alternative hippopotamus

Yesterday I only used up 5 of my 10 allowed subversion credits. Let's see what else is out there...

• The ultimate chess match: Kasparov vs. Putin (Martini Republic)
• The texas attorney general's office comments, "'We respectfully believe' that the president's decision 'exceeds constitutional bounds for federal authority.'" Ouch. (Waiting for Dorothy)
• Cepetro on Hughes: "Quite frankly, this woman has the diplomacy of a slug." I'll add: a slug that knows how to make up stuff on the spot to get Bush out of a drunk driving fiasco. (cepetro)
• Fear and Loathing in Bush’s America? (polianna) (by the way, Polianna has been doing consistently solild work. Power to them.)
• Mad Kane on Condi Rice (hmmm.... mad kane on condi rice.) "And speaking of the boots, I don't fault Republicans for their drooling blather about Condi's Dominatrix garb. After all, what else are they going to talk about? Her accomplishments?" (mad kane)

I like this subversion roundup. Maybe we should do it more often?
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As it turns out, it's personal: (Fairbanks Daily News Miner)

WASHINGTON--Sen. Ted Stevens said the gridlock over oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge has depressed him, a feeling magnified by the growing guilt he feels for accepting the legislation 25 years ago that led to the current stalemate.

Stevens, speaking with national reporters at the U.S. Senate's television gallery Friday morning, said the whole situation has him "clinically depressed."

Shortly afterward, he told Alaska reporters that he shouldn't have used that term. He has not been diagnosed by a psychiatrist and is not taking any medication. But he said he has been feeling low enough that he asked his physician about it. He said the doctor told him take some time off.

Senator Stevens is alleged to have pressured the Smithsonian to edit the captions on a photo exhibit depicting ANWR, and to have the exhibit moved to a virtually invisible location in the museum basement. For the record, Stevens denies that he put pressure on the Smithsonian, but since he oversees the Smithsonian on the Senate Rules Committee this is a little hard to swallow.

Smithsonian Secretary Lawrence Small said the exhibit needed to be modified since it amounted to "advocacy," and the Smithsonian doesn't do advocacy. ArcticWildlife.org records this exchange between Senator Durbin and Mr. Small on this point:

Senator Durbin cited a caption from an unrelated exhibit of botanical paintings at the same museum that says a particular plant might become extinct "unless we act now."

Isn't that advocacy?, Durbin asked.

"That's a statement of fact," Small insisted. The caption didn't say what was endangering the plant or what people should do to preserve it, he said.

Durbin also read a 90-word photo caption from a third exhibit at the museum. Quoting a Kentucky historian, it said mining would leave Appalachia with "dismembered mountains" and said "the corpse of a forest ... will lie buried beneath a wasteland like the world as described in the opening verses of Genesis."

Meanwhile, Durbin said, the Smithsonian concluded that a Banerjee caption about the buff-breasted sandpiper - saying it travels from Argentina to the Arctic and is vulnerable to habitat disturbances - had to go.

Update: The more I think about this, the stupider it seems. Using a litmus test of "advocacy" you'd have to conclude that museums everywhere need to be shutdown right away. Take for instance the controversial anti-segregation message the Brown vs. Board of Education exhibit at the American History Museum sends, or the pro-evolution message the dinosaur exhibit at the Natural History Museum gives. Meanwhile, the Holocaust Museum gives off a vibe that must be offensive to holocaust deniers everywhere.

Wouldn't it have been more appropriate to give both sides of the debate: Drilling in the Arctic: necessary to keep America safe, or crime against nature? Could it be that the pro-drilling argument is laughably unsound? Could this be less about sound policy and more about a victory dance Republicans want to do in the end zone?

File under: ANWR.
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(Note: this is really a continuation of Elephant #2, the misconception that ANWR is our way of fighting OPEC. When I combine the individual sections I'll do some editing and make a coherent whole out of it. I'll also note for you linux fans out there, the Open Office word processor allows you cut and paste text and images and export as a pdf. It's a really cool feature that I've been playing around with.)

