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Gary Johnson Thinks Barack Obama and Bashar Assad Are Morally About the Same

by Carey68Hsrqgpwm Posted on October 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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Gary Johnson thinks our foreign policy should be less interventionist. That’s fair enough. I agree with him. But this is ridiculous:

Attacking Hillary Clinton over what he criticized as her overly interventionist instincts, Mr. Johnson pointed to the hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians killed by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, as well as civilian deaths caused by the American-backed coalition, and said Mrs. Clinton, the former secretary of state, bore at least partial responsibility…He charged that Mrs. Clinton “bears responsibility for what’s happened, shared responsibility for what’s happened in Syria. I would not have put us in that situation from the get-go.”

This is nuts. Hillary Clinton played no role in starting the civil war in Syria, and 400,000 people have died there even though Barack Obama chose not to adopt her policy preferences. Our responsibility for what’s happened in Syria—whether you think it’s large or small—belongs to Obama, not Clinton. Then there’s this:

Johnson drew a parallel on Wednesday between the Syrian government’s targeting of noncombatants in that nation’s civil war and the accidental bombing of civilians by United States-backed forces…When pressed four times on whether he saw a moral equivalence between deaths caused by the United States, directly or indirectly, and mass killings of civilians by Mr. Assad and his allies, Mr. Johnson made clear that he did.

Words fail. Yes, the United States is far from perfect. Yes, we sometimes kill innocent civilians. Yes, we often do too little to make sure civilians are safe. All of this is worth protest until we get better.

But we do try to spare civilians. In fact, our rules of engagement are famously restrictive. Bashar Assad, by contrast, deliberately targets civilians in huge numbers. Civilian or not, if you oppose Assad he wants you dead.

Does Johnson really see no difference there? That wouldn’t pass muster in a freshman ethics class, let alone the real world. I’d like to see the United States rely less on a military approach to the Middle East, too, but I sure wouldn’t want our military in the hands of a guy who apparently sees no real moral difference between a butcher like Bashar Assad and decent but imperfect leaders like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

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Gary Johnson Thinks Barack Obama and Bashar Assad Are Morally About the Same

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Here’s a Preview of How Donald Trump Could Use Hurricane Matthew to Attack Hillary Clinton

by KathleneRoten Posted on October 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have announced they are pausing their campaign events while they wait to see if Hurricane Matthew, the Category 4 storm now barreling through the Caribbean, makes landfall in the United States Thursday evening. That doesn’t mean either presidential candidate is expected to remain idle as the storm continues to intensify. In fact, both campaigns are reportedly trying to figure out how to effectively demonstrate strength, without appearing to exploit a potential catastrophe for political points.

Clinton is already taking some heat, after it was revealed her campaign purchased television spots on the Weather Channel ahead of the storm. Trump has so far restricted himself to sending best wishes to residents, urging them to remain safe. But a glimpse of his past remarks during times of disaster offer a preview of how he could respond should Matthew hit land. In the past, he has used hurricanes and other natural disasters as opportunities to attack President Barack Obama and re-up his favorite conspiracy theories:

While it remains to be seen if Trump will stick to his current restraint, if this year has taught us anything, it’s that Trump’s inflammatory statements and his self-congratulations are his most predictable trait. And then, of course, there’s his generosity.

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Here’s a Preview of How Donald Trump Could Use Hurricane Matthew to Attack Hillary Clinton

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The Key Moments From the Vice Presidential Debate

by KarmaG62lyzhfxl Posted on October 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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In a debate that was expected to have none of the fireworks of last week’s presidential face-off, the two vice presidential nominees embraced their attack-dog roles Tuesday in a sparring match that was less about the men on stage than about Donald Trump.

Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia used the debate in his home state to slam Trump repeatedly over his refusal to release his tax returns and his surprising comments about nuclear proliferation. Republican Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, in turn, tried to dodge most of the attacks Kaine lobbed his way and used them to accuse Kaine of running an “insult-driven” campaign. Pence was also able to get in a few swipes at Hillary Clinton.

