The Daily Parker

Politics, Weather, Photography, and the Dog

False equivalence and journalistic malfeasance

It has become a lot more likely in the last two weeks that my party will nominate Elizabeth Warren for President. (Note: I am a financial contributor to the Warren campaign.) One way you can tell is that journalists have started writing misleading stories about her:

It is certainly true, as CBS noted, that some people have questioned Warren’s account [of being fired because she was pregnant in 1971]. A story in the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative publication, did so, as did a writer for Jacobin, a socialist publication. But to say that stories have raised questions is not the same thing as saying the questions are good ones.

Over the years, people have also “raised questions” about whether the earth rotates around the sun, the moon landing happened, Communism was fatally flawed, Elvis died and Barack Obama is an American. But I wouldn’t recommend putting any of those questions in a headline.

A good rule: Whenever you see the phrase “raises questions” in a story, you should be deeply skeptical of its assertions. The phrase is a crutch that journalists too often use to make implicit accusations they can’t support.

Regardless of who gets the nomination for either party, the next election (389 days away), we can all to to bed each night knowing the next day will have even worse coverage of the election than the day before. If Warren runs against President Trump, I can scarcely imagine the sexist and anti-intellectual campaigning and journalism we'll get.

Meanwhile, in the same newspaper, Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman puts into words something I've thought for years: we're actually lucky that Trump is an unstable moron.

Good, old-fashioned Chicago cold front

O'Hare's high temperature today of 19.4°C occurred at 5am. From then until about 9am the temperature lingered around 19°C. And then the cold front came through.

Between 9am and 11am the temperature plunged 8°C. It's now 11°C and raining. Tomorrow it'll be 11°C and sunny. Overnight it'll be 3°C in the city and -2°C in the far Western suburbs.

Autumn comes to Chicago all at once. Today's the day it chose this year.

What's happening today?

Not too much:

And two algorithms I'm testing that should produce similar results are not. So back to the coding window I go.

The sources of pollution

The Guardian has ranked the 20-largest polluters worldwide based on their addition to atmospheric greenhouse gases since 1965. You will not be surprised:

New data from world-renowned researchers reveals how this cohort of state-owned and multinational firms are driving the climate emergency that threatens the future of humanity, and details how they have continued to expand their operations despite being aware of the industry’s devastating impact on the planet.

The analysis, by Richard Heede at the Climate Accountability Institute in the US, the world’s leading authority on big oil’s role in the escalating climate emergency, evaluates what the global corporations have extracted from the ground, and the subsequent emissions these fossil fuels are responsible for since 1965 – the point at which experts say the environmental impact of fossil fuels was known by both industry leaders and politicians.

The top 20 companies on the list have contributed to 35% of all energy-related carbon dioxide and methane worldwide, totalling 480bn tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) since 1965.

Those identified range from investor-owned firms – household names such as Chevron, Exxon, BP and Shell – to state-owned companies including Saudi Aramco and Gazprom.

Chevron topped the list of the eight investor-owned corporations, followed closely by Exxon, BP and Shell. Together these four global businesses are behind more than 10% of the world’s carbon emissions since 1965.

Columnist George Monbiot says the companies got away with this by blaming you and me for their fossil-fuel extraction:

Even as their own scientists warned that the continued extraction of fossil fuels could cause “catastrophic” consequences, the oil companies pumped billions of dollars into thwarting government action. They funded thinktanks and paid retired scientists and fake grassroots organisations to pour doubt and scorn on climate science. They sponsored politicians, particularly in the US Congress, to block international attempts to curtail greenhouse gas emissions. They invested heavily in greenwashing their public image.

These efforts continue today, with advertisements by Shell and Exxon that create the misleading impression that they’re switching from fossil fuels to renewable energy. In reality, Shell’s annual report reveals that it invested $25bn in oil and gas last year. But it provides no figure for its much-trumpeted investments in low-carbon technologies. Nor was the company able to do so when I challenged it.

The ideology of consumerism is highly effective at shifting blame: witness the current ranting in the billionaire press about the alleged hypocrisy of environmental activists. Everywhere I see rich westerners blaming planetary destruction on the birth rates of much poorer people, or on “the Chinese”. This individuation of responsibility, intrinsic to consumerism, blinds us to the real drivers of destruction.

And the band played on.

