Could Lane's latest be the worst RedState post ever?

RedState's Moe Lane is moaning about a "contemptible" letter signed by leaders of police, firefighters, and teachers in Wisconsin and sent to the President of Marshall & Ilsley Corporation in Milwaukee. The part of the letter Lane quotes reads as follows:

The undersigned groups would like your company to publicly oppose Governor Walker’s efforts to virtually eliminate collective bargaining for public employees in Wisconsin. While we appreciate that you may need some time to consider this request, we ask for your response by March 17. In the event that you do not respond to this request by that date, we will assume that you stand with Governor Walker and against the teachers, nurses, police officers, fire fighters, and other dedicated public employees who serve our communities.

In the event that you cannot support this effort to save collective bargaining, please be advised that the undersigned will publicly and formally boycott the goods and services provided by your company.

Here is what Lane says about the letter:

Now, this would not be a contemptible letter if it were signed by members of private sector unions.  Private sector unions work in trades, and they have the right to make informed business choices (and even uninformed ones).  But public sector union members are supposedly public servants - and they are expected to avoid even the hint of impropriety in their labor disputes.  This is a barely-veiled threat from the cops and the firemen that organizations subject to the anti-labor reform boycott cannot expect a prompt and effective response from them in case of emergency.  Simply put, there are different standards of behavior for emergency responders.  Stricter ones, because being a repository of the public trust carries with it an expectation of behavior that is appropriate for that trust.  This letter harms that trust.

Stop.  Let me explicitly say that I do not believe any pious excuses along the lines of “That’s not what they meant!”  This is precisely the kind of let’s-imply-without-saying, sneak behavior that we’ve all come to expect from union ‘negotiators.’  Let me also explicitly say that the cops and firemen have nobody but themselves to blame for making anybody trust them less as a result of this letter: if they don’t want people to have legitimate concerns about public ’servants’ taking partisan sides, then public ’servants’ shouldn’t take partisan sides.  

I am inclined to interpret Lane's post as uncharitably as he has interpreted the letter he's moaning about. Rather than take the high road, I will emulate the behavior exemplified by those conservative bloggers who also happen to be assholes such as Lane and pay Lane back in his own coin.

According to Lane, the members of private sector unions have the right to make business choices. The implication is that members of public sector unions do not have the right to make business choices. Is Lane seriously suggesting that once a person joins a public sector union that that person surrenders her right to make business choices? Is Lane seriously suggesting that the members of public sector unions can be forced to do business with M&I Bank? Is Lane seriously suggesting that persons cannot collectively choose not to do business with this or that corporation? How free can a market be when persons cannot make free choices within that market? Conservatives claim that they are in favor of free markets, but many of them (including Lane, evidently) really aren't (which is something that I have known for some time).

The threat being made in the letter is a potential boycott of goods and services provided by M&I Bank, and that's it. It is clear to anyone who has a command of the English language that the people signing the letter and the members of the groups they represent are threatening to not do business with M&I Bank. That's what a boycott is. And it is abundantly clear that that is all that is being threatened in the letter. If Lane thinks that he can tell people who they can and cannot do business with, then he can go fuck himself.

Lane, however, claims that he has detected an implication in the letter that emergency responders will not respond as promptly and effectively to emergencies involving M&I Bank if M&I Bank does not express opposition to Scott Walker's union-killing bill. I detect no such implication whatsoever, either in the passage Lane quoted or in the rest of the letter. Lane insists that it's there: remember, he says, "I do not believe any pious excuses along the lines of 'That’s not what they meant!'  This is precisely the kind of let’s-imply-without-saying, sneak behavior that we’ve all come to expect from union 'negotiators.'" It doesn't matter, then, what the letter says: if the letter contains the threat, it's in there, and if the letter does not contain the threat, it's still in there. That is why, in the final analysis, Lane's post is a miserable, worthless piece of shit.

Did you know that Scott Walker's union-killing bill does not apply to police and firefighter unions? According to the New York Times,

The new law weakens unions representing public sector employees by limiting bargaining to wages, restricting raises to inflation, increasing the amount employees pay for health insurance and pensions, and giving union members the right not to pay dues. It also requires unions to hold annual votes to determine if workers still want to belong. The law exempts firefighters and law enforcement personnel. 

Why would it exempt firefighters and police officers? Because they tend to vote Republican, while teachers tend to vote Democratic. The bill targets teachers' unions because the bill is an attempt to weaken the Democratic Party in Wisconsin and make the Republican Party more powerful as a result. Funny, then, that Lane would claim that public servants should be politically neutral, when the political views of cops and firefighters were obviously a consideration in the design of Walker's union-killing bill.

Think about what Lane is alleging. Does he seriously mean to suggest that if there is a fire at a branch of M&I Bank, that firefighters won't respond as quickly as they otherwise would and subsequently endanger innocent human lives? Is Lane seriously suggesting that in the event of a bank robbery at a branch of M&I Bank, police officers will lollygag on their way to the scene and again put innocent human lives at risk? Seriously?

Lane's insane post tells us virtually nothing about labor relations in Wisconsin, but it speaks volumes about Lane himself, and this is what it tells us: even if you tend to be conservative and vote Republican, if you cross Lane on an issue like this, he will plunge the knife in and twist it. Lane's post ends with the following words:

If I lived in Wisconsin, I would be pounding the table right now and demanding that every signatory to that letter hand in their badges.  Since I don’t, it’s incumbent on Wisconsin citizens to make an answer to this.

 Indeed you would, Moe, indeed you would. Because you are a prick.

I'm going with the Nobel Prize-winning economist and the scientific community on this one.

Source

RedState's Vladimir has taken it upon himself to write another ignorant post about climate change. (This is what I had to say about one of his previous posts.)

His target: Paul Krugman. He quotes Krugman as writing the following:

While several factors have contributed to soaring food prices, what really stands out is the extent to which severe weather events have disrupted agricultural production. And these severe weather events are exactly the kind of thing we’d expect to see as rising concentrations of greenhouse gases change our climate — which means that the current food price surge may be just the beginning.

Vladimir responds to Krugman as follows:

[H]aven’t we heard this all before?

“Gee, this is some crazy weather we’ve been having.”

I’m old enough to remember some pretty darn extreme weather, like Hurricane Camille, a monster Cat 5 storm that devastated the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 1969. There was the Super Tornado Outbreak of April, 1974: a complex of 148 twisters that spun across hundreds of mile of the Midwest, killing 148, injuring 5,300, and wiping the town of Xenia, OH off the map. And lest we forget the record cold winter of 1977-78, when natural gas supplies ran low.

Many of our impressions of current extreme weather conditions have to do with the fact that 1) they’re fresh in our memories; 2) we have better communications and 3) higher population densities than in times past.

Complaining about extreme weather is part of the human condition. 

Vladimir then goes on to cite 19 stories about extreme weather dating back to 1888 (I am assuming that none of them were fabricated), and in some cases the extreme weather prompted speculation that the climate was changing. I take it that Vladimir considers that speculation to have been unfounded.

So, what's wrong with Vladimir's response?

Vladimir is attributing to Krugman the following argument:

1. There have been recent outbreaks of severe weather. 
2. Therefore, global climate change is real. 

Granted, Vladimir says nothing about global climate change, but there is little doubt that Vladimir's response is intended to convince his readers that recent severe weather is not evidence that the climate is changing. That is, Vladimir is arguing that the truth of (1) isn't sufficient evidence for the truth of (2).

But if you put the quotation in context and read the rest of Krugman's column, you'll find that Krugman's argument is much stronger than the one Vladimir attributes to him:

It’s true that growth in emerging nations like China leads to rising meat consumption, and hence rising demand for animal feed. It’s also true that agricultural raw materials, especially cotton, compete for land and other resources with food crops — as does the subsidized production of ethanol, which consumes a lot of corn. So both economic growth and bad energy policy have played some role in the food price surge. 

Still, food prices lagged behind the prices of other commodities until last summer. Then the weather struck.  

Consider the case of wheat, whose price has almost doubled since the summer. The immediate cause of the wheat price spike is obvious: world production is down sharply. The bulk of that production decline, according to U.S. Department of Agriculture data, reflects a sharp plunge in the former Soviet Union. And we know what that’s about: a record heat wave and drought, which pushed Moscow temperatures above 100 degrees for the first time ever.  

The Russian heat wave was only one of many recent extreme weather events, from dry weather in Brazil to biblical-proportion flooding in Australia, that have damaged world food production.  

The question then becomes, what’s behind all this extreme weather?  

