Category Archives: Mop

Parents Sure Are Keen on Their Kids Becoming Pro Athletes

by Allison05T Posted on September 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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Here’s a curiosity. According to a new poll, 26 percent of parents of high school athletes hope their kids will turn pro someday. This rises to 39 percent among parents who earn less than $50,000 per year. As Christopher Ingraham points out, this is pretty ridiculous. Fewer than 1 percent of high school athletes—way fewer than 1 percent—ever make it to the show.

And it’s actually even more ridiculous than that. If your kid isn’t already a star athlete by high school, the chances of going pro drop to basically zero. There’s no way that 39 percent of these folks are the parents of star athletes.

This makes me curious about what this poll really means. Do parents “hope” their kids become pro athletes the same way they hope to win the lottery someday? As in, it’s nice to dream about, but it’s probably not going to happen. Or do they hope in the same way they hope to buy a new car next year? As in, with a little luck and some hard work our dream could come true. These are two very different things.

If it’s mostly the former, no harm done. I’d like to win the lottery too. But if it’s mostly the latter, America must be chock full of really disappointed parents. Maybe that explains something.

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Parents Sure Are Keen on Their Kids Becoming Pro Athletes

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Here’s the Most Offensive GOP Response to Obama’s New Syrian Refugee Plan

by IgnacioZavala Posted on September 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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As my colleague Tim McDonnell reported earlier today, the Obama administration has announced that the United States will take in 10,000 Syrian refugees starting October 1, in what the White House described as a “significant scaling up” of the US commitment to the ongoing migrant crisis.

Cue the terrorism-conflating saber-rattling of one Congressman Peter King (R-N.Y.), who issued the following statement this afternoon:

There’s evidently much wrong with King’s statement, not least of all the fact that the Tsarnaev brothers who bombed Boston spent time growing up in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, and were part of a family originally from war-torn Chechnya. Not Syria.

It also takes a long time for a Syrian refugee to apply for a coveted spot in the United States—precisely due to the fact that the United States is going to extraordinary lengths to prevent terrorists from slipping in, according to the Washington Post:

The United States has so far lagged far behind several European countries in this regard, largely due to the time-consuming screening procedure to block Islamist militants and criminals from entering the United States under the guise of being legitimate refugees.

As a result, it takes 18 to 24 months for the average Syrian asylum seeker to be investigated and granted refugee status. The process takes so long that the UNHCR takes biometric images of some applicants’ irises to ensure that when refugee status is eventually granted, it goes to the same person who applied.

King hasn’t been the only politician warning of an increased terror threat if the United States allows more Syrians into the country. But fellow Republican Marco Rubio struck a less incendiary tone this week. “We would be potentially open to the relocation of some of these individuals at some point in time to the United States,” he said, according to CNN, but added that, “We’d always be concerned that within the overwhelming number of the people seeking refugee status, someone with a terrorist background could also sneak in.”

According to an investigation by Mother Jones in 2011, Rep. King might possess one of the most hawkish voices in Washington, but his record on terror has raised some eyebrows. King was one of the nation’s most outspoken supporters of the Irish Republican Army and a prolific fundraiser for the Irish Northern Aid Committee (NorAid), allegedly the IRA’s American fundraising arm. (King’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment on that article.) You can read Tim Murphy’s fascinating report here.

King had previously told the Daily News, “Obviously, we have to take refugees… But we have to be extremely diligent, very careful.”

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Here’s the Most Offensive GOP Response to Obama’s New Syrian Refugee Plan

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New Photos: See Pluto’s Surface in Incredibly Rich Detail

by ElmoMaudsley Posted on September 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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We love Pluto. We love that we know so much more about it now—after the spacecraft New Horizons hurtled 3 billion miles to get there and send back the amazing Pluto pictures that arrived in July. Today, NASA released a new set of images that bring us right up close to the planet’s weird, chaotic surface in unprecedented detail.

