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America’s Rash of School Shooting and Bomb Threats Continues

by ClaribelOwx Posted on February 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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School officials sent home nearly 2,000 students after receiving a bomb threat at McLean High School in northern Virginia at approximately 8:00 a.m. Monday morning. The Washington Post reports:

The 10th largest school district in the country, Fairfax County schools face nearly daily threats. Security officials have said that threats come in frequently through the Internet and social media and that they investigate about 100 cases a year.

Earlier this year, fake bomb threats closed schools in six states, and in 2015 a threat forced school officials in Los Angeles to cancel classes for the second largest school system in the country.

Schools throughout the nation have been facing a rash of shooting and bomb threats. One study suggests that such threats are on the rise. In February 2015, Kenneth Trump, the president of the National School Safety and Security Services, released a study that reviewed 812 threats reported in the media from the first half of the 2014-15 school year. Threats had risen 158 percent since the first time he conducted the study in the previous year.

However, there is no comprehensive national data on school threats, and no mandate for schools or law enforcement to track them, so it’s diffucult to discern if the problem is in fact a rising trend. Meanwhile, also on Monday four students were reported injured in a school shooting in Ohio. Read more about the ongoing wave of threats to schools in our recent explainer here.

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America’s Rash of School Shooting and Bomb Threats Continues

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When Did Americans Get So Gullible?

by MilagroX06 Posted on February 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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Once again last night, Donald Trump won a landslide victory. He didn’t win just “economically anxious” blue-collar voters; he won everybody:

Trump’s victory was propelled by a broad coalition of voters, including evangelicals, voters without a college education, and people who said they were looking for a candidate outside the Republican establishment.

Trump appealed to voters across the ideological spectrum. He won 38 percent of people who describe themselves as “very conservative,” beating Cruz in Cruz’s own territory. And he also led among voters who describe themselves as “somewhat conservative” and even “moderate.” Rubio came in second with both those groups…The broad scope of Trump’s victory paints a dire picture for Republican establishment types hoping his support can be confined to a particular demographic or corner of the country.

The thing that knits all these Trump supporters together isn’t low wages or jobs disappearing overseas or xenophobic fear of anyone nonwhite. You can find each of these qualities in some of Trump’s supporters, but not in all of them. As near as I can tell, the only thing that all of them seem to share is a desire for someone “tough.” Mostly they want someone who’s tough on foreigners of various stripes, but Trump also does well by insisting he’ll be tough on crime, tough on insurance companies, tough on hedge fund managers, and tough on a slew of other malingerers.

And…now I’m trying to think of what to say next. It’s not that I’m surprised toughness sells to a certain audience. What I’m surprised by is that so many people buy the idea that Trump is tough. To me, it looks like a reality show schtick. It’s so obviously phony that it barely seems conceivable that so many people are taken in by it. Is that really all you have to do? Just a lot of blustery talk and that’s that? When did so many Americans get that gullible?

It’s puzzling. Trump is hardly the first demagogue to become popular, so maybe I’m overthinking this. But it feels different this time, as if we’ve become so sucked in by reality TV that we now accept reality TV as reality itself. So that’s what we want: the faux toughness of a reality TV star.

Trump’s act seems so obviously childish to me that I have a hard time accepting the fact that so many people apparently take it seriously. But what else explains him?

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When Did Americans Get So Gullible?

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Donald Trump Wins Nevada Caucuses

by DannEarley364 Posted on February 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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Coming off big wins in New Hampshire and South Carolina, Donald Trump secured his position as the clear front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday night with another resounding victory in the Nevada caucuses.

The major networks called the race for Trump shortly after the caucuses concluded. Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas were locked in a battle for second place, with Ohio Gov. John Kasich and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson trailing.

Trump, who has broken all the usual campaign rules with brash promises that range from building a wall along the Mexican border to banning Muslims from entering the country, has now won the last three caucuses or primaries. He enters the Super Tuesday contests on March 1 with a commanding lead in the delegate count.

