Tag Archives: depression

September Is Here! Time for Republicans to Get … Um … Something About Donald Trump.

by LillieClifford6 Posted on September 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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It’s September! Hooray! The kids are back in school and Donald Trump’s reign over the silly season will soon be coming to an end. Finally, we can start to get serious about choosing our next presi—

Wait. WTF? Trumpmentum’s sagging fortunes have turned around? He’s now even further in the lead? Well crap.

The Republican field really needs to get its act together. They can’t go on being afraid of him because he’s “tapping into something real,” or whatever the latest excuse is. It’s time for some nuclear-level attack ads. The problem, I assume, is that everybody in the race wants someone else to waste their money attacking Trump, so they’re all left in a weird kind of prisoner’s dilemma where no one is willing to go first. They better figure out soon that this is a losing strategy.

Oh well. The higher they go, the farther they fall. Amirite?

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September Is Here! Time for Republicans to Get … Um … Something About Donald Trump.

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Lone Gay Marriage Holdout Acting "Under the Authority of God"

by AstridTerrill62 Posted on September 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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Sigh.

A county clerk in Kentucky who objects to same-sex marriage on religious grounds denied licenses to gay couples on Tuesday, just hours after the Supreme Court refused to support her position.

In a raucous scene in the little town of Morehead, two-same-sex couples walked into the Rowan County Courthouse, trailed by television cameras and chanting protesters on both sides of the issue, only to be told by the county clerk, Kim Davis, that she was denying them marriage licenses “under the authority of God.”

The optimist in me says that if the biggest backlash to the Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision is one clerk in a tiny town in Kentucky, then we’ve gotten off pretty easy. And really, the more I think about it, that really does seem like the main takeaway from this.

But it’s obvious that the endgame here is for Kim Davis to be fired, or tossed in jail for contempt. The Supreme Court itself has ordered her to issue licenses, so she has no further legal recourse. Only recourse to God.

I’m now curious to see what the Republican field will make of this. On the one hand, most of them are treating the primary contest as a zero-sum race to see who can move furthest to the right. On the other hand, do they really want to get on the wrong side of gay marriage and immigration? On the third hand, there’s the whole rule of law thing. And on the fourth hand, Donald Trump is not an anti-gay warrior. He’s the guy everyone is responding to, so maybe that means this will stay low key.

The Huckabees and Carsons of the world will surely support Davis. The rest of the field….probably not. That’s my guess. Then again, if video of Davis being hauled off to the county pen ends up on a 24/7 loop on Fox News, who knows? Defying the will of a small groups of pissed off base voters is not something the Republican field is exactly famous for.

UPDATE: Greg Sargent confirms my sense that holdouts like Davis are very rare. “In the seven southern states where the backlash might have been expected to be fiercest, only one — Alabama — still has multiple counties that are holding out. One other — Kentucky — has only two remaining counties holding out.” The national campaign director for Freedom to Marry says that, all things considered, “things are going exceedingly smoothly.”

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Lone Gay Marriage Holdout Acting "Under the Authority of God"

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54% of Republicans Think Obama Is a Muslim

by MagaretRusso Posted on September 1, 2015

Mother Jones

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You know, I thought this nonsense had stopped. I don’t know why I thought it had stopped—out of sight, out of mind?—but apparently it hasn’t. Crikey.

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54% of Republicans Think Obama Is a Muslim

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It’s Not the Economy, Stupid. The Spanish Language Is the Ur-Motive of Anti-Immigration Sentiment.

by AbbeyAGWvozn Posted on August 31, 2015

Mother Jones

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Ed Kilgore on the conservative hostility toward illegal immigration:

This very weekend I was reading an advance copy of an upcoming book that includes the results of some intensive focus group work with what might be called the “angry wing” of the GOP base. The author notes that one thing that simply enrages grass-roots conservatives is the use of non-English languages by immigrants.

Yep. You can read all about it from one of Kilgore’s predecessors, who wrote about it during our last big try at immigration reform in 2006. It’s based on an excellent piece by Chris Hayes, written before he sold out to the bright lights and big paychecks of cable television.

I agree that language is probably the key original driver of anti-immigrant sentiment, though it’s long since inspired further animus based around crime, gangs, social services, and other culture-related issues. The odd thing is that this is one of the few areas where I think the anti-immigrationists have a bit of a point. It’s not a very big point, since (a) Spanish occupies no official role in the United States, and (b) Latin American immigrants all end up speaking English by the second and third generations anyway. Hell, the third-generation Latino who speaks lousy Spanish is practically a cliche.

That said, I’ve long believed that having multiple official languages makes it very hard to sustain a united polity. The Swiss manage, but the whole reason they’re famous for it is because it’s so unusual. Even the Belgians and Canadians have trouble with it, and they’re pretty tolerant people.