Here’s NASA’s take:

“This is what we came for—these images, spectra and other data types that are going to help us understand the origin and the evolution of the Pluto system for the first time,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. “And what’s coming is not just the remaining 95 percent of the data that’s still aboard the spacecraft—it’s the best datasets, the highest-resolution images and spectra, the most important atmospheric datasets, and more. It’s a treasure trove.”

Our friend Phil Plait at Slate has some more detail about what these images tell us. But for now, just check them out for yourself. Kickass!

NASA: “This synthetic perspective view of Pluto shows what you would see if you were approximately 1,100 miles above Pluto’s equatorial area, looking northeast over the dark, cratered, informally named Cthulhu Regio toward the bright, smooth, expanse of icy plains informally called Sputnik Planum. The entire expanse of terrain seen in this image is 1,100 miles across.” NASA

NASA: “This image features a tremendous variety of other landscapes surrounding Sputnik. The smallest visible features are 0.5 miles in size, and the mosaic covers a region roughly 1,000 miles wide.” The white squares outline close-ups in the following two images. NASA

A close-up from the image above, this is called the “chaos region” because of the diversity of surface geology. NASA

NASA: “This 220-mile wide view illustrates the incredible diversity of surface reflectivities and geological landforms on the dwarf planet. The image includes dark, ancient heavily cratered terrain; bright, smooth geologically young terrain; assembled masses of mountains; and an enigmatic field of dark, aligned ridges that resemble dunes; its origin is under debate.” NASA

NASA: “Two different versions of an image of Pluto’s haze layers, from a distance of 480,000 miles. Pluto’s north is at the top, and the sun illuminates Pluto from the upper right. The left version has had only minor processing, while the right version has been specially processed to reveal a large number of discrete haze layers in the atmosphere. In the left version, faint surface details on the narrow sunlit crescent are seen through the haze in the upper right of Pluto’s disk, and subtle parallel streaks in the haze may be crepuscular rays—shadows cast on the haze by topography such as mountain ranges on Pluto, similar to the rays sometimes seen in the sky after the sun sets behind mountains on Earth.” NASA

The moon, Charon. NASA

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New Photos: See Pluto’s Surface in Incredibly Rich Detail

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Louisiana: Women Don’t Need Planned Parenthood. They Have Dentists.

by BrandiPeden Posted on September 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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The task seems straightforward: Make a list of health care providers that would fill the void if Louisiana succeeded in defunding Planned Parenthood. But the state, which is fighting a court battle to strip the group of hundreds of thousands of dollars in Medicaid funds, is struggling to figure out who would provide poor women with family planning care if not Planned Parenthood.

Nowhere is this struggle more apparent than in a recent declaration by Louisiana’s attorneys that there are 2,000 family planning providers ready to accommodate new patients. A federal judge, reviewing the list in an early September court hearing, found hundreds of entries for specialists such as ophthalmologists; nursing homes caregivers; dentists; ear, nose, and throat doctors; and even cosmetic surgeons.

“It strikes me as extremely odd that you have a dermatologist, an audiologist, a dentist who are billing for family planning services,” said the judge, John deGravelles, who will determine in the next week whether it is legal for the state to end Planned Parenthood’s Medicaid contracts. “But that is what you’re representing to the court? You’re telling me that they can provide family planning and related services?”

His harsh questioning sent the state back to the drawing board. On Tuesday, the state’s attorneys acknowledged that the dentists and other specialists didn’t belong on the list. They filed a pared-down version that lists just 29 health care providers.

Gov. Bobby Jindal, a Republican contender for the presidency, moved to cut off $730,000 in Medicaid reimbursements to the state’s two Planned Parenthood clinics in late August in response to several heavily edited, widely circulated videos purporting to show Planned Parenthood employees selling fetal parts, which is illegal.

Planned Parenthood denies the charges and has asked for an injunction to block Jindal.