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Donald Trump Wins Nevada Caucuses

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How Hillary Clinton Won Nevada

by DemiLockett Posted on February 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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It might have been closer than most people would have guessed a month ago, but Hillary Clinton’s long-term investment in Nevada paid off. The former secretary of state edged out Sen. Bernie Sanders by about five percentage points in the Nevada caucuses. It wasn’t quite the 20-point edge that Clinton had in polls from late last year, but it was a decisive win that backs up the Clinton campaign’s contention that Sanders won’t be able to maintain the same level of support he enjoyed in Iowa and New Hampshire as the contest moves to more diverse states.

Nevada was always a big priority for Clinton, a first test to see if she could bring together the multicultural coalition that has formed the Democratic base across the country. Her campaign manager, Robby Mook, got his start on the Clinton team running her 2008 campaign in the state. The campaign had a bevy of staffers in the state, including Mook disciple Emmy Ruiz, as soon as the national campaign launched in March. They replicated the sort of grassroots community organizing that Mook learned on Howard Dean’s 2004 campaign.

Sanders, meanwhile, didn’t get going until half a year later. His state campaign manager, Joan Kato, didn’t arrive until November. While the Clinton campaign spent the final weeks of the race running a get-out-the-vote effort to make sure Clinton backers actually showed up to caucus, the Sanders campaign was still trying to identify its supporters at a phone banking event Wednesday focused on reaching Latino voters.

“I think one of the reasons that we got here a little bit later, that the average person in Nevada understands, is that we were raising our money through small donor donations,” Kato told me later that day. “With a $27 average donation, it might take you a little bit more time to get off the ground.” But the Sanders campaign quickly ramped up, spending more on TV ads in the state and eventually opening more field offices (12) than the Clinton campaign (7).

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How Hillary Clinton Won Nevada

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In Shocker, Americans Divided by Party on Scalia Replacement

by PamelaCCOH Posted on February 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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A new poll says Americans are evenly divided about whether the vacant Supreme Court seat should be filled this year. Can you guess why they’re so evenly divided? Huh? Can you?

The survey found voters were split deeply along party lines, with 71% of the Democrats favoring Senate consideration of an Obama nominee and 73% of Republicans supporting no action until the next president assumes office.

Yeah, that’s a shocker, all right. By an amazing coincidence, partisans on both sides have accepted the rigorous and principled arguments set forth by their fellow partisans. However, the fight for the independents continues. They’re split 43-42 percent, just like the country as a whole.

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In Shocker, Americans Divided by Party on Scalia Replacement

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Sorry, Hillary Clinton, Nevada Is Actually a Diverse State

by TheoHowes665163 Posted on February 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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Stinging from its lopsided defeat in New Hampshire and bracing for a tougher-than-expected primary fight against Bernie Sanders, the Hillary Clinton campaign has sought to lower expectations for the next contest, this Saturday’s Nevada caucuses. To do so, the campaign has been subtly pushing a curious line: Don’t read too much into the results of the Nevada caucuses because the state is disproportionately white, just like New Hampshire and Iowa.

As I explained last week, Nevada should be a firewall state for Clinton, and that’s how the Clinton campaign long painted it. But last Tuesday, campaign spokesman Brian Fallon tried to dash those impressions during an appearance on MSNBC. As recounted by BuzzFeed‘s Ruby Cramer, Fallon tried to suggest that Sanders had an edge in the caucuses thanks to the makeup of the state.

“There’s an important Hispanic element to the Democratic caucus in Nevada,” Fallon said. “But it’s still a state that is 80 percent white voters. You have a caucus-style format, and he’ll have the momentum coming out of New Hampshire presumably, so there’s a lot of reasons he should do well.”

Campaign manager Robby Mook, who ran Clinton’s 2008 campaign in the state, made a similar argument the next day when talking with congressional Democrats:

Is Nevada as lacking in diversity as Iowa and New Hampshire? Not even close. It’s actually one of the more diverse states in the country. The population is 9 percent African American, just a few points below the national average of 13 percent. It’s also 9 percent Asian American or Pacific Islander, above the national 5.6 percent average. And Nevada boasts a far larger Latino population than the country writ large: 27.8 percent, versus 17.4 percent nationally.

Where does the Clinton campaign come up with the idea that Nevada is so overwhelming white? It all comes down to the difficult terminology of race and ethnicity. Technically, the state is 76 percent white, but that’s because most people who identify as Latino or Hispanic are included in that category. Separate them out, and the state is just 51.5 percent non-Hispanic white.