It was a messy, chaotic affair for two vice presidential hopefuls, both thought to be more mellow than their running mates. The two candidates often talked over each other often during the debate—and over the moderator, CBS News’ Elaine Quijano, who had a hard time holding Kaine and Pence to the allotted time and subject matter for each question.

Here are the best moments from the combative debate:

Pence defends Trump on not paying taxes. Following a New York Times report suggesting that Trump might not have paid any federal income taxes for nearly two decades by claiming $913 million in losses on his tax returns in 1995, Pence defended his running mate. “Donald Trump is a businessman, not a career politician,” Pence said. “He actually built a business. He faced some pretty tough times 20 years ago. His tax returns—that showed he went through a very difficult time but he used the tax code just the way it’s supposed to be used and he did it brilliantly.”

Kaine goes after Trump’s missing tax returns. Kaine went hard after Trump for not releasing his tax returns. He recalled that Trump promised back in 2014 that he would release his returns if he ran for president, and he said that Trump broke that promise. Just as Pence shared his tax returns with Trump as part of the vetting process to be his running mate, Kaine said, Trump should share his returns with the American people as he runs for the job of president.

Pence accuses Kaine of running an “insult-driven campaign.” Throughout the debate, Pence accused Kaine and Clinton of running an “insult-driven campaign.” “I have to tell you, I was listening to the avalanche of insults coming out of Sen. Kaine,” Pence said early in the debate. What had Kaine said that had so offended Pence? The Democratic candidate has just ticked off a litany of statements that Trump had made over the course of the campaign. Pence used this to bring up Clinton’s comment that half of Trump’s supporters are in a “basket of deplorables.”

Kaine ridicules Trump’s inability to apologize. When Pence noted Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comments, Kaine said that she had apologized for how she phrased that comment. (She apologized for exaggerating and saying the “deplorables” made up “half” of Trump’s supporters.) He went on to name a long list of insults that Trump has spewed since starting his campaign but not apologized for and said, “You will look in vain to see Donald Trump ever taking responsibility for anybody and apologizing.”

Kaine goes after Trump’s penchant for praising dictators. Midway through the debate, Kaine rattled off a list of Trump’s most controversial foreign policy ideas, from his questioning of the NATO treaty to his suggestions that the United States would be better off if more countries had nuclear weapons. But the best zinger came when Kaine listed the figures who would be carved into Trump’s “personal Mount Rushmore”: Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong-un, Muammar Gaddafi, and Saddam Hussein.

Kaine suggests Pence revisit his fifth-grade civics lessons. Kaine criticized Trump for his connections to Russian oligarchs and took on Pence for praising Putin as a “stronger leader” than President Barack Obama. For this, Kaine suggested, Pence might need to retake fifth-grade civics.

Pence defends the Trump Foundation. Pence declined many opportunities to defend Trump’s record against Kaine’s onslaught of attacks throughout the night, but he finally backed his running mate up when it came to Trump’s charitable foundation. The Trump Foundation, Pence claimed, “gives almost every cent to charitable causes”—a statement that has been proved false time and again through dogged reporting from the Washington Post. Trump has used his foundation to send an illegal political contribution to the attorney general of Florida, to pay off legal fees incurred by his businesses, and to purchase portraits of himself. The foundation is currently being investigated by the New York attorney general.

Pence defends Trump’s record on abortion. Pence and Kaine went toe-to-toe on the issue of abortion. Kaine said Trump and Pence want to see Roe v. Wade repealed, resulting in laws that punish women for seeking abortions. Kaine also seized on a comment Trump made early in the campaign when he said women who seek an abortion should be punished. (Trump’s campaign later walked back that comment.) Pence responded that he and Trump would not condone punishing women for abortion and defended Trump’s past comments by noting that Trump isn’t a “polished politician” like Clinton and Kaine.

