Libros
Mother Jones
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Earlier this week I wrote about Lara Logan’s sensationalistic report on Benghazi for 60 Minutes on Sunday. As it turned out, the only new bit of reporting came from a British security supervisor who has written a book and came on the program to publicize it, but even he didn’t really have anything new to add. When he got to Benghazi, he said, he realized it was a dangerous place and that al-Qaeda-affiliated groups were active in the area. This isn’t news.
However, the supervisor, who was dramatically disguised on camera and went by the pseudonym Morgan Jones, did have a very detailed account of his own heroic actions on the night of the attacks. Today, Karen DeYoung of the Washington Post suggests—well, she’s a straight news reporter, so she doesn’t suggest anything. But here’s what she reports:
In a written account that Jones, whose real name was confirmed as Dylan Davies by several officials who worked with him in Benghazi, provided to his employer three days after the attack, he told a different story of his experiences that night.
In Davies’s 2½-page incident report to Blue Mountain, the Britain-based contractor hired by the State Department to handle perimeter security at the compound, he wrote that he spent most of that night at his Benghazi beach-side villa. Although he attempted to get to the compound, he wrote in the report, “we could not get anywhere near . . . as roadblocks had been set up.”
….The State Department and GOP congressional aides confirmed that Davies’s Sept. 14, 2012, report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Post, was included among tens of thousands of documents turned over to lawmakers by the State Department this year.
….A person answering the telephone Thursday at Blue Mountain, based in Wales, said no one was available to discuss Benghazi or Davies, who no longer worked there. Damien Lewis, co-author of the book, said in a telephone interview that Davies was “not well” and is hospitalized. Lewis said he was unaware that the Blue Mountain incident report existed but suggested that Davies might have dissembled in it because his superiors, whom he contacted by telephone once he was informed that the attack was underway, told him to stay away from the compound.
So here’s what we know: (a) There was really no need for the dramatic pseudonym. Everyone knew who Davies was. (b) His official report differs wildly from his 60 Minutes account. (c) Davies is now conveniently sick and unable to explain himself. (d) Davies never told his co-author about his after-action report. (e) Presumably he never told 60 Minutes about it either. (f) Congressional investigators have had copies of Davies’ report for months.
Needless to say, neither 60 Minutes nor congressional Republicans care about any of this. They have their story and they’re sticking to it. The rest of us can make up our own minds.
See more here –
Mother Jones
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I’ve been reading all day that Republican favorability ratings plummeted in the latest Gallup poll, but I didn’t think much of it. After all, favorability ratings for both parties have been pretty low for a while. But when I finally clicked through to look at the actual numbers, it was a lot more dramatic than I thought:
Wow. Republican favorability ratings have been hovering within a few points of 40 percent ever since 2006. Then Ted Cruz mounted his filibuster, Republicans starting threatening to crash the economy, and their favorability crashed ten points to 28 percent, the lowest in history. As we all know, the Crazification Factor is 27 percent, which means that literally nobody sane approves of the Republican Party any longer.
This demonstrates a surprising amount of common sense among average Americans. In a way, I’m heartened.
Read the article –
Mother Jones
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Nearly 80 percent of antibiotics consumed in the United States go to livestock farms. Meanwhile, antibiotic-resistant pathogens affecting people are on the rise. Is there a connection here? No need for alarm, insists the National Pork Producers Council. Existing regulations “provide adequate safeguards against antibiotic resistance,” the group insists on its site. It even enlists the Centers for Disease Control in its effort to show that “animal antibiotic use is safe for everyone,” claiming that the CDC has found “no proven link to antibiotic treatment failure in humans due to antibiotic use in animals.”