Compare that to Iowa and New Hampshire, which are, respectively, 87 percent and 91 percent non-Hispanic white.

It’s possible that Nevada’s minority populations won’t show up to caucus in large numbers. But that doesn’t seem too likely, at least based on the 2008 caucuses, when 35 percent of caucus voters were racial or ethnic minorities, according to exit polls. The state’s minority population has only grown since 2008, so there’s little reason to expect the caucus-going population to look that much whiter than in 2008.

With Sanders having captured the momentum after his big New Hampshire win, Clinton really may have a more difficult time in Nevada than she anticipated. But she can’t blame it on demographics.

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Sorry, Hillary Clinton, Nevada Is Actually a Diverse State

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Marco Rubio Lashes Out Against Call For Religious Toleration

by GlindaHaight Posted on February 4, 2016

Mother Jones

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President Obama, during a speech today at a Baltimore mosque:

If we’re serious about freedom of religion — and I’m speaking now to my fellow Christians who remain the majority in this country — we have to understand an attack on one faith is an attack on all our faiths. And when any religious group is targeted, we all have a responsibility to speak up. And we have to reject a politics that seeks to manipulate prejudice or bias, and targets people because of religion.

Marco Rubio, commenting a couple of hours later on Obama’s speech:

Always pitting people against each other. Always. Look at today: he gave a speech at a mosque. Oh, you know, basically implying that America is discriminating against Muslims….It’s this constant pitting people against each other that I can’t stand.

There you have it. Ask Christians to reject the politics of bigotry, and you’re pitting people against each other. And Marco Rubio, for one, will have no part of that.

UPDATE: Revised to include exact quote from Rubio.

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Marco Rubio Lashes Out Against Call For Religious Toleration

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Donald Trump Lost the Iowa Caucus. Now He’s Whining on Twitter.

by KenLaurantus851 Posted on February 2, 2016

Mother Jones

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This is such an awesome bit of whining from Donald Trump that I felt I had to share it. I think we need a new word for this. Trump+whining = Twining. Or Trump + griping = Triping. Or something. Maybe figure out a way to add the concept that he’s actually a winner even when he’s objectively a failure. That might take some kind of German construction, though.

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Donald Trump Lost the Iowa Caucus. Now He’s Whining on Twitter.

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Clinton Beats Sanders, 50-50

by Serena8909 Posted on February 2, 2016

Mother Jones

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I’m not much of a horse-race guy, but it sure seems like the horse race is now key to the future of the Democratic primaries. The problem for Bernie Sanders is that he has an obvious structural disadvantage—superdelegates are almost 100 percent Clinton supporters—as well as a problem in the states following New Hampshire. So he needs to follow up his good showing in Iowa with electrifying results in New Hampshire.

But he can’t. He started opening up a big lead in New Hampshire at the beginning of January, and the polls now have him 20 points ahead. To generate any serious shock waves he’d have to win by 30 or 40 points, and that’s just not in the cards. Obviously anything can happen, but at this point it looks like Sanders wins in New Hampshire; it’s entirely expected and ho hum; and Clinton then marches implacably on to the nomination. It’s hard for me to see a likely scenario in which anything different happens.

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Clinton Beats Sanders, 50-50

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Americans Not Really That Angry After All

by ElliottKahle Posted on January 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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Aaron Blake makes an interesting point today about the notion that Donald Trump and other presidential candidates are uniquely appealing this year because voters are so angry:

They’re simply not — or at least, not abnormally angry. Despite the rise of two candidates who have embraced the idea of anger, our country simply isn’t unusually angry about how things are going in Washington.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows just 24 percent of Americans describe themselves as “angry” about the way the federal government works. I say “just,” because that’s actually on the low end of where that number has been in recent years. (An additional 47 percent describe themselves as “dissatisfied but not angry.”)

It seems as though I’ve heard about the seething anger of the electorate before nearly every election in my life. Joe Klein takes a drive through the heartland every few years and reports back about this. But all sorts of polling evidence suggests that Americans aren’t really all that unhappy in general and not really all that angry about the government. No more than usual, anyway. Now, maybe this year really is different. Maybe voters are more responsive to angry appeals even if they aren’t especially angry in general. But for all the talk, Blake is right: the polling data doesn’t really show anything unusual.

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Americans Not Really That Angry After All

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