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The Key Moments From the Vice Presidential Debate

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We’re Live Blogging the Vice Presidential Debate of 2016

by JoyceMerz38 Posted on October 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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This was a more normal debate than last week’s, which makes it harder to call. Tim Kaine was very much the aggressor, interrupting frequently and demanding that Pence defend the most egregious of Donald Trump’s outbursts. Pence was calmer, and kept insisting that Trump had never said the stuff Kaine accused him of saying. This wasn’t true, but there’s no telling if the audience at home believed him anyway. In the future, perhaps candidates should be allowed to have a series of video clips they’re allowed to display during their answers?

On style, then, Pence probably won with his calm demeanor. On substance, it was a KO for Kaine. Trump really did say all the stuff Kaine accused him of, but Pence simply refused to engage with it. Trump did casually say he didn’t care much if other countries got nukes. Trump did say that women who get abortions should be punished.1 Trump’s tax plan does include huge cuts for millionaires. Trump did promise to release his taxes and then reneged on it. Trump (and Pence) have called Vladimir Putin a better leader than Obama. Trump has trash talked the military. And he did call NATO obsolete and then suggest he might not bother defending the Baltics if Russia invaded them.

Neither Pence nor Kaine made any terrible gaffes, and neither landed any killing blows. This means that partisanship probably weighs most heavily here, but even with that in mind I’d give the debate to Kaine. The post-debate commentary is going to make it clear that Kaine was mostly accurate about Trump, and that Pence simply wasn’t willing or able to defend him. I don’t know if that will be devastating for Pence, but it won’t make him look good. Overall, I give Kaine a B+ and Pence a B-.

As for Elaine Quijano, I really don’t know. She didn’t take control of the debate at all, and frequently allowed Pence and Kaine to talk when she should have shut them up—but just as frequently moved on when she should have let them talk. Was this because of the debate rules? Because Pence and Kaine refused to abide by the rules? Or because she’s a bad moderator? I don’t know.

A full transcript of the debate is here.

1He took it back the next day, but he still said it.

In a presidential campaign featuring superstars Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Tim Kaine and Mike Pence have faded so far into the background they’re almost invisible. In fact, they’ve both avoided controversy so assiduously that the main attacks against Kaine are about his defense of murderers several decades ago, while the biggest complaint about Pence is that he claimed cigarettes weren’t killers back in the year 2000. I’m exaggerating here, but only barely.

Actually, what most people seem to be looking forward to is Pence’s defense of Donald Trump’s various meltdowns. Sadly, he’s probably well prepped for this. But you never know. There might be fireworks anyway.

10:35 – And that’s a wrap.

10:33 – Pence: We’ll unify America by bringing change to Washington DC, standing tall in the world, and supercharging the economy. Um.

10:31 – How will you unify America if you win? Kaine: Republicans respect Clinton. She has a track record of working across the aisle. Kaine says he does too. Not a bad answer.

10:27 – Pence opposes abortion. Kaine supports women making their own choices.

10:26 – Now it’s a lovefest. Everybody agrees that faith is great. Everybody agrees that the other guy’s faith is great.

10:23 – Now let’s talk about faith. You will be unsurprised that both men are deeply, deeply informed by their faith.

10:20 – Quijano: I remind you both that the question is about North Korea.

10:19 – Now Kaine is talking about foundations too. The Clinton Foundation is great! But the Trump Foundation is “octopus like” and breaks the law all the time.

10:16 – What would you do to prevent North Korea from developing a missile that can reach the United States? Pence delivers a bit of mush and then….returns to Trump’s taxes and the Clinton Foundation. Huh?

10:11 – Finally Kaine says something not really true: that Trump didn’t know Russia annexed Crimea two years ago. Pence goes after it. But he’s still stuck on most of Kaine’s accusations because they’re all on tape.

10:10 – Kaine has generally been pretty aggressive in his accusations against Trump. Pence is constantly rolling his eyes and saying “Oh please” or something similar. But he rarely even tries to explain why Kaine is wrong. He just switches to an attack on Hillary Clinton. I guess he doesn’t have much choice since Kaine has mostly been accurate.