In straining to identify alternate providers, the state has added to a growing body of evidence that other health care providers would have a difficult time accommodating low-income women if Planned Parenthood were no longer able to take Medicaid. Planned Parenthood clinics in Louisiana do not provide abortions. Instead, the clinics provide thousands of annual cancer and STI screenings, overwhelmingly to low-income women on Medicaid. In Louisiana alone, the group last year performed 2,100 well-woman exams, 1,200 pap smears, and 11,000 STI tests, and it administered long-lasting contraceptives 4,100 times, to 5,200 patients, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of the Gulf Coast said.

Several Louisiana health care providers that would have to take over Planned Parenthood’s patients have stressed that their capacity to do so is very limited. “You can’t just cut Planned Parenthood off one day and expect everyone across the city to absorb the patients,” Stephanie Taylor, who oversees the state’s efforts to curb sexually transmitted diseases, told the New York Times. “There needs to be time to build the capacity.”

Another obstacle is the dearth of family planning clinics and doctors that accept women on Medicaid or other forms of public funding. Across the country, Planned Parenthood provides contraception to almost 40 percent of women who rely on public programs for family planning. The Times notes that four out of five Planned Parenthood patients have incomes below 150 percent of the poverty level, at a time when two-thirds of states reported difficulties ensuring there are enough health providers, especially OB-GYNs, for Medicaid patients.

On Tuesday, there was fresh evidence for what the fight to defund Planned Parenthood means for poor women. The Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights think tank, published an analysis of nearly 500 counties where Planned Parenthood operates clinics. In 103 of those counties, Planned Parenthood is the health care provider for every single woman who relies on public funding for contraception. In an additional 229 counties, Planned Parenthood clinics provide care for at least half of patients who rely on Medicaid.

“Certainly in the short term, it is doubtful that other providers could step up in a timely way to absorb the millions of women suddenly left without their preferred source of care and whether those providers could offer the same degree of accessible, quality contraceptive care offered by Planned Parenthood,” the Guttmacher researchers wrote.

But the notion that patients could turn elsewhere remains a key rationale when abortion foes attempt to strip the group of $528 million in federal funding. The argument came up frequently in a Wednesday hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on the Planned Parenthood sting videos. “We often hear that if Planned Parenthood were to be defunded, there would be a health crisis among women without the services they provide,” testified Gianna Jessen, an anti-abortion activist who was born after an unsuccessful abortion. “This is absolutely false. Pregnancy resource centers are located nationwide as an option for the woman in crisis.” Abortion foes have also touted a map showing more than 13,500 clinics that could replace Planned Parenthood.

Sen. Bill Cassidy, the junior Republican from Louisiana, has said there were more than 100 community health care centers “scattered all over the state” that could accept Planned Parenthood’s patients.

Lawyers for the state appeared to contradict him after they whittled down their list of capable providers to 29. And even among those providers, their ability to pick up Planned Parenthood’s slack is questionable. In Baton Rouge, the site of one of two Louisiana Planned Parenthood clinics, the state lists five alternate providers. But only three of those offer contraception, according to the state’s filing, and two of those have wait times ranging from two to seven weeks. One of the Baton Rouge clinics the state suggested is not accepting any new patients for STI, breast cancer, or cervical cancer screenings.

The state did not withdraw its original list without a fight. When pressured by Judge deGravelles, an attorney for Louisiana stood by the list, saying it represented every provider in the state that had used a family-planning billing code for insurance reimbursement. Here is an excerpt of the transcript:

The judge is set to rule on Planned Parenthood’s call for an injunction before September 15, when the state’s contract with Planned Parenthood would expire and Medicaid reimbursements would stop flowing.

In the September 2 hearing, deGravelles expressed reluctance to allow the contract to expire, since the state hadn’t articulated a good reason for doing so. “You have 5,200 women who are getting their care at these facilities,” he said. “If these contracts are terminated that care is going to be disrupted…for no reason related to the health care they’re getting.…They’re going to have to get other doctors, they’re going to have to seek out other places to get their health care. Correct?”

