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I Still Think Trump Will Lose

by MaureenKlug2751 Posted on January 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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Just for the record, I haven’t changed my mind: Donald Trump will not win the Republican nomination for president. At some point fairly soon, the other candidates are going to take off the gloves and really go after him. When that happens, Trump will have to fight back in a fairly ordinary way. Insults on Twitter will no longer be enough. Eventually the attacks will stick, Trump will do something dumb, and his support will drop.

That’s it. That’s all I’ve got. I don’t know who’s going to hit him hard. I don’t know which attack will stick. I don’t know what kind of mistake Trump will make. I don’t know what will finally bring Republican voters to their senses. But something will.

Unless, of course, the Republican candidates continue to inexplicably shuffle around morosely and simply accept their fate as pathetic losers. It’s hard to believe that’s what’s happened so far, and hard to believe it will continue. But I guess it’s possible. Maybe what the GOP really needs is an institutional-size Prozac. Or Viagra. Or something.

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I Still Think Trump Will Lose

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Enough With the Eugenics Already

by Tayla3156886219 Posted on January 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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Jonah Goldberg:

I have on my desk Thomas Leonard’s Illiberal Reformers which I am very much looking forward to reading and, if time permits, reviewing. Leonard is a brilliant and meticulous historian and his new book investigates the eugenic roots of progressivism. More on that in a moment.

Everybody needs a hobby, but this is sure an odd thing to keep obsessing about. Yes, many early progressives believed in eugenics. Modern liberals aren’t especially proud of this, but we don’t deny it either. There are ugly parts of everyone’s history.

So why go on and on about it? If it’s a professional historical field of study for you, sure. Go ahead. But in a political magazine? It might make sense if you’re investigating the roots of current beliefs, but eugenics died an unmourned death nearly a century ago. And no matter what you think of modern liberal views toward abortion or right-to-die laws, nobody can credibly argue that they’re rooted in anything but the opposite of eugenics. Early 20th century progressives supported eugenics out of a belief that it would improve society. Contemporary liberals support abortion rights and right-to-die laws out of a belief in individual rights that flowered in the 60s.

So what’s the deal? Is this supposed to be something that will cause the general public to turn against liberals? Or what? It really doesn’t make much sense.

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Enough With the Eugenics Already

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Lets All Agree That Apostrophe’s Arent Necessary

by LynwoodWingfiel Posted on January 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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German Lopez says that “apostrophes offer an exciting opportunity to show other people how smart and educated you are”—which all by itself makes it worth learning how to use them. For example:

Another common issue is irregular plural words, like children and teeth. For these words, you add an apostrophe and an s — so children’s toys and teeth’s roots.

Live by the apostrophe, die by the apostrophe. My middle-school English teacher beat into us that only humans can possess things. Animals too, I suppose. Or countries. But in any case, never inanimate objects. So it’s “roots of teeth,” because teeth don’t own roots.

Of course, some young punks think this is a dated rule that makes no sense, and they go around merrily giving inanimate objects possession of everything. This is appalling. Of course this rule makes no sense, but that’s the whole reason that good grammar demonstrates how smart and educated you are. If we did what made sense, we’d eliminate the apostrophe entirely since it’s never necessary for comprehension. But that way lies anarchy.

Anyway, everyone1 loves to argue about grammatical minutiae, so have a beer and get to it in comments.

1Actually, not everyone. But my readers sure seem to like it!

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Lets All Agree That Apostrophe’s Arent Necessary

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Why Is Flint’s Water Still Unsafe? Or Is It?

by BethEverett Posted on January 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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Can someone help me out? Flint reconnected to the Detroit water system in October, and it was supposed to take a few weeks after that to clean out the pipes. So what happened? I keep seeing pallets of bottled water being delivered to Flint, but shouldn’t the tap water be safe by now? Has it been tested for lead levels in the past month or two? I’ve been trying to check this out, but I can’t seem to find anything definitive.

I feel like I must have missed something. I don’t know how hard a thorough round of testing is, but it sure seems like that would have been a top priority starting in early November. Is it being done?

UPDATE: Here’s the answer:

Over time, the lead pipes in Flint built up a protective mineral coating—or scale—that prevented lead from getting into the water.
During the 17 months it was used, acidic water from the Flint River corroded away the scale, exposing fresh metal.
Even if the water is now good, it’s going to take a while before the scale rebuilds. In the meantime, lead can still leach into the water.

Back in December, the Flint Utilities Director announced that they planned to boost the level of phosphates in the water to aid in rebuilding the scale. They also hired a firm to begin testing of high-risk homes. Normally it can take up to five years for scale to rebuild, but presumably the additional phosphates will reduce this time. Still, it might be quite a while before the water is safe again, which explains the continuing pallets of bottled water.