To some extent we’re seeing the results of a natural phenomenon, La Niña — a periodic event in which water in the equatorial Pacific becomes cooler than normal. And La Niña events have historically been associated with global food crises, including the crisis of 2007-8.  

But that’s not the whole story. Don’t let the snow fool you: globally, 2010 was tied with 2005 for warmest year on record, even though we were at a solar minimum and La Niña was a cooling factor in the second half of the year. Temperature records were set not just in Russia but in no fewer than 19 countries, covering a fifth of the world’s land area. And both droughts and floods are natural consequences of a warming world: droughts because it’s hotter, floods because warm oceans release more water vapor.  

As always, you can’t attribute any one weather event to greenhouse gases. But the pattern we’re seeing, with extreme highs and extreme weather in general becoming much more common, is just what you’d expect from climate change.

Clearly, Krugman is not making the hasty, crude inference Vladimir attributes to him. Krugman's reasoning is more sophisticated than that. Krugman is making what has been called an inference to the best explanation. The idea is this: we are justified in inferring the truth of what best explains what we observe or already know. The mere occurrence of extreme weather does not alone justify the claim that the climate is changing, obviously. But extreme weather, combined with all the other evidence Krugman mentions, does, because if the climate were changing, the phenomena we're observing is exactly what we would expect to observe, i.e., we wouldn't be surprised to make the observations we are in fact making. And that means that the hypothesis that the climate is changing is probably true.

Look at the argument Vladimir attributes to Krugman again. It's bad. Vladimir's post might leave his readers with the impression that those of us who believe that climate change is real accept bad arguments for our belief. But the evidence for climate change is much, much stronger than the argument Vladimir attributes to Krugman. And no amount of bullshit from non-scientists like Vladimir will convince me otherwise, much as I would like it to, because what we face is terrifying.

Perhaps you choose to ignore the evidence because you're not emotionally equipped to deal with the reality of global climate change. Perhaps you have an economic interest in ignoring it, like those Republicans who have been bought by the energy industry. Perhaps you are comforted by the lie that God won't allow global climate change to do serious damage to the planet and those who live on it; perhaps you turn to the Bible for scientific enlightenment. Maybe you're ready to simply continue leading your life as you have always led it because it is comfortable and familiar, and it is good to live in the adolescent haze of the belief that we can release as much carbon dioxide into the environment as we like without consequence. And even if it turns out that the scientific predictions are correct, maybe you won't have to deal with the worst of it, and what do you care if your children, and your children's children, have to live in a far less hospitable world? Why should you care, really?

Sorry, Vladimir. I'm going with the Nobel Prize-winning economist and the scientific community on this one.

Please leave the science to the scientists

Some RedState blogger named Vladimir is overjoyed that Great Britain's unusually cold winter is causing problems for its wind farms.

Vladimir writes:

Bwhahahahahaha!

In a replay of last year’s weather pattern, the U.K. is once again in the grips of a Global Warming Climate Change-induced record cold snap.

Not to worry. Those industrious Brits had the foresight to build wind farms with rated capacity equal to 5% of the country’s electricity needs.

But they’re getting only 1.6% of their electricity from the wind farms. Because…

Extreme wintertime cold comes from high pressure weather systems. And high pressure weather systems don’t generate much wind. Not much wind = not much wind energy.

But since the weather is so cold, big mechanical things like wind turbines freeze up. To prevent damage, they need to be thawed out.

This is priceless:

As the temperature has plummeted, the turbines have had to be heated to prevent them seizing up. Consequently, they have been consuming more electricity than they generate.

Bwhahahahahaha!

I know! As Erick Erickson would say, this is just so awesome! That serves those limey bastards for supporting our unprovoked attack on Iraq! Wait, that doesn't sound right and now I'm confused.

Does RedState require of their bloggers that they be assholes? Just wondering.

Anyway, Vladimir gleefully quotes a columnist for the Daily Mail as saying,

Even though the winters of 2008 and 2009 were ferociously cold, they were dismissed as ‘random events’. The Met Office put the odds on a third harsh winter no higher than 20-1. . . .

Needless to say, the head of the Met Office is not even a weatherman. He’s a leading ‘climate change activist’ who buys into the propaganda pumped out by the fanatics at the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU) — exposed for blatantly suppressing evidence which contradicts their messianic belief in ­‘global warming’.

There's a fair and balanced source!

Vladimir finishes his post with some dated philosophy of science:

Back in the olden days, the Scientific Method worked like this: you made a prediction based on a hypothesis, then tested the prediction. If it was false, you scrapped that hypothesis & went back to the drawing board for a new hypothesis. Now, when the facts are 180 degrees opposite the prediction, the hypothesis dogma stands unchallenged, and a new explanation is fabricated to wrap around and reckoncile with the contrary observations.

Vladimir sounds so smugly self-assured that his readers probably have no idea that he doesn't know what he is talking about. There are very few things more irritating than an idiot who thinks he's a genius.

Vladimir's understanding of philosophy of science goes as far as Karl Popper's idea that bona fide scientific theories are falsifiable. In Conjectures and Refutations, Popper writes,

Every "good" scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is. . . . A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is nonscientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice. . . . Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. 

Now, what is wrong with this? Don't we want our scientific theories to have observational consequences?

As Philip Kitcher shows in Abusing Science: The Case against Creationism, falsifiability cannot be the only thing that separates science from non-science. For one thing, scientific theories by themselves have no observational consequences. In order to use a scientific theory to make predictions, one must make any number of auxiliary assumptions about the testing conditions, other background factual matters, and the like. Therefore, if the prediction turns out to be false, the falsity of the theory does not automatically follow: one of the other assumptions might be the culprit.

Now, one might attempt to modify Popper's criterion by stating that what makes a theory scientific is that it has observational consequences when combined with necessary auxiliary assumptions. But this won't do, either, because any theory, scientific or otherwise, has observational consequences when combined with auxiliary assumptions.

The upshot is this: a few cold snaps in Great Britain do not falsify the theory that human beings are warming the planet. The nature of scientific theory is much more complicated and much more interesting that Vladimir would have us believe. This is because Vladimir is completely out of his depth. And he should also learn how to spell "reconcile."

Those who deny the reality of man-made global warming usually have no expertise in the area. This "genius" compares global warming to a fictional card game mentioned in one of my favorite television series, Star Trek. (How dare he!) All he has shown is that he can't tell the difference between weather and climate:

As I sit here now, snowbound in our Offshore Command Center, I can see a parallel to the totally unbelievable explanations being given by the proponents of man-made global warming. A few years ago, they stated that snowfalls would become more rare. Now, it is a side-effect of the warming process. Much the same, I guess, as the 17 degree temperatures I experienced last week, a whopping 30 degrees lower than the norm for December.

And this "genius" (Vladimir again) appears to suggest that there couldn't be man-made global warming because a third of Americans don't think there is. Scientific questions can be settled by public opinion poll! That's just so awesome! In the same post, Vladimir writes,

There’s a huge difference between “global warming” and “anthropogenic global warming”. If one believes in warming, but that it is caused by natural forces, it is difficult to argue for man-made initiatives to counteract it. Wasting resources fighting earth-scale or even cosmic forces may be the ultimate act of hubris and folly.

I believe I have seen this argument before, i.e., if global warming is not man-made, then we don't need to concern ourselves with doing anything about it. If you think about it, that's not the sort of thing you'd expect to hear a genius say. Human beings have spent millennia battling natural forces, sometimes successfully. And if it just so happens that the scientific consensus on global warming is correct, wouldn't the prudent thing be to try to do something about it?

Hey, RedState bloggers: please leave the science to the scientists, you fucking morons.

So, the detainees at Guantanamo are androids, then?

From two RedState posts published Dec. 21: 

In 2008, I was first introduced to the personhood movement. . . . Instantly, I threw in my support behind the movement, without hesitation or reserve. Why?  Because the argument for personhood was so undeniably true.  In short, every human being has the basic human right to exist.  And further, all human beings deserve the protection of our laws. —Shaun Kenney, "Five Great Reasons Why Personhood Will End Abortion"

Congress is on the verge of passing legislation that would effectively make it impossible to transfer the cases of murderous, terrorist scum to regular American courts.  Congress is doing this, earlier Democratic rhetoric to the contrary, because there are actual limits to legislative stupidity, and it’s pretty stupid to put murderous, terrorist scum into a civilian court system not particularly designed to handle it. —Moe Lane, "Obama administration caves on indefinite detention"

Seriously, though, I don't expect consistency from RedState. I don't even expect individual RedState posts to be internally consistent. Still, I thought it would be instructive to point out that many conservatives don't actually subscribe to important Christian beliefs. And I suspect that many Christians don't subscribe to them, either. 