Would a congressional declaration that English is the official language of the United States do anything to calm anti-immigrant fervor? At this point, probably not. But if it were written narrowly and carefully, I’d probably support it. I figure that if God considered a single common language such a boon that it threatened his dominion, it must be pretty powerful stuff.

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It’s Not the Economy, Stupid. The Spanish Language Is the Ur-Motive of Anti-Immigration Sentiment.

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This Week’s Great Showdown: Denali vs. McKinley

by c7u433n Posted on August 31, 2015

Mother Jones

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So the big news this weekend was President Obama’s decision to change the name of Mt. McKinley back to Denali. As near as I can tell, the only people who truly care about this are:

Alaskans
Ohioans
Mountain climbers
Trivia buffs

Of these, Alaskans are pro-Denali; Ohioans are proudly pro-McKinley; mountain climbers have been calling it Denali for years already; and trivia buffs are almost certainly pro-Denali since they love it whenever something changes that allows them to pedantically correct other people.

So far—to my pleasant surprise, I admit—there’s been very little complaining about how Obama is—again!—bending to the forces of political correctness and identity politics by kowtowing to the icy cold branch of the native American community. But the week is young and the easily outraged are probably still rubbing the sleep out of their eyes. Give them time.

For the time being, though, the pro-McKinley side has only the Ohioans, who have been battling Alaskans over this for decades. Ohioans are mighty defenders of William McKinley, proud son of Niles, Ohio. So proud, in fact, that one of their own renamed Denali to Mt. McKinley in 1896 merely because McKinley had just been nominated for president. Alaskans probably had no idea this was even happening, and in any case they weren’t yet a state and could do little about it. They finally tried to officially reverse this power grab in the 70s, but sneaky Ohioans took advantage of a loophole to prevent the US Board on Geographic Names from acting. That ended yesterday when Obama decided to rename America’s highest peak himself.

The obvious solution to all this is to rename Ohio’s tallest mountain. Unfortunately, Ohio is flat and has no mountains at all. Its highest point is Campbell Hill, topping out at a pedestrian 1,550 feet. They could rename it McKinley Hill—unless, of course, that would outrage the descendants of Charles D. Campbell—but that’s quite a comedown from the majesty of Denali, as the pictures on the right show.

What to do? Nothing much, I suppose, except for Ohio’s congressional delegation to rant and rave about Obama’s unilateral power grab etc. That’s fine. Hometown pride demands no less. Even at that, though, I have to give props to Rep. Bob Gibbs for this masterpiece of outrage:

I hope my colleagues will join with me in stopping this constitutional overreach. President Obama has decided to ignore an act of Congress in unilaterally renaming Mt. McKinley in order to promote his job-killing war on energy.

Constitutional overreach? Sure, whatever. That’s garden variety stuff by now. But how does removing the name of America’s 25th president advance Obama’s job-killing war on energy? Inquiring minds want to know.

As for the political implications, all you need to know is this: Alaska has three electoral votes. Ohio has 18 and is routinely a critical swing state. You may draw your own conclusions from this.

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This Week’s Great Showdown: Denali vs. McKinley

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The Internet Is Making Us Sicker

by ShaunLadprsnu Posted on August 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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The placebo effect, as we all know, is the mechanism by which we sometimes feel better even when we’re given meds that later turn out to be sugar pills. The mere expectation that we will get better somehow helps us actually get better. The most eye-popping example of the placebo effect is probably this one here.

But there’s also a dark side to this. I don’t know if it has an official name, so let’s call it the anti-placebo effect.1 Basically, it means that your mind can invent miserable side effects from taking medication merely because you know that certain side effects are possible. Take cholesterol-lowering statins, for example:

At the Mayo Clinic here, Dr. Stephen L. Kopecky, who directs a program for statin-intolerant patients, says he is well aware that middle-age and older adults who typically need statins may blame the drugs for aches, pains and memory losses that have other causes. He also knows his patients peruse the Internet, which is replete with horror stories about the dangers of statins.

Yet he, like other doctors, also thinks some statin intolerance is real despite what clinical trials have shown. The problem: In the vast majority of cases, there is no objective test to tell real from imagined statin intolerance.

So there you have it: the internet is making us sicker. Does it make up for this by also making us healthier? I have my doubts. It is a spawn of evil.

And no, you still can’t take mine away. However, this is one of the reasons why I’ve avoided reading about multiple myeloma on the internet. I figure it’s unlikely to help, and might very well hurt.

1Turns out it’s called the nocebo effect. How about that?

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The Internet Is Making Us Sicker

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Inflation Is Low? Let’s Tighten Monetary Policy Anyway.

by NewtonVallejos Posted on August 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer comments on inflation and monetary policy:

The Federal Reserve’s No. 2 official said there is “good reason” to think sluggish U.S. inflation will firm and move back toward the U.S. central bank’s 2% annual target, touching on a significant assessment facing the Fed ahead of its September policy meeting.