“They will have to do that,” a lawyer for the state replied. “Correct.”

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Louisiana: Women Don’t Need Planned Parenthood. They Have Dentists.

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James Bond Gives $50,000 to a Sketchy Bernie Sanders Super-PAC

by BerenicPaling Posted on September 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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James Bond’s latest attempt to save the world didn’t involve blowing things up or chasing down bad guys. Instead, Daniel Craig, the Englishman who plays Bond, acted with his wallet, making a healthy donation to support his preferred presidential candidate: Bernie Sanders. But in doing so, he may have played into a villain’s hands.

Over the summer, Craig donated nearly $50,000 to a super-PAC called Americans Socially United, which claims to support the Vermont senator’s dark-horse bid for the Democratic nomination, according to the Center for Public Integrity (CPI). The pro-Sanders super-PAC is run by a self-described lobbyist, Cary Lee Peterson, who “has routinely run afoul of creditors and the law,” with two outstanding warrants in the state of Arizona. The group was initially called “Ready for Bernie Sanders 2016” and “Bet on Bernie 2016,” both illegal uses of the candidate’s name that caused confusion for Sanders supporters who accidentally donated to Peterson’s PAC instead of the campaign. Peterson’s group has not filed the legally required campaign finance disclosures, CPI reports.

Moreover, Sanders, who supports campaign finance reform, doesn’t want super-PACs supporting his campaign and has asked Americans Socially United to stop its efforts on his behalf. His campaign sent Peterson a cease and desist letter in June, which Peterson continues to disregard.

But Peterson contends that he is simply trying to support his favorite candidate. “You don’t need to look back on my past,” Peterson told CPI. “I’m going out there trying to make a difference.”

Thus far, Craig is sticking to his guns, too. “Currently, I have been informed of no evidence to question that my donation has not been used as intended,” he told CPI. “Should that situation occur, then clearly, I will review my position.”

Super-PACs, which are largely unregulated by the Federal Election Commission, can get away with a lot. As attorney Paul Ryan explained to CPI, the people running these super-PACs could legally use the money they raise “to buy a yacht and sail off into the sunset.”

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James Bond Gives $50,000 to a Sketchy Bernie Sanders Super-PAC

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Scott Walker No Longer Understands His Own Base

by ChanteOakley6 Posted on September 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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A few days ago Scott Walker refused to answer a question about Syrian refugees because “I’m not president today, and I can’t be president today.” This was a novel take on presidential campaign questions, which are—for obvious reasons—all about what you’d do as president. But apparently Walker decided it was unfair to ask him about that before he actually became president. He left unclear what kinds of questions would be left for reporters to ask him.

Today, unsurprisingly, Walker changed his tune. He decided to “clarify” his answer, which turned out to be simple: he doesn’t want the US to take in any more Syrian refugees. We take in plenty already. Instead, he wants to increase our bombing campaign against ISIS. This would probably make the refugee crisis worse, but whatever.

I say that Walker’s clarification was unsurprising because he’s really made a habit of this. Steve Benen provides the blow-by-blow:

Walker’s pattern of stumbling only reinforces doubts about his strength as a national candidate. TPM’s Caitlin MacNeal noted a series of issues and controversies — Kentucky’s Kim Davis, whether sexual orientation is a choice, evolutionary biology, President Obama’s patriotism and religion — on which Walker couldn’t or wouldn’t share his position publicly.

There are a variety of other issues — birthright citizenship, Boy Scouts, building a Canadian border wall — on which Walker managed to state an opinion, but soon after, that position proved untenable, forcing him to “clarify” his actual beliefs. Asked about Walker last week, an Iowa Republican told Politico, in advance of this week’s incident, “For the last two months Walker hasn’t made a single policy pronouncement that he or his staff hasn’t had to clarify or clear up within two hours.”

