Tag Archives: character

EPA science adviser says clearing board of experts leaves “huge void.”

The nation’s largest privately owned coal company, Murray Energy, just filed a lawsuit against the Last Week Tonight host over the show’s recent segment. Oliver had criticized the company’s CEO, Robert Murray, for acting carelessly toward miners’ safety.

Murray Energy’s complaint stated that the segment was a “meticulously planned attempt to assassinate the character and reputation” of Murray by broadcasting “false, injurious, and defamatory comments.”

Oliver shouldn’t be too concerned, according to Ken White, a First Amendment litigator at Los Angeles firm, who told the Daily Beast that the complaint was “frivolous and vexatious.”

The lawsuit is hardly a shocking development. Before the show aired, Oliver received a cease-and-desist letter from the company. He noted that Murray has a history of filing defamation suits against news outlets (most recently, the New York Times).

Oliver said in the episode, “I know that you are probably going to sue me, but you know what, I stand by everything I said.”

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EPA science adviser says clearing board of experts leaves “huge void.”

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Oil will keep flowing through the Dakota Access Pipeline — for now.

The nation’s largest privately owned coal company, Murray Energy, just filed a lawsuit against the Last Week Tonight host over the show’s recent segment. Oliver had criticized the company’s CEO, Robert Murray, for acting carelessly toward miners’ safety.

Murray Energy’s complaint stated that the segment was a “meticulously planned attempt to assassinate the character and reputation” of Murray by broadcasting “false, injurious, and defamatory comments.”

Oliver shouldn’t be too concerned, according to Ken White, a First Amendment litigator at Los Angeles firm, who told the Daily Beast that the complaint was “frivolous and vexatious.”

The lawsuit is hardly a shocking development. Before the show aired, Oliver received a cease-and-desist letter from the company. He noted that Murray has a history of filing defamation suits against news outlets (most recently, the New York Times).

Oliver said in the episode, “I know that you are probably going to sue me, but you know what, I stand by everything I said.”

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Oil will keep flowing through the Dakota Access Pipeline — for now.

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Who’s to Blame For the Disaster in Yemen?

Mother Jones

The raid in Yemen that went pear shaped on Saturday was originally planned under the Obama administration. However, they were unable to complete their detailed assessment before Obama left office. Then Trump and his team took over and—apparently—decided to speed things up:

Mr. Trump’s new national security team, led by Mr. Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and a retired general with experience in counterterrorism raids, has said that it wants to speed the decision-making when it comes to such strikes, delegating more power to lower-level officials so that the military may respond more quickly. Indeed, the Pentagon is drafting such plans to accelerate activities against the Qaeda branch in Yemen.

That’s the New York Times. Here’s the Washington Post on the same subject:

“We expect an easier approval cycle for operations under this administration,” another defense official said…“We really struggled with getting the Obama White House comfortable with getting boots on the ground in Yemen,” the former official said. “Since the new administration has come in, the approvals at the Pentagon appear to have gone up.”

And here is Reuters:

U.S. military officials told Reuters that Trump approved his first covert counterterrorism operation without sufficient intelligence, ground support or adequate backup preparations. As a result, three officials said, the attacking SEAL team found itself dropping onto a reinforced al Qaeda base defended by landmines, snipers, and a larger than expected contingent of heavily armed Islamist extremists.

Reading between the lines, Trump figured that Obama was a wuss and spent too much time over-litigating this stuff. He wanted action, so he approved the mission. It went badly, and now military officials are blaming Trump, telling reporters that he went ahead “without sufficient intelligence, ground support or adequate backup preparations.”

Is that really what happened? Or is the Pentagon throwing Trump under the bus for a failure that’s their fault? I suppose we might find out if Congress decided to investigate, but that would be out of character for them. After all, Congress rarely spends its time holding contentious hearings about missions in dangerous parts of the world that go south and get people killed. I can’t think of one recently, anyway.

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Who’s to Blame For the Disaster in Yemen?

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Nightly News Takes a Dive on Issues This Year

Mother Jones

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Andrew Tyndall notes that the nightly news no longer seems to care about policy debates:

This year’s absence of issues is an accurate portrayal of the turf on which the election is being played out….If the candidates are not talking about the issues, the news media would be misrepresenting the contest to do so.

