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Here’s Yet Another Penny-Ante Shill From Donald Trump

by AzucenaPickerin Posted on March 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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The list of Donald Trump’s penny-ante shills seems endless. Trump steaks, Trump mortgages, Trump university, Trump vodka, Trump travel, etc. All of them were going to be the biggest thing ever, and all of them were basically either failures or scams. But it turns out there’s another Trump failure that no one seems to have heard about until now. Here’s Ian Tuttle with the details:

In November 2009, Trump, boasting a Midas-gold tie, took the stage in front of several thousand fans at Miami’s Hyatt Regency to debut his latest venture: The Trump Network™, a multi-level marketing operation focused on nutritional supplements.

A pyramid scheme based on nutritional supplements? That has Donald Trump written all over it! Please continue:

In early 2009, Trump purchased Ideal Health, Inc., founded in 1997 outside Boston by Lou DeCaprio and brothers Todd and Scott Stanwood, who became Trump Network executives….The centerpiece of the program was the PrivaTest….Customers would purchase the PrivaTest kit, collect a urine sample, and ship the sample to a lab, which would analyze it and develop a “Custom Essentials” kit of nutritional supplements “calibrated . . . to reflect your unique nutrient needs.”

….The PrivaTest and a month’s supply of Custom Essentials cost $139.95, an additional month’s supply cost $69.95, and to keep one’s “unsurpassed individual nutritional support” up to date, the Trump Network recommended repeating the PrivaTest every nine months — at a price of $99.95, plus shipping and handling.

….Network marketing has had its successes: Avon and Mary Kay, for example….Trump and his devotees maintain that, because there was an actual product involved, the Trump Network was no scam, and in early 2011, Trump told New York Magazine that he expected the Trump Network to become larger than Amway, then an $8.4 billion operation. Unsurprisingly, that never happened. “The Trump Network had gotten in trouble financially,” Bonnie Futrell, a former Network marketer, told Stat News. “They weren’t being able to pay the lab. They weren’t paying vendors. They weren’t paying us.” In early 2012, just over two years after it started, the Trump Network was sold to network-marketing company Bioceutica.

I assume no one is surprised to hear this, so there’s not much point in dreaming up snarky comments about it. It’s pure Trump.

But here’s what I don’t get: how is it that we’re hearing about this for the first time? It only happened seven years ago. It was announced with all the usual Trump fanfare. But it seems to have escaped everyone’s notice. How many more of these things are out there just waiting to be discovered?

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Here’s Yet Another Penny-Ante Shill From Donald Trump

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Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Team Is…Um…

by MaxwellCisco Posted on March 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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As you all know, I’ve been eagerly awaiting Donald Trump’s announcement of his foreign policy team. He promised it a couple of weeks ago, but he’s been busy and I guess real life got in the way. We all know how that goes. He didn’t announce anything last week either. So how about this week? This morning, Mika Brzezinski asked him if there’s a team:

Yes, there is a team. There’s not a team. I’m going to be forming a team.

There you have it. Like Schrödinger’s cat, there is, there isn’t, and there might be a team. But until the box is opened, we won’t know for sure.

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Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Team Is…Um…

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Black Voters Are Going to Be Pissed When They Hear About This

by BeatricNevarez Posted on March 7, 2016

Mother Jones

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Well, crap. Dinesh D’Souza has somehow uncovered the secret history of the Democratic Party: Not only were we once the party of slavery, but racism among prominent Democrats continued “well into the 20th century.” Can you imagine? But we’ve been working feverishly for decades to keep our shameful past swept under the rug, so virtually nobody knows this anymore.

Well, some of us knew it. It so happens that I’m part of the inner circle, so I knew it. But the rest of you sheeple didn’t, and that’s the way we intended to keep it. Unfortunately, someone ratted us out. I guess we should have kept D’Souza locked up longer on that bogus campaign finance violation. The foreign oligarchs who have been funding our propaganda efforts are not going to be pleased.

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Black Voters Are Going to Be Pissed When They Hear About This

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James Inhofe blames Flint water crisis on Obama’s climate agenda

by IsidraSteen Posted on February 25, 2016

James Inhofe blames Flint water crisis on Obama’s climate agenda

By on 24 Feb 2016commentsShare

James “Snowball” Inhofe, the Oklahoma senator who once compared the EPA to the Gestapo, has announced an amendment to the Energy Modernization Act that will provide low-interest loans for Flint, Mich., and other communities facing water crises.

