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Kristol Walks The Tightrope: Tries To Defend Both McCain And The New York Times

By Ben Armbruster on Feb 21, 2008 at 4:59 pm

Today on Fox News, right-wing pundit and New York Times columnist Bill Kristol discussed the New York Times’s damaging story on Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) unethical relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman. Kristol tried to have it both ways, juggling his support for McCain with his allegiance to his new employer.

Defending McCain, Kristol said that he is not sure whether the NYT story “is fair” and went on to suggest it wasn’t very consequential:

– “There’s no one showing that McCain did anything.”

– “This is no big deal and no blow to the McCain campaign.”

– “The McCain campaign could be heaving a big sigh of relief…it’s a one day story.”

– “No one’s really accusing him of anything.”

– “At the end of the day there’s nothing there that proves or suggests any wrong-doing by Sen. McCain.”

– “There’s nothing in it that’s really damaging to McCain. … [He] has really put this story to rest.”

At the same time, Kristol was careful not to criticize his new employer, the Times. When Fox anchor Trace Gallagher told Kristol that the story is “almost blatently unfair,” Kristol hedged. “Well I don’t know, they’re reporting on turmoil within the McCain campaign,” he said. Kristol made similar defenses of the Times throughout the segment:

– “The Times is entitled to print a long story about McCain advisers going to a lobbyist and saying she was dropping McCain’s name too much.”

– “I’m not going to criticize [NY Times executive editor Bill] Keller or the Times for publishing it.”

Watch it:

[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2008/02/kristolmcnyt.320.240.flv]

The new Kristol seems to be a much more tepid critic than the old Kristol, who once argued the NYT “isn’t a first rate newspaper” and “should be prosecuted.”

Digg It!

Climate Progress

China sells its soul for liquid coal

By Joe Romm on Feb 21, 2008 at 4:48 pm

coal_truck_china_460.jpg

Nothing is worse for the climate than large scale coal-to-liquids. Not even the tar sands. In September, the Chinese news agency said it would rein in liquid coal plants. A Guardian story yesterday puts the lie to that claim:

A Chinese energy company is poised to open a chemical plant to make liquid fuels for cars and aircraft from coal, a move that has alarmed environmental campaigners who say it will increase carbon emissions and worsen global warming.

The plant, in Inner Mongolia, will use technology developed by Germany during the second world war to convert coal directly into synthetic diesel, dubbed “Nazi fuel”.

Nazi fuel. Has such an inviting ring to it.

The Chinese facility, operated by Shenhua Corporation, will be the first of its type in the world….

A study last year by the Chinese Academy of Sciences said: “Production of liquid fuels from coal is practically the most feasible route to cope with the dilemma in oil supply.”

I agree — if by feasible you mean, “will just about guarantee the end of the planet’s livability by 2100.”

Shame on the schizophrenic Chinese Academy, which in 2005 signed the Academies statement (along with the U.S., Russia, India, Brazil, and major European countries) that called for “substantial and long-term reduction in net global greenhouse gas emissions” — something that would be quite impossible with widespread use of Nazi fuel liquid coal.

At least two more commercial scale coal-to-liquids plants are under construction in China, although the Chinese government has expressed concern about the possible environmental impact of uncontrolled expansion, and has taken steps to limit the number of smaller facilities.

Oh, why didn’t you say that to begin with: The Chinese government “expressed concern” about environmental impacts and is limiting the number of “smaller” facilities. That almost restores my faith in the wisdom of their leaders. Almost. Significant production of liquid coal would officially make their climate policy as immoral as ours. I fear that the figurative “U.S.-China Suicide Pact on Climate” I describe in my book is starting to become a literal one.

Capturing the carbon dioxide from liquid coal would reduce the negative consequences, though “would still produce at least 20% more carbon dioxide than petrol and diesel made from oil.” But, in any case, the Chinese plants are not designed for capture, even if they had some large, certified repository to put the carbon dioxide in, which they don’t. So the life cycle emissions will be “almost twice the carbon pollution as using conventional diesel.”

And putting this in dry Inner Mongolia doesn’t strike me as a terrific idea given that “the energy-intensive conversion plants also require massive amounts of cooling water to stop them overheating.”

I thought the Chinese were supposed to be wise and holistic, what with Confucius and Tai Chi and the I Ching and yin & yang and acupuncture, and inventing paper, movable type, the compass, silk, and porcelain, and all that. Turns out they are as dumb as us. Or maybe dumber. I mean, we would never go for something dubbed Nazi fuel … would we?