With just two weeks to go, issues coverage this year has been virtually non-existent…. No trade, no healthcare, no climate change, no drugs, no poverty, no guns, no infrastructure, no deficits. To the extent that these issues have been mentioned, it has been on the candidates’ terms, not on the networks’ initiative.

I disagree with this on two levels. First, Hillary Clinton has talked plenty about issues in the conventional sense that Tyndall means it: speeches that cover specific policy proposals, with detail to back them up. Only Donald Trump has declined to do this.

More broadly, both candidates have talked about issues. Trump talks all the time about trade, immigration, ISIS, and guns. Clinton talks about childcare, ISIS, health care, guns, and so forth. There are lots of character attacks too, but then, that’s usually the case. But just because issues are talked about in broad strokes doesn’t mean they’re not talked about. They are. The network news broadcasts just don’t want to risk losing their audiences by forcing them to pay attention to such boring stuff.

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Nightly News Takes a Dive on Issues This Year

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America’s "Most Exciting" Playwright Takes On the School-to-Prison Pipeline

Mother Jones

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Illustration: Miles Donovan, Source Photo: Kevin Berne/Berkeley Rep

What if everything you knew about school discipline was wrong?

You know her on-screen as Gloria Akalitus in Nurse Jackie, or as Nancy McNally in The West Wing, but these days, Anna Deavere Smith is onstage, solo. As part of an ongoing project she calls On the Road: A Search for American Character, Smith has written and performed at least 18 one-woman plays exploring social issues around the country. Topics have included women tangling with the judicial system, the Los Angeles riots of 1992, and the uproar in Crown Heights following a 1991 car accident involving a Hasidic driver and two seven-year-old Caribbean American kids. Smith has been called “the most exciting individual in American theater right now.” A MacArthur “genius” fellow and a National Humanities Medal holder, she was recently selected to deliver the Jefferson Lecture, the federal government’s highest honor for achievement in the humanities.

For her latest play, Notes From the Field, Smith interviewed some 170 people—from California to her hometown, Baltimore—to inhabit characters based on individuals caught up in the school-to-prison pipeline. She’s taken the performance from coast to coast and will grace Baltimore’s Center Stage on December 4 and 5. In the play’s second act, which Smith calls an “interruption,” she invites audience members to brainstorm potential solutions to the issues the characters raised. Smith sees theater as a unique way into social problems: “We’re in the presence of one another. It’s not like we can start texting or doing our taxes,” she says. A live performance “manages to get undivided attention. In all the varieties of media, that doesn’t happen so often.”

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America’s "Most Exciting" Playwright Takes On the School-to-Prison Pipeline

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Ben Carson Says Honesty Is More Important Than Political Experience

Mother Jones

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Ben Carson’s improbable presidential campaign took a big hit on Friday when Politico reported that a key story Carson has long told—that he was offered a “full scholarship” to the prestigious US Military Academy at West Point after meeting a prominent Army general—was false. It turns out that Carson never sought admission to West Point. There was no offer of any scholarship. (In fact, there are no scholarships to West Point; cadets attend free). Carson’s campaign acknowledged to Politico that his account was inaccurate.

With Carson faring so well in the GOP contest—especially among evangelical Christians who admire his Christian faith, character, and biography—how might this news affect his presidential bid? Perhaps when it comes to evaluating this revelation, his supporters and fans should take their cue from Carson.

In a recent email solicitation—headlined, “I’m not a politician”—Carson, while asking for donations, explained what he believes are the most important qualifications for the job of president. Political experience (of which he has none) was not at the top of the list. Instead, he prioritized the moral fortitude of the candidate. And he claimed that the success of his campaign showed that a large number of Americans were forming a movement demanding strength of character over policy know-how. Here’s how Carson put it:

Many in the political class don’t seem to understand it, but something historic is happening across America. We’ve been told that only politicians can fix our problems, but I believe that traditional “political experience” is much less important than faith, honesty, courage, and an unshakable belief in the principles that made America the greatest nation in the world.