So move along, nothing to see here, right? Not so fast. On Monday, the CDC came out with a new report called “Antibiotic resistance threats in the United States, 2013,” available here. And far from exonerating the meat industry and its voracious appetite for drugs, the report spotlights it as a driver of resistance. Check out the left side of this infographic drawn from the report:
CDC
Note the text on the bottom: “These drugs should be only used to treat infections.” Compare that to the National Pork Producers Council’s much more expansive conception of proper uses of antibiotics in livestock facilities: “treatment of illness, prevention of disease, control of disease, and nutritional efficiency of animals.” Dosing animals with daily hits of antibiotics to prevent disease only makes sense, of course, if you’re keeping animals on an industrial scale.
The CDC report lays out a couple of specific pathogens whose spread among people is driven by farm practices. Drug-resistant campylobacter causes 310,000 infections per year, resulting in 28 deaths, the report states. The agency’s recommendations for reducing those numbers is blunt:
• Avoiding inappropriate antibiotic use in food animals.
• Tracking antibiotic use in different types of food animals.
• Stopping spread of Campylobacter among animals on farms.
• Improving food production and processing to reduce contamination.
• Educating consumers and food workers about safe food handling
practices.
Then there’s drug-resistant salmonella, which infects 100,000 people each year and kills 38, CDC reports. The agency lists a similar set of regulations—including “Avoiding inappropriate antibiotic use in food animals”—for reversing the rising trend of resistance in salmonella.
Finally, there’s Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, which racks up 80,461 “severe” cases per year and kills a mind-numbing 11,285 people annually. The CDC report doesn’t link MRSA to livestock production, but it does note that the number of cases of MRSA caught during hospital stays has plunged in recent years, while “rates of MRSA infections have increased rapidly among the general population (people who have not recently received care in a healthcare setting).”
Why are so many people coming down with MRSA who have not had recent contact with hospitals? Increasing evidence points to factory-scale hog facilities as a source. In a recent study, a team of researchers led by University of Iowa’s Tara Smith found MRSA in 8.5 percent of pigs on conventional farms and no pigs on antibiotic-free farms. Meanwhile, a study just released by the journal JAMA Internal Medicine found that people who live near hog farms or places where hog manure is applied as fertilizer have a much greater risk of contracting MRSA. Former Mother Jones writer Sarah Zhang summed up the study like this for Nature:
The team analyzed cases of two different types of MRSA — community-associated MRSA (CA-MRSA), which affected 1,539 patients, and health-care-associated MRSA (HA-MRSA), which affected 1,335 patients. (The two categories refer to where patients acquire the infection as well as the bacteria’s genetic lineages, but the distinction has grown fuzzier as more patients bring MRSA in and out of the hospital.) Then the researchers examined whether infected people lived near pig farms or agricultural land where pig manure was spread. They found that people who had the highest exposure to manure—calculated on the basis of how close they lived to farms, how large the farms were and how much manure was used—were 38% more likely to get CA-MRSA and 30% more likely to get HA-MRSA.
In short, the meat industry’s protestations aside, livestock production is emerging as a vital engine for the rising threat of antibiotic resistance. Perhaps the scariest chart in the whole report is this one—showing that once we generate pathogens that can withstand all the antibiotics currently on the market, there are very few new antibiotics on the horizon that can fill the breach—the pharma industry just isn’t investing in R&D for new ones.
CDC
Last year, the Food and Drug Administration rolled out proposed new rules for antibiotic uses on farms. At the time I found them wanting, because they include a massive loophole: They would phase out growth promotion as a legitimate use for antibiotics, but still accept disease prevention as a worthy reason for feeding them to animals. As I wrote at the time, “The industry can simply claim it’s using antibiotics preventively and go on about its business—continuing to reap the benefits of growth promotion and continuing to menace public health by breeding resistance.” To repeat the CDC’s phrase from its new report, “These drugs should be only used to treat infections.” Worse, the FDA’s new rules would be purely voluntary, relying on the pharma and meat industries to self-regulate.
Nearly a year and a half later, the FDA still hasn’t moved to initiate even that timid step in the right direction. Perhaps the CDC’s blunt reckoning will provide sufficient motivation.