Related Posts:

Culture

Trade Time

By ThinkProgress on Feb 21, 2008 at 4:41 pm

This Houston-Hornets-Grizzlies trade seems remarkably pointless. None of the players involved are any good, and what does New Orleans want with a point guard? Meanwhile, the huge Cleveland-Seattle-Chicago three-way is a bit confusing as well. Wally Sczerbiak’s three point shooting would be a very effective weapon alongside LeBron James, but they play the same position. Still, all things considered this deal seems helpful to Cleveland.

Meanwhile it’s pathetic that given the assets Chicago at one point seemed to have lined up to acquire Kevin Garnett or Pau Gasol or Kobe Bryant that they’re instead picking up Larry Hughes and Drew Gooden. Don’t miss Josh Levin on how crazy NBA trades have gotten thanks to the intricacies of the salary cap.

Media

Gin Blossoms Throwdown

By ThinkProgress on Feb 21, 2008 at 4:24 pm

Increasingly, my friends and I are old men. For example, I hurt my back on Monday. Also, Spencer Ackerman and I got into a dispute about the Gin Blossoms. I say that “Hey Jealousy” is their best song:

Ackerman, by contrast, is a partisan of “Found Out About You”

I say only the collective wisdom of the internet can decide an issue like this.

UPDATE: Yes, yes, Gin Blossoms suck. I understand. Still, there’s a question to be answered.

Politics

McCain’s environmental rating: 0.

By Satyam Khanna on Feb 21, 2008 at 4:20 pm

The League of Conservation voters today rated Sen. John McCain (R-AZ)’s environmental record. McCain scored 0 percent in 2007 (24 percent lifetime) “due to missing all 15 votes scored, including the key vote on repealing tax giveaways to big oil — a measure that failed by only one vote.” The Sierra Club notes:

McCain was the only member of Congress to skip every single crucial environmental vote scored by the organization, posting a score lower than Members of Congress who were out for much of the year due to serious illnesses–and even lower than some who died during the term

Politics

Limbaugh Spins NYT Story As Hate Radio Victory: McCain Should ‘Understand Who His Friends Are’

By Amanda Terkel on Feb 21, 2008 at 3:27 pm

Rush Limbaugh and other hate radio talkers have aggressively attacked the candidacy pf Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). Today on his radio show, Limbaugh responded to the explosive New York Times story on McCain’s relationship with lobbyist Vicki Iseman by spinning it as a victory for hate radio.

According to Limbaugh, this episode is the predictable consequence of McCain shunning him and other hate radio pundits:

The important question for John McCain today is, is he going to learn the right lesson from this, and what is the lesson? The lesson is liberals are to be defeated. You cannot walk across the aisle with them. You cannot reach across the aisle. You cannot welcome their media members on your bus and get all cozy with them and expect eternal love from them. You are a Republican. [...]

There’s a great opportunity here for Senator McCain to learn the right lesson and understand who his friends are and who his enemies are. He’s had that backwards for way too long.

Listen to Limbaugh’s comments here:

[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2008/02/limbaughmccainnyt.320.40.flv]

Right-wing pundit Laura Ingraham was similarly self-righteous today, stating:

I ask the McCain campaign this question: Do you think you need talk radio now? Do you think that talk radio’s important to set the record straight, or do you think a press conference, where the media is shouting question after question at you — do you think that’s going to put an end to all of this?

Right wing pundits still don’t like McCain, but they’re willing to give him a second chance — as long as the senator is willing to see the light and change his ways. David Brody of CBN believes that this New York Times “hit job” may seen as “a conservative badge of honor” and “could actually help John McCain.”

Always classy, Limbaugh ended his segment by saying that he wasn’t surprised that The New York Times published an unfavorable piece on McCain. “It’s as predictable as Ted Kennedy finding a bar at happy hour,” he said.

Transcript: Read more

Politics

Senators make emergency landing in Afghanistan.

By Amanda Terkel on Feb 21, 2008 at 3:26 pm

AP reports:

A helicopter carrying three senior U.S. senators has made an emergency landing in Afghanistan.

Sens. John Kerry, Joseph Biden and Chuck Hagel were aboard the aircraft., according to Jon Summers, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The lawmakers are on a trip this week that includes stops in India, Turkey and Pakistan.

Kerry and Biden are Democrats from Massachusetts and Delaware, respectively, and the Republican Hagel is from Nebraska.

UPDATE: CNN reports that a snowstorm forced the senators’ helicopter to make the emergency landing. Biden’s press secretary notes, “There were no injuries and all members of the traveling party were safely transported to their destination at Bagram Air Base.”

Yglesias

McCain and the Missiles

By ThinkProgress on Feb 21, 2008 at 3:22 pm

According to John McCain’s website:

John McCain strongly supports the development and deployment of theater and national missile defenses. Effective missile defenses are critical to protect America from rogue regimes like North Korea that possess the capability to target America with intercontinental ballistic missiles, from outlaw states like Iran that threaten American forces and American allies with ballistic missiles, and to hedge against potential threats from possible strategic competitors like Russia and China. Effective missile defenses are also necessary to allow American military forces to operate overseas without being deterred by the threat of missile attack from a regional adversary.