I've spent a little time spying on our drilling-obsessed siblings on the right, and I think I can explain part of their viewpoint. Now, I'm not talking about the uber-phallic zealots, and I think you know who I'm talking about. In their case they just hate liberals. With all their talk about irrational Bush hatred, some of these folks would paint their house chartreuse if just a single lefty would be offended. But, as I say, I'm not talking about them.

The key phrase seems to be independence from foreign oil. Independence is a core American belief. More so than any other country, we prize our rugged individualism. Okay, maybe except for Australia, they're pretty independent, too. And of course, New Zealand, which we somehow lump in with Australia, even though they're two separate countries. And, to be fair, a lot of South America prizes independence. Same with Africa. And Europe. We definitely prize independence more than umh, I don't know, maybe China under Mao.

My point is that deep down we're a little embarassed that we depend so much on the Gulf region for oil. That makes us somehow... needy. And what's more pathetic than a needy superpower?

In the minds of the pro-drilling crowd, ANWR represents our ability to shake our fists at the oil barons and shout: Take that. Now go away before I taunt you a second time.

Where I grew up this was called: taking a piss in the wind. The mathematical reality is that unless we change our habits, we'll always be heavily dependent on foreign oil. The Energy Information Administration looked into this, and here's what they found:



Using the mean case (which I believe is used in the sense of average, not the most cruel) we see that ANWR could account for 4% of imports in the year 2025. Imagine if you will raising a fist at the hypothetical oil baron and shouting: "In 20 years we can reduce our dependence on you by 4%. Put that in your hooka and smoke it." The point is that as far as taunts go, that's pretty lame.

What's weird is that the majority of this "dependence" is discretionary, i.e., our driving habits. And it would take almost no effort to avoid destroying the coastal area of a wilderness refuge.

Occasionally I hear someone throw out this faustian bargain: What if we open up ANWR for drilling, and in return we close the loophole for the most gas guzzling of the SUVs? Well, because if we closed that loophole, then we wouldn't need to destroy a wilderness refuge to begin with.

While it's trendy to blame the SUVs I'll note that the lighter ones, like a Toyota RAV4, are actually pretty fuel efficient. They even exceed the CAFE requirement of 27.5 mpg for passenger vehicles. Meanwhile, if you buy a 3 ton Hummer II, you get a tax cut.

As far as I can tell, I'm subsidizing the freedom of a minority to make us more dependent on foreign oil. That doesn't sound particularly American to me.

File under: ANWR.
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• Paganfundamentalist nails the disconnect between the pro-environment movement and the Christian right. He calls it "brownwashing" I call it "Manchurian Candidacy":

  What Jim Ball calls the "brownwashing" of the Bible is largely the work of the same secular powers that seek expanded Pentagon budgets, private retirement accounts and sweeping tax cuts. Corporate agendas dipped in Scripture are still corporate agendas. While to some extent fundamentalist theology is useful in packaging such views, the easy embrace of the environment among the evangelical rank and file indicates that industry is the dominant player in shaping the Christian Right worldview on the question - not religion.

• The Unofficial Kerry blog quotes Big John: "The American people did not vote to drill in ANWR.''
• Dirty Greek nails Bush on his recent speech:

  Yeah. He gussies it up by saying it's "the same amount we could get from 41 states combined," which is a pointless comparison, then says it would create thousands of jobs and reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

• Public Domain Progress points out the real irony:

  But, in a gusher of political irony, guess what? The oil giants have little interest in drilling there! Even a Bush advisor on this issue confided that "No oil company really cares about ANWR," adding that "If the government gave them the [drilling] leases for free they wouldn't take them."

• News Hounds dissects Gale Norton's appearance on Hannity&Colmes:

  The first alternative Colmes suggested was closing the SUV fuel efficiency loophole. He claimed that doing so would save a million barrels of oil a day by 2015, more than ANWR would produce. Norton didn't deny that but said that the "Administration has raised the requirements for the light duty trucks - raised the mileage targets that they need to achieve. The president has also suggested to Congress that we have tax credits for hybrid vehicles and has urged the movement to hydrogen fuel cell vehicles."

