of doors and made a lot of phone calls in a lot of campaigns, I can attest that what happens on the ground is quite different from what media hype would have you believe. People I talked to in the swing district I visited every month in the run up to the mid-terms worried about healthcare, good jobs, traffic, and affordable housing and education. Russia and the Mueller investigation never came up.

Besides which, criminally guilty or exonerated, we’ve never needed evidence beyond what Trump and his Republican enablers display multiple times a day. From despicable character to destructive policies to deep corruption, it’s there plain as day. As George Conway (husband of Trump’s advisor Kellyanne Conway!) writes in the Washington Post, “If the charge were unfitness for office, the verdict would already be in: guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Let’s do something about that. Mueller Time must now be Our Time.

When I went to see the Oscar-nominated Live Action shorts recently, an advisory taped to the box office window warned viewers to expect themes of murder, racial violence, and children in peril. The films featured a six-year-old abandoned on a beach; a child getting sucked under by quicksand as his friend watches in helpless horror; a reenactment of the police inquiry of two 10-year-olds convicted of kidnapping and murdering a toddler in England 25 years ago; and a young boy from a gun-loving (as well as loving) family.

Well, maybe not entirely loving, since the father beats up a black man for interacting with his son in a friendly manner in a checkout line. In a fastidious act of retaliation, the beaten man’s friends and family tattoo the racist father’s entire body black before releasing him to stumble back home. Whereupon his son unknowingly shoots him to death, mistaking his dad for a black intruder. This last short, “Skin,” was awarded the Oscar.

All the films were well-acted and tightly written, with top-notch production values. Still, not a good first-date movie.

I have another short film to nominate for the “Children in Peril” category. It’s a lot less harrowing to watch than the Oscar contenders, although if you think about it for more than a nanosecond, it’s the most disturbing. Unlike the others, the production values are terrible, as videos surreptitiously shot by an amateur holding a smartphone tend to be.

The fifteen minutes of grainy footage shot through a narrow doorway are of Senator Dianne Feinstein’s now-infamous meeting with a group of middle- and high-schoolers about the Green New Deal. The senator loses no time in dismissing the kids as unrealistic know-nothings who aren’t old enough to vote anyway, so why should she care? She doesn’t allow them to read their handwritten letter to her; instead, she’s fixated on distributing copies of her proposal so the kids can read it. One little pig-tailed girl looks like she’s about to burst into tears. Another, older and bolder, manages to score an internship with Feinstein, who seems to belatedly realize that she’s committing PR suicide on a national stage.

The kids are hurried out of the meeting by some middle-aged white guys in suits. These aides, looking like Jeff Flake trapped in an elevator with sexual assault victims after the Kavanaugh hearings, attempt awkward small talk.

“I’m a big backpacker, so I’m environmentally conscious!” one offers.

A boy says, “My grandparents’ house burned down in the Paradise fire due to low rain, and that could have been caused by climate change.”

 The adults in suits choke out, “Oh, no! Really? Terrible!” before fleeing.

Terrible indeed.

Feinstein may have had a point, but she looked and sounded like an old crank yelling, “Get off of my lawn!” Not a smart move to plant a sign reading, “You and your stupid ideas aren’t welcome here” for any Democrat hoping to attract a whole new generation of voters to the Party.

Of course, DiFi’s viral moment has nothing on the virulence of the Republican climate deniers and obstructionists currently in power and rapidly catapulting us toward catastrophe. While Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell rant about socialism and mock the Green New Deal, at least the Democrats are putting forth and debating ideas necessary for addressing the problem on the scale it requires. As Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer—hardly a radical environmentalist but recognizing the urgency of the moment—said recently from the Senate floor:

“Maybe Leader McConnell doesn’t realize this, but because of the political stunt vote he’s planning on his version of Green New Deal, for the first time in a long time, the Senate is finally debating the issue of climate change. And it’s about time, if you ask me. . . . I understand my friends on the other side of the aisle don’t like the Green New Deal. O.K., that’s fine. What’s your plan? Maybe a lot of members think they can get away without having to answer the question. They won’t. . . . Democrats believe this is an issue of surpassing importance. What do our Republican colleagues believe? We hope sincerely that our Republican friends will come around and view it the same way.”

Until they do—until we all do—children will remain in peril.

The news that Volkswagen intentionally faked emissions testing for years has sparked international outrage and demands for accountability.

But there is an even bigger fraud under way, one with far graver consequences than 11 million diesel cars spewing emissions well above their advertised levels. It’s the false notion that climate change is unrelated to manmade greenhouse gases. This deception is not hidden in a software design. It’s openly proclaimed by power brokers like Oklahoma’s Senator Inhofe, who calls global warming a hoax, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has declared war on the EPA’s attempts to curtail coal-fired-plant emissions. Too many other politicians also fall in line with the vested interests of big donors like the Koch brothers and major oil corporations. Only a few of the Republican presidential contenders even admit that manmade emissions contribute to climate change. Besides denial, their favored response to the biggest challenge facing our planet is to duck the issue altogether.

Meanwhile, more than 97 percent of climate scientists agree that human activities are driving climate change. Only in America is such well-established science routinely open to debate.  Residents and leaders of most other countries may disagree on what to do about the threat, but at least they acknowledge it exists.

Rising sea levels, more intense storms and droughts, the spread of tropical diseases, famine, and global unrest may escalate beyond control if we don’t act quickly.

Unlike the Volkswagon deception, climate fraud is obvious to all who bother to look. If we reward the deniers with our silence or our votes, we help perpetrate the fraud.

Fortunately, awareness of the danger is finally taking hold in the consciousness of most Americans, if not the leaders of the Republican Party. Let’s harness the outrage and demand for accountability VW so richly deserves, and apply it equally to those who fiddle while our planet burns.