I Got Your Evidence Right Here

What’s worse than three days without power in 85 degree heat and humidity? Being kept awake by the lights of the neighbors across the street.

In a related story, from the online edition of Tuesday’s Seattle Times:

Seattle is on a stretch of 271 days and counting without reaching 75 degrees, said Dennis D'Amico, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service. The previous record was 254 days.
"We have crushed that," Mass said, adding it's likely temperatures won't reach 75 until July.
It's not just that it's not warm — it's been far colder than June's usual high of 70.
At 56 degrees, Sunday's high was just 1 degree above the lowest high ever recorded at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport on a June 20. That's a typical mid-April high.

Seriously. Where do I sign up?

Not much this week. For some reason, very little of interest takes place between May and September. I suppose there are three nuggets of interest.

It seems General Stanley McChrystal has found himself in something of a SNAFU. It seems he has been caught on the record disparaging nearly the entire civilian command structure of the military. From the ambassadors all the way up to the President, no one was spared his cutting sarcasm and dismissive nonchalance. Ordinarily this wouldn’t be a problem, the leaders of the opposition party do worse than that multiple times a day every day. The issue in this case is that Stanley McChrystal is an active member of the U.S. military. A G.I. Government Issue. And by a strange quirk of U.S. law, the First Amendment, guaranteeing the freedom of political speech, does not apply to government issues while they are on active duty - and especially in the theater of war. According to the UCMJ, use of contemptuous words against the President, Vice President, and so forth, is grounds for a court martial and whatever punishment may result from that.

Am I surprised at McChrystal’s apparent contempt for the civilian command structure? Not really. In the same way many civilians view the military brass as trigger-happy cowboys itching for the next thing to blow up, military brass view civilians - politicians in particular - as soft, lazy busybodies, always getting in the way of crushing the enemy. However, as an active duty general, he is not at liberty to disparage the Commander-in-Chief or the chain of command. He knew that. And if he didn’t, he should have. Now he has to face the consequences. If I had money to burn I would wager that the President will choose to retain him in spite of his actions. This isn’t the first time McChrystal has “gone off the reservation.” But Democratic administrations are notoriously paranoid of taking any actions whatsoever that might be construed as “failing to support the troops,” regardless of how those necessary those actions may be. The smart money here is on the Afghan war continuing with McChrystal at the helm.

Last week, in a televised address to the nation, President Obama announced he had instructed British Petroleum to set up a $20 billion escrow fund to provide compensation and clean-up funds for the ongoing spill. Two days later, BP CEO Tony Hayward made the trek up to Capitol Hill for his turn at punching bag before the dog and pony show that is the United States Congress. The act was proceeding largely according to script, with House members raising their voices and waving their arms and Hayward apologizing profusely while insisting he knew nothing about anything, until the microphone was turned over to Representative Joe Barton, Republican, of Texas. A fool without corneas could see where this was going. Barton proceeded to apologize to Hayward for his company’s “treatment” at the hands of the government, calling the White House’s demands for the escrow fund a “shameful act... of extortion” by the President, and expressing his dismay that a private company would be forced to cover the costs of the damage caused by their negligence. Before the words had even left his mouth, the minority leaders in the House and Senate were scrambling to find a television camera into which they could distance themselves from Barton’s idiocy. And only minutes later, after apparently being struck by a bolt of, “wow-did-I-really-say-something-that-stupid-out-loud,” Barton attempted to clarify himself, claiming his remarks were “misinterpreted,” and “taken out of context,” and that he certainly didn’t mean to imply that BP should not be held responsible for the clean-up.

Unfortunately, stupidity travels faster than common sense, and before they could get the memo to shut up and keep their moronic, baseless criticism to themselves, several Republican party leaders including the Republican Policy Committee (consisting of 115 House Republicans) and the Governor of Mississippi rallied around Barton’s comments. Well, they rallied until someone informed them that the only entity involved in the oil spill less popular than the government is British Petroleum, and most Americans still feel as though BP hasn’t done enough to compensate the region for the disaster, and given the opportunity, will refuse to do so. Once they were made aware of that fact, most of them retreated, claiming they never actually said the very things they’d said on camera and in print merely hours earlier. Why did they have to be made aware of that fact by other people?

Finally, on Tuesday afternoon a federal judge in Louisiana overturned the Obama administration’s six month moratorium on new deep water drilling. The oil and gas industry argued, somehow successfully, that there is “no evidence that deep water drilling operations pose a threat to the Gulf of Mexico.” Excuse me? No evidence? Really? Then what the *bleep* is this?

And this.

And this.

(Images from Boston.com/bigpicture)

I guess I might argue that the 80 millions gallons (and counting) of oil sloshing about the Gulf of Mexico could be considered “evidence” of the threat posed by deep water drilling. Look. If you as a judge believe that the short term danger to the Gulf coast economy by a drilling moratorium outweighs any possible danger to the Gulf coast ecology, just say so. Don’t lend credibility to an obviously absurd argument with an even more ludicrous justification for your decision.