Klein counters RedState-fueled hysteria

Just in time for the election season, folks on the right are trying to turn health care reform into a liability for the Democrats.

Consider the lather RedState bloggers have worked themselves into. (Did I just end a sentence with a preposition? Oh, dear! What will Leon Wolf think?) Erick Erickson complains that the Obama administration is going to give waivers to corporations to mitigate the "devastating effects of Obamacare." Brian Simpson complains that very few people will opt for the high risk pools created by health care reform (without mentioning, of course, that high risk pools were also proposed by Republicans). Ben Domenech complains that "HHS has missed one-third of the deadlines contained within the legislation for the first six months under Obama’s new health care regime." Brian Simpson compiled a short laundry list of problems, ranging from the refusal by some insurance companies to issue child-only insurance policies to 3M's decision to reimburse retirees' purchase of health insurance rather than sponsoring a health care plan for them.

Of course, had health care reform not been watered down, perhaps none of these problems would have surfaced. Maybe those waivers would not have been necessary. Certainly the high risk pools wouldn't have been necessary. Single-payer was the best solution, but Democrats took it off the table at the very beginning.

Ezra Klein gave us a reality check this morning. Health care reform will bring an end to practices that ought to end. One of the complains Brian Simpson makes is that health care reform will bring an end to McDonald's "mini-med" coverage. This is actually a good thing. According to Klein, Sen. Chuck Grassley actually called McDonald's mini-med coverage "not better than nothing." "The point of health-care reform," writes Klein, "was to get people into real insurance and protect them from illusory plans that run out when they get sick." The consequence of health care reform, according to Klein, will be

a vastly better health-care system, where 32 million more people have coverage and where tens of millions of more are in far better plans than they would've had without the law. But that will require changes in some of the worst plans, and on the part of some of the worst employers and insurers.

Which is worse: the coming changes, or the status quo?

RedState bloggers complain about these changes, but from the fact that changes are coming, it doesn't follow that catastrophe is on the horizon. And if Republicans really are worried, rather than calling for the repeal of health care reform, they ought to be calling for strengthening it.

When this McCarthyist hysteria is over, Erick, you're going to be sorry.

RedState's Erick Erickson posted the following this morning:

[1] If korans are burned in Florida by some moron preacher, the terrorists will get new recruits.

[2] If the Ground Zero Mosque is moved in New York, the terrorists will get new recruits.

[3] In other words, we either bow to the demands and wishes of radical Islamists or else.

This is madness. No. This is Barack Obama’s America.

This is what passes for critical thinking at RedState.

We have good evidence to believe that (1) and (2) above are true.

According to Abdul Shakoor, an 18-year-old high school student in Kabul who protested the planned Koran burning, "We know this is not just the decision of a church. It is the decision of the president and the entire United States." As William Saletan points out, people in the Muslim world will hold all of us responsible for the actions of "some moron preacher," just as many Americans hold all Muslims responsible for 9/11. (How does it feel?) There is also the report from Interpol that the Koran burning is likely to lead to retaliatory attacks against innocent people.

According to Taliban operative Zabihullah, "“By preventing [the New York City mosque] from being built, America is doing us a big favor. It’s providing us with more recruits, donations, and popular support.” According to NPR, "Experts worry the controversy surrounding an Islamic center near ground zero in Lower Manhattan is playing right into the hands of radical extremists." There is little doubt that (2) is true as well.

From (1) and (2), Erickson infers that "we either bow to the demands and wishes of radical Islamists or else." What Erickson is assuming, of course, is that the Muslims who are upset about the Koran burning and opposition to the mosque are radicals. Naturally, that is what your typical conservative thinks: all Muslims are radicals.

That's the problem that bigoted bloggers face: if they're not careful, they will mistakenly put their bigotry on display for all to see. Not that Erickson has anything to worry about; I'm sure that virtually all his readers are just as bigoted as he is.

I believe that there is no good reason to prevent the mosque from being built. Does my belief in American freedom of religion make me a radical?

I believe that those rednecks down in Florida should not be burning copies of the Koran. Does my belief that books ought not to be burned make me a radical?

Why does it seem as if conservatives just want to be allowed to be complete pricks?

Because a lot of them are complete pricks.

What is the mentally challenged Erickson doing on CNN?

This is not madness. This is my America, and I bet it was your America, too, Erick, before you sold your soul to help Republicans win an election. When this McCarthyist hysteria is over, Erick, you're going to be sorry you so cowardly acquiesced to aid and abet it.

Update. It occurred to me after I posted this that I may have interpreted Erickson uncharitably. Even if I did, however, he still has a problem.

Erickson writes, "In other words, we either bow to the demands and wishes of radical Islamists or else." Now, perhaps it might be said that, by "radical Islamists," he is not referring to those of us who are upset about opposition to the New York City mosque or the Koran burning. Perhaps he is referring to potential terrorists, and he is saying that we ought not to give in to their demands.

But think about it: what good reason do we have not to give in to these demands? The demands, if you want to call them that, are reasonable. These are demands that we would place on ourselves as decent Americans if we were thinking clearly. That redneck Jones has a right to have a book burning, but given our belief in our 1st Amendment rights, it would be unwise to exercise that right. We have a right to demand that the New York City mosque be moved, but again, given our belief in our 1st Amendment rights, it would be unwise to exercise that right.

If I were to interpret Erickson charitably, I would be interpreting him as saying the following: we ought not do anything our enemies demand that we do, even if we otherwise have excellent reasons to do it. Were we to do as Erickson suggests, we would in effect give our enemies the power to dictate what we do anyway. Why don't we simply do what we believe is right, regardless of what our enemies' demands are?

Impomeni Post Breakdown: Counting the blogger's fallacies to assess his intention to bullshit

Mark Impomeni of RedState has posted a kind of analysis of President Obama's speech last night. The post is entitled, "Obama Speech Breakdown: Counting the president's words to assess his priorities."

According to Impomeni, Obama used 345 words to blame Bush for lax regulation, 418 words to discuss the spill's effect on the Gulf, 778 words on "the oilspill and cleanup efforts," and 863 words on his"'green energy' agenda."

Impomeni infers that the speech was actually an advertisement for green energy:

Clearly, the president’s number one priority in making this speech was to make the case for his high tax, command and control, lifestyle changing, carbon regulating energy plan.

Moreover, Obama placed his 863 words on “green energy” at the end of his address. In so doing, the president orgnized the speech on the principles of inductive logic - in which the bad news comes first in order to soften the impact of the proposed solution. Everything which comes before his pitch for “green energy” is properly seen, then, as support for Obama’s proposal. The crisis, the impact, the lives of those affected, all props in Obama’s drive to remake the nation’s energy policy.

Last night, Obama revealed himself to be nothing more than a snake-oil salesman. He knows that the public does not want his energy-limiting scheme, but he is determined to force it on America using the worst environmental tragedy in the nation’s history as the hook. Never let a crisis go to waste. 

So, what's wrong with Impomeni's analysis?

Impomeni has as much knowledge of the principles of inductive knowledge as I have of the oil industry. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,

An inductive logic is a system of reasoning that extends deductive logic to less-than-certain inferences. In a valid deductive argument the premises logically entail the conclusion, where such entailment means that the truth of the premises provides a guarantee of the truth of the conclusion. Similarly, in a good inductive argument the premises should provide some degree of support for the conclusion, where such support means that the truth of the premises indicates with some degree of strength that the conclusion is true.

What we currently know about the catastrophe in the Gulf may provide an inductive argument for the need to shift to green energy. (Is there something wrong with presenting inductive arguments?) But softening the impact of the solution to a problem by presenting it after bad news about the problem is not a legitimate means of argumentative support: it is an emotional means of persuasion and is therefore fallacious. When Impomeni describes this means of persuasion as being in agreement with an inductive principle of logic, then, he clearly doesn't know what he's talking about.

Let's agree that the speech was a way for Obama to make the case for green energy. What exactly is wrong with that? One way to prevent future oil spills is to stop using so much damn oil. We have a problem; Obama is proposing a solution. Isn't that what he should be doing? This is another sleazy Republican strategy: cast the discussion in such a way that the opponent cannot win. Had Obama proposed no solution, Impomeni would have complained about that. Obama proposed a solution, and Impomeni is complaining about that. No matter what Obama does, Impomeni will claim that Obama has failed somehow. And this is as good a marker as any of a blogger's intention to bullshit.