  This is, umh, what I've been saying for the last couple of weeks, Alan.

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• There's some confusion regarding this story about the House version of the budget bill not including language on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This is not an indication that Republicans are less enthusiastic about doing this. It's more of a strategy issue. The language will be introduced in the Senate version, and likely in the process of negotiation, the language will be introduced into the final budget bill.
  
  If you will, it's a head fake.
• I happen to see this post by someone who has some actual hands-on experience on this issue:

  I'm not gonna argue about the impact on land or local wildlife. Having worked in a tundra research lab where we studied the impacts from Prudhoe Bay, I know the impacts are real, long-lasting, and damaging.

  It's a very interesting and informative read. When I get around to making an ANWR links section of the sidebar, that's going to be the first entry.
• One of the tricky things in this discussion is conveying amounts in a way that people can relate to. For instance, take this factoid: at its peak the 1002 Area of ANWR could produce a little less than 1 million barrels of oil per day.
  
  How do you relate to quantities like that?
  
  The logical thing is to relate it to the amount of oil we consume per day through driving (about 9 million barrels). What I'm looking for is some iconic measure that is, as they say, user-friendly. Picture one of those hoakey bar charts with 3.5 widgets on it. Is that widget a barrel, a VW beetle, a polar bear?

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As I got into work this morning, my assistant, Pavlov Chien was merrily waving this Washington Post headline around:

U.S. Quits Pact Used in Capital Cases

This is one of the Geneva Convention protocols that we've participated in since 1969:

The protocol requires signatories to let the International Court of Justice (ICJ) make the final decision when their citizens say they have been illegally denied the right to see a home-country diplomat when jailed abroad.

"Isn't this wonderful news?" beamed Pavlov.
"It doesn't sound like good news to me," I replied. "It sounds like we're once again sounding a note of defiance to the world community. I call that unnecessarily making enemies."
"I call that leadership," said Pavlov. "Sometimes you have to destroy the Global Village to save the Global Village."

I should explain that Pavlov is on loan to me from the Project for a New American Ecology, a neoconservative think-tank, authors of the controversial best-seller Me First in the Balance. Like PNAC, they take as one of their fundamental premises:

We aim to make the case and rally support for American global leadership.

"But isn't leadership setting the right example? As Kant described it: becoming a shining example for all mankind. And doesn't leadership include not withdrawing from agreements in the international community?" I wondered.
"No, you America-hating hippopotamus. Leadership means you get to tell people what to do."

And with that said, and a dismissive snort, he threw the paper aside and returned to his forthcoming article: Alaskan Hegemony and You, Perfect Together.

File under: ANWR.
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Tom Maguire:

But the balance of manpower favors the Reps, who may simply have decided to engage the Dems on as many fronts as possible. In this view, Social Security is the stalking goat drawing Democratic fire, while other important bills fly through under the radar.

Sounds about right to me. This is just what I'm concerned will happen over the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
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There's a story floating around about Paul Wolfowitz. The idea is that he owns a Toyota Prius, and he's either advising his staff to get a Prius, or in this version, actually buying them a Prius:

Now, Wolfowitz seems to stick to his guns - I saw the story recently about how he has a couple of Prius's, is ordering them for everyone in his office - he is walking the walk to do ANYTHING that limits what he perceives as the danger from the Middle East - which in this case, means starting to wean the U.S. from oil.

What this is supposed to show is that Wolfowitz, though possibly a dangerous lunatic, is a True Believer. He believes in indepence from foreign oil to such an extreme, that he's willing to drive a Prius.

I should mention that Paul and I both live and work in DC. He's been around town for a couple of years, so I'm surprised that he's missed this: We have one of the biggest fucking subways in the entire fucking universe. I'm just trying to suggest that Mr. Wolfowitz may want to consider some of the energy-saving strategies us common folk use.

I should also point out to Paul that the reason we're in this mess (by this mess I mean our dependence on foreign oil, and not necessarily the dozen or so other messes we're currently in) is because of lazy beaurocrats like himself.

