Oh, the Hypocrisy!

"Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts."

~Daniel Patrick Moynihan

In an article bemoaning conservatives' apparent disconnect from reality, Paul Waldman writes these two paragraphs and puts them next to each other, apparently unironically:

Ascribing the most nefarious of motives to our political opponents is standard fare, of course. But basing your political arguments not on what those opponents have done or have proposed to do but on what they "would" do, frees you from the need to keep a hold on even the slightest tether to reality. Who needs evidence of the other side's evil, when you can just imagine what lies in their hearts?

Imagination also has its psychic rewards. Take the Tea Partiers. The vast majority would probably say that Barack Obama, that vile socialist, has raised their taxes. The truth, however, is that Obama cut taxes for 98 percent of working families with the stimulus bill. You could argue that those tax cuts weren't a good idea, but you ought not to be able to argue that they didn't happen.

So to sum up: Paragraph 1: Basing your arguments on what your opponents would do frees you from reality. Paragraph 2: Tea Partiers would say that Obama raised their taxes, but it's not true.

Waldman's only justification of this is Tea Party Nation leader Judson Phillips refusing to admit that most Americans' taxes decreased under Barack Obama. Does Waldman bother to mention a New York Times poll where a majority (52% to 42%) of Tea Partiers say that the amount they pay in income taxes is fair? No, there's no sign that Waldman even looked at it.

I am sympathetic to the argument that conservatives' reliance on straw men comes at the expense of facts. But that doesn't mean that liberals should emulate it.

The American Power Act

Much has been said about the American Power Act, introduced to the Senate on May 12. It would incentivize more offshore drilling and nuclear power. It would limit the EPA's capacity to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. And it does not nearly reduce greenhouse gas emissions enough.

Some of these complaints are misleading: For instance, the American Power Act only limits the EPA's ability to regulate under the Clean Air Act because it establishes a cap-and-trade system for large carbon emitters. EPA would deal with these emitters under the American Power Act, while still reserving the ability to regulate other emissions, like automotive emissions, under the Clean Air Act.

And in spite of these complaints, the American Power Act deserves our support. It finally sends a signal that the United States will regulate greenhouse-gas emissions. Such a signal is needed for entrepreneurs to invest in researching and implementing green energy. Indeed, it is precisely what they are waiting for.

And yes, it does not reduce greenhouse-gas emissions enough. But it is much easier to establish the cap-and-trade framework and adjust later on. And as Joe Romm reminds us, this is exactly what happened with the Montreal Protocol and the Clean Air Act(s).

Yes, the bill is flawed and we should lobby the Senate to improve it. But those flaws should not prevent us from taking the first real step to fight global warming and passing this bill.

This Should Be a No-Brainer

The Obama administration is considering joining the Ottawa Treaty, which bans the use of land mines. Which are of no use in the counterinsurgencies we're fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. The only place they would be useful is in the ironically-named demilitarized zone between North and South Korea. But control over those mines has been transferred to South Korea. Not to mention that "technological advances have enabled the Pentagon to create explosives that function like mines but are detonated remotely, making them permissible under the treaty."

There is even enough support in the Senate for ratification. Sixty-eight senators have signed on to a letter calling on Obama to join the ban. (67 are needed for ratification.) There is no reason not to do this.

More Bad News and Bad Press for BP

The dome that BP had placed over one of the oil leaks from the downed Deepwater Horizon rig has apparently failed. The reverse funnel was moved after being clogged by methane hydrates, compounds that consist of methane and other hydrocarbons trapped in the crystalline structure of ice. BP hopes either to melt the hydrates by pumping warm water down to the dome or to thin them out using methanol. Both practices are risky as both methanol and the hydrates are flammable. A sudden thaw would precipitously release methane, causing an increase in pressure and potentially an explosion much like the one that took down the rig originally.

And as if the revelations that BP was exempted from conducting an environmental impact assessment and lobbied against stricter safety measures weren't enough, Democracy Now examines the role of BP--then the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company--in the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh and the Iranian republic:

Also, BP was on the grassy knoll.

Will All Great Neptune's Ocean Wash This Clean?

BP is lowering a dome into the Gulf of Mexico in an attempt to capture oil leaking from the Deepwater Horizon rig that sank over two weeks ago. The dome would work like a funnel in reverse; oil would rise to the top of the dome and be pumped to a ship on the gulf surface.

BP was apparently exempted from conducting an environmental impact assessment on the rig after it was concluded that a massive oil spill was "unlikely." Now this is probably true; according to American Petroleum Institute director Erik Milito, "There have been in excess of 30,000 Gulf of Mexico wells drilled in the last 40 years and there hasn’t been a major spill [ed: I'm gonna let him finish, but Ixtoc I was one of the greatest spills of all time.] so I’d say the safety rates were good." Still, the fact that there is at least some probability of a significant oil spill should require an impact assessment.

