armchair pundit

It’s not often I agree with Bill Kristol (like… never), but I can’t argue with his op-ed piece in today’s New York Times. Obama gave a commencement address at Wesleyan University, pinch hitting for the ailing Senator Ted Kennedy. He spoke about the importance of public service and self-sacrifice for the greater good, but as Kristol points out:

…there’s one obvious path of service Obama doesn’t recommend — or even mention: military service. He does mention war twice: “At a time of war, we need you to work for peace.” And, we face “big challenges like war and recession.” But there’s nothing about serving your country in uniform.

Whether you agree with a given war or not, dying for one’s country is the ultimate public service and example of self-sacrifice. It’s a shame that Obama didn’t mention it – so close on the heels of Memorial Day. It’s a shame, but it hardly warrants a whole op-ed piece.

Still, maybe Obama should acknowledge the omission. Politicians spend a lot of time pointing out how wrong their opponents are, but it’s amazing what a small capitulation can do.

H.L. Mencken knew this. He used to get a lot of angry letters, and he would often write back. Instead of arguing or digging in or meticulously refuting each point, he would simply say, “maybe you’re right.”

…and not just because my recent investment in oil futures depends on the price continuing to rise.

The sudden upsurge in the price of gas has been the top news story for the past few weeks, and there doesn’t seem to be any relief in sight. Oil is a finite resource, and as China, India and other developing nations have… well… developed, the worldwide demand for oil has shot up. As Americans turn to the government – and the three people campaigning to be the next president – for a solution, it seems amazing that no one saw this coming.

Of course the US leads the rest of the planet by a long shot when it comes to oil consumption, thanks to a combination of massive suburban sprawl, the popularity of gas-guzzling SUVs and a system of government subsidies that keeps our gasoline cheap compared to the rest of the world.

Progressives have lobbied the government for years to raise the mandatory average fuel-efficiency requirements of American cars, and the government’s response over the last eight of those years – especially from that bunch of oilmen in the executive branch – has been predictably dismissive.

The normal Republican philosophy regarding such things is to let the market take care of it. Keep the government out of it, they say. In an ideal world, I totally agree. The government is bloated and slow and bad at getting things done. In reality though, the problem with the Republican hands-off philosophy is that Republicans are totally disingenuous about it.

If the real price of gasoline was actually reflected at the pump, then people would stop using gasoline simply because they couldn’t afford it. People would stop buying gas-guzzling behemoths in favor of smaller cars. People who work in cities would stop moving into houses way out the suburbs, and people who already live in the suburbs would start carpooling or taking public transportation (if it’s even an option). That’s the market at work. We know the market would do its thing because it’s exactly what happened in the past when gas prices shot up for any length of time.

And it’s happening again. Even the modest rise we’ve seen over the past year or so – and it has been modest for Americans, no matter what it feels like – has sent a surge of riders to mass transit, according to this recent article in the New York Times. The difference this time is that given what’s happening with China, India and much of the rest of the developing world, oil prices aren’t likely to level off again… ever.

The bottom line here is that the Republican philosophy works. We just need the courage – yes, courage – to let the market actually do its thing.

Of course there’s another part of me – the part that loves to travel – that’s afraid to see what all this will do to air fares.

“Hillary can’t win, and Obama can’t beat her.”

This seems to be the bottom line in the endless slog toward choosing the Democrat who will run against McCain this fall.

Obama’s platform is “change,” so it’s ironic that nothing changed in the six weeks between Super Tuesday and the Pennsylvania primary.

The American people are certainly craving change, starving for it, so why can’t Obama close the deal? Is he offering the wrong kind of change? Too much change? Too little? Too unspecific?

I admit I’ve sort of stopped paying attention to the Democratic race because frankly the media coverage is painful (all bowling scores, flag pins and other sensationalist trivia), and the candidates themselves seem intent on wallowing in the muck. But when I was more actively following the campaigns of Obama and Clinton, my impression was consistent with the early primary results: Obama was incandescent, dynamic, something new. Clinton was pedestrian, wonky (not to mention cool, ruthless, shrewish).

Obama’s “change” has a lot to do with rejecting the politics of polarization. Obama’s message is about hope and unity (“yes WE can”). When the American people first heard his words, they resonated, and he performed well in the early races. The idea of unity (“not red states and blue states… but the UNITED States”) is powerful, and it’s what Americans want.