10:07 – Now Kaine makes it explicit: He’s tried to get an answer on nukes “six times.” Pence won’t defend Trump’s position. Quijano bails out Pence by moving to a new subject.

10:05 – Kaine keeps poking Pence on Trump’s casual attitude toward other countries getting nuclear weapons. Pence resolutely refuses to deal with this.

9:58 – A question about Aleppo. And speaking of Aleppo, Gary Johnson says his ignorance of geography is a benefit. Folks who know all those foreign countries and foreign leaders just end up wanting to attack them. Seriously.

9:54 – What is an “intelligence surge”? Kaine: Expanding our intelligence capacity and building better alliances. Okey doke.

9:49 – Is America more or less safe than it was eight years ago? For the record, I’d say it’s about equally dangerous.

9:48 – Kaine doing a pretty good job of running down why Trump is dangerous on foreign affairs: Trash talks the military, wants to tear apart alliances, he loves dictators, and he wants everyone to have nukes.

9:44 – Back to immigration. Pence trying to soften Trump’s plan. Kaine trying to make sure everyone knows every single detail.

9:41 – Pence now trying to make case that “basket of deplorables” is equivalent to all of Trump’s insults. It’s not working.

9:40 – Interesting that Pence rather obviously refused to say the word “wall” when talking about Trump’s immigration plan.

9:34 – Pence: Enough with all this institutional racism crap. Kaine: We can’t be afraid to bring up issues of bias.

9:31 – Both guys agree that cops are great.

9:29 – What is Elaine Quijano doing? She’s not keeping either of these guys in line, and she’s only allowing a minute or two on each subject. Come on. This isn’t a race to see who can talk about the most subjects in 90 minutes.

9:27 – Pence to Kaine: “There they go again.” Oh please.

9:26 – What the heck are the rules for this debate? Are interruptions allowed? Are there time limits? Or what?

9:22 – Pence to Kaine: “You can roll out the numbers” but the economy sucks no matter what all your egghead numbers say.

9:21 – Kaine on Trump: “His economic plan is a Trump first plan.” Meh.

9:19 – Nobody is making any funny faces yet.

9:16 – So far, our moderator is not doing a good job of keeping things in line. Maybe she’s restrained by bad rules?

9:14 – Both candidates are trying to be tough. It’s a little comedic. Sort of like five-year-olds trying to look tough next to John Wayne.

9:12 – Why do so many people think Donald Trump is erratic? How much time do we have to answer this question?

9:11 – Why don’t people trust Hillary Clinton? Hmmm. Let me think.

9:03 – And we’re off. Can I remember to use Eastern time zone time stamps this time? Wait and see!

9:00 – CNN can’t seem to make up its mind whether this debate is going to be a snoozefest or the biggest moment ever in debate history.

8:55 – David Axelrod: There will be no painting outside the lines tonight.

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We’re Live Blogging the Vice Presidential Debate of 2016

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The One Way Tuesday’s Debate Might Actually Be Interesting

by StevenKRGV Posted on October 4, 2016

Mother Jones

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Did you hear? The vice presidential debate is going to be a total snoozer. “Bland-to-bland combat,” says the Washington Post‘s Karen Tumulty. “The Thrilla in Vanilla,” says the Daily Beast. Neither Mike Pence nor Tim Kaine has ever gone on national TV to call a former Miss Universe fat, nor have they ever suggested at a campaign event that their opponent might get shot. Nor, to the best of my knowledge, have they encouraged their supporters to “check out sex tape” at 3 a.m. They are both middle-aged white men with law degrees who were raised Catholic, had three kids, and served in both Congress and as governors of large (but not unreasonably large) states. You can barely tell them apart:

Pence, notwithstanding his sweater vests and trips to Chili’s, is not just a jar of mayonnaise. As my colleague Hannah Levintova explained, he has a well-earned reputation as one of the most conservative governors in America, one whose one term has been defined by high-profile fights on abortion, gay rights, and a legal battle over refugee resettlement. Pence would be an exceptional figure in a normal year.

