The Obama Project@WindonWater.net

US climate change denier James Inhofe joins Al Gore in fight against soot | Environment | guardian.co.uk.

He said his concern about the health effects of soot grew from his interest in Africa, where poor families who cook on wood stoves can suffer lung diseases from the soot.

As for the oddness of his alliance with the climate evangelist Gore, Inhofe said: “Al Gore probably would be against automobile accidents and I am too. This has nothing to do with the CO₂ issue.”

But the convergence of interests has raised hopes among environmentalists that it might be easier to reach consensus on the need to act on soot – which is familiar and can be felt and touched – than it has been on greenhouse gases.

“This is a very significant breakthrough from his past positions so we are very pleased,” said Erika Rosenthal of EarthJustice.

In a further twist, Inhofe came out a few days ahead of Gore in drawing the public’s attention to what scientists have recently identified as the main cause of global warming after carbon dioxide.

This is very good news – and the very essence of what we can hope for out of bipartisanship.  Finding areas where we can agree – and making it POSSIBLE for us to agree where we can – is what the Obama brand is all about.  It isn’t bipartisanship if it requires one party or the other to relinquish their principles – it’s only bipartisanship if we create a climate where our “convergence of interests” can be expressed.

Well done, Sen. Inhofe.

This past Wednesday, I had the privilege of calling in to the Bob and Lee internet radio show “Agree to Disagree, with Bob and Lee”. As an added bonus, they had a special guest, Elvis Dingeldein, who was also on hand when I called. The topic I asked about is one I’ve been pondering quite a bit – namely the continued polarization along political lines of our information. I want to expand upon the problem (as I see it) here, and share the segment of the podcast in which I was involved, and where the gentlemen addressed themselves to my question. I’ll come back later with a follow-up post of what I think could be a solution.

The problem is that with the increasingly expanded availability to accrue like-minded opinions, we are growing more and more entrenched in our own “echo-chambers.” While segregation between the races has been held to be a bad thing, segregation by ideology, which have lately been conflated with racial and religious tribalisms, has become the mode du jour. We are so enamoured with our like-minded-seeking that we often miss how much information we actively reject when it doesn’t fit our preconceived notions – and we have become comfortable allowing a gradual drift – such that knowledge is being segmented into our ideological spheres.

To say this is unacceptable is putting too fine a point on the matter. This is something that needs to be hit with a blunt edge. Our energetic, vitriolic disputes, clever wit and sarcasm need to be better employed in the arena of ideas, rather than in the clannish protectionism of one camp over another.

(audio under the fold)

QT
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Here’s an excerpt of Steve Waldman’s blog post:

…consider this statistical couplet. According to a 2007 survey commissioned by a progressive think tank called Third Way, 69 percent of Americans believe abortion is the “taking of a human life,” but 72 percent believe it should be legal.

Let that soak in. Most people think abortion is taking a human life and yet favor the procedure being legal. How grotesque! Are we Americans utterly immoral?

Actually, what the data proclaim is something that politicians and activists can’t: Most Americans believe there are gradations of life. Some living things are more alive than others, and so the later in the pregnancy it gets, the more uncomfortable people become with the idea of ending it. But in reality they believe both that a life stirs very early on and that a one-week-old embryo is more “killable” than a nine-month-old fetus. For them, determining whether “life” begins at conception really doesn’t determine anything.

Right. I said something similar back in January:

Disclaimer: I’m choosing the words “anti-abortion” as opposed to the false dichotomy of pro-life and pro-choice. Who isn’t pro-life? Who is pro-abortion? And – is it a honest-to-God fact that every instance of abortion is really a choice? I think reasonable minds can come to a different place on this issue – especially if we stop talking about it in ways that define us as against each other. Most of us don’t think animals have the same rights as humans – but we also agree that we don’t have a right to be cruel to animals. that’s not a choice we get to exercise. There’s a reasonable place where we all can meet – I’d like to see us get there.

Given that Roe v Wade already makes the trimester distinction, it seems reasonable that that’s a line we can pursue, safely, without jeopardizing the sanctity of established law.

QT