Nice legislature you've got there. Shame if something happened to it

President Trump has told Congress that he doesn't believe they have any right to investigate him or any other part of the executive branch. This, ah, innovative view of the Constitution has garnered some criticism from just about everyone:

Legal experts have already torpedoed the absurd idea that the White House gets to declare the House’s impeachment inquiry illegitimate. The Constitution grants the House “sole power of impeachment,” and the chambers set their own rules. The White House claims the House must hold a full vote to render the inquiry operative, but this is simply baseless.

But, putting aside the fact that Trump’s demands were based on nonsense, what’s notable here is that the White House’s official position is that the conduct itself, that is, Trump’s act of pressing Zelensky to do these things, is perfectly okay.

Jennifer Rubin says this merely delays the inevitable:

The problem with this tactic, obvious to those outside the Trump cult, is that it is hard to imagine the House forgoing impeachment, unless of course Trump resigns before it can. Furthermore, while the House is free to pursue contempt proceedings against Sondland and other non-cooperating witnesses, it does not have to hold up impeachment proceedings. There is nothing wrong with moving forward with multiple articles, including one on obstruction, while also seeking enforcement of a contempt proceeding against current or former officials who refuse to appear or provide documents.

In short, there is more than enough evidence already and more than enough public support as we speak for the House to move to impeachment right now. To the extent over the next few weeks that it can gain further incriminating material or reveals incriminating material it possesses, the House will only bolster its case. However, nothing we have seen in the underlying evidence or the polling suggests any reason not to proceed to impeachment.

By fighting against the inevitable, acting more illogical and unhinged than usual and refusing to give Senate Republicans reason to support him, his current strategy only makes it easier for more Senate Republicans to break with him in a trial for removal. His flailing just heightens the perception among voters that one way or another, this guy has to go.

But let's not get complacent. With enough support from part of the legislature, or from the judiciary should it come to that, the Constitutional order of each branch policing the other two could fall apart. The Republican Party has long sought a (Republican) unitary executive that rules over the other two branches.

Trump, mostly for personal reasons as I don't believe he has any concept of the US Constitution nor has he read the document, is pushing for this goal harder than any president in history. I include Lincoln, by the way. Lincoln tried very hard to ensure that his decisions would pass Constitutional challenges after the Civil War, and he succeeded.

We should be thankful, then, that the instrument of the Republican Party's headlong push into authoritarian government turns out to have no clue how to do it, and undermines both himself and the Party every time he Tweets.

It's still horrifying to watch. And we still have 390 days until the next election.

Pausing from parsing

My task this afternoon is to parse a pile of random text that has, shall we say, inconsistencies. Before I return to that task, I'm setting aside some stuff to read later on:

And finally, Crain's reviews five relatively-new steakhouses in Chicago. Since we probably won't eat steak past about 2030, these may be worth checking out sooner rather than later.

Monty Python at 50

How did I miss this? Monty Python's Flying Circus turned 50 on Friday:

The Pythons included a prolific diarist – Palin has published three hefty volumes already – but, dismayingly, the months around the start of the first Python show are one of the longest gaps. Palin attributes this to the busy-ness of filming, and having a young child and ailing elderly father.

Although comic weirdness had been introduced to the BBC by The Goon Show, Monty Python went even further. BBC production teams may have sensed something odd was coming from the paperwork: a requisition form to the props department asks for a “selection of bras (6), panties (6), and tights (5)” and “1 swastika flag, approx 4’ x 2.6”. A list of extras for a filming day includes, after one name, the specification “no pigeon on shoulder” (parrots, on shoulders and flat on their perch, would become a Python speciality). A handwritten note asks: “What about topless on fountain?”

While Cleese has latterly attracted a reputation for irascibility, he is caught out in the files in a gesture of striking kindness. A Kent schoolboy called Doug Holman writes, asking for tickets to a recording. Cleese arranges for a pair to be sent. Doug, boldly, writes back, saying he is part of a large group of friends who want to go. Cleese contacts the BBC to request a further 14 tickets, suggesting that the young will be “good laughers”.

Given the passage of five decades, many of the early Python audience have joined the choir invisible with the programme’s late parrot. But I tracked down a Doug Holman who grew up in Kent and is now 69, running a business in Hampshire. My email rapidly received the reply: “It’s a fair cop! Hearty congratulations on your detective work.”

So much happened in 1969 and 1999 that these anniversary posts will probably keep coming through next year. Time keeps on slippin'...

What's Ukraine got to do with it?