But the vice presidential debate isn’t really about the vice presidential candidates. If Pence says anything memorable on Tuesday night, it will most likely be on the subject he has the most trouble talking about: the positions and statements of his running mate, Donald Trump.

It has been an awkward relationship from the start. When he picked the Indiana governor as his running mate, Trump frantically tried to backtrack hours later, then held a press conference the next day announcing the selection that was mostly about himself, and finally did a joint interview on 60 Minutes in which Pence barely spoke. At other joint appearances, Pence has had to politely keep quiet as Trump trashes the trade deals Pence enthusiastically supported and rails against the war in Iraq that both of them backed.

Pence, a social conservative stalwart who launched his political career by condemning negative campaigning, has been put on perpetual cleanup duty in the service of a nominee who accused Hillary Clinton of cheating on her husband. He has had to endorse a Muslim ban he once called “offensive and unconstitutional.” When Trump got into a public feud with the parents of a Muslim soldier who was killed in Iraq, it fell to Pence to run interference. When Pence was asked about Trump’s claim that 95 percent of African Americans would support the Republican ticket, he could only muster a weak laugh.

Throughout the campaign Pence has struggled to defend his running mate with a straight face; on Tuesday, he’ll have to do it for 90 minutes.

An example of how things could go wrong for Pence came during Monday’s US Senate debate in New Hampshire, where Republican Sen. Kelly Ayotte—who has said she is voting for Trump—was asked if she considered the presidential nominee a role model for children. There may be no good answer for someone in her position; no one would have taken her seriously if she reflexively said “yes,” but she would never hear the end of it if she said her choice for president was not. Ayotte fumbled awkwardly with the question before eventually saying, “absolutely.” Watch this and try not to wince:

It was 40 seconds of video she’ll have a hard time living down, and she seemed to recognize it. Almost immediately after the debate was over, Ayotte put out a new statement revising her answer: She “misspoke” during the debate, and believed that neither nominee was a good role model for children. Ayotte, at least, could fall back on a critique of both candidates. Pence won’t be so lucky.

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The One Way Tuesday’s Debate Might Actually Be Interesting

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Trump Continues to Lash Out at Former Miss Universe, This Time Over Non-Existent Sex Tape

by Pedro17L0457 Posted on September 30, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump continued his attacks against former Miss Universe winner Alicia Machado Friday morning, unleashing a series of tweets that labeled her “disgusting” and a “con”, and encouraged his supporters to uncover her “sex tape.” The allegation that Machado once starred in a porn film has been debunked by numerous sources.

The smear campaign comes days after the first presidential debate on Monday, when Hillary Clinton said Trump had called Machado “Miss Piggy” to ridicule her appearance. Following the debate, Trump doubled-down on his fat-shaming by calling Machado’s previous “massive” weight gain a “real problem.”

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Trump Continues to Lash Out at Former Miss Universe, This Time Over Non-Existent Sex Tape

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How to Vote for a Third Party—And Still Stay in the Main Game

by JesseZHBnzgzn Posted on September 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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In 2000, Americans learned just how dramatically a third-party vote could swing an election, when Ralph Nader pulled thousands of Florida votes away from Al Gore, handing the narrow victory to George W. Bush.

This year, polls suggest that history could repeat itself. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are in a dead heat, while Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson polls around 8 percent nationally and Jill Stein, from the Green Party, polls about 2 percent. Two former Bush administration officials and a small group of developers in Silicon Valley—coincidentally all immigrants—want to avoid the possibility of third-party voters ushering in a Trump presidency. They’ve created a smartphone app that allows anti-Trumpers who aren’t Clinton fans to swap a third-party-candidate protest vote with the vote of someone in a safely blue state.

