Author Archives: CassieRZJyu

Today in Trump

by CassieRZJyu Posted on January 23, 2017

Mother Jones

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Here’s Chuck Todd on Meet the Press this morning, asking White House “counselor” Kellyanne Conway why President Trump’s press secretary started his first day in office by going out and lying repeatedly on national TV. Her answer: Sean Spicer was merely providing “alternative facts.”

I don’t want to pick on Todd, who pressed Conway hard on this, but it was almost painful watching him try so hard to avoid using the obvious word here. Over and over, he wanted to ask why Spicer had lied, which would be the usual way of phrasing his question. On a couple of occasions he even stuttered a bit while he searched for another word. He just wouldn’t say it. So what’s the best response to Conway’s dogged unwillingness to answer questions in even a debatably truthful way? I think Jamelle Bouie has it right:

There’s a limit to how much TV networks should tolerate staffers who have a consistent history of viewing airtime merely as a way of promoting lies. Kellyanne Conway blew past that limit before Trump even took office. It’s hard to see what the value of having her on a news show is at this point.

In other developments, hold on to your jaw—or maybe your stomach—as you watch Trump blow a kiss to FBI Director James Comey and then give him a big hug:

Jeet Heer has the proper take on this:

Trump won because of Comey. Period. Without Comey’s letter of October 28, Trump would have lost by 8 million popular votes and a few dozen electoral votes. And Comey knew exactly what he was doing. Published reports suggest that literally every single person he talked to advised him that writing his letter would be an unprecedented violation of rules against letting ongoing investigations interfere with elections.

Finally, in other news from Kellyanne Conway, we learned officially what’s been obvious for a long time: Donald Trump is never going to release his tax returns.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You mentioned a couple hundred thousand people who sent in petitions on health care, talking about health care, you also have more than 200,000 who petitioned the White House calling on President Trump to release his full tax returns with all information needed to verify emolument’s clause compliance. Whenever 100,000 petition, that triggers a White House response. So, what is the White House response?

CONWAY: The White House response is that he’s not going to release his tax returns. We litigated this all through the election. People didn’t care. They voted for him.

The “audit” was just a ruse all along. I don’t think that will surprise anyone with a room-temperature IQ, and I guess Trump decided to stop playing the game.

1,458 days to go. I can hardly wait for the Spicer/Conway description of Trump’s tax cuts and Trump’s replacement for Obamacare.

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Today in Trump

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The Real Lesson From Emailgate: Maybe the State Department Needs More Secure Email

by CassieRZJyu Posted on August 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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David Ignatius talked with “a half-dozen knowledgeable lawyers” and concluded that the Hillary Clinton email affair has been overblown. No big surprise there. Click the link if you want more.

But here’s the curious part. Part of Clinton’s trouble stems from the fact that sensitive information was sent to her via email, which isn’t meant for confidential communications. However, as Ignatius points out, this is a nothingburger. Everyone does this, and has for a long time. But why?

“It’s common knowledge that the classified communications system is impossible and isn’t used,” said one former high-level Justice Department official. Several former prosecutors said flatly that such sloppy, unauthorized practices, although technically violations of law, wouldn’t normally lead to criminal cases.

Why is the classified system so cumbersome? Highly secure encryption is easy to implement on off-the-shelf PCs, and surely some kind of software that plugs into email and restricts the flow of messages wouldn’t be too hard to implement. So why not build more security into email and ditch the old system? What’s the hold-up?

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The Real Lesson From Emailgate: Maybe the State Department Needs More Secure Email

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New EPA carbon rules would save thousands of lives, science says

by CassieRZJyu Posted on May 5, 2015

E.P.Yay.

New EPA carbon rules would save thousands of lives, science says

By on 5 May 2015commentsShare

We’re all thinking it, I’ll just say it: Carbon emissions regulations are boring. Nine times out of 10, I’m yawning by the time I get to the “regulations” part. Plus, I don’t personally spew CO2 and other pollutants from industrial-scale smokestacks — even if I’m personally responsible for some of that spew — so it can be kinda hard to care about this or that incentive or check meant to keep big polluters in line.

Well, too bad, it’s time to pay attention. Carbon regulations save lives — we were already pretty sure about this, but now science can confirm just how many lives we’re talking: thousands. The Obama administration’s proposed regulations on carbon pollution from power plants would save thousands of lives every year. Here’s The New York Times with the gist:

[A new] study, led by researchers at Syracuse and Harvard Universities, used modeling to predict the effect on human health of changes to national carbon standards for power plants. The researchers calculated three different outcomes using data from the Census Bureau and detailed maps of the more than 2,400 fossil-fuel power plants across the country.

The model with the biggest health benefit was the one that most closely resembled the changes that the Environmental Protection Agency proposed in a rule in June. Under that plan, reductions in carbon emissions for the plants would be set by states and would include improvements to the energy efficiency of, for example, air-conditioners, refrigerators and power grids.

The health benefits of the rule would be indirect. While carbon emissions trap heat in the atmosphere, which contributes to a warming planet, they are not directly linked to health threats. Emissions from coal-fired power plants, however, also include a number of other pollutants, such as soot and ozone, that are directly linked to illnesses like asthma and lung disease.

Researchers calculated that the changes in the E.P.A. rule could prevent 3,500 premature deaths a year and more than 1,000 heart attacks and hospitalizations from air-pollution-related illness.

Nearly 5,000 lives saved and hospitalizations avoided — that’s about four suburban high schools (this is a unit I just made up) worth of people, which is a horrifying number to drop to preventable causes every year. 

Source:
E.P.A. Carbon Emissions Plan Could Save Thousands of Lives, Study Finds

, New York Times.

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New EPA carbon rules would save thousands of lives, science says

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Chart of the Day: Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States

by CassieRZJyu Posted on November 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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Matt Yglesias linked today to a map from the Pew Hispanic Center showing which states had the highest populations of unauthorized immigrants. It was interesting but unsurprising: the biggest states (California, Texas, Florida, New York) also have the most unauthorized immigrants. This got me curious about which states had the highest percentages of unauthorized immigrants—which the Pew map also provides. The answer is in the chart below.

For what it’s worth, I thought the most striking thing was the fact that for all the sound and fury illegal immigration provokes, it turns out that there are only seven states in which unauthorized immigrants make up more than 4 percent of the population. In the vast majority of the country, they’re a vanishingly small group.

More here:

Chart of the Day: Unauthorized Immigrants in the United States

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