The bipartisan amendment will increase much-needed funding to communities with inadequate water infrastructure, but lest you think Inhofe grew a heart (or a brain) for a moment: Nope! The senator seems to be less concerned with the toxic water coming out of America’s pipes that with throwing shade at Barack Obama. In a statement, Inhofe said:

As a result of misplaced priorities of President Obama, who has consistently failed to partner with the states to address our nation’s real needs, stories are emerging in East Los Angeles, Baltimore, communities across Ohio, and elsewhere about lead pipes and other infrastructure problems that put the health of our citizens at risk.  In my leadership role on the EPW Committee, I have watched the Obama administration prioritize more than $120 billion for the president’s global warming agenda at the expense of real investment in critical infrastructure.

Ya hear that, liberals?? Contrary to common sense and all expert opinions, Flint’s water crisis isn’t because the conservative local government changed the city’s water source in order to save money, it’s because of Obama’s “global warming agenda.”

While it’s true that the EPA’s reaction to the crisis was troublingly slow, and that Obama’s proposed 2017 budget does cut the EPA’s water infrastructure funding by a quarter billion dollars, we have a really hard time believing that this had anything to do with global warming. Is it a problem? Yes. But is it because of excessive attention to climate change? No.

Let’s recall that this is the president who has tried to invest the EPA with more regulatory oversight, in the service of fighting climate change and improving environmental health around the country. Both have been priorities of Obama’s administration, and both have been staunchly opposed by a Republican Congress. And not only does climate change action not distract from clean drinking water, but the two are directly related, as drought can concentrate contaminants in dwindling water reservoirs.

If the senator’s logic seems flawed, maybe we should give him a break: All those fracking-induced earthquakes in Senator Snowball’s home state might have rattled his brain.

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James Inhofe blames Flint water crisis on Obama’s climate agenda

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Here Is What Blogging Has Done To Me

by WinfredBSB Posted on January 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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Yesterday I wrote a post that listed a bunch of things people have said about Ted Cruz, along with a bunch of things I made up. But which were real and which were invented? Here was the answer:

All statements whose ordinal number takes the integer form 2n+1 or 2n-1 have been invented. The rest are real.

I got some pushback about this, mostly asking what the hell kind of crap was this, anyway? So here goes. Here’s where it came from:

  1. At first I was just going to toss in a few fake statements and put the answer key below the fold. But then I realized that anyone who got here via a direct link would see the answers right away.
  2. So then I figured I’d add eight fakes in all the odd slots. But if your eye drifted down to the answer, you’d see “odd” right away.
  3. So I put it in small type. But even that was readable.
  4. So then I figured that instead of “odd,” I’d say that all the fakes were of the form 2n+1. My geeky readers would appreciate it.
  5. Then I looked for a link that defined “odd,” so that my non-geeky readers had a fighting chance of figuring things out. The only simple one I found defined odd as 2n+1 or 2n-1. So I changed the text to match.

This was pretty obviously a pointless waste of time. Welcome to my world. This is what blogging has done to me.

Anyway, in case you didn’t figure it out, all the odd numbered statement are fakes. The rest are real. The scary thing is that I didn’t have any trouble coming up with eight plausible fakes.

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Here Is What Blogging Has Done To Me

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Inflation: It’s a Real Thing!

by IsobelSkinner88 Posted on January 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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Petula Dvorak has gotten a lot of, um, pushback for this column about the kids these days—including hers:

The work ethic of our kids: Where is it? Where are the entrepreneurial snow shovelers? For generations of enterprising children, snowflakes may as well have been dollar bills, y’all, falling from the sky. Kids jostled to be the first to ring the doorbells of the snowed-in, the $5 driveways added up, and that new Atari Defender game cartridge, those rainbow Vans — yours and yours.

But in 2016? Not so much.

….Last year, when we had a mere dusting compared with Snowzilla and the boys were 8 and 10 years old, they shoveled our stairs and sidewalk with verve, and then struck out to ring doorbells to make a buck. The novelty of responsibility was fresh and delicious.

They got three customers: a politician’s wife who was encouraging and delightful, giving them a crisp $5 bill and a load of praise; another neighbor who paid $5; and $0 from a bleary-eyed millennial renter who promised to pay them but didn’t have cash. And never paid up long after the snow melted.

As school was closed for the big dig-out, I tried again to inspire some hustle in my little childlumps, whose only hustle was to get a sleepover going. “There are still lots of cars buried out there,” I said. “I bet you can make enough money for that Lego Poe Dameron X-Wing you want.” No spark in their eyes. What’s going on?

Hmmm. Last year the kids shoveled three houses and they each earned $1.66 per house for their efforts. This year the snow is far heavier. They could probably double their earnings! I wonder why they’re not feeling enthusiastic about this? It’s a head scratcher, all right.

As it happens, lots of kid jobs—snow shoveling, burger flipping, lawnmowing, etc.—have been largely taken over by adults these days. But the real issue here is that adults simply have no feel for inflation. Petula’s father probably got paid $5 for shoveling a walk in 1950, so that’s what he paid Petula. Now she wants to pay her kids $5. Ditto for everyone else in their generation. But $5 in 1950 is about $50 today.