“If you like Gary Johnson and want to vote for Gary Johnson, then you should vote for Gary Johnson,” says John Stubbs, co-founder of R4C16, a grassroots Republicans for Clinton group, which had the idea for a vote-trading app. “If, however, you do not like Donald Trump, and you are voting for Johnson because you also do not like Hillary Clinton, our suggestion is to vote tactically and avoid the worst-case scenario, which is the election of Donald Trump.”

Stubbs, along with his R4C16 co-founder Ricardo Reyes, both worked for the US Trade Representative under the Bush administration and, until this election, had retired from politics. In June, however, the lifelong Republicans launched R4C16 to defeat Trump, who they worry could destroy the Republican Party for good.

“A Libertarian protest vote could toss the election to Trump,” Stubbs wrote in the Washington Post in July. So Stubbs and Reyes came up with the idea for a vote-trading app, after reading about a couple of developers in Silicon Valley who’d made #NeverTrump, an app designed to help people encourage their existing contacts in swing states to vote. They got in touch with Amit Kumar, the brains behind the app and CEO of Trimian, a startup he launched in 2015 that makes mobile apps for communities, and asked if he could update the app to include a vote-trade option.

Kumar was happy to oblige. “Most of the people at our company are immigrants. So we felt like it was a good use of our time to come in and do what we can,” said Kumar, who came to Silicon Valley from India in 2000 and recently became a US citizen. The rest of his US-based employees, he says, come from places like South Africa, the United Kingdom, the Philippines, and China.

Kumar explained that his team of developers had the idea for the first version of the #NeverTrump app a few weeks after this summer’s Republican and Democratic conventions and launched it in mid-September. Instead of knocking on random doors or cold-calling voters in get-out-the vote efforts, they wanted to mobilize voters with technology and within their existing networks. They worked pro-bono to create an app that, with a user’s permission, will sort through the contacts in your smartphone and list them by swing state. Users could then be enabled to send a pre-programmed email encouraging those friends to vote. After Stubbs and Reyes reached out, Kumar and his team quickly programmed in a vote-trading function that appears automatically based on the location and vote preference the user lists when he or she registers.

“We’ve made it very simple. If you happen to be a Clinton supporter in a non-swing state,” Kumar says, or a third-party candidate supporter in a swing state, “you now get a second button, which is ‘trade.'” Then, the pre-programmed message sending contacts a reminder to vote also includes an offer to swap votes.

Stubbs and Reyes wrote a New York Times op-ed earlier this month encouraging anti-Trump voters to consider trading their protest votes. They point out that in 2000, “Nader Trader” websites emerged a couple of weeks before the election but did nothing to change the outcome. Stubbs believes that this time around, however, vote-trading could have a significant impact because the internet is far more developed and ubiquitous, they’ve begun the effort two months in advance and, most importantly, this is no longer a brand new idea.

“In 2000, there’d been no discussion of it ever before,” Stubbs says. “There is an educational process that has to happen for voters.”

Vote trading has also caught on in other countries. In Canada’s 2015 election, a number of vote-swapping efforts emerged, and in the run-up to the election, more than a million citizens ditched their party affiliation with the democratic-socialist National Democratic Party to vote with the Liberal Party, helping to elect Justin Trudeau.

Following the 2000 election, several legal challenges cropped up claiming that Nader Trader websites were engaged in illegal vote-buying. The 9th Circuit ultimately ruled this wasn’t the case: The vote swaps weren’t binding promises, the court found, and constituted a form of First Amendment protected free speech.

The app has also sparked at least a few vote-trading initiatives that are less tech savvy. Mary Cybulski, a photographer in New York, read Stubbs’ op-ed and decided to start an informal vote trade of her own with the help of her daughter, who is in a Ph.D. program in North Carolina, where polls are currently split between Trump and Clinton. “She has a lot of friends who are like, ‘I can’t vote for Clinton, but I don’t want to elect Trump,'” Cybulski says. So her daughter is looking for potential third-party voters in North Carolina while Cybulski connects them to potential swap-ees in New York. “I’m fine with protesting, I just don’t want to take chances, so we can help with that,” Cybulski says. “We can register their protest vote and not elect Trump.” For now, though, they’ve only found a couple of participants.

