Tag Archives: country

Jeb Bush Opposed to Manipulating People’s Fears Over Syrian Refugees

by CedricSolander Posted on November 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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Jeb Bush comments on Donald Trump’s plan to create a Muslim registry in the United States:

Trump’s solutions are “just wrong,” Jeb Bush said Friday….”It’s not a question of toughness. It’s manipulating people’s angst and their fears. That’s not strength. That’s weakness,” Bush said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Good for Bush, though it’s a low bar to oppose a national registry for everyone of a specific religion. I don’t think Bush will be the only one to choke on that notion. Still, he was clear about his opposition, and clear about why it’s wrong.

It’s too bad he’s taken this long. He could have been a voice for sanity from the start and set himself apart from the crowd. At this point, though, it would just make him look tentative and indecisive. He lost a chance to do the right thing and possibly get a big payoff from it.

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Jeb Bush Opposed to Manipulating People’s Fears Over Syrian Refugees

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Obamacare’s Growing Pains Are About What You’d Expect in a Newly Competitive Market

by Mamie2869mu Posted on November 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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Yesterday United Healthcare announced that they would be exiting the Obamacare exchanges after 2016. They were losing too much money and figured it was time to call it quits.

What does this mean? Here are a few bullet points:

UH is a relatively small part of Obamacare, accounting for about 5 percent of exchange members.
However, its presence is bigger in some states than others.
Overall, then, this is only moderately bad news for Obamacare as a program. In some places, however, it’s very bad news. And obviously, for the people affected who have to switch plans in 2017, it’s a huge pain in the ass.

Beyond this, the news depends on why UH is doing so badly:

It could be that UH simply isn’t competitive. If that’s the case, it’s nothing more than the expected result of marketplace competition. If other companies are more efficient or offer better products, you’re in trouble.
However, it’s also possible that UH’s exit exposes some fundamental problems with Obamacare. UH claims—without offering any real evidence—that people are signing up when they get sick and then dropping out. This is unsustainable in any insurance market, and if people really have found loopholes that allow this on a large scale, it’s bad news for Obamacare. It would be especially bad news since Republicans are rooting for Obamacare to fail and will refuse to allow any changes that might make it work better.

Generally speaking, I think that what we’ve been seeing recently is a fairly predictable consequence of setting up a competitive market: there’s going to be a lot of churn at the beginning, as companies figure out what works best. Some, like UH and the ill-fated co-ops, will drop out. Others will discover they were too optimistic and will raise rates. Others will gain market share at their expense because they’re better run or made better actuarial projections. In a few years, this will all settle down and we’ll finally have a pretty good idea of just how well Obamacare works and how much it costs.

We could have avoided this kind of thing by creating a simpler, more universal program, but that just wasn’t politically possible. Creating a competitive marketplace was the only way to get Obamacare passed. Unfortunately, competition has both pluses and minuses. In theory, it should provide lower prices and better value in the long run. But it might take a while to get there.

More detail is available from John Cohn and Megan McArdle.

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Obamacare’s Growing Pains Are About What You’d Expect in a Newly Competitive Market

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More Transgender People Have Been Killed in 2015 Than Any Other Year on Record

by CyrilRuddell Posted on November 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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At vigils across the country today, people are honoring the victims of fatal anti-transgender violence as part of an annual Transgender Day of Remembrance. At least 21 transgender people have been killed in the United States already this year, which is more homicides than any other year on record, according to a recent report by Human Rights Campaign. During the first six months of the year alone, more transgender people were killed than in all of 2014. Most of the victims were transgender women of color. So far, none of the attacks have been deemed hate crimes.

On Tuesday, a congressional task force launched in response to the “epidemic of violence against the transgender community.” The Transgender Equality Task Force, chaired by Rep. Mike Honda (D-Calif.), who has a transgender granddaughter, aims to understand the causes of anti-transgender violence and identify what the federal government can do to improve the situation.

Activists say it’s hard to know exactly how many transgender people are killed every year. One problem, they say, is that police officers often refer to transgender homicide victims with names and pronouns reflecting their gender of birth, rather than their gender identity. (For example, transgender women are often described by police officers as men.) And while the FBI last year began publishing statistics on hate crimes against gender-nonconforming people, the bureau’s figures only reflect cases reported to authorities. Some crime-reporting programs at the state level have also opted, for budgetary reasons, not to collect data on hate crimes against transgender people, according to an FBI spokesman. Lauren Smith, a press contact for Honda, the chair of the congressional task force, said the issue of data collection has come up in discussions among task force members, but that the group won’t be meeting until shortly after Thanksgiving to hammer out specific agenda items they hope to address.

Read more of MoJo‘s coverage on anti-transgender violence here.

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More Transgender People Have Been Killed in 2015 Than Any Other Year on Record

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Here Is Today’s Case Study in Right-Wing Media Virtue and Rectitude

by AugustiXxj Posted on November 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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A friend of mine watches Fox News so I don’t have to,1 and he says they’ve been practically wetting their pants over the story of Hillary Clinton’s campaign calling the founder of the Laugh Factory and threatening to sue him if he didn’t take down a short video compilation of Hillary jokes.

