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Yglesias

Through a Glass, Darkly

By ThinkProgress on Jun 22, 2008 at 6:47 pm

According to this eye-opening Washington Post op-ed, in Vladimir Putin’s Russia it’s possible for government officials and well-connected individuals to commit crimes with impunity. I’m glad I don’t live in a country like that!

Here if the government were to ask telecom firms to illegally cooperate with an illegal surveillance operation, we’d ensure the rule of law continues to operate by changing the law so that complying with such requests will be legal in the future and also bestowing retroactive immunity on the cooperating firms. And if the Vice President’s top aide were convicted of a crime, the president would need to step in and commute his sentence. It’s these kind of procedures that keep our country safe and free!

Climate Progress

Colombia hosts cocaine summit to find cause of price rise, Bush says cause is inadequate supply

By Joe Romm on Jun 22, 2008 at 5:45 pm

Since when do we deal with our addiction by going to summits hosted by drug suppliers? Yet here is the Washington Post:

Saudi Arabian Oil Summit Hopes to Isolate Cause of Price Rise

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia, June 21 — Leaders from oil-producing and oil-consuming nations will meet here Sunday to try to pinpoint the reasons behind the rise in oil prices, which have doubled over the past year, and to find ways to bring them down.

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You cannot make this stuff up. I can “pinpoint” the reason prices are high. We are addicted to your product, just like the president said. We will pay any price you charge and do nothing whatsoever to break the addiction. Heck, we will even go to a summit you host to talk about anything but our addiction.

U.S. Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman, representing the world’s top oil consumer, said Saturday that insufficient oil production is driving the soaring crude prices. Oil production has not kept up with increasing demand from developing countries including China and India, Bodman said.

Has your head exploded yet? Is Big Media that gullible? Don’t answer that second question. Is the energy secretary unaware that we still use twice as much oil as China and India combined? Is he unaware supply is limited but that his boss has blocked most efforts to reduce demand? (See “Peak Oil? Bring it on!“)

Question for the Energy Secretary: What country’s insatiable thirst for oil imports is most responsible for the tightening world market from 1995 to 2004?

Read more

Yglesias

Aesthetics

By ThinkProgress on Jun 22, 2008 at 5:32 pm

Rich Lowry, diavlogging with Mike Tomasky, says there’s basically no reason we shouldn’t just drill for oil everywhere because the only downside is “aesthetics”:

I assume that people who work in the tourism business, or who live in communities where many other people do, will appreciate that aesthetics can have actual economic value. If we made it so that every spot of the coastal United States became horribly ugly the total economic damage would be pretty large. But even aesthetics for its own sake aren’t nothing — I assume Lowry wouldn’t burn Starry Night for $5. And of course the ecological damage done by oil drilling can go far beyond merely ruining the view (oil and ocean life don’t mix) which is to say nothing of the environmental problems associated with burning the oil.

Ultimately, though, this kind of thinking is why the “oil addiction” language has gained such popularity. There are things we could do that would set us on a path toward reducing our oil consumption. Alternatively, we can decide that it’s somehow just not possible and we need to reconciling ourselves to pumping more and more oil with that quest for oil overriding all other possible considerations.

Yglesias

It Should Be Overturned

By ThinkProgress on Jun 22, 2008 at 3:03 pm

There’s some kind of persistent confusion, both in the punditocracy and among the public at large, as to where John McCain stands on this issue, but he’s been fairly clear that he wants to overturn Roe v. Wade:

In an ideal world, we’ll get an honest debate on this and related subjects during the campaign season, rather than the usual thing where candidates just kind of mutter about “strict constructionists” without saying anything substantive.