….When the time comes to raise rates, Mr. Fischer said, “we will most likely need to proceed cautiously” and with inflation low, “we can probably remove accommodation at a gradual pace. Yet, because monetary policy influences real activity with a substantial lag, we should not wait until inflation is back to 2% to begin tightening.”

A lot of people think the big problem with Fischer’s statement is the first bolded sentence. There’s been “good reason” to think inflation will increase for a long time. And yet it hasn’t. Why are we supposed to believe that this year’s good reason is any better than previous ones?

That’s fair enough. But I think the real problem is in the second bolded sentence: Fischer is intent on tightening monetary policy well before inflation shows any sign of hitting 2 percent. This illustrates a serious asymmetry in the Fed’s decisionmaking. If inflation goes below the 2 percent target, they’re willing to wait things out. But if it shows even the slightest sign of maybe, someday going a few basis points above the 2 percent target, then it’s time to tighten. The net result of this is that inflation won’t average 2 percent. It will swing between 1 and 2 percent, maybe averaging 1.5 percent or so.

That’s a bad thing, and it’s especially bad if, like me, you think our inflation target should be more like 3-4 percent anyway. But that’s the way it is.

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Inflation Is Low? Let’s Tighten Monetary Policy Anyway.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 28 August 2015

by biletedeavionrezervari Posted on August 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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This is how we roll around here in August: stretched out to maximum length for maximum cooling power. Plus it might lure someone over to give Hilbert a tummy rub. Pretty often it does, in fact.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 28 August 2015

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"Political Correctness" Is Mostly Just Code For Not Insulting People

by PhilipConyers Posted on August 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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S.E. Cupp says that Donald Trump’s rise can be laid at the feet of liberal political correctness. Ed Kilgore isn’t buying:

Is that the source of all this hysteria? Conservative media accounts of random college speech code incidents and the occasional dumb move by a school principal? Something that affects maybe a tenth of one percent of the population?

Well….maybe. When it’s on a 24/7 loop on Rush Limbaugh and Fox News, it probably seems like an epidemic. I can see it raising a lot of hackles. But let’s continue:

I’m sorry, I don’t buy it. The Trump supporters and proto-Trump supporters I know are upset by things like having to listen to Spanish-language messages on customer service lines, not being able to call women “chicks” without someone frowning at them, and having to stop telling racist jokes at work. That’s what “political correctness” is code for: having to worry about the sensitivities of people who were invisible or submissive not that very long ago.

If Cupp is right and I’m not, then let’s all cooperate in convincing Republican politicians and conservative pundits to stop using the term “political correctness” and come right and and tell us what the beef is about. Is it really “trigger warning” requirements at scattered liberal arts colleges? Or is it this whole new world we’re in where people have to question old habits? When Ben Carson calls inhibitions about torturing terrorism suspects “political correctness,” it’s pretty clear he’s yet another apostle for the Church of the Day Before Yesterday, when America was never wrong and dissenters kept their mouths shut.

I could do with a little less speech policing from all sides, frankly. It gets a little tiresome sometimes. Still, the truth is that Ed is right: for the vast, vast majority of us, it leaves our lives entirely unaffected as long as you can avoid flat-out slurs against women, blacks, gays, Jews, and so forth. Really, that’s about 99 percent of it. Is that really so hard?

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"Political Correctness" Is Mostly Just Code For Not Insulting People

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Man Is the Irrational Animal

by MarquisOsby9415 Posted on August 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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Mark Kleiman points out that most of us need to hold more or less rational beliefs about our professional lives. “Even people whose stock-in-trade is deception—con artists, stockbrokers, lobbyists—have to observe the rules of arithmetic when it comes to totting up the take.” But that’s only half the story:

Most of the time, though, people aren’t at work, and much of what they think and talk about has little if any relevance to practical decisions in their own non-working lives. Freed of the need to think rationally, most people seem to prefer the alternative.

Yep. This is why, say, it costs nothing to claim that evolution is nonsense and shouldn’t be taught in schools. For the 99.9 percent of us who don’t work in fields that require it, evolution doesn’t affect our daily lives in any way at all. Believing or not believing is affinity politics and nothing more. This explains how Donald Trump gets away with being a buffoon:

The deepest mistake is to regard someone who acts as if he doesn’t give a damn whether anything he says is true, or consistent with what he said yesterday, as stupid….As far as I can tell, Donald Trump simply isn’t bothered by holding and expressing utterly inconsistent beliefs about immigration, or for that matter denying obvious facts in the face of the crowd that witnessed them. And it doesn’t much bother most of his voters, either….And if we deal with it by imagining that Trump, or Trump voters, are “stupid,” we’re going to make some very bad predictions.

We forgive a lot in people we like. Liberals forgive Hillary Clinton for her lawyerly and incompetent defense of her email practices. Trump fans forgive the fact that he makes no sense. But forgiveness is a virtue, right? I guess that makes Trump’s supporters the most virtuous folks on the planet.

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Man Is the Irrational Animal

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