Impomeni claims that "the public does not want his energy-limiting scheme." What evidence does he have for that assertion? If we are not to be concerned with evidence, I suppose I could say that Impomeni is a goat-fucking child molester, even though I have no evidence whatsoever for that claim. Right? Why not? Impomeni is a goat-fucking child molester! I can't believe that RedState would be associated with him, you know, since he has sexual relations with goats and molests children. Anyway, according to The Pew Research Center,

Despite the growing damage from the Gulf oil leak, the public generally favors continuing to drill for oil and gas in U.S. waters. And in setting priorities for energy legislation in Congress, fully 68% favor expanding exploration and development of coal, oil and gas in the United States.

Yet there also is broad support for limits on carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions. And as an overall goal for U.S. energy policy, 56% say it is more important to protect the environment, while 37% say it is more important to keep energy prices low.

That doesn't exactly square with Impomeni's claim.

Finally, Impomeni ends his little post by saying, "Never let a crisis go to waste." This idea appears to have gained traction among conservatives. You see, when Republican presidents respond to crises, it's not because they don't want to let a crisis go to waste: rather, they are selflessly doing their jobs out of love for country. But when a Democrat is president, a crisis is an opportunity to destroy the country or gain a political advantage. Remember what Rush Limbaugh had to say about Obama's response to the earthquake in Haiti?

Yes, I think in the Haiti earthquake, ladies and gentlemen -- in the words of Rahm Emanuel -- we have another crisis simply too good to waste. This will play right into Obama's hands. He's humanitarian, compassionate. They'll use this to burnish their, shall we say, "credibility" with the black community -- in the both light-skinned and dark-skinned black community in this country. It's made-to-order for them. That's why he couldn't wait to get out there, could not wait to get out there.

As I've said, this is an example of the Republican strategy I mentioned earlier. If Obama responds to the earthquake, it's because he's evil, and if he does not respond to the earthquake, it's because he's evil. No matter what, then, Obama is evil.

The truth of the matter is that the only evil people in this situation are the bullshitters, e.g., Limbaugh and Impomeni, among others. When an intelligent debate about our energy future is needed, all these goat-fucking child molesters can offer is a virtually endless supply of bullshit.

Source of word vomit stream identified as RedState's hysterical Ziganto

The pace at which RedState's Lori Ziganto churns out her hysterical, dimwitted screeds is impressive.  I simply don't have the time to respond to all of them since I work well over 40 hours a week.  And that doesn't include the work I do around the house.

Anyway, according to Ziganto, Obama expressed disapproval of the United States' superpower status in remarks he made at the recent nuclear security summit.  Ziganto writes,

Yesterday at his nuclear conference, Obama said the following:

“Whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower.”

Whether we like it or not. That’s like what Mommies say when telling you to eat your yucky vegetables. Would he prefer that we be vulnerable and weak? Heck of an American Can-Do attitude, Barry!  

("Barry," by the way, is birtherspeak.  While outing herself as a birther might play well with her readers, it makes her look unhinged to the rest of us.)  The title of her little essay is, "Obama and His Administration Lament America’s Superpower Status."

One finds more predictable conservative shrieking about Obama in her little essay.  Ziganto writes, "Obama does not believe in American Exceptionalism and he is actively pursuing its decline."  Ziganto also writes:

Obama’s entire career path was predicated on the belief that America is icky and needs “fixed.” That America needs to be more like Europe. He goes on apology tours grousing about all our delusionally perceived wrongs, for goodness sake. He can’t even bring himself to ever praise America. 

And she goes on to ally herself with Liz Cheney.  According to Ziganto, she and Cheney live up to the creed, "Walk softly, but carry a big lipstick."  (Say what?  If I disagree with them, will they sneak up on me and give me a makeover?)  That kind of tells you everything you need to know.

Anyway, I wonder why the quotation that sparked Ziganto's touch of word vomit was so short?  Gee, I wonder what the context was? Let's take a look!

I remain committed to being a partner with countries around the world, and in particular hot spots around the world, to see if we can reduce those tensions and ultimately resolve those conflicts.  And the Middle East would be a prime example.  I think that the need for peace between Israelis and Palestinians and the Arab states remains as critical as ever. 

It is a very hard thing to do.  And I know that even if we are applying all of our political capital to that issue, the Israeli people through their government, and the Palestinian people through the Palestinian Authority, as well as other Arab states, may say to themselves, we are not prepared to resolve this -- these issues -- no matter how much pressure the United States brings to bear. 

And the truth is, in some of these conflicts the United States can’t impose solutions unless the participants in these conflicts are willing to break out of old patterns of antagonism. I think it was former Secretary of State Jim Baker who said, in the context of Middle East peace, we can’t want it more than they do. 

But what we can make sure of is, is that we are constantly present, constantly engaged, and setting out very clearly to both sides our belief that not only is it in the interests of each party to resolve these conflicts but it’s also in the interest of the United States.  It is a vital national security interest of the United States to reduce these conflicts because whether we like it or not, we remain a dominant military superpower, and when conflicts break out, one way or another we get pulled into them.  And that ends up costing us significantly in terms of both blood and treasure.

So I’m going to keep on at it.  But I think on all these issues -- nuclear disarmament, nuclear proliferation, Middle East peace -- progress is going to be measured not in days, not in weeks.  It’s going to take time.  And progress will be halting.  And sometimes we’ll take one step forward and two steps back, and there will be frustrations.  And so it’s not going to run on the typical cable news 24/7 news cycle.  But if we’re persistent, and we’ve got the right approach, then over time, I think that we can make progress.

(Emphasis mine.)  Obviously, Obama is acknowledging our superpower status and what he takes to be its attendant responsibilities.  He is also saying that, all else being equal, it is better in the long run that we lead other nations in striving for peace rather than engage them in war.

Only in the mind of an hysterical conservative blogger is acknowledging the costs of war a condemnation of military strength.

Ziganto, you're a f*cking idiot.  There, I said it.

Incidentally, Lori, how do you square your claim that Obama is pursuing the decline of American exceptionalism with Obama's assertion in the very same speech you quote that "because of the steps we’ve taken [at the summit], the American people will be safer"?

I find it funny that Ziganto, who likely supports the Republican Party, claims that Obama is anti-American when it is the Party of No that is so intent on having us mired in a no-can-do malaise—for political purposes, of course.

How can Ziganto, with her overworked, sputtering brain, square what she says in her hysterical little essay with Obama's assertion that "I stand here today as hopeful as ever that the United States of America will endure, that it will prevail; that the dream of our founders will live on in our time"? Or Obama's declaration that "To ensure prosperity here at home and peace abroad, we all share the belief we have to maintain the strongest military on the planet"? Or Obama's message that

in the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. For when we have faced down impossible odds; when we've been told that we're not ready, or that we shouldn't try, or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people. Yes we can.  

Or Obama's statement at the 2004 Democratic National Convention that

Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our nation not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy; our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  That is the true genius of America. 

Ziganto, take your snark and boobs and find something that you're actually qualified to do—fast food, say.

RedState's bk suffers injury in attempt to use logic

When one oversimplifies issues and refuses to make important distinctions, one will find double standards where none exist.

Such is the case with RedState blogger bk.

In "Abortion vs death penalty double standard," bk accuses "'true' liberals" of (1) working to minimize the suffering of criminals who are being executed but (2) not working to minimize the suffering of sentient fetuses that are being aborted.

I suppose that bk would respond to my criticism of his post below by asserting that I am a false liberal (whatever that is).  Anyway, here it is.

bk cites this New York Times story as evidence that liberals don't want criminals being executed to feel pain.  The story concerns the death penalty case Baze v. Rees, in which "a United States District Court judge in Tennessee ruled that the state had, in fact, violated the Eighth Amendment by disregarding the 'substantial risk' that the three-drug cocktail [used in lethal injection] would cause 'unnecessary pain.'"

Notice that the motivation isn't compassion for the condemned: it is concern about the constitutionality of the punishment.  The Eighth Amendment prohibits "cruel and unusual punishment."  bk can't simply ignore the Constitution, even if it would give him great satisfaction to know that criminals feel pain when they are executed.

Anyway, bk asserts that liberals are opposed to a bill being considered in Nebraska that "would make all abortions after the 20th week illegal because of the suffering of the baby vs the current law there that looks at viability on a case by case basis." (Notice his use of the word "baby" to refer to the fetus—a vile technique used by pro-lifers to convert others to their cause by non-rational means.) According to bk,

The same sort of liberals who didn’t want criminals to allegedly suffer for a moment just before death are absolutely outraged at this idea. They are worried because with the Roberts court having already okayed partial birth abortion bans in Gonzales v. Carhart that they might allow another “pillar” of Roe v. Wade to be chopped down by setting a fixed limit – a “bright line” – on viability.  