But it’s not enough, and that’s what Hillary recognized. That’s why she has been so effective in the last couple of months.

The last eight years have certainly been polarizing, but they have also been characterized by incompetence, arrogance, secrecy and dishonesty. Obama has got the honesty issue in the bag, and he’s effectively positioned himself as the candidate who can unify the country. But Hillary has done a much better job on the issue of competence. On openness and humility it’s probably a toss-up.

Americans want all of this, and so the two candidates – together – sum up the change Americans are craving. That’s the real reason the voters are split almost down the middle. For Hillary to have any hope of securing the nomination (and the presidency), she needs to convince America that she is honest, open and can be a unifying force (not gonna happen). For Obama to win, he needs to convince America that he is no less competent than Clinton.

(to the editors at the New York Times)

Dear Sir:

An editorial in the Times, April 5, observes that “a decade of fierce polemics has failed to resolve this ongoing quarrel” between two contending views: that “the war to preserve a non-Communist, independent South Vietnam could have been waged differently,” and that “a viable, non-Communist South Vietnam was always a myth.” There has also been a third position: That apart from its prospects for success, the United States has neither the authority nor competence to intervene in the internal affairs of Vietnam. This was the position of much of the authentic peace movement, that is, those who opposed the war because it was wrong, not merely because it was unsuccessful. It is regrettable that this position is not even a contender in the debate, as The Times sees it.

On a facing page, Donald Kirk observes that “since the term ‘bloodbath’ first came into vogue in the Indochinese conflict, no one seems to have applied it to the war itself — only to the possible consequences of ending the war.” He is quite wrong. Many Americans involved in the authentic peace movement have insisted for years on the elementary point that he believes has been noticed by “no one,” and it is a commonplace in literature on the war. To mention just one example, we have written a small book on the subject (Counterrevolutionary Violence: Bloodbaths in Fact and Propaganda, 1973), though in this case the corporation (Warner Brothers) that owned the publisher refused to permit distribution after publication. But quite apart from this, the observation has been made repeatedly in discussion and literature on the war, by just that segment of opinion that The Times editorial excludes from the debate.

Sincerely yours,
Noam Chomsky
Professor, MIT

and

Edward S. Herman
Professor, University of Pennsylvania

I want to like, Hillary Clinton. I really do.

She’s an accomplished and well-regarded senator, and she’s the only First Lady in my lifetime who tried to make a meaningful contribution during her tenure in the white house.

I want to like her, but she’s making it really hard.

In her presidential campaign, she could choose to focus on her strengths and her many accomplishments. Instead, she keeps inventing stories, revising history, taking cheap shots and insulting our intelligence.

In the last two weeks alone…

• She invented details about her Bosnia visit and then insulted our intelligence by claiming she simply misspoke (um… misspoke dozens of times?)
• She’s taken great pains to make the case that she’s always opposed NAFTA, despite copious evidence to the contrary.
• Responding to calls for her to drop out of the race, she charged that Obama doesn’t want to give Pennsylvanians their chance to vote. It doesn’t rise to the level of the “plagiarism” allegation, but it’s still a cheap shot, considering no such calls have come from Obama or anyone on his staff.
• Finally, when a reporter asked for her to comment on the recent gains Obama has made in the superdelegate count, she feigned ignorance, claiming she doesn’t pay attention to those numbers.

Even if you take her at her word, is this the kind of leader we want? I don’t know about the rest of America, but I’m done with cheap shots. I can’t take any more sniping. And I know it was just one of those obligatory remarks, but if Hillary isn’t paying attention to the superdelegate count, then there’s something seriously wrong with her. The superdelegates are crucial to the outcome of the most important contest of her life. We want her to be paying attention to that.

The narrative the media has painted about Hillary is that she will do anything, absolutely anything, to win the nomination, that she doesn’t have the capacity to put the party or the country ahead of her own ambitions. This is probably unfair, but she hasn’t done a whole lot to dispel this impression.

As a result, she has completely alienated young voters – a constituency that has always favored Obama, but I have to imagine there was a time when they might have warmed to her. At this point, however, judging by the Digg crowd (a skewed lens, I admit), they are passionately anti-Hillary. This is a pretty powerful segment of potential voters, and it’s unfortunate that she has failed so badly with them.