Here's a plot of the CAFE standard (required mpg of your car) over the years:



One of the things that may strike you is how little things have changed since 1985. We are indeed living up to the standard of doing as little as possible (nothing) to solve a problem through government.

I'll anticipate the argument that while the requirement may not have changed, the cars themselves are more efficient. Some of them are, some of them aren't. Here's the bottom line: the average car gets 21.5 mpg. The average light truck gets 17.2 mpg (source: EPA).

If the average passenger car actually got 27.5 mpg, and the average truck got 18 mpg (including the heavier SUVs which have no efficiency requirement), then we would save an amount of oil equal to the peak production capacity of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

I've got to remember to write to Gale Norton about this when she gets back from snowmobiling through Yellowstone Park.

Notice that I'm not proposing anything crazy like riding the subway instead of driving to work (I'm looking at you, Paul Wolfowitz), or gasp, riding your bike to work, I'm suggesting that our cars and trucks should meet the really low standards we've already set for them.

File under: ANWR.
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About a year ago I happened to catch Fareed Zakaria at Politics&Prose. I remember hearing people buzzing afterwards: "Oh, how smart, how well-spoken. Why don't we have more like him around?"

He is certainly very well spoken. Yet, he left me with the same sense that I often get from an egg roll: I'm not sure whether I've had an actual meal, or that my palette has just been tricked. In particular, I couldn't tell you whether that evening I'd heard a subtle denounciation of Bush's foreign policy, an equally subtle praise for Bush, or just gibberish.

I recalled that sensation reading Zakaria's recent Newsweek piece:

Bush never accepted the view that Islamic terrorism had its roots in religion or culture or the Arab-Israeli conflict. Instead he veered toward the analysis that the region was breeding terror because it had developed deep dysfunctions caused by decades of repression and an almost total lack of political, economic and social modernization. The Arab world, in this analysis, was almost unique in that over the past three decades it had become increasingly unfree, even as the rest of the world was opening up. His solution, therefore, was to push for reform in these lands

. I'm always tickled to hear someone use the word "analysis" applied to Bush. You can almost picture him puffing on his pipe, the Jowett translation of Plato's Republic tucked under his arm. By George, W mutters to himself, I believe I've discovered the theoretical underpinnings of a most fantastic plan for world peace, prosperity, and global harmony.

Zakaria must be forgetting that the "Bush" foreign policy is just the Project for a New American Century with a paperbag bookcover. And that it's implementation has included torture, has provoked instability, and produced thousands of unnecessary deaths. If we ever regain credibility with the rest of the world, it could be a generation or more.

As Dr. King put it: "Hate begets hate; violence begets violence."

Update: I can't find a definitive reference for this quote (the hate and the violence clauses are reversed in some versions). Here's how WSU has it:

Hate begets hate; violence begets violence; toughness begets a greater toughness. We must meet the forces of hate with the power of love.

The part about toughness confused me at first. I don't believe he means "greater toughness" in the sense of our toughness can beat up your toughness. That's not really consistent with the next sentence. I think he's using greater in the sense Thoreau often did. To suggest a force of a higher order. A humane human is greater than a bully in the hierarchy of things.

Thoreau expands on this idea in Higher Laws. I can't help but see a good bit of Thoreau in MLK whever I read this passage:

"I learned this, at least, by my experiment: that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal, and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings. In proportion as he simplifies his life, the laws of the universe will appear less complex, and solitude will not be solitude, nor poverty poverty, nor weakness weakness. If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them."

File under: Iraq.
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KTUU TV (Alaska):

Anchorage, Alaska - The presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States has rallied other religious groups to join him in opposing[ed: sic] to the opening of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Bishop Frank T. Griswold and a variety of religious groups within the Christian and Jewish faiths sent a letter to Congress last week to protect what they called the “land sacred” to the Gwich’in nation. The Gwich’ins have been protesting the opening of ANWR, saying it would affect the migration of the Porcupine caribou herd.

The Episcopal Church has issued several resolutions to protect ANWR, saying it has a special obligation to the Gwich’in, who are 90 percent Episcopalians.

It would be a vast cosmic irony if organized religion is what finally brings down the Bush administration.

