Author Archives: Seraphinakbj

Breastfeeding is an Environmental Issue

by Seraphinakbj Posted on May 9, 2013

Isabel Araujo

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5 Tips for Safe Car Travels with Your Pet

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Breastfeeding is an Environmental Issue

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What These Tweets Tell Us About Boston Bombing Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

by Seraphinakbj Posted on April 19, 2013

Mother Jones

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p.mininav-header-text background-color: #000000 !importantMore MoJo coverage of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombings


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What These Tweets Tell Us About Boston Bombing Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev


EXCLUSIVE: Wrestling Photo, Stunned Reactions From Former Classmates of Bombing Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev


These Soldiers Did the Boston Marathon Wearing 40-Pound Packs. Then They Helped Save Lives.

Dzhokhar Tsarnaev apparently maintained an active Twitter account. A high school classmate of the at-large Boston Marathon bombing suspect has confirmed to BuzzFeed that the @J_tsar Twitter account belongs to Tsarnaev, and multiple Twitter users who say they are friends of Tsarnaev have pointed to this Twitter feed as his. The tweets on the @J_tsar account cover a variety of topics, including religion and pop culture, and contain much trash talk about women. The user of this account kept on tweeting after the bombing. On April 15, hours after the attack, he tweeted, “Ain’t no love in the heart of the city, stay safe people.” On April 17, he tweeted, “I’m just a stress free kind of guy.” Here’s a sampling of odd, mundane, and chilling tweets from the account from the past year, including one in which the user laments, “The value of human life ain’t shit nowadays.”

This is a Tweet that Tsarnaev retweeted on election day:

— Jahar (@J_tsar) September 2, 2012

The user of this account also tweeted this on Election Day last year:

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What These Tweets Tell Us About Boston Bombing Suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev

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Did Gun Legislation Fail Because of a Filibuster?

by Seraphinakbj Posted on April 19, 2013

Mother Jones

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Bob Somerby wants to know why the Manchin-Toomey background check bill failed in the Senate even though it received 54 votes:

All through the Post, reporters and analysts referred to “the 60-vote threshold required for approval.” But no one ever tried to explain where that threshold came from….The Post’s news report didn’t try to explain where that threshold came from. Neither did its analysis piece.

….After that, we read the New York Times, including its featured news report on the front page. After reading that report, we realized that we were no longer sure….Sixty votes were “needed under an agreement between both parties?”….Do you have any idea what that means? Frankly, we do not, though Jonathan Weisman makes it sound like this was not a typical filibuster. He makes it sound like Democrats agreed to a special threshold in part to defeat that amendment they didn’t favor.

Here’s our question: Did the practice known as a “filibuster” create the need for the sixty votes? That’s what we would have thought last night. By this morning, we no longer knew. And our big press organs were working hard to keep us all in the dark.

Maybe some of you are wondering the same thing. Was this a filibuster? If so, why not say so?

Here’s the answer: over the past few years, as the use of the filibuster has become routine, it’s become common to speed things up a bit by adopting unanimous consent agreements under which both sides agree that a piece of legislation will require 60 votes to pass but won’t require all the usual procedural hurdles of an actual filibuster. This is often convenient for both parties.

That’s what happened in this case. The party leaders negotiated a unanimous consent agreement which specified that 60 votes were required to proceed to debate on Manchin-Toomey. It didn’t get those 60 votes, so it failed.

This puts reporters in a bind. Here are their options:

  1. Explain the whole thing: a UC was negotiated; it required 60 votes on a motion to proceed; the motion failed because it got only 54 votes. Unfortunately, this will leave readers confused unless you also explain why Harry Reid agreed to such terms in the first place. The answer is that if Reid didn’t, then Republicans would formally filibuster the bill. 60 votes would still be required and a bunch of other procedural hurdles would be put in place. Reid was better off negotiating the UC.
  2. Chalk it up to “Senate procedures” or something like that and move on. This is short and sweet, but it risks leaving a lot of readers scratching their heads and wondering what really happened.
  3. Just call it a filibuster. For all intents and purposes, that’s what it is, and it’s the threat of a filibuster that prompted the UC in the first place. Technically, however, it’s not a filibuster, so reporting it as one isn’t precisely correct.

You can see the problem: none of these is really satisfactory. #1 is out of the question. It’s simply too long. #2 is unsatisfying. It doesn’t really explain what happened. #3 get the guts of the explanation right, but it’s technically inaccurate.