Allow me to explain, bk.

I am liberal.

I am pro-choice.  I believe that abortion should be legal, safe, and (most importantly) rare.  I don't believe that abortion should be available without restriction, as bk claims.  For example, I am against partial birth abortion unless continuation of a pregnancy threatens the life or health of a woman.  Aborting a viable fetus is equivalent to infanticide in my view.  Why am I pro-choice?  I believe that abortion is a serious moral issue.  The decision to terminate fetal life ought not to be made lightly.  But human beings have a right to control their own bodies.  (Indeed, if we don't have that, what's left to have?)  No government or church has a right to dictate to a woman what her reproductive choices will be.  Many pro-lifers forget that women have rights if fetuses have rights; to them, it is as if women are mere livestock.  But no right is absolute.  It is true that some fetuses are sentient, and fetal sentience is a moral problem for pro-choicers.  But fetal sentience is not the only moral consideration.

I am opposed to the death penalty.  I believe that criminal punishment is justified by its deterrent effect.  There is no scientific proof that the deterrent effect of the death penalty is superior to that of all other alternative punishments, such as life in prison without parole.  And life in prison without parole is a severe punishment.  Common sense arguments that the death penalty is a superior deterrent are no better than common sense arguments that abolition of the death penalty would deter murders.  So the death penalty is overkill: for all we know, we can deter all murders that can be deterred without it, so the death penalty is unnecessary.  And I haven't even mentioned the issue of executing innocent people, an issue that a conservative ought to be concerned about if their support of the death penalty is justified by something other than a lust for blood.  If it could be shown that the death penalty were a superior deterrent, then we would be justified in using it, even if it caused those who received it to suffer.

We ought to minimize unnecessary suffering in this world, be it experienced by the innocent or guilty, human being or sentient non-human animal.  But this is only one of our moral duties.  There are others, bk.  So I reject your rudimentary argument that liberals accept a double standard here. 

Notice that I could formulate an equally sloppy argument to show that "true conservatives" accept a number of double standards: they have concern for the suffering of fetuses, for example, but not for the suffering of infants, especially if they have preexisting conditions or their parents are impoverished.  Of course, there are actual examples of plenty of conservative politicians holding plainly contradictory positions, but we needn't go into that here.  

It is posts like bk's that engender the belief that conservative bloggers can win debates only by oversimplifying the issues, refusing to recognize important distinctions, and attributing strawmen to their opponents who they reduce to mere caricatures.  Conservatives, those debating strategies make you look like morons.  I know a lot of you think that many liberals are mindless idiots, and I suppose that some of them are.  But many of us are actually pretty smart—smart enough to see bk's post for what it is: an attempt to propagandize a readership whose intellectual defenses are down.

RedState's whopping adolescent non sequitur

You have no doubt heard about the threats and vandalism surrounding the vote on health care reform in the House March 21.  Talking Points memo prepared a catalog of the mayhem for your perusal should your memory need refreshing. 

RedState's approach to this phenomenon has been one whopping adolescent non sequitur. 

I know I'm a bit late with this, but I am lucky enough to be employed full time.  I do what I can.

Erick Erickson's general approach has been to avoid his own party's complicity and blame Democrats for the whole thing. This isn't surprising, as I have said before, given the Republican Party's refusal to take responsibility for anything. He and Moe Lane love to point out that Republicans are also targets of threats and vandalism. According to Erickson:

The threats, potential acts of violence, and violence against those who voted for the health care legislation must be condemned. . . . I have heard the audio of some of the threats. I get worse stuff routinely. Rush Limbaugh gets worse stuff on a daily basis. Republican members of Congress have gotten similar and worse stuff. Thank God this wasn’t a free trade vote or a variety of left wing groups would have half the country in flames right now.

Erickson says that Democrats shouldn’t be surprised and that they were playing with fire by passing the health care reform bill.  In another post, Erickson writes, "We’re not the ones stirring the pot of socialism taking over the private sector. The Democrats are. We’ve just been pointing out the facts that . . . the Democrats find so inconvenient including, yes, the so called 'death panels.'" According to Erickson, "[H]ad the Democrats not done what they did none of this would be happening. . . . Oh, and let’s not forget Alan Grayson on the floor of the House saying the GOP wants people to die." (Erickson, of course, conveniently neglects to mention Republicans warning Americans that they would die if health care reform were passed.)  In that post, he repeats the claim that Democratic supporters are also guilty of violence. "[I]f we go back to the August townhalls," writes Erickson, "7 out of 10 violent acts were by Democrat supporters. And now? Police say the bullet that hit Eric Cantor’s office was most likely random, but it is not definitive. What about the threats his office has gotten in the past week? What about the threats Congresswoman Schmidt received or the other Republicans?"

Moe Lane's glee in pointing out violent behavior among Democratic supporters is apparent. In the post "DNC successful: Ablemarle County GOP HQ attacked," Lane quotes a report that "someone threw bricks through the headquarter’s [sic] windows, breaking three of them." He writes, "If I were the Albemarle County GOP, I’d send the bill for the windows to the Democratic National Committee. After all, they adamantly refused to take responsibility for their own rhetoric, so it only seems fair that they at least pay out some monetary compensation for their demagoguery." Lane also reports, "[T]he United States Attorney in Philadelphia filed 'a two-count complaint and warrant . . . charging Norman Leboon with threatening to kill United States Congressman Eric Cantor and his family.'" You can probably guess what Lane's response is to uproar over Sarah Palin's "reload map." He directs us to a Verum Serum post blaming Democrats for the same fundraising tactics, i.e., using maps and language that "are, if anything, more militant than what Palin used in her Facebook posting."

To summarize, RedState's response to the vandalism and threats by Republican supporters and their incitement by Republican leaders is as follows:

1. Democratic supporters are guilty of vandalism and threats; 
2. Democratic leaders are guilty of inciting those acts. 
3. Democrats were asking for it.  

Now, what is wrong with this response?  Well, when one summarizes it as I have, the fog lifts and its problems come into view.  Let's just grant the truth of (1).  It wouldn't surprise me if some Democratic supporters resort to criminal acts.  And if (1) is true, then (2) probably has a kernel of truth in it.  Whether we hold a person A responsible for the actions of another person B, however, we have to ask: what did A do to incite B to act?  The more inflammatory A's behavior or language, the more responsible A is for inciting B.  And though I don't have the time now to do this research for you, there is no question that the behavior and language on the right has been far more inflammatory than behavior and language on the left.  One would have to be uninformed or in the grip of a partisan fantasy to claim otherwise.  The right has all of the "responsibility-free talkers on television and radio" as David Frum puts it.  The left has MSNBC, but their rhetoric simply doesn't compare to that of, say, Michael Savage.  While RedState is quick to blame Democratic leaders for inciting their supporters to criminal behavior, however, they say absolutely nothing about the culpability of Republican leaders for inciting the same behavior. 

But the more important question is this.  Let's suppose that (1) and (2) are both true.  What possible relevance does that have to this issue?  In the end, the correct answer is, I believe, "None."  The issues are these: Republican supporters have been threatening Democratic lawmakers and committing vandalism, and Republicans are responsible for inciting some of their behavior.  Erickson addresses the first issue by saying the behavior must be condemned.  But he does so in passing; he clearly seems interested in other matters.  By accusing Democratic leaders and supporters of doing the same things, they aren't really addressing the issue at all; they are shifting their (and our) attention to something else that only seems to be related simply because it is on the same topic, i.e., threats and vandalism. 

Why has RedState chosen to respond to the threats and vandalism in the way that they have?  Let's survey some possibilities.