Oops, almost forgot. Why do the Episcopalians hate America?

File under: ANWR.

(Note: according to the KTUU homepage it's 30 degrees in Anchorage right now. Here, in DC it's 33 degrees and snowing. I just find it weird that on a given day in March DC weather is indistinguishable from Alaska.)
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While Roxanne may have been a tad aggrieved at having one Danny Banaduce impersonator pick this up as a meme, I think she'd like this:

Friday Random Subvert the Dominant Link Hierarchy

Yeah.
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I know I've left a few threads hanging. Not the least of which is a report that an observant reader left in comments. Yes, I've gone through it with a fine tooth comb. The short word is that what the House summary says about the report is not what the report says.

To cut to the chase, ANWR at its peak production point (somewhere around 2020) may reduce our dependence on foreign oil by just a few percentage points. As someone who is a bit familiar with reading government reports, my sense was that the Energy department was pushing back on Representative Polombo, who (in my opinion) called for the report to discredit Kerry during the 2004 election. Let's just say, you never see something like: we think drilling in ANWR is a really good idea. More on this soon.

The reason I haven't written this up earlier is probably obvious. It's very difficult to take percentages like millions of barrels of oil consumed per day per 1000 people and make that statistic entertaining. As President Bush put it during the first debate, it's hard work.

Plus, I've spent more time than I anticipated on emails concerning Pavlov Chien, my assistant on loan from the Neoconservative Environmentalism Foundation. As I've mentioned, what I thought was a clever quip about the Bush administration being Eco-Drama Queens, seems to have really hurt Pavlov's feelings. I tried to make up, but he just said that he hoped that they'll put Spotted Owl in my next batch of sushi.

I've asked Pavlov to write the post on Arctic Hegemony and You, Perfect Together, and he really perked up. I'm pretty sure he's willing to forgive me, I'm sure we'll find out soon.
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The Hippo counsels the Moose to shut the fuck up. No, really. Until you actually know what you're talking about, you should cease and desist mooing, or moosing, or whatever it is they call it when mooses bellow uncontrollably.

For instance when you write:

The greatest predictor of voting behavior is the frequency of church attendance. The Democratic Party is perceived as a secularist party. This phenomena is extremely costly to the party in one of the most religious countries outside the Muslim world. That is why the Moose urges the donkey to reconsider its hostility to faith in the public square. That doesn't mean merely mouthing Biblical passages in support of the minimum wage. Sometimes it appears that the only religion Democrats accept is a theological belief in church-state separation.

In general, my fellow imaginary mammal, I notice you often make statements of the form: The Moose urges the Donkey to stop doing X. X is usually something like hating the military families, hating religion, hating tax cuts, or in general hating America. And needless to say, we don't hate any of these things. I agree that the Ann Coulters and Sean Hannitys of the world have spent their careers trying to convince people that these things are true. But they're what we liberals like to call crazy Republican hacks. And the fact that you keep saying that we should stop doing things that these nutcases accuse us of, makes me tend to believe that you're the one out of touch. Either that, or you are maliciously trying to propagate Republican talking points. In either case, stop it.

So, here's a question for you. What would you call somebody with these stands on social issues:

• Pro choice.
• Pro civil unions.
• Believes that the "Christian church must never be a mirror image of any government, whether Democrat or Republican, totalitarian or democratic."
• Seeks the "eventual reduction of the availability of guns in society."
• Who "rejects war as a usual means of national policy."

If you guessed latte-swilling Volvo-driving birkenstock-wearing Dean screamer, you're wrong. Those are positions of the United Methodist Church.

(technically, the UMC doesn't have a position on the Iraq War, but the head of social policy, Jim Winkler, said that the war was "without any justification according to the teachings of Christ." I'm going to make the inferential leap here, and say he was against it.)

Why do the Methodists hate America? How did they get so out of touch with our mainstream values?

Of course, I'm being facetious. The Methodist Church is like the Peoria, Illinios of religions. It is pretty much by definition the mainstream. Certainly more so than some overpaid hack in the DLC.
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This was what you might call a lazy day here in the nations capitol. It wasn't cold, but it wasn't exactly Hawaii, either. Like most of us here, where the nexus of democracy and the Bush administration somehow manage to co-exist, I didn't really know what to do with myself.