The #NeverTrump app has seen much wider success. Kumar says the app has had “tens of thousands” of downloads, and he anticipates a pickup in both downloads and trading as the election nears. As long as his investors and team continue to be supportive, he says his company will continue to maintain and update the app, motivated in large part by Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric.

“I’ve been in the Valley since 2000. And the first time I ever heard a racist taunt was a week back,“ Kumar says. “Trump has given society the permission to be racist. As an Indian American—we aren’t Muslims, but we see what he says about Muslims. We’re not Mexicans, but we see what he says about Mexicans. It’s up to us, as subcommunities, to stand up. And the way I think about it is, whichever community you belong to, if you think this is not about you, well guess what? It is going to be.”

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How to Vote for a Third Party—And Still Stay in the Main Game

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What the Candidates Might Say Tonight About the World’s Most Important Issue

by PilarErtel48 Posted on September 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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People pause near a bus adorned with large photos of candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump before the first presidential debate. Mary Altaffer/AP

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Climate change is a grave threat to our future, but it probably won’t come up at Monday’s presidential debate. Topics for the event include “Securing America,” and although you’d think issues of national security might involve climate change (the military certainly does), if history is any indication, it likely won’t get mentioned at all.

But if it does get the attention it deserves, here’s where Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton stand:

Dirty energy: Clinton supports some natural gas extraction on public lands, is against offshore drilling in the Arctic and the Atlantic, and has pledged $30 billion to provide suffering coal communities with health care, education, and job retraining as we move away from coal as a source of energy.

Trump has promised to boost coal production, ease environmental regulations, open federal lands to oil and gas extraction, and increase permits for oil pipelines. He also is considering appointing an oil executive to head the Department of Interior and a fracking mogul to lead the Department of Energy.

Clean energy: Clinton has said she would install more than half a billion solar panels in the United States by the end of her first term, and that under her presidency, we will generate enough clean energy to power every home in America by 2027.

Trump has said wind power is a great killer of birds (it’s not) and that solar is too expensive to be a viable source of energy, despite the fact that the cost of solar has now reached record lows—and with proper government investment, it would get even cheaper. Trump also objects to Obama’s signature environmental legislation, the Clean Power Plan, as well as the Paris Climate Accord, which he says he would cancel.

Environmental justice: After a debate in Flint, Michigan, in April, Clinton said she would require federal agencies to devise plans to deal with lead poisoning and other environmental justice issues, and she pledged to clean up more than 450,000 polluted sites around the United States.

Trump, on the other hand, mocked the Democratic National Committee for including climate justice in the party’s platform, and has previously vowed to dismantle the Environmental Protection Agency—or, as he calls it, “the Department of Environmental”—although he’s recently backtracked on that particular idea.

Fossil fuel donations: While Republican presidential candidates can usually count on generous support from the fossil fuel industry, this year is the exception. Between both individual and corporation donations, Clinton has taken nearly twice as much from Big Oil as Trump, and some oil execs may even vote for her. Looks like we can add this to the list of things the great race of 2016 has upended.

Third and fourth party candidates Jill Stein and Gary Johnson won’t be at the debate Monday night, which is too bad, because they tend to have the most interesting answers on climate change…and everything else.

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What the Candidates Might Say Tonight About the World’s Most Important Issue

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This Newspaper Just Endorsed Its First Democrat for President in Almost a Century, Because Trump

by CarinEWPBavsc Posted on September 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Friday, the Cincinnati Enquirer endorsed Hillary Clinton, the first Democrat for president the paper has endorsed in almost 100 years.

“The Enquirer has supported Republicans for president for almost a century—a tradition this editorial board doesn’t take lightly,” the editorial board wrote. “But this is not a traditional race, and these are not traditional times. Our country needs calm, thoughtful leadership to deal with the challenges we face at home and abroad. We need a leader who will bring out the best in all Americans, not the worst.”