Meanwhile, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has responded by calling for a "pause" in pursuing legislation on climate change. According to The New York Times, Graham "said that the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico had heightened concern about expanded offshore drilling, which he considers a central component of any energy legislation. Mr. Graham also said that Democratic insistence on taking up immigration policy before energy had chilled his enthusiasm for any global warming measure."

Sorry, Senator Graham, but limiting offshore drilling or at least regulating it more tightly after an unexpected explosion kills 11 and spews thousands of barrels of oil into an ecologically sensitive area of the Gulf of Mexico seems like a rational response to me.

They Said You Was Hung

Returns are in from Britain's parliamentary election, and the net result? No party has a clear majority, but the Conservatives have a 306-seat plurality. Labour has 258 and the Liberal Democrats have 57. So how will the horse-trading play out?

There are three main mathematical possibilities:

1. The Tories and Lib Dems could form a government.
2. The Lib Dems could ally with Labour instead, but at least two other parties would also have to join in.
3. The Conservatives could theoretically form a government without the Lib Dems, but would need at least four other parties to do so.

Would these miscellaneous other parties side with the Tories or with Labour? I'm not sure. The largest other parties are regional parties like the Scottish National Party (6 seats), Plaid Cymru (3) of Wales, and Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party (8; traditionally Tory) and Sinn Fein (5).

But by far the biggest playmaker is Nick Clegg and his Liberal Democrats. Clegg, a proponent of proportional representation, had indicated that the party with the most votes (i.e. the Tories) should get to occupy 10 Downing Street. But the Lib Dems seem the more natural ally of Labour.

What will happen? My prediction (and chance to look silly) is that the Tories will form a coalition with the Lib Dems after promising electoral reform. We shall see.

Conservatives Left Their Heads on the Dance Floor

Just because this is what the Right sees whenever anyone talks about repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell, doesn't mean that we shouldn't repeal it.

The nice thing about this is that military officers appear to be amused by it: According to spokeswoman Maj. Michelle Baldanza, "The brigade command team is happy to see that they...still have a good sense of humor and that morale is high."

Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Lend Me Your Rights

"He's a citizen of the United States, so I say we uphold the laws and the Constitution on citizens...If you are a citizen, you obey the law and follow the Constitution. He has all the rights under the Constitution...We don't shred the Constitution when it is popular. We do the right thing."

~Glenn Beck

I can't believe I'm saying this, but Glenn Beck is right. (Although Glenn does make other statements during that segment like favoring torturing non-citizens, when torture is ineffective and more importantly immoral and illegal under U.S. and international law.) Every citizen is entitled to Miranda rights save some legal exceptions like the public safety exception, which allows authorities to question terrorist suspects about whether they acted alone or if they know of other threats. In the case of Faisal Shahzad, the public safety exception was employed, then they Mirandized him and he continued to talk.

But John McCain thinks Mirandizing him was a mistake. And now Joe Lieberman is introducing a bill that would allow the State Department to revoke an American's citizenship if they are "a member of a terrorist group, even before trial or capture." They could then appeal the decision--and the burden of proof would at least be on the State Dept.--but if their citizenship is revoked before they have a chance to appeal, I don't see this working well in practice.

This should be self-evidently a bad idea. If the government can revoke someone's citizenship without sufficient judicial constraint, there is bound to be abuse. And if even if their citizenship could be revoked, the Supreme Court has ruled that they are still entitled to rights under U.S. law.

Last word:

The appalling behavior of John McCain and Joe Lieberman this past week underlines what a bullet this country missed by electing Barack Obama president...

Now recall that McCain and Lieberman were celebrated in Washington for their alleged maturity, wisdom, and elder statesmen experience. They are in fact adolescent hysterics, whose terrorized Manichean view of the world sees nothing but an existential struggle and the imperative to win it. We would have been electing Cheney to a third term. And we barely knew it.

~Andrew Sullivan

White House Correspondents Dinner

If this whole Leader of the Free World thing doesn't work out, Obama could always host a talk show. Although, since he's funnier than Leno, it might have to be on TBS.

How Convenient!