Sure enough, a 30-second bit of googling suggests that the going rate for getting a neighborhood kid to shovel your walk is about $40 or so. More if the storm is heavy and you have a big lot. A professional goes for about $70.

Maybe kids these days are lazy. I don’t know—though the most recent kids I met were so smart and well-behaved that Marian and I were in awe. But hey—maybe they’re lazy too! I didn’t invite them to mow my lawn, after all. But this complaint about snow shoveling is just a personal version of that old chestnut, the business owners who complain they can’t find good workers but then admit they aren’t willing to raise their wages to attract them. Bottom line: don’t whine about lazy kids unless you’re willing to pay them enough to make it worth their time to work for you. For five bucks they’ll feed your cats while you’re on vacation. But only newbie suckers would shovel a walk after Snowzilla for that.

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Inflation: It’s a Real Thing!

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Why Do So Many People Believe Bernie Sanders?

by WilfredPba Posted on January 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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OK, now for the Democrats. It’s really hard to get excited about the state of the race, isn’t it?

The Clinton campaign’s focus on gun control is absurd. Hillary has an NRA grade of F and Bernie gets a D-. That’s what we’re arguing about? For chrissake. How dispiriting can you get?

On health care, Bernie wants single-payer. Me too. And I’ll bet Hillary does as well. She’s just decided that it’s not politically useful to say so. And since neither one of them is going to get it anytime soon, does it really matter much?

The same is true on nearly every other domestic issue. Bernie is off to Hillary’s left—either genuinely or rhetorically—but in office they’d both be constrained to the same place. Neither one could accomplish even what Hillary wants, let alone what Bernie wants.

The one place where they have real differences and those differences might matter is national security. But for reasons of their own, neither of them really wants to talk much about that. Hillary doesn’t want to highlight her relative hawkishness in a Democratic primary, and Bernie doesn’t really want to highlight what his dovishness would mean in practice. Besides, it just gets in the way of the only message he really cares about: plutocracy and income inequality.

Bottom line: given the realities of American politics, they’d both be highly constrained in what they can accomplish in the White House. It doesn’t matter what’s in their hearts. What matters is (a) whether they can win in November and (b) what kind of deals they can broker with Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell.

Anybody who’s read my blog for a while can guess where I fall on this. I think Bernie has done a great job of pushing Hillary a bit to the left and demonstrating that she can expect continued pressure on that front. But the truth is that Hillary wins on both points A and B. She’s not the most charismatic politician in the world, but as we all like to say, we’re voting for president, not someone to have a beer with. What’s more, I’ve long admired her tenacity; her ability to withstand decades of crude invective and political destruction derby; and her very obvious, lifelong commitment to using politics as a way of improving people’s lives. There have been a million noxious compromises along the way, but that’s how politics works in the real world. Plus I’d love to see a woman in the White House.

I like Bernie. I like what he says. If I believed he could do all the stuff he talks about, he’d have my vote. But I don’t.

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Why Do So Many People Believe Bernie Sanders?

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Fabulous New Blood Test Technology Not Quite as Fabulous as Advertised

by PhillisLqs Posted on October 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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Last year, when I was getting my blood drawn with dismaying frequency, I sang the praises of Elizabeth Holmes, a young billionaire who founded a company that promises to perform lab tests with only as much blood as you get from a finger prick. That sounded great.

My blood tests have gotten much less frequent these days, and I’ve mostly gotten over my needle phobia anyway,1 so I haven’t paid much attention to Theranos, the Silicon Valley darling Holmes founded. But this morning, John Carreyrou of the Wall Street Journal reported that Theranos was basically a house of cards. It actually does very little testing using its “Edison” finger-prick technology, and has had trouble getting FDA approval for its tests due to questions about the accuracy of its results.

Tonight, Carreyrou reports that things are even worse than that:

Under pressure from regulators, laboratory firm Theranos Inc. has stopped collecting tiny vials of blood drawn from finger pricks for all but one of its tests….That test detects herpes and was cleared by the FDA in July.

….Theranos has since nearly stopped using the lab instrument, named Edison after the prolific inventor, according to the person familiar with the situation. By the time of the FDA inspection, the company was doing blood tests almost exclusively on traditional lab instruments purchased from diagnostic-equipment makers such as Siemens AG , the person says.

….Most of Theranos’s blood-drawing sites, which it calls “wellness centers,” are located inside Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. drugstores….A blood-drawing technician at a Walgreens in the Phoenix area, reached by phone late Thursday, said Theranos had “temporarily suspended” finger-prick draws and was only drawing blood from patients’ arms with needles at that store.