Culture

Slavery By Another Name

By ThinkProgress on Jun 22, 2008 at 12:57 pm

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I mentioned Douglas Blackmon’s excellent book, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II once before and I’m glad to learn that Bill Moyers featured it on his show recently. Here’s a bit of the transcript:

DOUGLAS BLACKMON: Vagrancy. So, vagrancy was a law that essentially, it simply, you were breaking the law if you couldn’t prove at any given moment that you were employed. Well, in a world in which there were no pay stubs, it was impossible to prove you were employed. The only way you could prove employment was if some man who owned land would vouch for you and say, he works for me. And of course, none of these laws said it only applies to black people. But overwhelmingly, they were only enforced against black people. And many times, thousands of times I believe, you had young black men who attempted to do that. They ended up being arrested and returned to the original farmer where they worked in chains, not even a free worker, but as a slave.

BILL MOYERS: And the result, as you write, thousands of black men were arrested, charged with whatever, jailed, and then sold to plantations, railroads, mills, lumber camps and factories in the deep South. And this went on, you say, right up to World War II?

DOUGLAS BLACKMON: And it was everywhere in the South. These forced labor camps were all over the place. The records that still survive, buried in courthouses all over the South, make it abundantly clear that thousands and thousands of African-Americans were arrested on completely specious claims, made up stuff, and then, purely because of this economic need and the ability of sheriffs and constables and others to make money off arresting them, and that providing them to these commercial enterprises, and being paid for that.

It’s a fascinating book, and does a lot to put contemporary issues in an important but essentially forgotten context. See more here.

Security

Bolton: Israel Will Attack Iran After U.S. Election But Before Inauguration, Arab States Will Be ‘Delighted’

By Faiz Shakir on Jun 22, 2008 at 12:38 pm

This morning on Fox News, former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton continued his drumbeat for war against Iran. Adopting Bill Kristol’s argument, Bolton suggested that an attack on Iran depends on who Americans elect as the next President:

I think if they [Israel] are to do anything, the most likely period is after our elections and before the inauguration of the next President. I don’t think they will do anything before our election because they don’t want to affect it. And they’d have to make a judgment whether to go during the remainder of President Bush’s term in office or wait for his successor.

Bolton gamed out the fallout from an attack on Iran. He claimed that Iran’s options to retaliate after being attacked are actually “less broad than people think.” He suggested that Iran would not want to escalate a conflict because 1) it still needs to export oil, 2) it would worry about “an even greater response” from Israel, 3) and it would worry about the U.S.’s response.

Bolton then concluded that Arab states would be excited if the U.S. or Israel attacked Iran:

I don’t think you’d hear the Arab states say this publicly, but they would be delighted if the United States or Israel destroyed the Iranian nuclear weapons capability.

Watch it:

Bolton has said he is backing John McCain because he would handle the Iranian nuclear program in a “stronger” way than the Bush administration.

Culture

Derrick Rose

By ThinkProgress on Jun 22, 2008 at 12:13 pm

Obviously readers are aware that I don’t watch much college basketball, and therefore my scouting opinions are worthless. But thought Derrick Rose looks like a fine basketball player, talk of picking him ahead of Michael Beasley seems kind of crazy to me:

Beasley scores way more (26.2 versus 14.9) on better shooting from the field (.532 versus .477) from the line (.774 versus .712) and from beyond the arc (.379 versus .337). Beasley’s a forward who snags 12.4 rebounds per game (to Rose’s 4.5) while Rose is a guard who gets 4.7 assists per game to Beasley’s 1.2 while their turnovers are similar (2.9 for Beasley to 2.7 for Rose). Chad Ford’s rationale for the pick doesn’t make me feel much better about Rose:

Everyone likes scorers and rebounders, which is why Beasley is so appealing. Statistically, as John Hollinger shows, he’s one of the best college prospects ever.

However, Paxson is in desperate need of a leader who’s willing to sacrifice for the team — a guy whose value doesn’t always show up in the box score, just the win column. He had to be grinning from ear to ear when Rose said, “I’m an unselfish guard that’s willing to do anything to win … I mean anything.”

Those intangibles aren’t nothing, but the Bulls look to me an awful lot like a team that needs someone who can hit shots reliably and good rebounders are always welcome. Apparently Rose played much better at the end of the season, and if you throw out the first half of his season then the numbers look better for him though Beasley is still better.

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