And Carson does tend to depict himself as a teller of truths. In one of his books, he pointed out that he was always advising youngsters to be honest:

When I talk to young people, I urge them, “Tell the truth. If you tell the truth all the time you don’t have to worry threemonths down the line about what you said three months earlier. Truth is always the truth. You won’t have to complicate your life by trying to cover up.”

So what will it mean for Carson that he has been dishonest about an important element in his from-rags-to-riches-via-neursurgery narrative, which is a bedrock of his political appeal? Pundits rushed to Twitter to declare that this would—or could—be a fatal blow for Carson, who recently has been mocked for having once said the pyramids of Egypt were built not to house the remains of the Pharaohs but to store grain. But Carson is no conventional candidate, and the support he has drawn has defied political norms. So there’s no predicting how Carsonites will absorb this news. They might start to question Carson’s character. Then again, they might see him as a victim of persecution waged by the godless liberal media and embrace him even more.

God only knows what they will do if forced to choose between facts and faith.

Here’s the full Carson email:

—–

I’m not running for President to build my resume, and the last thing I want to be is a politician.

I’m doing this for our children and grandchildren. Our Constitution was written for them — to empower them and to ensure that they’d have the opportunity to fulfill their God-given potential.

My jump to first place in the critical early-voting state of Iowa is humbling, and I’m encouraged that so many of my fellow Americans are open to embracing a true outsider.

October has been a month of real momentum, but before it ends I ask you to join me by making a donation to my campaign of any amount.

Better yet, if you donate before midnight on October 30th you’ll be automatically entered for the chance to join me on the campaign trail for a private, one-on-one lunch.

This will be a great opportunity to get to know one another and talk about our shared desire to heal and revive America — and my campaign will be handling all accommodations.

Many in the political class don’t seem to understand it, but something historic is happening across America. We’ve been told that only politicians can fix our problems, but I believe that traditional “political experience” is much less important than faith, honesty, courage, and an unshakable belief in the principles that made America the greatest nation in the world.

Thank you, and I hope I can count on your support before the end of October.

Sincerely,

Ben Carson

Update: Carson’s campaign tells the Daily Caller that “the campaign never admitted to anything” and called the Politico story “an outright lie.”

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Ben Carson Says Honesty Is More Important Than Political Experience

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Before It Cried Conspiracy, the Paul Camp Quietly Prepared for Today’s Indictments

Mother Jones

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Just hours after three Rand Paul associates were indicted on federal charges that they worked to cover up an attempt to buy an Iowa state senator’s endorsement for the 2012 Ron Paul campaign, the Paul camp is claiming that the indictments are timed to trip up the Kentucky senator on the eve of the first GOP presidential debate. All three men were involved with the 2012 Paul campaign, but have worked for the family for years, including to help get Rand Paul elected.

Shortly after the indictments were announced, Ron Paul issued a statement, saying, “I think the timing of this indictment is highly suspicious given the fact that the first primary debate is tomorrow.” Roscoe Howard, the attorney for Paul’s grandson-in-law Jesse Benton, one of the three men who were indicted and the head of a pro-Rand Paul super-PAC that is currently paying for 40 field staffers in Iowa, echoed the sentiment to the Washington Post:

“We are deeply disappointed to learn of today’s indictment by the Department of Justice,” said Howard. “Jesse Benton, a prominent conservative Republican, has cooperated with the government during its multi-year investigation. That this indictment is now suddenly announced on the eve of the first Republican Presidential debate strongly supports our belief that this is a politically motivated prosecution designed to serve a political agenda, not to achieve justice. Mr. Benton is eager to get before an impartial judge and jury who will quickly recognize this for what he believes it is: Character assassination for political gain.”

But how unexpected was this move?

First of all, the Ron Paul 2012 campaign has spent more than $434,000 on legal bills since last summer. The fees suddenly spiked around the end of July 2014, a period that, according to today’s indictment, involved meetings between Benton and federal investigators. Another of the indicted men, John Tate, who also works for the same pro-Rand Paul super-PAC, also met with federal investigators last July. The following month, a grand jury subpoenaed emails from many members of the Paul campaign. The subpoena, which was publicly leaked, listed the email accounts of all three men, as well as that of Ron Paul himself, as targets of the investigation.