That doesn’t sound very promising. I have a feeling that Elizabeth Holmes might not make the Forbes list of billionaires next year. She might be lucky if Theranos even still exists.

1So far, the upsides of my chemotherapy have been (1) better hair, (2) weight loss2, (3) less dread of blood draws, (4) forbidden to clean the litter box,3 and (5) the purchase of a powered bed, which is really cool.

2Though, sadly, I’ve gained most it back.

3Though, sadly, I’ve since been given permission to do this again.

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Fabulous New Blood Test Technology Not Quite as Fabulous as Advertised

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Putin’s War in Syria Not Going Well So Far

by SusanneWPA Posted on October 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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The New York Times reports that Russian jets in Syria are “conducting nearly as many strikes in a typical day against rebel troops opposing the government of President Bashar al-Assad as the American-led coalition targeting the Islamic State has been carrying out each month this year.”

Got that? As many in a day as we do in a month. So how’s that working out? Zack Beauchamp points me to an analysis of the first week of the Russian campaign from the Institute for the Study of War:

The offensive reportedly included reinforcements in the form of “hundreds” of Iranian troops….Quds Force commander Maj. Gen. Qassem Suleimani personally oversaw operations….Direct assistance from Russia in the form of airstrikes “synchronized” with the ground operations.

….Nonetheless, the Syrian regime and its allies have thus far failed to achieve significant gains…. Confirmed reports indicate that pro-regime fighters have seized only six villages and towns…. At the same time, regime forces suffered heavy losses in manpower and materiel in the face of heavy rebel resistance. Free Syrian Army (FSA)-affiliated rebels forces claimed to destroy at least twenty tanks and armored vehicles as well as a helicopter gunship in a “tank massacre” on the first day of the offensive.

….Operations against the Syrian opposition will likely prove harder and slower than anticipated by either Russia or Iran….The foreign allies of the Syrian regime may be forced to expend further financial and military resources in order to preserve their initial gains.

We’ll see how this goes. But both Russia and Syria are all-in on this campaign. Russia is maintaining a sky-high operational tempo along the border between regime territory and rebel territory, and the Iranians are helping out too. Nonetheless, it’s rough going and the Syrians are apparently taking heavy losses. How long can Putin keep this up before his glorious nose-thumbing at the West turns into an exhausting quagmire?

Hard to say. Maybe the rebels are at the end of their rope, and Syrian regime troops will soon break through. I wouldn’t count on that, though.

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Putin’s War in Syria Not Going Well So Far

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The Benghazi Charade Is Finally Melting Away

by DenishaX72 Posted on October 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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Republican congressman Richard Hanna talks about the Benghazi committee today:

This may not be politically correct, but I think that there was a big part of this investigation that was designed to go after people and an individual, Hillary Clinton.

Hanna supports gay rights, so I suppose that basically makes him a Democrat who can be ignored on this subject. Still, the evidence that Republican leaders viewed the committee as mostly a way of making trouble for Hillary Clinton is sure getting tough to dismiss. Greg Sargent comments on how Team Hillary is exploiting this:

It isn’t just that Clinton is using the new GOP quotes to tar it as a partisan exercise and attack its credibility, though that is a key goal….The idea is to turn the ongoing Benghazi battle with Republicans into an emblem of her willingness to fight on in the face of determined opposition — thus playing to one of her strengths, i.e., perceptions of her tenaciousness.

Maybe. But I’d say there’s something else at work here. Do you remember Mitt Romney’s big problem back in 2012? He was perceived as too moderate by the base of the Republican Party. He addressed this by endlessly making over-the-top attacks on President Obama. The calculus was simple: the base hated Obama more than they distrusted Romney, so he could gain their trust by showing that he hated Obama more than anyone else.

Hillary is playing a similar game here. The Democratic base distrusts her, but they hate Republicans more than they distrust Hillary. By making it clear that she’s the primary target of Republican attacks, she’s tapping into that. If Republicans hate her more than anyone, she must have something going for her. Plus there’s just the Pavlovian instinct to defend any Democrat against Republican attacks. The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Republicans have screwed the pooch on Benghazi. The press can only play along with their faux investigation as long as they maintain plausible deniability about its partisan goals. But now we have (a) Kevin McCarthy spilling the beans, (b) news reports that John Boehner wanted to use the committee to attack Hillary, (c) Richard Hanna agreeing that it was mostly a partisan witch hunt, and (d) no less than the New York Times reporting that the committee has all but given up on Benghazi in favor of holding hearings on Hillary’s email server. We knew all along there was a man behind the curtain, but now he’s actually been exposed. It’s getting harder and harder to play along with the charade.

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The Benghazi Charade Is Finally Melting Away

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