Hard to believe that I visited Ukraine more than 10 years ago, but not hard to believe that it keeps coming up in US politics. Julia Ioffe explains why:

Whenever Ukraine appears in our news cycle, it is talked about as if it’s a simpler place than it is. The political dynamic gets reduced to neat binaries—the forces there are either pro-Russia or pro-West; leaders are either corrupt actors or laudable reformers; the good guys versus the bad guys. But that framework belies the moral complexity of the place, which is why it pops up in our domestic political scandals in the first place.

Ukraine would like America and Europe to think of it as a promising young democracy, the good little country struggling to fend off the gravitational pull of evil Russia. There is a lot of truth in that. But it is also an oligarchy where a very small number of people control the country’s natural resources, a legacy of its Soviet past. Around each of these people is a clan vying for influence, resources, and political power. They sponsor media outlets and politicians. Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, for example, has promised to fight corruption but is also closely linked with one of the country’s most powerful oligarchs.

Ukraine pops up in our domestic political scandals because it is in the middle of a tug-of-war between Russia and the West, and because Westerners go there to enrich themselves doing questionable work. But in our minds, it is a small country somewhere over the horizon, full of people with funny Slavic names. Ukraine is much easier to think about if we cram it into our own political dichotomies, even if that distorts what’s really happening on the ground. The problem in doing so, however, is that we become unwitting participants in someone else’s games.

Julia Ioffe is one of our best reporters on post-Soviet countries. She's right: the more private American citizens muck about in Ukraine, the more we're going to get sucked into post-Soviet politics.

Does Warren have it sewn up?

John Judis thinks she might:

At the risk of appearing foolhardy several months hence, I want to say that in the last week, it has become very likely that Elizabeth Warren will win the Democratic nomination. A two-tier race, with Warren, Joe Biden, and Bernie Sanders in the top tier, has become a race largely of Warren against herself.

Sanders – justifiably in my opinion, and I am of the same rough age – always faced questions about his age.  These questions have been answered in the negative, sadly, by his recent heart attack. Voters will be right to doubt whether someone of Sanders’ age and medical history can handle one of the most stressful jobs on earth – especially, in Sanders’ case, because he would be coming into the job anew and face a hostile Washington and Wall Street. He needs to prepare for a graceful exit.

Biden, on paper, has always been the most electable Democrat, and if the presidential election had been held last month, he probably would have won.  To undecided voters in swing states – and I always believe they number more than the political scientists claim – Biden comes off as “one of us.” It’s an inestimable advantage that Warren, for instance, doesn’t enjoy. He has also steered clear of extreme positions that would cost him in a general election. But Biden seems even slower on the uptake than in the past.  I don’t believe these claims that he (or Trump for that matter)  has dementia – enough with these amateur psychiatrists! – but he shows the disabilities of age.

The general election is in just under 13 months, but the Iowa caucuses are only 119 days away. I have always thought Sanders too far to the left, and too policy-focused, to win; but his age also matters. And I love Uncle Joe, but again, do we need another 70-something in the hardest job in American politics?

I've supported Warren for a while now. I think the rest of the party ought to as well.

Moscow on the Potomac

Author Peter Pomerantsev says that the behavior of the Trump Administration, especially around its false accusations of illegal behavior by Hunter Biden, could not have better demonstrated how much Vladimir Putin has taught the West:

The message of much of Kremlin propaganda is not to showcase Russia as a beacon of progress, but to prove that Western politics is just as rotten as President Vladimir Putin’s. We may have corruption, the argument goes, but so does the West; our democracy is rigged, but so is theirs.

The media manipulation of the early Putin years didn’t try to convince you of a fabricated version of “truth.” Instead, it worked by seeding doubt and confusion, evoking a world so full of endlessly intricate conspiracies that you, the little guy, had no chance to work out or change. Instead of conspiracy theories being used to merely buttress an ideology as under Communist rule, a conspiratorial worldview replaced ideology as a way to explain the world, encouraging the public to trust nothing and yearn for a strong leader to guide it through the murk — a tactic that’s as common in Washington these days as in Moscow.

This attitude is what makes Kremlin propaganda today different from its Soviet predecessor. The Soviets tried to make their lies sound factual. Even their disinformation in the West was meant to feel foolproof: For example, the 1980s campaign to show that the C.I.A. had invented AIDS was carefully curated through Soviet-controlled medical conferences. When President Ronald Reagan called out the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, Mr. Gorbachev feigned horror at the idea that the Soviet Union would stoop to lies. Today, when the Kremlin pushes conspiracies claiming Americans invented Ebola or Zika, these stories are thrown online with no serious attempt to make them sound believable. Their aim as much to confuse as to convince. And there’s no shame in being caught lying.

And Putin is loving it.