Who else? Quoth Rush Limbaugh:

I want to get back to the timing of the blowing up, the explosion out there in the Gulf of Mexico of this oil rig. … Now, lest we forget, ladies and gentlemen, the carbon tax bill, cap and trade, that was scheduled to be announced on Earth Day. I remember that. And then it was postponed for a couple of days later after Earth Day, and then of course immigration has now moved in front of it. But this bill, the cap-and-trade bill, was strongly criticized by hardcore environmentalist wackos because it supposedly allowed more offshore drilling and nuclear plants, nuclear plant investment. So, since they’re sending SWAT teams down there, folks, since they’re sending SWAT teams to inspect the other rigs, what better way to head off more oil drilling, nuclear plants, than by blowing up a rig? I’m just noting the timing here.

Of course! It is a little too convenient that an oil rig explodes, dumping barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico right when environmentalists are starting to protest expansions to offshore drilling. Just like 9/11 was a little too convenient for an administration searching for a pretext to go to war with Iraq. They must have been inside jobs! What's that, Rush?

Well said, Rush. You are "a glittering jewel of colossal ignorance." Why don't you learn something about environmentalism or at least probability before you go off making claims without evidence? Last word from Justin Gardner:

For some reason…I don’t think folks who have spent their lives defending the environment would deliberately cause one of the worst environmental disasters in our lifetime just to get legislation passed that they felt was inherently compromised.

Call it a hunch.

Why I Hate Portmanteaux

portmanteau: n. a word formed by merging the sounds and meanings of two different words, as chortle, from chuckle and snort

The best ones like "liberaltarian" are succinct, clever bons mots. Then you have ones like "listicle," which has less to do with wit than it does with smashing two words together. Hell, it's not even clear which two words have been smashed together; it sounds more like "list" + "testicle" than "list" + "article."

But they all get used so much that they immediately become cliché. Like a joke told too many times, they lose any cleverness they may have once possessed. So unless you've just come up with a good one, just save it for the Colbert Report, everybody.

Reactions to the Times Square Plot

Four days ago, an amateur car bomb failed to go off in New York City's Times Square. A T-shirt vendor noticed smoke coming out of an awkwardly parked Nissan Pathfinder and alerted a nearby police officer. The authorities responded swiftly, evacuating the area and defusing the bomb.

Reactions have been oddly muted, nowhere near the frenzy after the underwear bomber Omar Abdulmutallab failed to blow up a plane above Detroit. My rationale is that the difference in reaction is due to the difference in terrorist methods. There is so much security around airplanes that the fact that Abdulmutallab got as far as he did represents a failure somewhere in the system. But there seems to be no good way to stop someone from parking a car bomb in Times Square. In this case, the system worked as well as it could.

Meanwhile, Adam Serwer at Tapped had been pushing the line that conservatives have been quiet because the suspect at the time was "a middle-aged white guy" instead of a radical Muslim. But now that a Pakistani-American has been arrested and has reportedly confessed, Republicans are still fairly silent.

Still, even though I'm not quite as cynical as Serwer--"If the attack was carried out by Muslim extremists, the conservative response will be that this would never have happened if Obama were still torturing people. If it turns out to be a domestic right-wing extremist, well, it'll be a tragic but understandable response to government tyranny."--I have to admit he has a point. Would Scott Brown have said, "No one likes paying taxes obviously," if a Muslim had flown a plane into a building with IRS offices instead of Andrew Joseph Stack III?

Also, Andrew Sullivan rounds up more reactions, and Megan McArdle opines on why terrorist attacks are so infrequent.

“We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint”

"When we understand that slide, we'll have won the war." -General Stanley McChrystal

A recent New York Times article outlines the problems with the armed forces' reliance on PowerPoint: The complexity and interconnectedness of the war cannot be adequately presented with slides. Either you overwhelm your audience with visual complexity or reduce the problem to bullets. Either way, the details – the meaning – are lost on the audience.

The solution to this dilemma seems relatively straightforward. PowerPoint is best understood and best used as a visual aid. The slides should be reserved for pictures, maps, graphs, charts, and diagrams. That way, the complexity can be addressed in the oral part of the presentation. If a hard copy of the material is needed, it should be written up as a memo or report in Word.

Sorry, Defense Secretary Gates, it's the only way.

If It's Broke, Don't Fix it

In a very confusing editorial in Saturday's New York Times, A.A. Gill argues that change is needed in Britain, but "the worst possible way to start changing it would be precipitously, after an inconclusive election, on the heels of a global financial calamity when the markets are looking for stability and firm direction." Gill echoes the paranoid, Tory line: "OH NOES! A hung Parliament will make Britain look weak and indecisive!"

Indeed, Gill's Tory bias is hardly concealed throughout the piece: Gordon Brown is friendless and ill-tempered. Nick Clegg is traitorously European. (He speaks five languages! His kids have Spanish names!) But Tory David Cameron is "personable" and "fresh-faced" "with emotionally winning oratory." "Your mother would like him." Indeed, Gill's biggest fear seems to be that a hung Parliament will lead to electoral reform, which will lead to "1000 years" of center-left government.