I’ve just been reading some Jeff Jarvis’ recent posts about Senator Obama (like this one), and it’s a clear reminder that even a lot of smart people will ultimately cast their vote based on a general gut assessment of the candidates.

I don’t know where Jarvis sits on the political spectrum, but he dissects and parses Obama’s speech along all the same lines as the stream of other conservatives who criticized it. Jarvis makes it very clear that he doesn’t want to give Obama the benefit of the doubt – which is fair. But like the other pundits who criticized Obama’s speech, Jarvis takes some pains to manufacture the doubt.

The bottom line seems to be that people who see the world in very black and white terms (not speaking of race now) didn’t like Obama’s speech. Black and white thinkers need to push things toward one end of the spectrum or the other – a thing is either right or wrong, good or evil, us or them. These are the “J” types in Myers-Briggs. They wanted Obama to disown or denounce pastor Wright, because Wright is clearly a wrong-headed person.

Maybe conservatives tend to be “J” types, because conservatives tend to frame things this way. Tax cuts are good. Illegal immigrants are bad.  There’s an axis of evil, and these countries are part of it. Black and white thinkers don’t appreciate people who push things toward the middle, who try to highlight complexities and nuances. They think these people are weak, equivocating, slippery, untrustworthy.

Gray area thinkers are the “P” types in Myers-Briggs. We (yep, I’m a “P”) see black and white thinkers as crude, simple-minded, judgmental, prejudiced. We were exuberant in our praise of Obama’s speech because we’ve had eight years of Bush. Yes, we’ve had it. Had it with his brand of black and white thinking. It was refreshing to hear a politician talk about something in honest terms and not try to boil it down to right and wrong.

Obama loves a man who is deeply flawed. He has striven to understand the nature and origin of the man’s flaws.

Who among us is not flawed? Who among us hasn’t loved someone who is flawed? I don’t know about you “J” types out there, but we “P” folks understand that everyone is flawed.

My stepfather had a mean streak in him. He used to call me a “fag” (among other things) when he got angry, because I liked to draw and paint and cook, and because one of my high school buddies sported an earring. He pushed my mom around a couple of times. On the other hand, he taught me a lot, gave my family a lot.

He was a guy who’d had a really rough life in some ways, a guy who’d been deeply hurt and betrayed a few times. Understanding this about my stepfather helped me dismiss his verbal abuse and put it in its own box, so to speak. Should I have dismissed (or disowned) him and not just his abuse?

That’s not how love and family and friendships work. Anyone who thinks these things are black and white is kidding himself.

I didn’t see Obama’s landmark speech today, but I read the transcript. I admit I was moved by it, and although there was certainly a practical or tactical element to it – in the context of his presidential chances – I think it’s important to look past that and consider his actual words.

I wish CNN agreed. Unfortunately, the whole focus of their coverage was to discuss whether the speech would work, and by “work” they meant only whether it would put to rest questions around Obama’s association with pastor Jeremiah Wright. They used Rush Limbaugh’s response of all things, to raise doubts, as if Limbaugh’s response wasn’t determined before the speech was even made, as if Limbaugh at this point is anything more than a washed up, irrelevant joke on the outer fringes of the media, preaching to an ever-smaller choir.

They didn’t talk about whether the speech would “work” in the sense of whether it will remind us that individuals are complex, that the issue of race is complex, that none of this is black and white – in any sense of the phrase. They didn’t talk about whether the speech would “work” in the sense of whether it will help us shift our attention to more concrete and ultimately solvable issues like the economy, healthcare and the environment – where people of all races share the same concerns.

It’s bullshit cynical coverage CNN, and you will lose more and more of your young audience as long as you pollute the airwaves with this kind of crap. No amount of fancy touchscreen infographics and talk of “liveblogging” will change that fact.

“Dear Citizens of America,

In view of your failure to elect a competent President and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective immediately.

Her Sovereign Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories (except Kansas, which she does not fancy), as from Monday next…”

The headline caught my eye today on the Digg front page. I clicked, and the first few lines of what I read next were immediately familiar. A quick Google search confirmed that it originated in an email that was widely circulated just after Bush won (or didn’t, I suppose) the presidential election in 2000. I’m sure I received it more than once.

It’s also important to note that John Cleese did not actually author the letter.