From –
Mother Jones
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Tyler Cowen posits today that on economic issues, the right wing was both more dynamic and more correct than the left during the 70s and 80s, with “peak right” coming in 1989. After that, the left became more dynamic and more interesting. Obviously this is an arguable hypothesis, but let’s put it aside for a moment to consider this:
The relative rise of the Left peaks in 2009, with the passage of Obamacare and the stimulus. From that point on, the left wing, for better or worse, is a fundamentally conservative force in the intellectual arena. It becomes reactive and loses some of its previous creativity.
Over those years, right wing thought, on the whole, became worse and more predictable and also less interesting. But excess predictability now has infected the left wing also. Attacking stupid ideas put forward by Republicans, whether or not you think that is desirable or necessary, has become their lazy man’s way forward and it is sapping their faculties.
Here’s my question: Supposing, arguendo, that stupid ideas from Republicans have been the most destructive economic force of the past four years, then isn’t attacking those ideas actually a pretty productive use of time for a left-wing economist? Sure, it would be nice to see lots of intellectual ferment coming from the left, but (a) it’s probably too soon for that given the scale of the upheavals of 2008-13, and (b) it’s hard for elegant new theories to get much of a foothold until the stupid stuff is finally and definitively put in the ash can of history.
These are both debatable points. But I think there’s been some interesting work on shadow banking, the future of automation, the role of financial intermediaries, the cyclical impact of leverage, and much more coming out of the left and center-left recently. And that’s not even counting some equally interesting work on the role of income inequality on economic growth that’s starting to emerge from the leftier precincts of the left. But this stuff is all still trying to find its legs. It’s too soon for anyone to have emerged as the Keynes or Friedman of the post-financial-crash world.
Likewise, even after five years, right-wing economists are still pushing pet theories of austerity that make no sense, along with a variety of nonsensical RBC blather and monetary medievalism. Maybe the best course for academic economists is to ignore this stuff, knowing that it’s basically doomed in short order. But I think you can hardly blame them for thinking that this might be a dangerous course, one that could end up in disaster for lack of pushback. I don’t know if that’s the right way to think about it, but it’s not obviously ridiculous.
Excerpt from:
Attacking Stupid Ideas: A Dirty Job, But Someone’s Got to Do It
Mother Jones
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Rep. Martha Roby (R-Ala.) is no John McCain.
At a town hall forum in her district on Monday that was sponsored by a local tea party group, Roby was asked by an attendee what she would do to counter the supposed abuses of President Barack Obama, whom the man described as ineligible for office, a communist, and a tyrant. Here’s how the fellow put it: “What I need from you is to know what you can do, you and your fellow non-communist colleagues in the lower House, what you can do to stop these communist tyrannical executive orders laid down by this foreign-born, America-hating communist despot?”
After the room erupted in laughter and supportive applause, Roby responded with a smile: “Thank you for your question—he said it loud enough that you all heard it.” Roby did not push back on the questioner’s claims. Instead, she validated his fears. “Look I can’t emphasize the oversight part of my job enough,” she said. “And I think that that gets lost in what we do every day, because that’s exactly what we’re doing—we’re chasing down these executive orders, we’re chasing down these rules that are promulgated, that are backdoor legislation, whether it’s the EPA, the IRS, go down the list.”
Watch:
Contrast Roby’s dodgy reply with the direct response employed by McCain during the 2008 campaign, when a McCain supporter called then-Sen. Obama “an Arab.” McCain grabbed the microphone and wouldn’t let this stand:
Original article:
VIDEO: House GOPer Won’t Push Back on Birther Calling Obama "Communist Despot"
Mother Jones
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#RoyalBaby was born today. The famous spawn of the United Kingdom’s Prince William and Duchess Kate Middleton, #RoyalBaby is a bundle of joy who is supposedly worth roughly $380 million in stimulus to the British economy. There has been much international anticipation over the birthing of #RoyalBaby. For instance, here is the Google Trends graph of “Royal Baby” searches over the past 90 days:
Via Google Trends
“Given the special relationship between us, the American people are pleased to join with the people of the United Kingdom as they celebrate the birth of the young prince,” Barack and Michelle Obama said in a statement. “Barring revolution in Britain,” the BBC wrote, “the shape and trajectory of this baby’s life is, in every real sense, inescapable. This is a child whose destiny is to inherit one of the oldest hereditary thrones in the world.”