1. Erickson and Lane are saying that the behavior of Republican leaders and supporters is permissible since Democratic leaders and supporters are guilty of the same behavior.  Everyone is familiar with this method, employed by children, of justifying objectionable behavior.  And anyone familiar with logic knows that this maneuver is a fallacy.  One cannot justify the behavior on the right merely by claiming that some people on the left engage in the same behavior.  Erickson asserts repeatedly that we ought not condone the threats and vandalism, however, and I would like to be charitable and take him at his word.  But if I do, then it would seem to follow that Erickson himself does not recognize the irrelevance of his own comments on this issue.  Therefore, either Erickson is resorting to the child's method of self-defense, or he is unaware of a basic point in rudimentary critical thinking texts. 
2. Erickson and Lane are saying that all such behavior is wrong, and consistency demands that anyone who condemns such behavior among Republican leaders and supporters condemn the same behavior among Democratic leaders and supporters.  Perhaps they are criticizing the media for failing to cover and condemn criminal acts by Democrats.  Anyone who has read RedState enough knows that their bloggers buy into the myth of the liberal media.  On the other hand, it is probably true that most of the behavior in question has been perpetrated by Republican leaders and supporters, so naturally it will receive the lion's share of the coverage.  But even if we interpret them as having this motivation, it is clear that they are attempting to divert attention away from the issues at hand and toward alleged objectionable behavior among Democrats.  
3. Erickson and Lane are worried that the threats and vandalism reflect badly on conservatives, so they are concerned with pointing out that liberals also engage in the same behavior in order to reestablish parity.  Sorry, RedState, but this isn't going to work.  There's a reason that stereotypical Republicans are portrayed as an intolerant, prejudiced, fearful, anti-intellectual, gun-toting regular folk having compassion only for corporations: because there is some truth in that stereotype, and Republicans have been nurturing that stereotype for decades by appealing to just that sort of person for support.  And for that reason, attempting to graft a similar stereotype onto liberals comes off as a bit desperate and absurd.  Of course, stereotypes can only be generally true, if they are true at all.  There are plenty of Republicans who do not fit the stereotype: I know a few.  But even if we suppose that this maneuver does work, how is it relevant to the matter at hand?  It is not. Again, they are diverting your attention away from the issues at hand and toward alleged objectionable behavior among Democrats. 

Finally, let us consider (3): Democrats were asking for it.  This is not the first time I have dealt with this kind of argument from the right.  Even The Onion has dealt with it.  If the threats and vandalism ought to be condemned as Erickson claims, then why claim that Democrats were asking for it?  If the behavior in question is wrong, then it doesn't matter what the Democrats were asking for.  The behavior ought to be condemned, and that's that.  All kinds of reprehensible behavior can be excused in this manner: had he not been so annoying, he wouldn't have been assaulted; had she not dressed so provocatively, she wouldn't have been raped, and so on.  It makes it sound as if the victim is to blame: he shouldn't have been so annoying; she shouldn't have been so attractive, and so on.  But is it true that the Democrats ought not to have passed health care reform?  They were lawfully elected and lawfully passed the legislation.  Democrats did nothing wrong.

So we see that RedState's response to the threats and vandalism is a non sequitur: it is completely irrelevant to the issues at hand. But RedState isn't interested in sound thinking.  The fallacies they commit are convincing, especially to a readership that has been groomed to accept them.  For them, if Democrats enact legislation to which they are opposed, and Democratic supporters engage in criminal behavior, perhaps incited by a handful of Democratic leaders and pundits, then there is nothing wrong with spitting on congressmen, referring to congressmen with the n-word, threatening congressmen, and damaging private property.  They were asking for it, after all.  And this comes from the family values, law and order party.  Republicans truly have lost their souls.

I've had enough.

It appears that RedState has given Moe Lane the job of spinning reports of violent behavior by right-wing nutjobs immediately before and after the health care reform vote in the House on March 21.  Their entire approach to this phenomenon is one whopping non-sequitur.  More about that in a future post.

In his latest poorly argued piece of propaganda, Lane claims that Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, who is believed to have been spat upon by a protester March 21, made the whole thing up.  His evidence?  Cleaver doesn't want to talk about the incident.  In an obviously biased report produced by a Fox "News" affiliate, Cleaver said:

All I'm saying is that we all have to diffuse it and I think that it is not in my best interests or the best interests of this nation to stoke it, and I've avoided doing it, and I'll continue to do that. 

Cleaver's decision not to talk about it is motivated not by an unwillingness to face those who accuse him of lying, but rather by a desire to elevate the debate from the immature racist name-calling of the protesters to something more civil and productive. 

It is incredibly easy to point out just how truly awful Lane's inference is.  Here's Lane's argument:

1. If a person does not want to talk about an incident, then that incident did not in fact occur.  
2. Cleaver does not want to talk about the incident.  
3. Therefore, Cleaver made the whole thing up.  

The problem with this argument is obviously (1).  (1) is clearly false.  Human beings everywhere decline to talk about things that have happened to them, for all kinds of reasons.  Many people don't like to talk about traumatic events in their lives, and sometimes need therapy in order to bring themselves to the point at which they can talk about them.  For Lane, if a woman tells a loved one that she's been raped, but refuses to talk about it or go to the police, then she must be lying.  Well, isn't that convenient for the rapist? 

Moe, your argument is a pile of shit. 

And Moe, don't bother me with any stupid objections like, "I didn't say that Cleaver was a rapist!" or "What does my argument have to do with rape?"  Take a critical thinking course and then get back to me.

If Lane's argument is so bad, then, why did he present it?  If you watch the Fox "News" video, you'll notice that the reporter interviewed Chris Stigall, a morning radio talk show host, in order to get his opinion on the story.  And what did Stigall say?

It's incumbent upon [Cleaver] to downplay it.  If truly he's interested in diffusing the anger and the hostility out there, then acknowledge, this [protester] was just wanting to be heard.  To even allow the myth for a week now to be out there that he was spat upon purposely, that does nothing to diffuse anything.  It just makes things worse. 

Lane took Stigall's comments and ran with them.  Stigall has clearly decided that Cleaver is lying.  How he knows this is a mystery.  And the subtle racism in his advice to Cleaver is unsettling.  Allow me to decode: "Just admit that nothing happened, leave that nice man who was screaming at you alone, and know your place.  When you're uppity like that, it just makes things worse."  It sounds very much like what abusers tell their victims in order to keep them quiet. 

I have no problem with conservatives expressing their views.  What bothers me are writers who, in spite of their nauseating smugness, have the critical thinking skills of a gerbil and a propagandist's complete lack of interest in truth and evidence.  To quote Bill James, "What we really need is for the amateurs to clear the floor." 

Updates.

1. Lane has updated his post with a link to a post on something called Weasel Zippers.  The post is signed "ZIP."  ZIP asserts that some claim or other is "100% bullshit." ZIP also writes, "If Rep. Emanuel Cleaver was spit on he would be milking it for everything it's worth," rather than refusing to comment on it. ZIP also writes, "I interpret this as Cleaver backing away from his initial claim he was spit on. Again, proving it NEVER happened."  That's ZIP, showing us all how to jump to conclusions. 
2. My spouse thinks I may be jumping to conclusions by seeing racism in Stigall's opinion.  Maybe I am.  But I doubt it, and this is why.  Conservatives are arguing that, among all of those protesters, no one used the n-word and no one spat on the congressmen.  Seriously?  Isn't it more plausible to believe that among all of those protesters, some of them used the n-word, and one of them actually spat on a congressman?  Their position on this matter is prima facie implausible and much more difficult to defend than mine.  So why would they argue for that position?  Well, they have a partisan axe to grind, of course.  But it wouldn't surprise me if some latent racism is a factor as well. 

Wolf at RedState attempts to school Carson and Lewis on civil rights

Somewhat predictably, certain bloggers on the right are claiming that protesters in Washington actually did not hurl racial epithets at congressmen on Saturday.

RedState's Leon H. Wolf's evidence for this claim is the following video:



You can read his post and watch the video here.

"The specific accusation most often repeated," Wolf writes, "is that when Andre Carson (D-IN) and John Lewis (D-Ga) left the Cannon House Office Building yesterday, they were met with a crowd that chanted the 'n-word' at them repeatedly." According to Wolf, "It turns out, it’s not just that there’s a lack of evidence that this ever happened, there’s actually video evidence of the scene in question which absolutely proves that Carson and Lewis are full of crap."

What is the problem with Wolf's argument?

Wolf is obviously assuming that if Carson's and Lewis's story were true, the n-word would have been audible on the video. Now, is this assumption true? Carson and Lewis cover a lot of ground on the video. Are we really expected to believe that this single recording device would have captured anything of interest? How stupid does Wolf think we are?

Wolf infers from the video that Carson and Lewis are liars. And that's not all:

I don’t know if these two idiots are just unaware that protesters and activists tend to carry video cameras everywhere they go now in order to catch news as it happens, or if (more likely) they just figured that their completely fabricated story fit a pre-existing narrative the media would be happy to credulously pass on. The sad thing is that it appears to have worked. I won’t hold my breath for all the media who slandered the Tea Party protesters to retract and publicly these two out [sic] for the liars they are, though.