With this unexpected endorsement, the Enquirer joins several other newspapers who, due to fears of a Trump presidency, have bucked years of tradition and chosen not to endorse the GOP nominee: Earlier this month, the Dallas Morning News endorsed Clinton, the first Democratic nominee for president they’ve endorsed in 75 years. The New Hampshire Union Leader endorsed libertarian Gary Johnson, after endorsing Republican candidates for a century.

The Enquirer’s editorial outlines Hillary Clinton’s “proven track record of governing,” including her work fighting for women’s rights, children’s health coverage, LGBT equality, and to secure care for 9/11 first responders.

Of Trump, the editorial board points out that he has no history of governance—and rather than acknowledging his novice status, he purports to know more than the experts:

Trump is a clear and present danger to our country. He has no history of governance that should engender any confidence from voters. Trump has no foreign policy experience, and the fact that he doesn’t recognize it—instead insisting that, “I know more about ISIS than the generals do”—is even more troubling. His wild threats to blow Iranian ships out of the water if they make rude gestures at U.S. ships is just the type of reckless, cowboy diplomacy Americans should fear from a Trump presidency.

The editorial board acknowledges their reservations about Clinton, including her lack of transparency, and it makes clear that any reservations they have about Clinton “pale in comparison to our fears about Trump.” The board goes on to outline a host of other concerns about Trump: his insults about women, his offensive comments about Latino and African-American communities, his support of dictatorial leaders like Vladimir Putin and Saddam Hussein, his endorsements from white supremacist groups, and much more.

“Of late, Trump has toned down his divisive rhetoric, sticking to carefully constructed scripts and teleprompters,” the Enquirer notes. “But going two weeks without saying something misogynistic, racist or xenophobic is hardly a qualification for the most important job in the world. Why should anyone believe that a Trump presidency would look markedly different from his offensive, erratic, stance-shifting presidential campaign?”

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This Newspaper Just Endorsed Its First Democrat for President in Almost a Century, Because Trump

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Hillary Clinton Wants to Raise Taxes on Wealthy Heirs

by Jim Thorpe Posted on September 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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Hillary Clinton has proposed an increase in the estate tax:

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton would levy a 65% tax on the largest estates….generate $260 billion over the next decade, enough to pay for her plans to simplify small business taxes and expand the child tax credit….The Clinton campaign changed its previous plan—which called for a 45% top rate—by adding three new tax brackets and adopting the structure proposed by Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont during the Democratic primaries. She would impose a 50% rate that would apply to estates over $10 million a person, a 55% rate that starts at $50 million a person, and the top rate of 65%, which would affect only those with assets exceeding $500 million for a single person and $1 billion for married couples.

But but but, capital formation! Where will the American economy manage to dredge up any capital if we raise taxes on billion-dollar estates? Plus, as the straight shooters at the Wall Street Journal editorial page point out, there’s inflation. Using current dollars, a decade from now that top rate of 65 percent will apply to married couples with a mere $900 million in taxable assets. Surely we can’t be serious about this?

And how many people does this affect? Well, in 2014 there were a grand total of 223 estates worth $50 million or more. Given the power-curve nature of income, this suggests that there were maybe, oh, five estates worth $500 million. That’s something on the order of a thousand rich kids who will have to pay 15 percent more than the current top rate and maybe a dozen or so who would pay 25 percent more. Those dozen or so would inherit a mere $350 million instead of $600 million. That’s a grim fate, to be sure, but I suppose they’ll manage to soldier on.

As for all those farmers and family businesses who will be devastated? Forget it. There aren’t any—unless you consider the Trump Organization to be a small family business.

As with most policy proposals in this campaign, this is more for show than anything else. A Republican Congress won’t take up the estate tax again. Still, it’s designed to show whose side Hillary Clinton is on, and it does a pretty good job of that.

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Hillary Clinton Wants to Raise Taxes on Wealthy Heirs

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