Hereditary throne, indeed. So in honor of the latest addition to the British royal family—a bloodline marked by tabloid fame, generations of autocracy, and Nazi sympathies—here is Mother Jones‘ #RoyalBaby Playlist.
1. Pavement
2. The Smiths
3. The Sex Pistols
4. Schoolhouse Rock!
5. Aerosmith
America.
See the original article here:
Mother Jones
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In a response to Jonah Goldberg, Charles Cooke admits that sharks aren’t actually all that dangerous:
Still, it’s best to presume that every single shark you meet is going to eat you. My view is that, because a shark can eat you, and has eaten people in the past, you should have, as per the definition that you provided, ”suspicion and mistrust of people or their actions without evidence or justification” — or, rather, of sharks and their actions
….The bottom line is that we should treat government as we should sharks: As George Washington is supposed to have said, “Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.” Even he couldn’t have imagined how dangerous and fearful governments could become.
My problem is that I’m not sure that the alternative to paranoia is reason. Is the way in which most people trust “reasonable”? No, not in the slightest. If people are going to be unreasonable — and they certainly are – it’s better that they’re unreasonably scared….There are no black helicopters and there may never be any black helicopters. But isn’t it positive that people are worried about them?
Well, I agree with Cooke about sharks. But there’s a pretty important missing point here: for most of us, there’s zero upside to palling around with sharks and zero downside to being unreasonably scared of them. So sure: you should avoid sharks at all costs. Why wouldn’t you?
Needless to say, the same is not true of government, no matter how much conservatives like to think otherwise. It provides many useful services! I like the fact that police keep me safe, paved roads let me go places, pensions and healthcare are available to me when I get old, and government agencies keep my air, water, and food tolerably clean and safe. There are genuine tradeoffs to be made, which means that reason really is the only non-insane way to evaluate what kind of government we want. Even coming from National Review, I’m a little surprised that apparently someone needs to make this rather obvious point.
Read the article:
Mother Jones
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Here’s my favorite part of the IRS scandal yet. According to the Inspector General’s report, the Cininnati office of the IRS developed an acronym for “Be On the Look Out.” Yep, they turned it into BOLO. Apparently the spreadsheet which listed words and phrases that might indicate political activity became known as the “BOLO Listing.” I expect this to take Twitter by storm any second now.
UPDATE: Pardon my ignorance. Turns out this is a standard police term. A “BOLO alert” is issued when police are trying to find someone suspected of a crime. I guess the IRS appropriated the term, they didn’t invent it.
Link to article:
Mother Jones
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Peter Kirsanow thinks that L’Affaire IRS (501gate? Cincygate? Teagate?) should be thoroughly investigated. I’m on board with that. But Kirsanow wants to go further. Much, much further:
But the investigation shouldn’t be limited to the IRS. Until last week, the IRS was denying that conservatives were being targeted by the agency. Now we know those denials were completely false. What about the Department of Labor, or for that matter, any federal agency with authority to investigate, regulate, or fine individuals and businesses? With few exceptions, the permanent bureaucracy in Washington leans heavily left. If IRS employees could target conservatives, what prevents the same mindset from prevailing in other agencies?
Congress must use its time and resources judiciously. But it would be shortsighted not to take seriously the complaints that citizens — regardless of ideology — have made about other agencies as well. Hey, we conservatives might be paranoid. But it looks like this time someone was, indeed, out to get us.
Good idea. This could be an excellent WPA-style works program, and it’s one that Republicans in Congress would be willing to fund generously. I recommend a citizen investigating force of at least 3 million drawn from all walks of life. There’s no sense in thinking small here.
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