Really, it’s sad in a way. Racism still does exist in this country, but political crooks like Carson and Lewis have turned the owrd [sic] into a joke for the sake of their own political gain. Well done, fellas - way to serve the cause.

Carson and Lewis, according to Wolf, are idiots as well. In fact, Wolf's post is entitled, "Lying Bastards Lie." So, according to Wolf, Carson and Lewis are (1) liars, (2) idiots, and (3) bastards. Is it really a stretch to think that Wolf and others like him would use the n-word to refer to them as well? No.

What's more likely?

• No one in the crowd used a racial epithet, but Carson and Lewis claimed falsely that someone did, knowing that there were plenty of witnesses, some with video recording equipment, who would contradict them;
• Someone in the crowd used a racial epithet, but the single video recording device failed to capture it. 

Why believe that Carson and Lewis are lying? Why not just believe their story, since "[r]acism still does exist in this country"?  Here's my guess: Wolf is probably thinking that, well, there's just something that's not quite right about those two, Carson and Lewis.  Gee, what could it be?  Well, whatever it is, many of their readers probably noticed it as well and were therefore more likely to accept Wolf's lame argument.  I mean, what else would someone who reads RedState expect from these two congressmen who don't quite look right, who seem unsavory somehow? 

What is both completely laughable and offensive is Wolf's admonishment of Lewis and Carson in the final paragraph, as if Wolf is actually an authority on the cause or even cares about the cause. Lewis was part of the civil rights movement in the previous century; Wolf is some asshole who contributes to a blog. Spare me.

Update: RedState's Martin Knight is presenting the same flawed argument.  It's there alongside some rather irrational ranting:

There has not been a single competitive election, legislative battle or even debate on the issues in the past four decades that Democrats have parachuted charges of racism and “hate.”

It is what Democrats use as shorthand for “I disagree”; it’s what they call their kids when they don’t do their homework. How does anyone think it became racist for one to be pro-life, or pro-school vouchers when the vast majority of black parents support school choice?

I think that in his hysteria, Knight said the opposite of what he meant to say in the first paragraph.  In the second, he infers from the fact that many of us are calling the protesters who hurled racist epithets "racist" that we think that being pro-life and supporting pro-school vouchers is racist.  I don't think that being pro-life or supporting pro-school vouchers is racist; I think referring to African Americans with the n-word is racist.  Martin, get a grip.

I have an idea

As of 7:56 p.m. my time, Erick Erickson at RedState believes that all is not lost.

"There is still a change [sic], though increasingly slim, that the House GOP will be able to blow up the health care bill on a motion to recommit," Erickson writes.

Republicans can also "[p]ledge immediate repeal in toto of Obamacare should it pass." And they can "[p]ledge to adopt for their own use the exact same rules under which Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats have governed the House of Representatives."

Hell, they can even challenge parts of the bill in court, Erickson says.

Hey, Erick, I have an idea: win a freaking election. That's what you can do. Win an election.  

And by the way, you might find a supermajority in the Senate helpful, now that your party has established its necessity.

You lost the election. Stop your whining, you pathetic bunch of crybabies. That goes for you racist, homophobic Teabaggers as well. [And if any of you Teabaggers are insulted by this, then I have two things to say: (1) shame on you for feeling insulted, and (2) you lost your right to complain when you started throwing the n-word around.] 

Note: this is Your Analytic Analeptic's one hundredth post! Φ's kinda excited about it, even if no one else is.

Erickson at RedState favors politicization of the Justice Department

Read about it here.

Sounding as if he's channeling Barry Goldwater, Erickson states, "Liz Cheney is right."

Erickson writes:

There will always be lawyers willing to defend the indefensible. And if you are a lawyer willing to defend the indefensible you can get really rich and/or really infamous. Some of them are there just because they like the challenge.

Typically, however, the lawyers willing to defend the indefensible are from the far left — particularly when defending those who are at war with America.

Good for them for being willing to have a niche in the legal field. But it says something not about them, but about the Obama administration that Barack Obama would put these same attorneys into the Department of Justice.

In the second paragraph, Erickson employs Cheney's McCarthyite strategy of questioning the loyalties and values of the Justice Department lawyers in question. At the same time, he reminds us who the real defenders of the Constitution are—not some cowardly risk-averse sociopathic right-wing intellectual lightweights, but rather those on the left who understand that no single person should have the power to decide who deserves due process and who doesn't.  Further, as I understand the law, the Obama administration is under no obligation to take advantage of the "legal" avenues opened to them by the Military Commissions Act.  

In the third paragraph, Erickson comes out in favor of the politicization of the Department of Justice. For those of us with the long-term memory of your average goldfish, you can read all about it here and here. And I say "politicization" because Erickson implies that Obama ought to have a litmus test for lawyers: he should hire only those lawyers that share Erickson's point of view regarding the treatment and legal status of Guantanamo detainees.  As I understand it, though, Eric Holder, not Obama, is responsible for running Justice.

We cannot infer anything about the political views of Justice Department lawyers from the work they do at the Justice Department; neither can we make their employment at Justice contingent on their personal political views.  Politicizing Justice in this manner undercuts the very foundation of the legal system in this country; it engenders the belief that we are not all equal before the law, that how one is treated by the legal system may depend on one's own political views.  Perhaps that's what Cheney and her supporters really want.

RedState, Abortion, and the Senate Health Care Bill

Brian Faughnan of RedState recently claimed that "Obamacare" pays for abortion. His evidence for this claim was a quotation of Sen. Barbara Boxer appearing in California Catholic Daily:

Boxer, who played a prominent role in brokering the ‘compromise’ in behind-closed-doors meetings with Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nevada, and Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Nebraska (who insisted on the abortion provision to obtain his yes vote), came under withering attacks from her longtime pro-abortion supporters following the inclusion of the Nelson provision. . . .

But not to worry, Boxer told McClatchy News Service. Boxer, reported McClatchy, “said it's only an ‘accounting procedure’ that will do nothing to restrict [abortion] coverage.”

So is it true? Does the Senate bill provide for government funding of abortion as California Catholic Daily, that paragon of objective and impartial reporting, claims?

Here's what Timothy Noah of Slate has to say about the matter:

"If you go to Page 2069 through Page 2078 [of the Senate bill]," Stupak told George Stephanopoulos on March 4 on Good Morning America, "you will find in there the federal government would directly subsidize abortions, plus every enrollee in the Office of Personnel Management-enrolled plan, every enrollee has to pay a minimum of one dollar per month toward reproductive rights, which includes abortions." Stupak is here referring to the exchanges created under health reform and to a nonprofit plan managed by the Office of Personnel Management that would be sold through the exchanges. The latter was a consolation prize to supporters of a public-option government health insurance program that didn't make it into the bill.

Let's go to Page 2069 through Page 2078 of the Senate-passed bill. It says, "If a qualified plan provides [abortion] coverage … the issuer of the plan shall not use any amount attributable to [health reform's government-funding mechanisms] for purposes of paying for such services." (This is on Page 2072.) That seems pretty straightforward. No government funding for abortions. (Except in the case of rape, incest, or a threat to the mother's life—the same exceptions granted under current law.) If a health insurer selling through the exchanges wishes to offer abortion coverage—the federal government may not require it to do so, and the state where the exchange is located may (the bill states) pass a law forbidding it to do so—then the insurer must collect from each enrollee (regardless of sex or age) a separate payment to cover abortion. The insurer must keep this pool of money separate to ensure it won't be commingled with so much as a nickel of government subsidy. (This is on Pages 2072-2074.)

Stupak is right that anyone who enrolls through the exchange in a health plan that covers abortions must pay a nominal sum (defined on Page 125 of the bill as not less than "$1 per enrollee, per month") into the specially segregated abortion fund. But Stupak is wrong to say this applies to "every enrollee." If an enrollee objects morally to spending one un-government-subsidized dollar to cover abortion, then he or she can simply choose a different health plan offered through the exchange, one that doesn't cover abortions. (Under the Senate bill, every insurance exchange must offer at least one abortion-free health plan.)

When Boxer said that the bill would do nothing to restrict abortion coverage, then, she was claiming that those who enroll in a health plan through the exchange would be able to obtain coverage for abortion if they so chose; she was not claiming that taxpayers would pay for those abortions, as California Catholic Daily claims.

If I had to speculate, I would say that the folks at California Catholic Daily made an honest mistake. Their belief that Democrats want people to have abortions, combined with their own incompetence, resulted in their mistaken reporting. The losers at RedState, on the other hand, did not make an honest mistake. They want health care reform to fail, and they are willing to say anything, true or false, to help bring that about.