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Why Is Flint’s Water Still Unsafe? Or Is It?

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Friday Cat Blogging – 15 January 2016

by JulianeLeane Posted on January 15, 2016

Mother Jones

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A few days ago Marian went out to buy some new cat toys because, you know, a couple dozen clearly wasn’t enough. You can see her haul below, all with nice, fresh tails. Once the tails come off—which doesn’t take long—they’re no fun anymore. But you can’t please everyone. Hilbert looks like he’s saying “What? That’s all? I jumped all the way onto the counter just for this?”

In other cat news, my sister points us to this YouTube video of a cat invading a Liverpool-Spurs soccer match. It’s three years old, but who’s counting?

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Friday Cat Blogging – 15 January 2016

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The 21st Century Sure Has Been a Great Time to Be a Corporation

by CatalinStapleto Posted on January 14, 2016

Mother Jones

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This is apropos of nothing in particular. I was just noodling around on something else and happened to run across this data, so here it is. The economic recovery of the Bush years might have been pretty anemic for most of us, but it was sure a great time for the corporate world: Between 2001 and 2006, pretax profits went up 3x and after-tax profits went up even more. These profits dipped during the Great Recession, of course, but they’ve fully recovered since then. All in all, since the start of the 21st century the income of ordinary folks has declined about 5 percent, but after-tax profits in the nonfinancial sector have gone up nearly 4x. Nice work, business titans!

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The 21st Century Sure Has Been a Great Time to Be a Corporation

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The CARD Act Has Saved Us $12 Billion Per Year

by celemaiieftinebileteavion Posted on January 9, 2016

Mother Jones

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Who do credit card companies make the most money from? Answer: the poor, by far, because they rack up the highest fees and the highest interest expense. Card issuers also make some money on the rich, because they buy a lot of stuff. This generates interchange fees (usually 2-3 percent of the amount charged) that exceed the cost the reward points they dole out to attract these customers.

It’s the customers in the middle who cost them. They don’t buy enough stuff to generate lots interchange fees, but they aren’t poor enough to get themselves stuck with lots of late fees and interest charges. The chart below shows this. Folks with FICO scores between 660 and 730 (representing about a third of all customers) are net losses for credit card companies.

This comes from a paper written last year about the effect of the CARD Act, a law passed in 2009 that modestly regulated the credit card industry. The authors’ conclusion: “The CARD Act successfully reduced borrowing costs, in particular for borrowers with the lowest FICO scores. We find no evidence for offsetting increases in other costs or a decline in credit volume.” All in all, the CARD Act saved consumers—mostly lower-income consumers—about $12 billion per year. For much more, see today’s Harold Pollack interview with one of the authors here.

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The CARD Act Has Saved Us $12 Billion Per Year

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Friday Cat Blogging – 8 January 2016

by StantonVerdon Posted on January 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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The holidays just fly by, don’t they? At least, that’s what we all say after they’re over. This time, though, the inconvenient timing of Christmas means that you never saw the furballs in action on Christmas morning. As usual, the presents we bought them were dirt cheap, but they nonetheless enjoyed them far more than the humans did. The picture below is relatively early in the morning, when the cat presents were still in tolerably good shape. An hour later it was just a mountain of scraps.

By the way, Hopper here is the reason we didn’t have a Christmas tree this year. It would have been a disaster. Maybe next year.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 8 January 2016

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Is Being a Modern Teen Really a Relentless Slog of Existential Angst?

by ChanteOakley6 Posted on January 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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I was just at the bookstore, and on a whim I browsed through a bunch of “Teen Fiction” titles. Good God. I’ve never seen such a pile of depressing writing in my life. Everyone is sick, abandoned, kidnapped, bullied, overweight, comes from a broken family, survived a school shooting, or caught in the middle of a gothic horror. The horror books actually seemed the most uplifting.

I dunno. Maybe they all have happy endings? In any case, if these books are typical of what teens read these days, I’m halfway surprised that any of them make it out of adolescence with their psyches intact.

On the bright side, I learned a new word: Unputdownable. So it wasn’t a total loss.

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Is Being a Modern Teen Really a Relentless Slog of Existential Angst?

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Ted Cruz Is Doing Great in Iowa

by MerlinAviles Posted on January 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Yesterday I forgot to put up my weekly reminder of how Republicans are doing in the latest polls, so here it is today. Ol’ Ted is doing pretty well among the evangelical cornfields of Iowa, and he didn’t even have to root for the Hawkeyes in the Rose Bowl to do it. His scheme of waiting for either Trump or Carson to implode and then picking up their votes seems to have been pretty shrewd.

Of course, the winner of the last two Iowa caucuses were Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, and look where they are now. There’s still a bushel of campaigning left.

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Ted Cruz Is Doing Great in Iowa

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