For starters, north Korea doesn’t possess ICBM capabilities. Second, it’s hard to see how national missile defense will protect our forces from Iranian missile attacks when our forces are right next door in Iraq and Afghanistan. Indeed, it’s unclear why we’d be particularly worried about any sort of ballistic missile attack given the close quarters situation at hand. But while this is a bit dishonest and ignorant, the business about hedging against “potential threats from possible strategic competitors like Russia and China.” Simply put, a scenario in which the United States possesses an effective ability to shoot down a Russian or Chinese ICBM threat would be completely intolerable in Moscow or Beijing. It would, in effect, give the United States a viable a threat of a nuclear first strike.

Neither Russia nor China is going to let that happen. Instead, they’ll spend money on building up their nuclear arsenals in order to maintain their deterrent capacity. Thus, at great cost to the Unites States, to Russia, and to China we’ll be back at the status quo. But beyond the monetary cost, the large buildup in Chinese nuclear capabilities that would result from this situation would force India to engage in a nuclear build-up of its own. And that, in turn, would force Pakistan to follow suit. This large increase in the global stock of nuclear weapons would, of course, imply an increase in the odds of a nuclear accident or the loss or theft of nuclear material. At the same time, a nuclear buildup of this sort might create incentives for Iran to reinitiate its nuclear weapons research program. And even if it didn’t, revitalizing the Non-Proliferation Treaty desperately requires the status quo nuclear powers to be working together on nuclear issues, and fulfilling our treat obligations to move toward reduced arsenals.

In short, what McCain has on tap here is a recipe for disaster — a breakdown in great power relations, new arms races, massive nuclear proliferation, etc. And why? I suspect the last bit is the real reason. He wants “to allow American military forces to operate overseas without being deterred.” Basically, we need to spend huge sums of money and encourage an enormous amount of nuclear proliferation because that would facilitate the launching of new aggressive wars. Probably the proliferation McCain’s policies helped induce would become the rationale for a new round of warfighting.

Politics

Sadr expected to extend militia truce in Iraq.

By Ben Armbruster on Feb 21, 2008 at 3:20 pm

Reuters reports that Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr “is expected to extend a six-month truce by his militia” the Mahdi Army. Sadr’s final decision will be read in mosques throughout Iraq at Friday prayer services. Sadr’s cease-fire declaration last August has been widely credited as a significant contributing factor in improving security in Iraq.

Politics

Change to Win Endorsement

By ThinkProgress on Feb 21, 2008 at 2:49 pm

Alyssa Rosenberg is a staff correspondent at Government Executive, one of The Atlantic‘s sister brands, and she was on the conference call at which the Change to Win labor federation endorsed Barack Obama. She offers the following dispatch:

Anna Burger, the chair of Change to Win, said repeatedly that the federation’s unions felt that Obama was building a significant movement that would persist beyond the elections and help bring important policy changes. “He is building an election coalition that will turn into an action coalition that will restore the American dream,” she said.

The vision of that movement seemed to swamp differences on policy, even on core issues like health care, where Obama has attacked the mandates in Clinton’s proposal. “We believe that Barack Obama is absolutely determined to win health care for every man, woman and child in America. Does he have a different approach? Yes,” Burger said, emphasizing that she thought Obama would be best suited to achieve sweeping health care reform as president.

In fact, Burger seemed reluctant to draw policy distinctions between Obama and Clinton at all, saying that Change to Win appreciated Obama’s stance on the war in Iraq and on trade, but refusing to say whether she thought the federation’s members and leaders associated Clinton with NAFTA and its impacts.


But Burger clearly indicated that Change to Win thought the movement-building stakes were high enough to warrant the federation getting into the race at a point at which they thought they could be a decisive force. Change to Win has 175,000 members in Ohio and expects 110,000 of them to make it to the polls, Burger said. The federation has 60,000 members in Texas, but also has strong ties to the Latino and immigrant communities there.

Burger was blunt about what she hoped the endorsement would achieve. “We think it’s time to bring this nomination process to a close, and we think we can make a difference and get this done,” she said.

Now I’m told independently that Change to Win (unlike the AFL-CIO) doesn’t really have any resources as an entity separate from whatever its composite unions bring to the table. Thus, this doesn’t necessarily add much that’s concrete on top of what the SEIU, UNITE-HERE, Teamsters, and UFCW endorsements already bring Obama. The main point is a PR one, and in that regard the sentiments Burger expressed about a desire to bring the nominating process to an expeditious conclusion seems to be the main point.

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