Another swing and a miss by RedState. You're the gift that keeps on giving. This is too easy.

RedState's incoherent take on the torture memo lawyers

Leon H. Wolf of RedState is a very confused man.

Recently, he criticized liberals for criticizing the Justice Department's treatment of Bush II lawyers who wrote legal memos authorizing the torture of suspected terrorists. The men, John Yoo, Jay Bybee and Steven Bradbury, were accused of exercising poor judgment. This ruling superseded the original judgment of the investigation, which was that the lawyers were guilty of professional misconduct. That judgment could have led to their disbarment or even criminal prosecution. Read more from my sources here and here.

On my view, this ruling is troubling. There is no doubt that the Bush II administration used torture, and torture is illegal. Those responsible for the torture are guilty of war crimes. David Margolis, the man at Justice responsible for this latest judgment, has exonerated the men responsible for the torture memo and thus saw to it that they will not be punished for war crimes. The memos themselves justified the Bush II administration's use of torture, and therefore those in charge of the torture can avoid responsbility for their criminal acts. In the end, everyone involved in these war crimes will not be prosecuted and are therefore in effect above the law. As Scott Horton argues, this is a very serious matter:

Open criminality is a cancer on democracy. It implicates all who know of the conduct and fail to act. Such compliance presents a practical crisis, in that a government that is allowed to torture will inevitably transgress other legal limits. But it also presents an existential political crisis. Many democracies have simply collapsed as the people permitted their leaders to abandon the rule of law in the face of alleged external threats. The turn to torture was rapid, for instance, in Argentina at the time of the Dirty War and in Chile after the American-directed coup against Salvador Allende. In both cases, that turn had little to do with a perceived benefit from the use of torture in interrogation. To the contrary, the very criminality of the act had a talismanic significance. It asserted the primacy of the will of the torturer. It made the claim, for all to accept or reject, that the ruler was the law. Such a claim is, of course, intolerable to democracy, which presupposes, as Thomas Paine wrote, that “the law ought to be King; and there ought to be no other.”

So, what is Wolf's take on this? I'll quote his post at length:

Like a spoiled and petulant child who has tattled on a sibling to Daddy to no effect, angry liberals who are mad that Bush Administration lawyers suggested it was legal to put a terrorist in a box with a caterpillar have decided to try the other parent to see if they get a more satisfactory response. . . . Ever content to parody themselves, outraged liberals offended at our very uncouth treatment of people who plot our national destruction have been busy demanding the heads of current law professor John Yoo and current federal appeals judge Jay Bybee ever since. . . .

Of course, as everyone (most especially the Obama Administration) realizes, this course of action is preposterous and dangerous for the future of our country.
In the first place, . . . it’s preposterous to go on a witch hunt against lawyers for the crime of rendering a legal opinion, simply because that legal opinion proves to be politically unpopular with certain sets of the population. . . .

More to the point, the ridiculous hyperventilation directed at Messrs. Yoo and Bybee by people who haven’t the foggiest clue of these basic principles - and the politically-motivated witch hunt that has followed, will lead inexorably to the practice of defensive (read: bad) law. . . . In a rare exercise of foresight, it appears that someone in the Administration has posed the question, “Say, what’s to prevent people from going after our license if we, say, opine that it’s legal for the EPA to enact cap-and-trade without legislative authorization?”
This, however, is a point that is lost on the bungling left, who seemingly have no guiding star or principle other than being nice to people who want to kill Americans and destroy this country.

One can immediately see that Wolf is going to use whatever fallacious, non-rational means of persuasion are required to convince his readers, who are all too ready to believe what he says anyway and whose intelligence Wolf obviously does not respect. For who is the opposition here? The "bungling left," composed of "spoiled and petulant" children who want only to "[be] nice to people who want to kill Americans." If Wolf's actual arguments are so good, what purpose does the abuse serve? But think about it: how plausible is it that liberals, who are actual Americans, really want to be nice to actual terrorists? Last I heard, they want to convict them in civilian courts and execute them. So the portrayal is not only false; it is ludicrous.

Second, notice that, according to Wolf, the reason why liberals want to go after the torture memo lawyers is that their "legal opinion proves to be politically unpopular with certain sets of the population." This is, of course, false, as Horton makes clear. And, of course, it is also ludicrous.

Third, Wolf argues for the claim that punishing the lawyers will produce bad law. But his argument for this claim is that, if the torture memo lawyers are punished, then other lawyers might also be held responsible for their own actions. But what is wrong with that, exactly? The Bush administration wanted a specific legal opinion for political reasons, and it was the job of the torture memo lawyers to provide it. Holding lawyers accountable for their actions would not only give them additional incentive to do their jobs competently, it would also protect them from politicians would would prey on them. This might not have occurred to Wolf: as I have said before, those on the right have spent so long avoiding responsibility for their actions that by now it is probably second nature for them.

Finally, Wolf mischaracterizes the nature of the torture. He writes that the lawyers said only that "it was legal to put a terrorist in a box with a caterpillar." And this is where Wolf's post is not only false and misleading, it's just freaking incoherent. The justification of torture on the right is that it works, i.e., that it rapidly produces actionable intelligence better than alternative methods—a claim that is almost certainly false, by the way. (Just ask John Kiriakou.) Now, how could torture be so effective if it involves merely putting people in boxes with insects? It couldn't be, of course, so it must involve techniques that actually traumatize its victims. But then the liberal concern about the use of torture seems justified. I would be willing to waterboard Wolf it would help him see the point. But I doubt that he would sign up for it.

A bunch of freaking idiots

RealQuiet, one of the losers at RedState, has been quoting Sen. Kent Conrad as saying that reconciliation cannot be used to pass health care reform. According to Conrad,

[R]econciliation cannot be used to pass comprehensive health care reform. It won't work. It won't work because it was never designed for that kind of significant legislation. It was designed for deficit reduction... It will not work because of the Byrd rule which says anything that doesn't score for budget purposes has to be eliminated. That would eliminate all the delivery system reform, all the insurance market reform, all of those things the experts tell us are really the most important parts of this bill. The only possible role that I can see for reconciliation would be make modest changes in the major package to improve affordability, to deal with what share of Medicaid expansion the federal government pays, those kinds of issues, which is the traditional role for reconciliation in health care.

Unfortunately, RedState jumped the gun. As it turns out, Conrad thinks that reconciliation can be used to pass health care reform:

“Reporters don’t seem to be able to get this straight,” Conrad said, hitting the “misreporting” he said is widespread. “Comprehensive health care reform will not work through reconciliation. But if the House passes the Senate bill, and wants certain things improved on, like affordability, the Medicaid provisions, how much of Medicaid expenses are paid for by the Federal government, that is something that could be done through reconciliation.”

“A sidecar would be a good candidate for reconciliation depending on what’s in it,” Conrad said, adding that he didn’t think fixes to abortion or immigration provions would likely work, something that could create obstacles to passing the Senate bill in the House.

Conrad also explained in new detail why he believes that the House must pass the Senate bill first, a view that has been denounced by some critics who want the Senate to pass its fix before the House acts.

Conrad said that under Congressional rules, for a reconciliation fix to be “scored,” it’s not necessary that it become law, but it is necessary for it to have passed both houses of Congress before getting fixed. “For the scoring to change it has to have passed Congress, and that means both houses,” he said.

“The only thing that works here is the House has to pass the Senate bill,” Conrad continued. “Then the House can initiate a reconciliation measure that would deal with a limited number of issues that score for budget purposes.” After that, the Senate would pass the same reconciliation fix, Conrad explained, because even on the fix itself the House must go first because the lower chamber must initiate “revenue bills.”

This is a bit awkward for the losers at RedState. They are typical conservatives in that they believe that liberals are complete morons. Their megalomania is so pronounced that they believe that they know Congressional rules better than those in Congress do. According to Erik Erickson, "What the Democrats want to do is use reconciliation to fix legislation before it is enacted into law." But "reconciliation can only apply to fix legislation already signed into law by the President." This, of course, contradicts Kent Conrad, who RealQuiet had cited as an authority for his or her own mistaken opinion.

This is awkward because the RedState losers have been abusing people left and right for misunderstanding Congressional rules. So hogan, after quoting former comedian Dennis Miller (who is now about as funny as the genocide in Darfur) tells everyone that Sen. Bunning's objection to unanimous consent is "not a filibuster you freaking idiots," "as is increasingly well known to those who actually are capable of comprehension."

Some of the bloggers at RedState are capable of irony, it appears, even if they haven't the slightest understanding of the concept.