Along with James Fallows, I guess I’d opt for #3. It’s a very minor inaccuracy, I think, since the whole point of the unanimous consent agreement is to incorporate the voting requirements of a filibuster. So far, though, I don’t know of any newspapers that have decided to go this route. That leaves option #2, so that’s what we usually get. It may leave readers completely uninformed, but it’s technically accurate. Apparently most copy desks think that’s a reasonable tradeoff.

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Did Gun Legislation Fail Because of a Filibuster?

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The First—And Last—Hearing on Keystone XL Environmental Impact

by Seraphinakbj Posted on April 18, 2013

Mother Jones

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State Department officials trekked to Grand Island, Nebraska today to hear statements from ranchers, geologists, construction workers, oil executives, and a colorful cast of other characters in the only public hearing on the Department’s latest Environmental Impact Statement for the Keystone XL pipeline.

Speakers for and against the pipeline began lining up at 7 a.m. amid frigid cold and snow for a chance to get three minutes on the soapbox at the Heartland Events Center. There was the blustering, hoarse representative of the local Cowboy-Indian Alliance who exhorted Transcanada to “ship your toxic crap to Asia and India” instead of the US; the moody, varsity jacket-wearing teenager who recited an angst-ridden poetic diatribe against the pipeline (“The earth shudders beneath our feet / we are tectonic”); the welder with Pipeliners Local 798 who argued that moving oil through a pipeline was “greener” than using trucks or trains; and the members of a local Sioux tribe who sang prayer songs into the record.

During the three-hour afternoon session, sixty speakers stood before a weary-looking State Dept. panel and lobbed by-now-familiar arguments: jobs and the inevitability of development on one side, and water contamination and climate change on the other. Anti-pipeliners, many dressed in matching red and white t-shirts, held the clear majority, and alternated between sitting stony-faced with upheld power fists, and guffawing and booing when suit-clad oil reps and fleece-jacketed blue collar union leaders voiced their support for the project. The usual suspects from both camps were on hand: Transcanada VP Corey Goulet, and activist Jane Kleeb of Bold Nebraska, who described the mood in the room as relatively friendly considering the high, longstanding tensions between the two factions.

“Folks that have been dealing with this for four years now aren’t holding back,” Kleeb said, but “we had a lot of union guys say they agree with our concerns about the environment, but just want to get jobs for their guys.”

“Every time citizens get an opportunity to address the government on the pipeline is good,” Kleeb said. “It brings all of us together in one place.”

Today’s hearing was the first and last time for the public to comment in person on this EIS; written comments will still be accepted through April 22. President Obama is expected to make a final decision on the project by September.

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The First—And Last—Hearing on Keystone XL Environmental Impact

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The Republican Party Might Not Be Quite Dead Yet

by Seraphinakbj Posted on March 22, 2013

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Andrew Kohut, former president of the Pew Research Center, says the Republican Party is in deep trouble:

In my decades of polling, I recall only one moment when a party had been driven as far from the center as the Republican Party has been today….The Republican Party’s ratings now stand at a 20-year low, with just 33 percent of the public holding a favorable view of the party and 58 percent judging it unfavorably.

….While members of the Republican and Democratic parties have become more conservative and liberal, respectively, a bloc of doctrinaire, across-the-board conservatives has become a dominant force on the right….The party’s base is increasingly dominated by a highly energized bloc of voters with extremely conservative positions on nearly all issues.

….I see little reason to believe that the staunch conservative bloc will wither away or splinter; it will remain a dominant force in the GOP and on the national stage. At the same time, however, I see no indication that its ideas about policy, governance and social issues will gain new adherents. They are far beyond the mainstream.

Any Republican efforts at reinvention face this dilemma: While staunch conservatives help keep GOP lawmakers in office, they also help keep the party out of the White House. Quite simply, the Republican Party has to appeal to a broader cross section of the electorate to succeed in presidential elections.

This has practically reached the status of conventional wisdom these days. Republicans are doomed because they don’t appeal to the young, or to Hispanics, or to women, or whatever. Their core base of pissed-off white guys is shrinking, and they’re inevitably going to shrink along with it.

That makes sense to me. And yet….there’s something about it that doesn’t quite add up. Republicans control the House, and no one seems to think that’s going to change in the near future. (And no, it’s not just because of gerrymandering.) On the other side of Capitol Hill, Democrats seem genuinely concerned about holding onto the Senate next year. As for the White House, Republicans have only lost two presidential elections in a row, both times in years where the fundamentals favored Democrats. And they continue to hold outsize majorities in state legislatures and governor’s mansions.