I did spend a little time on the Mall, where I shot the picture above. In the process of ambling through my favorite Smithsonian haunts, I was surprised and pleased to see my favorite painting, on exhibit at the National Gallery: the Rembrandt self-portrait as the apostle Paul. This is a deeply psychological painting, one that I could spend days talking about, but not my point in this short post. I mention it only because this painting is a reminder to me that this small bit of land represents not just here and now, but all of western civilization.

The point is that the Washington Mall is the people's terrain. You and I own the space between the Capitol Building and the Lincoln Memorial. As far as hallowed ground goes, this is way up there.
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There's a lot of interesting, well-written commentary that I've seen in the last few days on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (or as what Gale Norton and other Bush sycophants like to call it: the 1002 Area). There's also some nutty stuff I've seen from the right. This is a small sampling, but I believe representative. It's important to invest some time on this right now, because as one of the holy grails of the right-wing, opening up ANWR is only second to ending Social Security as a right-wing priority.

Who Hijacked Our Country makes the essential point, that there are alternatives to making Alaska look like Elizabeth, NJ:

It’s been shown that improvements in gas mileage, and increased use of mass transit, would save more oil than the amount estimated to be in ANWR. But somehow this same national security paranoia never comes up when legislators are trying to pass energy conservation measures.

I saw fate whiz back by me negates one of the saws that I've seen trotted out, that the 1002 Area is just some hayseed tanglebrush:

Congressmen who have been flown over ANWR in oil-company jets have stood before cameras owned by media conglomerates and told us that the North Slope is a wasteland atop an endless supply of oil. In fact, quite the opposite is true. The North Slope is home to polar and grizzly bears, wolverines, musk oxen, wolves, and the Porcupine caribou herd. The Gwich'in people have lived in symbiosis with this herd for at least 10,000 years. All the beauty and magnificence we associate with the Arctic is there, intact and in abundance.

Environment II points us to a letter to Bush signed by environmental scientists across the US. Here's from that letter:

Sacrificing this ecosystem for an insignificant supply of our nation’s energy that will not reach the market for a decade does not represent balanced resource management. Instead, we urge you to support permanent protection of the Arctic Refuge’s coastal plain.

At The American Street, eRobin points out that while we're focusing on Social Security, this one is slipping under the radar:

Destroying the coast of the ANWR is one of the things BushCo wants to sneak in while we’re distracted by the proposed destruction of Social Security. When you call your senators to insist that they vote against the Barriers to Bankruptcy Bill, you can also mention your opposition to the destruction of our Arctic Wildlife Refuge.

History and Perceptions has an alternative viewpoint concerning drilling on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge:

Next, it's time to start building refineries. Lots of 'em. Big, huge, smelly gasoline refineries, where enough capacity exists to offset the summer driving season squeeze.

Lots of good blogging. Though, after that last one, I'm going to go take a shower.

File under: ANWR.
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Mr. Specious Infotainment on Friday:

Having read quite a bit about pre-WWII liberalism, I know that many liberals and progressives used to explicitly endorse the notion that the ends can justify the means and the spirit of ends-justifying-the-means suffuses vast areas of liberal public policy and, often, conservative foreign policy.

Anyway, does anyone know about an essay or book specificly on this concept and the arguments which swirl around it?

And then today:

I have to say this was the most disappointing result of a bleg to date. Except for some perfectly interesting and thoughtful personal observations on what the whole ends versus means thing means to some readers, nobody's pointed me to anything worth reading (save an old essay from WFB and exhortation to read through John Courtney Murray "writings").

First off, if he's read so much on the subject, why doesn't he use his vast knowledge of liberal philosophy? Why does he have to ask his readers to do the work for him? Why is he so doughy?

Second, he wasn't asking about articles on whether the ends justify the means. He was making a specific charge that this was an essential part of liberal philosophy.

What a shithead.

File under: hack.
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