When the campaign began, I was pretty bullish on Walker. He seemed to have the right combination of respectability and pit-bull snarl to appeal to a wide variety of voters. And since he’s had a long political career, including four years as Wisconsin governor, he’d have a pretty good handle on campaigning.

But no. It turns out he barely has a clue about campaigning. Has this always been the case, or has the rise of Donald Trump completely flummoxed him? Maybe a bit of both, but I think he’s really let Trump get inside his head. He planned to campaign pretty far to the right, and when Trump took that away from him he didn’t seem to know what to do. Agree with Trump? Then he’s just a follower. Disagree with Trump? But that could be dangerous if the base is really enthralled with the guy. What to do?

The answer, apparently, is to make it clear that he has no considered views of anything and merely wants to say whatever will make the tea partiers happy. But he no longer knows what that is. So he tap dances desperately, but does it so bumblingly that he just embarrasses himself. At this point, it’s not clear if he’ll ever get his act together.

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Scott Walker No Longer Understands His Own Base

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Is the Army Cooking the Books on ISIS and Iraq?

by SteveRRJpfpgjce Posted on September 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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The Daily Beast reports that defense analysts are in revolt over what they see as too much happy talk about ISIS that doesn’t reflect their actual views:

Two senior analysts at CENTCOM signed a written complaint sent to the Defense Department inspector general in July alleging that the reports, some of which were briefed to President Obama, portrayed the terror groups as weaker than the analysts believe they are….That complaint was supported by 50 other analysts, some of whom have complained about politicizing of intelligence reports for months.

….Some of those CENTCOM analysts described the sizeable cadre of protesting analysts as a “revolt” by intelligence professionals who are paid to give their honest assessment, based on facts, and not to be influenced by national-level policy. The analysts have accused senior-level leaders, including the commander in charge of intelligence and his deputy in CENTCOM, of changing their analyses to be more in line with the Obama administration’s public contention that the fight against ISIS and al Qaeda is making progress.

….But the complaint also goes beyond alleged altering of reports and accuses some senior leaders at CENTCOM of creating an unprofessional work environment. One person who knows the contents of the written complaint sent to the inspector general said it used the word “Stalinist” to describe the tone set by officials overseeing CENTCOM’s analysis.

Hmmm. The “Stalinist” jibe sets off some alarm bells. It could mean one of two things: (a) the work climate at CENTCOM is really, really bad, or (b) the senior analysts who filed the complaint are cuckoo. For better or worse, I usually associate accusations of Stalinism with all-upper case rants written by lunatics.

Still, even if one guy is a little over the top, there are 50 more apparently willing to sign on to the general complaint:

Many described a climate in which analysts felt they could not give a candid assessment of the situation in Iraq and Syria. Some felt it was a product of commanders protecting their career advancement by putting the best spin on the war.

….For some, who have served at CENTCOM for more than a decade, scars remained from the run-up to the 2003 war in Iraq, when poorly written intelligence reports suggesting Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, when it did not, formed the basis of the George W. Bush administration’s case for war. “They were frustrated because they didn’t do the right thing then” and speak up about their doubts on Iraq’s weapons program, the defense official told The Daily Beast.

If this turns out to be true, I wonder what’s really going on. My sense is that the Obama administration itself hasn’t been especially inclined to rosy scenarios. The Daily Beast article tried to find examples of sunny public statements from Obama officials and didn’t come up with much. But it’s quite possible that commanders on the ground are loath to admit how poorly things are going, and are insisting that analysts do nothing to muddy the waters.

In any case, now that the scope of these complaints are public, it will be hard for either the administration or CENTCOM to ignore them. Perhaps as a result we’ll finally find out what’s really happening in Iraq.

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Is the Army Cooking the Books on ISIS and Iraq?