This doesn’t seem like the markers of a party so far outside the mainstream that they’re doomed to extinction. Frankly, they seem to be holding on fairly well.

I agree that the Republican Party has some long-term demographic problems that are pretty serious. Nevertheless, it’s not clear to me that the American public is ready to throw them overboard. Or, perhaps more accurately, the American public has so far shown little inclination to throw them overboard when their only alternative is the Democratic Party.

This stuff deserves a little deeper look than we’ve been giving it. The GOP has been steadily moving right for more than 30 years now, and even though it always seems like one more step should make them electorally toxic once and for all, it never does. This time we’re convinced once again that they’ve finally taken that final, fatal step, but have they? I feel like there’s more to this story.

Mother Jones
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The Republican Party Might Not Be Quite Dead Yet

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Farmers markets are growing, but farmers’ incomes are not

by Seraphinakbj Posted on March 19, 2013

Farmers markets are growing, but farmers’ incomes are not

By Susie Cagle

She’s not getting rich.

It’s National Agriculture Day! What an appropriate day to celebrate the awesome work of our nation’s farmers! The awesome work they are so crappily compensated for, that is.

They may seem to be raking in the cash at all those new local farmers markets, but America’s food-growers — those producing fruits and veg, not soy and corn — aren’t having an easy go of it. NPR’s All Things Considered reports:

The market for locally grown food has seen dramatic growth over the last decade. Despite this boost in sales and popularity, evidence suggests that the economics behind the movement still don’t favor the farmer. The U.S. Department of Agriculture has new programs to try to prop up small-scale operations, but many local farms only survive because they scrape by on below-market wages, or by doing without things like insurance.

Iowa State economist David Swenson says farmers trying to earn a living by selling their produce locally often face a losing battle. He calculated that if someone were producing 25 acres of fruits and vegetables — which would meet the produce needs of about 5,000 people — they wouldn’t be anywhere near well-off. “That basically sustained 1.34 jobs and only $35,000 in total labor income and that’s labor income to the producer as well as to any help,” Swenson told NPR.

Small may not always be better. But the answer isn’t to stop shopping at the farmers market — nor, maybe, is it to quit your job and run off to the countryside to grow apples.

Susie Cagle writes and draws news for Grist. She also writes and draws tweets for

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Farmers markets are growing, but farmers’ incomes are not

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The USDA’s Sustainable Food Champion Steps Down

by Seraphinakbj Posted on March 18, 2013

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Back in 2009, when President Obama chose Kathleen Merrigan as second in command at the US Department of Agriculture, celebration erupted in sustainable-food circles. Last Thursday afternoon, the USDA announced the imminent end of Merrigan’s run as deputy secretary of ag with a terse note from USDA chief Tom Vilsack. It gave no reason for her departure, which is effective at the end of April.

For generations, the message from the US Department of Agriculture to the nation’s farmers could be summed up in the famous piece of advice offered by Ezra Taft Benson, President Dwight Eisenhower’s USDA chief: “get big or get out.” That’s why Merrigan’s tenure is so significant. Under her influence, the USDA suddenly began to urge consumers to “Know Your Farmer, Know Your Food,” and made a concerted effort to marshal USDA resources to support local and regional food systems supplied by farms of varying scales: the opposite of the globalized, monolithic system envisioned by Benson an put into place with the consent of his successors.

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Mother Jones
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The USDA’s Sustainable Food Champion Steps Down

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Mitch McConnell Will Fundraise With Billionaires After Saying the GOP Is Not The Party of Billionaires

by Seraphinakbj Posted on March 18, 2013

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On Friday, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) took a turn on the main stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the groupthinky annual confab for the young and old of the conservative movement. Dressed in a red tie and white-collared blue dress shirt, McConnell attempted to debunk one of the more pernicious myths about the Republican Party. “Don’t tell me Republicans are the party of millionaires and billionaires,” he said, “when Obama’s campaign arm is charging a half-million dollars for a meeting over near the White House.” The GOP, he later added, is “not beholden to any special interests.”

We’re not the party of the rich, McConnell insisted; we’re you.

You won’t find any objections here to McConnell’s jab at “Obama’s campaign arm”—a reference, more specifically, to Organizing for Action (OFA), the big-money nonprofit formed out of Obama’s reelection campaign. I’ve written plenty about OFA and its fundraising tactics, namely, reportedly offering donors and fundraisers access to the president and top administration officials in exchange for big bucks.