No doubt it was submitted and voted up by thirteen-year-old kids who don’t remember much about the year 2000, like most everything else on Digg, although in their defense, the version of the supposed Cleese letter they so recently swarmed around has been updated by someone who changed Tony Blair to Gordon Brown.

None of this was lost on the larger Digg audience, who were typically merciless in their comments: “This letter was discovered in a fossilized pterodactyl nest,” said one MJ Dub.

The letter in question apparently originated on an internal newsgroup at the U.K. office of a multi-national company. It’s unclear who the original author is, but it quickly took on a life of its own and has undoubtedly drawn contributions from numerous people.

The earliest version I was able to find on the magic Internet is very brief, containing only four points:

London, 8th November 2000.
To the citizens of the United States of America,

Following your failure to elect either a half decent candidate or man-monkey as President of the USA to govern yourselves and, by extension, the free world, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume a monarch’s duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, please comply with1 the following acts:

1. Look up “revoke” in a dictionary
2. Learn at least the first 4 lines of “God save the Queen”
3. Start referring to “soccer” as football
4. Declare war on Quebec

Tax collectors from Her Majesty’s Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all revenues due (backdated to 1776).

Thank you for your cooperation and…have a nice day!

Funny, but hardly rising to Cleese’s genius. Later revisions both tightened it and lengthened it considerably, however, and the incarnation that drew the recent flurry of Diggs goes like this (continuing from the quote at the top of this post):

Your new prime minister, Gordon Brown, will appoint a governor for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire may be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed.

To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. You should look up “revocation” in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up “aluminium,” and check the pronunciation guide. You will be amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it.

2. The letter ‘U’ will be reinstated in words such as ‘colour’, ‘favour’ and ‘neighbour.’ Likewise, you will learn to spell ‘doughnut’ without skipping half the letters, and the suffix “ize” will be replaced by the suffix “ise.”

3. You will learn that the suffix ‘burgh’ is pronounced ‘burra’; you may elect to spell Pittsburgh as ‘Pittsberg’ if you find you simply can’t cope with correct pronunciation.

4. Generally, you will be expected to raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels (look up “vocabulary”). Using the same twenty-seven words interspersed with filler noises such as “like” and “you know” is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication.

5. There is no such thing as “US English.” We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter ‘u’ and the elimination of “-ize.”

6. You will relearn your original national anthem, “God Save The Queen”,
but only after fully carrying out Task #1 (see above).

7. July 4th will no longer be celebrated as a holiday. November 2nd will
be a new national holiday, but to be celebrated only in England. It will be called “Come-Uppance Day.”

8. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you’re not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you’re not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you’re not grown up enough to handle a gun.

9. Therefore, you will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous than a vegetable peeler. A permit will be required if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

10. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and this is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean.

11. All intersections will be replaced with roundabouts, and you will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric immediately and without the benefit of conversion tables… Both roundabouts and metrification will help you understand the British sense of humour.

12. The Former USA will adopt UK prices on petrol (which you have been calling “gasoline”) – roughly $8/US per gallon. Get used to it.

13. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call french fries are not real chips, and those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called “crisps.” Real chips are thick cut, fried in animal fat, and dressed not with catsup but with malt vinegar.

14. Waiters and waitresses will be trained to be more aggressive with customers.

15. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all. Henceforth, only proper British Bitter will be referred to as “beer,” and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as “Lager.” American brands will be referred to as “Near-Frozen Gnat’s Urine,” so that all can be sold without risk of further confusion.

16. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as good guys. Hollywood will also be required to cast English actors as English characters. Watching Andie MacDowell attempt English dialogue in “Four Weddings and a Funeral” was an experience akin to having one’s ear removed with a cheese grater.

17. You will cease playing American “football.” There is only one kind of proper football; you call it “soccer”. Those of you brave enough, in time, will be allowed to play rugby (which has some similarities to American “football”, but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like a
bunch of Jessies – English slang for “Big Girls Blouse”).

18. Further, you will stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the “World Series” for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.1% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable and forgiven.

19. You must tell us who killed JFK. It’s been driving us mad.

20. An internal revenue agent (i.e. tax collector) from Her Majesty’s Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all monies due, backdated to 1776.

For more information on this urban legend and the provenance of the Notice of Revocation…, I suggest this article at About.com.