Earlier this month, Eugene Delgaudio, a political activist from northern Virginia who is a friend of the third man indicted today, Dimitri Kesari, circulated an email soliciting donations for a legal defense fund for Kesari. Kesari established the fund, a nonprofit called Defenders of Liberty Legal Defense Foundation in Colorado, this past February. There are also links between Paul’s campaign and Kesari’s attorney. When Kesari appeared in court this morning in Iowa, he was represented by attorney Jesse Binnall. According to campaign filings, the Ron Paul campaign paid Binnall’s firm $20,000 on December 29, 2014 and again on Feb. 4. On June 12 of this year the campaign also wrote a $2,800 check for the firm representing Benton.

People familiar with the way the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Section pursues indictments said it was unlikely there would not have been extensive contact between prosecutors and lawyers of the accused and an awareness that charges were coming. It is not uncommon for defense attorneys to have an opportunity before an indictment is handed down to appeal the decision to higher-ups within the Department of Justice. All evidence suggests that the indictments were hardly a surprise sprung on the Paul camp during the frantic final preparation for Thursday’s debate.

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Before It Cried Conspiracy, the Paul Camp Quietly Prepared for Today’s Indictments

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Listen to the Real Stephen Colbert Explain How He Maintained His Flawless Character for 9 Years

Mother Jones

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The curtain comes down on The Colbert Report Thursday night after a spectacular nine-year run on Comedy Central. But a big question remains: How on Earth did Colbert stay in character for so long?

“Stephen Colbert,” the character, is indisputably a brilliant creation. I watched every week because “Stephen Colbert” attacked right-wing media by embodying its most outlandish traits; the more sincere he was, the more searing and audacious the satire. He was sophisticated and simple at the same time. He gave viewers an amazing gift: temporary relief from the political divide by skewering idiocy at its source. (My colleague Inae Oh has compiled some of his best segments today).

It was a wildly impressive formula, in part for the stamina it required from Stephen Colbert, the comic. As fellow performer Jimmy Fallon told the New York Times this week: “I was one of those who said, ‘He’ll do it for six months and then he’ll move on.’…It’s gets old. But not this. He’s a genius.”

That’s what makes the above podcast, Working, With David Plotz, so fascinating: It’s Colbert, in his own words, out of character, describing his daily routine of getting into character; a real craftsman. It also reveals the vulnerable human performer within; a real artist.

Broadcaster and media critic Brooke Gladstone said back in April that Colbert “seems to be a modest man, too modest perhaps, to see that by lightly shedding the cap of his creation, he’s depriving us all of a national treasure.”

Long live Colbert.

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Listen to the Real Stephen Colbert Explain How He Maintained His Flawless Character for 9 Years

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I’m Pretty Thankful This Year. Here’s Why.

Mother Jones

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You might not expect someone who was diagnosed with cancer a few weeks ago to be feeling especially thankful right now. And it’s true that I’m not excited about either the cancer itself or the fairly miserable effects of the weekly chemotherapy that’s treating it. Nevertheless, this episode of my life has gotten me thinking about thankfulness, and it’s been on my mind for a while now. I know this is a little out of character, but allow me to share this with you in my usual bloggish way today.

The whole thing started on the evening of October 17th, when I sneezed hard and injured my back. On the morning of Saturday the 18th I couldn’t move enough to get out of bed. Here’s what happened next.

Marian called 911. Within ten minutes a troop of firefighters and paramedics were at our door. They hauled me downstairs on a stretcher, and ten minutes later I was in the emergency room. Over the next couple of hours I was tended to by an attentive staff of nurses and doctors. Blood was drawn, X-rays were taken, painkillers were administered. By a little after noon, a preliminary diagnosis of possible multiple myeloma had been made and I was admitted to the hospital.

The hospital was clean and efficient. My room was comfortable and private and had plenty of room for visitors. Over the course of the next few days, a rotating squadron of nurses took care of me. Biopsies were done. Medication was prescribed. A kyphoplasty was performed to stabilize my back. The myeloma diagnosis was confirmed on Thursday, and I was started on chemotherapy a few hours later. It was superb, unstinting care.