But let’s go back to McConnell’s claim that the GOP is not the party of millionaires or billionaires. For a thorough debunking, I defer to none other than Mitch McConnell.

Next week, McConnell and his wife, former Labor secretary Elaine Chao, will fly to Palm Beach, Florida, for a fundraiser at the home of millionaire John Castle, according to the Palm Beach Daily News. Then, after the Castles’ fundraiser, Wilbur Ross (net worth $2.6 billion) and his wife, Hilary, will wine and dine McConnell at their house, which is so extravagant that it has its own name, Windsong. (So does the guest house: Windsong Too.) Tickets range from $1,000 to $5,000 for the night’s events; to co-chair the event, you’ve got to pony up $15,000 to $30,000.

McConnell, of course, is in full campaign mode—even though Election Day 2014 is 18 months away and Kentucky Democrats have yet to settle on a challenger. (More on that here.) Indeed, McConnell’s fundraising blitz began the very day the 2012 campaign season ended, with a $2,500-a-head dinner hosted by the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Since then, he’s raised money at the home of another billionaire—New York City mayoral candidate John Catsimatidis, in January—raised money at lobbying firms, and raised money at an event sponsored by the political action committees for Koch Industries, Home Depot, Capitol One, Amgen, and Delta Airlines—all multibillion-dollar corporations.

Fundraising is McConnell’s specialty. As former Sen. Alan Simpson once observed, “When he asked for money, his eyes would shine like diamonds. He obviously loved it.” Don’t think for a moment McConnell will let his defense of the GOP get in the way of his chase for millionaires’ and billionaires’ money.

Mother Jones
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Mitch McConnell Will Fundraise With Billionaires After Saying the GOP Is Not The Party of Billionaires

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Waiting Periods in South Dakota: Guns v. Abortions

by Seraphinakbj Posted on March 13, 2013

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Last week, South Dakota became the first state in the country to authorize teachers to carry handguns in the classroom. South Dakota already had some of the most lax gun laws in the country. Back in 2009, the state passed a law repealing the waiting period to purchase handguns, meaning there is now no mandatory waiting period—none at all—to buy a gun.

Meanwhile, the state has been passing ever-more draconian waiting periods to access another constitutionally protected right: abortion. In 2011, the state passed a new law requiring a woman to consult with her doctor, visit an anti-abortion “crisis pregnancy center,” and then wait 72 hours before she can actually have an abortion. Two weeks ago, the state legislature passed another new law excluding weekends and holidays from the 72-hour waiting period, which means a woman may actually have to wait five or six days between her first appointment and the actual abortion procedure.

Mother Jones
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Waiting Periods in South Dakota: Guns v. Abortions

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Personhood Advocates Pledge to Try Again in Mississippi

by Seraphinakbj Posted on March 6, 2013

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Advocates of “personhood” for zygotes have decided that if at first you don’t succeed in banning all abortions, try again. And again, and again.

The anti-abortion group Personhood USA tried to pass a ballot measure granting fertilized eggs the same rights as adult humans in Colorado in 2008, and it failed. They tried again in Colorado in 2010, and it failed again, this time by a 3-to-1 margin. So then they tried in Mississippi in November 2011, where it lost yet again, with 58 percent of the voters even in this conservative state rejecting it.

So, the only logical next step for them, it appears, is to try again in Mississippi. On Tuesday, the group’s Mississippi chapter announced that it is working to get personhood back on the ballot. The Associated Press reports that the group filed paperwork with the secretary of state’s office on Tuesday in hopes of getting it on the 2015 ballot:

After a ballot title and summary are prepared by the attorney general’s office, the initiative’s sponsors would have one year to gather at least 107,216 signatures to get the measure on the ballot. That means the earliest likely date for a vote would be in November 2015, coinciding with the next governor’s election.

Mississippi only has one abortion clinic—which we reported on in a story and photo essay recently—that could be shut down in the next few weeks due to a new state law requiring the doctors there to have admitting privileges at a local hospital. So even without a “personhood” amendment making all abortion illegal, the state could be on its way to making abortion totally inaccessible for women living there anyway.

Reproductive rights groups reacted immediately to the news that the “personhood” folks were back at it. “Mississippi voters have already spoken: Health care decisions should be left to a woman, her family, her doctor, and her faith—not politicians,” said Felicia Brown-Williams, director of public policy at Planned Parenthood Southeast in a statement. “Mississippians expect real solutions to the real crises facing our state–not government intrusion into private medical decisions.”

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Personhood Advocates Pledge to Try Again in Mississippi

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