Lil White Lies: Moral Mushrooms

Before PolitiFact (PF) recently published that Obama had kept the above promise on the Obameter, they reviewed it and talked about it.

After they put it out, IF they saw what Bryan White had to say (essentially, that he didn't keep the promise because the energy producers exceeded it regardless) they most likely talked about it again, and decided there wasn’t any merit in his suggestion, and didn’t do it. It was probably in a meeting, for that matter, it was a group decision following some discussion.

If I was in that meeting, I would have said, this is bullsh*t. Leave it the way it is. Bryan White claims it is an “obvious” mistake, but that’s his opinion. I’d ask a few simple questions, which I’m sure some of which were covered if PF did have a meeting:

1. How does Bryan even know that the energy companies weren’t influenced by Obama to exceed this percentage which brought about it “just happening”? What is his evidence? Does he have Obama’s phone records to see if he called anyone in the energy industry? Is that the extent to which he wants PF to go?

2. Assuming Obama isn’t past-posting, if he encouraged these companies to try to achieve the 10% goal, and it was done, should he not deserve credit for the encouragement? Isn’t this a function of leadership, the so-called bully pulpit?

3. Assuming you’re a company who doesn’t want government intervention, you’re supposed to (in theory, according to Conservatives and Libertarians) “do the right thing.” What Bryan claims is implicit in Obama’s “promise” is the government riding rough-shod over the energy providers (the way I think he sees regulation or government pressure) in requiring them to achieve the standard. So it was apparently left to the “free markets” and the goal was achieved without government regulation: isn’t that what Bryan would want?

4. Actually, it WAS government intervention: it was the Stimulus which was “primarily responsible” for the growth. And who was behind the Stimulus? (emphasis added)

Yet, as Dave Hamilton, director of Global Warming and Energy Programs for the Sierra Club, pointed out in an e-mail interview, the Obama administration might not have had that far to go. Hamilton contends that, based on a report by the U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) -- the statistical, independent body within the Department of Energy -- the U.S. was already receiving roughly 10 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2009. "It was the strong growth in both hydro and wind that brought it over 10 percent for 2009, so I'm not saying the promise was disingenuous. But somebody must have known they didn't have that far to go to make 10 percent with hydro left in the mix,” said Hamilton. The EIA report that Hamilton cites specifies that the American Recovery and Re-Investment Act was primarily responsible for this growth of renewable energy-based electricity in 2009.

So, when Bryan was a kid and his mother told him to put his shoes away, I guess he put his shoes away, but he didn’t put his coat away too. He couldn’t make the correlation because his youthful logic said, that’s all my mother requires me to do. 

It has nothing to do with moral integrity, as Bryan would lead you to believe reading his post.  In fact, I’m rather sick and tired of reading another person impugning someone’s moral character as a justification to convince someone or to change something to what they believe is the “right” thing, because in their opinion, it’s incorrect. Like when he and his little friend Deff Jyberg seem to often comment on the Facebook PolitiFact page that others with differing opinions to theirs for whatever reason should be “ashamed” of themselves.

This morality play reminds me of something I quoted in a post early this year, by none other than Ayn Rand:

This method bears a certain resemblance to the fallacy ad hominem, and comes from the same psychological root, but is different in essential meaning. The ad hominem fallacy consists of attempting to refute an argument by impeaching the character of its proponent. Example: "Candidate X is immoral, therefore his argument is false."

But the psychological pressure method consists of threatening to impeach an opponent's character by means of his argument, thus impeaching the argument without debate. Example: "Only the immoral can fail to see that Candidate X's argument is false."

And you know, on top of this supposed embarrassment PF will suffer because they won’t do it his way, there’s his implicit threat of “I think this isn’t unintentional bias” as if he’s going to turn them into the bias police and expose them as a result, but if that doesn’t work then they certainly must be incompetent.

Wow, talk about false dichotomies. He should join the Tea Party if he’s not already a member,  seeing he likes to grab anything he can to hold over someone’s head, the facts and everyone else be damned.