The day after I was released from the hospital, Marian and I went shopping and spent several thousand dollars on new furniture that my back could tolerate. A few days after that we got an enormous bill for the hospital stay, but it was nearly entirely paid for by insurance. The balance was something we could easily afford.

In short, everything that happened after that fateful sneeze has demonstrated just how lucky I am. I got immediate, skilled treatment. I have great health insurance. I have a good job and no money problems. I work at home and can set my own hours—and I even have a job I like so much it actually helps me weather the treatment. I work for editors who are completely understanding about what I’m going through and want only for me to recover. I have family and friends who care about me and are endlessly willing to help. And most of all, I have a wife who loves me and is always, always, always there for me.

There is nothing more I could want. I’m even thankful for the sneeze. It hurt like hell, but it’s the thing that got me to the hospital in the first place. Without it, I wouldn’t be recovering as I write this.

So sure: cancer sucks. But how many people who go through it have all this? Not many. Some have money problems. Some have work problems. Some are on their own. Some have lousy or nonexistent health insurance. Some get inadequate treatment. I have none of those problems. I am lucky almost beyond belief.

And one more thing: health care is suddenly a lot more real to me than ever before. Sure, I’ve always favored universal health care as a policy position. But now? It’s all I can do to wonder why anyone, no matter how principled their beliefs, would want to deny the kind of care I’ve gotten to even a single person. Not grudging, bare-bones care that’s an endless nightmare of stress and bill collectors. Decent, generous care that the richest country in the richest era in human history can easily afford.

Why wouldn’t you want that for everyone? It beggars the imagination.

In any case, that’s what I got—that and a lot more. And I am thankful for it. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

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I’m Pretty Thankful This Year. Here’s Why.

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Big Mayo Wants You to Know There’s Only One Way to Make Mayo, Dammit

Mother Jones

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Last Friday, the Anglo-Dutch mega-conglomerate Unilever, owner of Hellmann’s Mayonnaise, filed suit against the vegan upstart Hampton Creek, maker of egg-free Just Mayo, citing “false advertising and unfair competition,” and whining claiming that “Just Mayo already is stealing market share from Hellmann’s.”

Unilever, which long ago swallowed Ben & Jerry’s, Breyer’s, Lipton, Mrs. Filbert’s, Slimfast, Close-Up, Noxzema, Q-Tips, Vaseline, and hundreds of other brands into its multinational maw, argues that “Hampton Creek’s materially false and misleading Just Mayo name, packaging, and advertising has caused and unless restrained will continue to cause great and irreparable injury to Unilever.” That irreparable injury—for which Unilever requests that Hampton Creek change the name, remove all jars from shelves, and pay Unilever three times damages, plus attorney’s fees—comes because Hampton Creek is trying to pass off its eggless goop as mayonnaise, which “damages the entire product category, which has strived for decades for a consistent definition of ‘mayonnaise’ that fits with consumer expectations.” The FDA, Unilever correctly points out, defines mayonnaise as including an “egg-yolk containing ingredient.” Hampton Creek has fired back that, duh, that’s why they call their product mayo, not mayonnaise. But this seems a little shifty, considering that on their website they’ve referred to Just Mayo as “an outrageously delicious mayonnaise.”

Read our past coverage of the hackers trying to make fake eggs better. Ross MacDonald

Mayo 101: Oil and water hate each other. Shake them up in a bottle, and they’ll retreat to their respective corners as quickly as possible. But sometime in the 1700s, some proto–molecular gastronomist discovered that if you add an egg to the mix, its unique lipoproteins will run interference, forming a thicket of long molecules that trap the oil droplets and prevent them from coalescing and rising to the surface. Sauce Mayonnaise was born, and quickly swept the Continent. That was pretty much the end of innovation in the mayonnaise sector, until recently, when Hampton Creek hit upon a method of tweaking yellow pea proteins to act like egg proteins. Just Mayo was born. And quickly sued.

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Big Mayo Wants You to Know There’s Only One Way to Make Mayo, Dammit

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