What’s that? This already sounds really unlikely? I guess so. It sure doesn’t seem very smart for a highly visible presidential candidate, does it? Still, Judicial Watch says it happened, and Fox and Rush and Sean are all over it too. So I guess it must be true. They wouldn’t just make stuff up, would they?

Well, sure they would. What happened, according to Jamie Masada, founder of the Laugh Factory, is that a few days ago he got a comically threatening phone call from someone named “John.” And that’s it. John never said he was with the Clinton campaign. John never called back. Masada never told Judicial Watch about it. In other words, there’s almost literally nothing there.

But apparently some Laugh Factory employee heard about the call, and somehow it went from there to Judicial Watch. Or something. Who knows, really? What we do know is that apparently no one bothered calling Masada to check up on this story—that would have run the risk of ruining it, after all—and now it’s all over conservative media. Michelle Goldberg comments:

What we have here is a small-scale demonstration of how the Hillary smear sausage gets made. It starts with a claim that’s ambiguous at best, fabricated at worst, and then interpreted in the most invidious possible light. The claim is reported in one outlet and amplified on Twitter. Other outlets then report on the report, repeating the claim over and over again. Talk radio picks it up. Maybe Fox News follows. Eventually the story achieves a sort of ubiquity in the right-wing media ecosystem, which makes it seem like it’s been confirmed. Soon it becomes received truth among conservatives, and sometimes it even crosses into the mainstream media. If you watched the way the Clintons were covered in the 1990s, you know the basics of this process. If you didn’t, you’re going to spend the next year—and maybe the next nine years—learning all about it.

And there you have it. This is where Mena airport and Vince Foster and Whitewater and the Clinton death list and all the other charming inventions of the Clinton smear squad came from. Seems like only yesterday.

1Not really. Believe it or not, it’s part of his job.

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Here Is Today’s Case Study in Right-Wing Media Virtue and Rectitude

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The Press Needs to Stop Encouraging Republican Lunacy Toward Muslims

by KerstinBowling Posted on November 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump is still Donald Trump, trying to gain attention by saying obviously outrageous things. But his latest outrage looks a little contrived. Here’s the full context of his recent interview with Yahoo’s Hunter Walker:

Yahoo News asked Trump whether his push for increased surveillance of American Muslims could include warrantless searches. He suggested he would consider a series of drastic measures.

“We’re going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule,” Trump said. “And certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy. And so we’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago.”

Yahoo News asked Trump whether this level of tracking might require registering Muslims in a database or giving them a form of special identification that noted their religion. He wouldn’t rule it out.

“We’re going to have to — we’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely,” Trump said when presented with the idea. “We’re going to have to look at the mosques. We’re going to have to look very, very carefully.”

It would be one thing if Trump floated the idea himself of warrantless searches and special IDs. It’s quite another if a reporter brings them up and Trump tap dances a little bit. Needless to say, in a better world Trump would have explicitly denounced all these ideas. Obviously we don’t live in that world. Still, the only thing Trump actually said here is that we’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely. The rest was just a reporter fishing for a headline.

To state the obvious: no, we don’t need to do anything that was “unthinkable” a year ago. As my colleague Miles Johnson notes, “of the 745,000 refugees resettled in the US since the September 11 terrorist attacks, only two have been arrested on terrorism-related charges.” The American Muslim community has been instrumental in preventing jihadist violence in the US since 9/11, and to deliberately alienate them, as Trump and many other Republicans are proposing, is just about the most dangerous thing we could do.

We know how to fight dangerous people. We know how to fight terrorism. And we don’t have to shred the Constitution to do it. Instead of fishing for headlines and stoking the latest round of fatuous fearmongering from Republicans, maybe we’d be better served if reporters started asking them hard questions instead.

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The Press Needs to Stop Encouraging Republican Lunacy Toward Muslims

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Brennan Center: No "Crime Wave" in 2015

by ShadSolander Posted on November 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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Has there been an explosion of crime in 2015? It will take some time before official figures are available, so the Brennan Center decided to compile some unofficial figures through October. They surveyed the 30 largest cities and asked for both the murder rate and the overall “index” crime rate (murder and non-negligent manslaughter, aggravated assault, robbery, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft). Their conclusion: the murder rate is up 11 percent while the overall crime rate is down 1.5 percent.

It’s true that some cities have seen very large increases in their murder rates. But that’s not uncommon. The base of murders is pretty small, so it doesn’t make much to create a big spike in a single year. The overall crime rate, which has a much larger base, is usually more stable.

Any time the murder rate goes up, it’s a good idea to be concerned. But murder rates have ticked up by 10 percent or so on several occasions in the past. There’s just a lot of noise the data. Overall, though, there’s little evidence of any kind of explosion in either the murder rate or the crime rate. A few cities (Baltimore, DC, Denver, most of Texas) seem to have a serious problem, but that’s about it.