This last claim is laughable. Gill acknowledges that parliamentary districts are so hopelessly gerrymandered in favor of Labour that they could finish third in the popular vote but win a plurality of seats. The status quo already sounds like 1000 years of center-left government. Furthermore, the reforms advocated by the Lib Dems would base seats in Parliament on the popular vote. If post-reform Britain has a center-left government, it will be because a majority of Britons want a center-left government.

The point is this, Mr. Gill: If the broken system is not fixed now, when will it?

The View from Section 6

As J-Mad wrote yesterday, President Barack Obama delivered the keynote address at the University of Michigan's spring commencement. The speech was characteristically level-headed and reasonable. Obama acknowledged that he and his opponents have legitimate disagreements, while simultaneously asserting and rationalizing that some went too far. Obama also deftly gave a political speech that was still relevant to the graduates.

(Sorry, Bryan Flory, but the overarching theme of the speech was how to maintain our republic, which is relevant to every American and seems appropriate for a commencement. I will agree, however, that Governor Granholm's speech, which was basically "Thank you, Mr. President, for (fill in the blank)" x 10, was almost completely irrelevant to the graduates. The only part that was relevant was when she said, "Thank you for coming here instead of that school to the south.")

There were two points of Obama's speech that I especially liked. First, he rejected the false dichotomy between complete liberty and total tyranny. He pointed out the aspects of government that everyone, especially the limited-government zealots, takes for granted: public high schools and universities, roads and highways, police and firefighters, safety standards, etc. And he articulated his view of the role government should play: "Government shouldn’t try to guarantee results, but it should guarantee a shot at opportunity for every American who’s willing to work hard."

Secondly, Obama advised the graduates on what they--and all of us--should do to maintain our republic: Don't vilify others simply because you disagree with them. Expose yourself to a diverse group of people and a diverse group of opinions. (Both of which I will attempt to do on this blog and in my personal life.)

Marine One leaves Ann Arbor.

With Barack Obama, the University of Michigan has set a high bar for commencement speakers that frankly cannot be surpassed. But on behalf of the Class of 2011, may I say, "Jon Stewart, please!"

Barack in the Big House

Today, President Barack Obama entered the Big House, packed to the brim, to send the 2010 graduating class of the University of Michigan off into the world. After being presented with an honorary doctorate of laws degree, he delivered a commencement address focusing on the need for each graduate to be a good citizen, treating others with respect and civility, while continuing to constantly broaden his or her horizons in order to guarantee the health of the United States for future generations. The pragmatic address had many words of wisdom for the graduating class, as well as their peers, friends, and families in the stands, for the future. The speech was decidedly non-partisan and employed a common Obama theme of unity while embracing diversity. Below, please find the video of the commencement address and some highlighted passages. For the full text, please click here.



Highlights:

"On the last day of the Constitutional Convention, Benjamin Franklin was famously asked, “Well, Doctor, what have we got -– a republic or a monarchy?” And Franklin gave an answer that’s been quoted for ages: He said, “A republic, if you can keep it.” If you can keep it. Well, for more than 200 years, we have kept it... Through periods of great social and economic unrest... it has allowed us slowly, sometimes painfully, to move towards a more perfect union. And so now, class of 2010, the question for your generation is this: How will you keep our democracy going? At a moment when our challenges seem so big and our politics seem so small, how will you keep our democracy alive and vibrant; how will you keep it well in this century?"

"There are some things we can only do together, as one nation -– and that our government must keep pace with the times... this notion...hasn’t always been partisan."

"But what troubles me is when I hear people say that all of government is inherently bad. One of my favorite signs during the health care debate was somebody who said, 'Keep Your Government Hands Out Of My Medicare' -- which is essentially saying 'Keep Government Out Of My Government-Run Health Care Plan.'"

"When our government is spoken of as some menacing, threatening foreign entity, it ignores the fact that in our democracy, government is us."

"So, class of 2010, what we should be asking is not whether we need 'big government' or a 'small government,' but how we can create a smarter and better government."

"The second way to keep our democracy healthy is to maintain a basic level of civility in our public debate...we can’t expect to solve our problems if all we do is tear each other down...The problem is that this kind of vilification and over-the-top rhetoric closes the door to the possibility of compromise. It undermines democratic deliberation. It prevents learning..."

"For the truth is, our nation’s destiny has never been certain. What is certain -– what has always been certain -– is the ability to shape that destiny."