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Book Review: A Carlin Home Companion by Kelly Carlin

by MeghanNobbs Posted on September 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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Courtesy of St. Martin’s Press

A Carlin Home Companion

By Kelly Carlin

ST. MARTIN’S PRESS

The late George Carlin was among the world’s most revered and subversive comedians, but in this memoir, daughter Kelly Carlin offers a look at a side of her dad we’ve never seen, from his earliest stand-up routines (on Manhattan stoops at age 11) to his cocaine abuse in the 1970s. She recalls baking “special” spice cake with her dad, and the drug trip that convinced him the sun had exploded, but there are tender bits too—like the time he woke her up to watch the Apollo moon landing or sent her a series of postcards from the road with a single word on each so she could string together the sentences. A Carlin Home Companion, which simultaneously documents Kelly’s own attempts at self-discovery, is a must for fans who want to understand the legend behind the mic.

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Book Review: A Carlin Home Companion by Kelly Carlin

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Jeb Bush Has a Tax Plan, But He’s a Little Shy About Sharing It

by MartyWhitehouse Posted on September 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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This is nuts. Apparently there is a detailed Jeb Bush tax plan. His website now features a document laden with specific savings that various taxpayers can expect, which can exist only if there are specific proposals to work from. And a team of friendly economists has produced a paper scoring the tax plan, which can also exist only if there’s a detailed document to draw on. And yet, that document doesn’t appear on his website. What’s going on? Why is Jeb’s plan a secret?

For what it’s worth, the economists say that:

The plan will cost $3.4 trillion over ten years.
But the tax cuts, along with Jeb’s proposed regulatory changes, will supercharge the economy enough to reduce the actual cost to $1.2 trillion.
If we limit federal budget growth to 3.2 percent per year, that will save $1.4 trillion. Voila! We’re ahead by $200 billion.

If you believe all this, Jeb has some swampland in his home state he’d like you to take a look at. But on the bright side, this paper does finally solve the mystery of where we can find the details of Jeb’s tax plan: they’re outlined in an appendix at the end of the paper. I guess it’s meant as a special treat for people who actually read the whole thing.

But why is this the only place the details of Jeb’s tax plan are available? Why not post it on his website? It’s a mystery. But at least there’s enough there that independent folks like the Tax Policy Center can probably take a pretty good swipe at scoring it themselves and figuring out the distributional impact. I can’t wait.

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Jeb Bush Has a Tax Plan, But He’s a Little Shy About Sharing It

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The Secret Decoder Ring for Donald Trump

by MarceloBoyd Posted on September 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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Dan Drezner, an allegedly serious professor of international relations, insists that we attend to two Donald Trump nuggets today. Twitter makes this kind of thing far too easy. First is this one, from a Rolling Stone profile:

With his blue tie loosened and slung over his shoulder, Trump sits back to digest his meal and provide a running byplay to the news….His staffers at the conference table howl and hoot….When the anchor throws to Carly Fiorina for her reaction to Trump’s momentum, Trump’s expression sours in schoolboy disgust as the camera bores in on Fiorina. “Look at that face!” he cries. “Would anyone vote for that? Can you imagine that, the face of our next president?!” The laughter grows halting and faint behind him. “I mean, she’s a woman, and I’m not s’posedta say bad things, but really, folks, come on. Are we serious?”

And now for the explanation, as told to Trump’s biographer:

When I look at myself in the first grade and I look at myself now, I’m basically the same. The temperament is not that different.

You wouldn’t be surprised to hear a first-grader get all giggly over childish insults about his teacher, would you? That’s what first graders do. At age 69, that’s still what Donald Trump does too.

But it’s actually even weirder than that. In purely conventional terms, Carly Fiorina is both perfectly attractive and perfectly businesslike. Lots of people might think she shouldn’t be president—anyone who cares about actual success in some field of life, for example—but even a stone misogynist’s first thought wouldn’t be that he just couldn’t stand to look at her face for four years. Even Trump’s hand-picked circle of sycophants apparently wondered what he was talking about.

But wait! It’s even weirder yet: Trump says this kind of stuff in front of a reporter? WTF?

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The Secret Decoder Ring for Donald Trump

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