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Brennan Center: No "Crime Wave" in 2015

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Jeb Bush Has Missed a Chance to Revitalize His Campaign

by MichealGill Posted on November 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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I’m just noodling around here, but I wonder if Jeb Bush has blown a chance over the past few days. See, I figure his only hope of winning is to let everyone else fight it out for a share of tea party vote while he gets the lion’s share of the other half of the Republican Party. If he’s the one guy who appeals to moderate Republicans, he can win.

Now, generally speaking, Jeb has been more moderate than the rest of the field in response to the Paris attacks. But should he have gone further? It wouldn’t have been hard. Make a real case for taking in refugees. Propose a serious, conservative plan for dealing with ISIS instead of resorting to jingoism and shibboleths. Criticize the other candidates for fearmongering. Maybe even say that he agrees with President Obama that it’s long past time for Congress to act on an authorization for military force against ISIS.

A serious, measured approach like this from a Republican candidate would have been so different, so unexpected, that it could have gotten him some real attention. The press would have swooned. Moderate conservatives would have noticed. Bush would have stood out from the field for the first time. And it would have played to his strengths instead of forcing him into a Trumpesque mold that he’s obviously uncomfortable with.

And as an added bonus, it would have been the right thing to do. What’s not to like?

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Jeb Bush Has Missed a Chance to Revitalize His Campaign

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Could Obama Have Prevented the Rise of ISIS in 2012?

by MoniqueBonney90 Posted on November 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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Back in 2012, Fred Hof was President Obama’s advisor for Syria. Today, Zack Beauchamp asks him if there was anything we could have done back then to prevent the rise of ISIS:

In mid-2012, President Obama’s key national security officials — Clinton, Panetta, Petraeus, and Dempsey — all recommended a robust training and equipping effort designed to unite and strengthen nationalist anti-Assad rebels. One of the justifications for the recommendation was that they were beginning to see the rise of al-Qaeda-related elements in Syria.

Had that recommendation been accepted and then implemented properly, the ISIS presence in Syria would not be what it is today. Had the US been able to offer Syrian civilians a modicum of protection from Assad regime collective punishment — barrel bombs and all the rest — a major ISIS recruiting tool around the world and inside Syria could have been diluted and even neutralized.

That bolded phrase is doing a helluva lot of heavy lifting here. I wish Beauchamp had followed up and asked Hof if he thinks the US intelligence and military communities could, in fact, have implemented this policy effectively. Their recent efforts, which produced something like five trained rebels, don’t inspire a ton of confidence. My guess is that Obama listened to their recommendations but concluded that in the real world, it wouldn’t have worked. I suspect he was right.

We’ll never know, of course, which means this can be a subject of debate pretty much forever. But there’s sure nothing in the recent historical record to inspire a lot of faith in our ability to carry out a plan like this.

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Could Obama Have Prevented the Rise of ISIS in 2012?

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Two Dead and Seven Arrested in Raid Targeting Paris Attacks "Mastermind"

by CareyKopp1618 Posted on November 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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Update, 12:56 p.m. EST: Big questions remain concerning the identities of those killed and arrested in the early morning raid carried out in St. Denis. The Washington Post reports Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected “mastermind” behind last Friday’s attacks on Paris, is dead. However, France’s chief prosecutor said in a press conference the identity of those killed and arrested could still not verified.

Previously:

Two terror suspects, including one female suicide bomber who detonated herself using an explosive vest, were killed in an early morning raid in the northern Paris suburb of St-Denis on Wednesday. Seven people were also arrested in the seven-hour standoff.

The raid was targeting Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Belgian-born terror suspect believed to be the “mastermind” behind the coordinated terrorist attacks in Paris last Friday. Authorities have yet to determine the identities of the terror suspects arrested and killed in Wednesday’s raid.

According to some reports, the woman who blew herself up may have been Abaaoud’s cousin.

A heavy police presence remains in the city. The Guardian reports residents have been told to stay inside and roads have been blocked off.

Speaking to mayors around the country on Wednesday morning, French President Francois Hollande pointed to the violent raid as a sign the country was at “war with ISIS.” He also reaffirmed France’s commitment to taking in 30,000 refugees, despite fears that terrorists may try to enter Europe with the flow of migrants.

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Two Dead and Seven Arrested in Raid Targeting Paris Attacks "Mastermind"

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The Moment an Explosion Rocked France’s National Stadium Caught on Video

by ShellaHemming Posted on November 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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A terror attack is unfolding in multiple locations across Paris, including two explosions near the country’s main sports stadium, the Stade de France. This Vine featured on CNN Friday evening appears to capture the moment of one of those explosions as the French and German national soccer teams were playing. Stay updated with Mother Jones‘s coverage of the attacks here.

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The Moment an Explosion Rocked France’s National Stadium Caught on Video

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