President Bush is touring the Middle East right now, and he has made sure to bluster about Iran’s fictional nuclear ambitions at every stop, but oil has been the main topic on his agenda. Yesterday he met with Saudi leader, King Abdullah and tried to persuade him to up his country’s production, in order to stabilize prices.

Bush argued that high oil prices will cause the US to import less oil, and therefore less money will flow from American wallets into royal Saudi Arabian wallets. The problem with this argument (other than the notion of protecting the exchange of our cash for Saudi palaces and ponies) is that the increasing demand for oil in China, India and the rest of the developing world will more than offset any decrease in US imports.

Saudi Arabia shrugs.

In the 1970s, before the Ayatollah overthrew the Shah, Iran was one of our main sources of imported oil. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 triggered an energy crisis when in November of that year, President Carter cut off oil imports from Iran. This marked the beginning of the end for Carter, who famously proposed to the American people that the solution to the crisis was to conserve. “Wear sweaters,” he told us.

The thing is, we’re addicted to oil, and to conserve is… well… un-American. The Reagan administration saw the light, and Saudi Arabia became our new best friend in the Middle East.

Fast-forward to 2008. Iran is still chock full of oil, so it should come as no surprise that our current president has steadfastly ignored the U.S. Intelligence Estimate finding that Iran stopped pursuing its nuclear ambitions in 2003. Iran has oil. We want it. We need it. Therefore we need Iran to be a threat, just like we needed Iraq to be a threat, because President Bush needs to guarantee access to oil.

Consider the following:

• Current US consumption of oil is 20.7 million barrels per day.
• The US strategic reserves contain 689 million barrels.
• Factor in our domestic production, and without imports we have about 60 days of oil to burn before it’s all gone.

Bush’s commitment to keeping oil lines open is not sinister in itself. The reality is, our economy would cease to function without foreign oil, and that would hurt every single one of us, probably more than we can imagine. If Bush had simply told the truth – we need a steady supply of oil from Iraq in order for our economy to function, therefore we need a more stable and sympathetic regime there – he would not have gotten the necessary support from Congress or the American people. So he used terrorism as a pretense.

Now Bush is trying to do it again, with Iran.

The war in Iraq is about oil. Few people would dispute that. Some would say it was waged simply to take the oil, while others argue that it is being waged in order to create a stable regional ally who will reliably sell us oil. It’s probably the latter, but it doesn’t really matter. The war is about oil.

To ensure access to Iraq’s oil, we are paying $275 million per day. How much would it cost to expand the war to Iran?

So, to summarize, we consume an enormous amount of oil. We have dangerously little oil of our own, so we need everything we can get from the Middle East. To maintain this dynamic of dependence, we are willing to invest $275 million per day and hundreds of thousands of American lives (because it’s not just the lives lost that we are investing, but the hard work of all the soldiers) in a war.

This is the true cost of oil, which is not represented at the pump. The $3-plus that you pay per gallon does not include the costs of tax subsidies to the oil industry, the subsidies for the extraction, production, and use of petroleum, the military costs of protecting access to oil supplies – not to mention health care costs for treating respiratory illnesses ranging from asthma to emphysema, or finally, the costs of climate change. If we factored all this into the price of gasoline, it would cost about $15 per gallon, according to a study (pdf) by the International Center for Technology Assessment.

Are we getting a good return on this investment? Does it have a future? What else could we do with $275 million per day and the hard work of hundreds of thousands of people we’re spending just on the Iraq war?

$275 million per day works out to about $100 billion per year which, according to one study, could pay for…

• Reforesting the earth (6 billion)
• Stabilizing water tables around the world (10 billion)
• Restoring all the world’s fisheries (13 billion)
• Protecting topsoil on the world’s croplands (24 billion)
• Providing universal basic health care to everyone on the planet (33 billion)
• Providing universal primary education to every child on the planet (12 billion)
• And finally, for good measure, closing the condom gap (2 billion)

Before you get into a tizzy, the figures above reflect additional money that would need to be spent on the various initiatives, rather than the total figures. These are all things, like the military, that only cost us money. They don’t generate any, which is why I didn’t compare the military spending on the Iraq war to money we could invest in, say, developing alternative energy sources. We’d actually make money if we did that.

It’s good to know we have our priorities straight.