Tag Archives: flickr

Oops. Putin’s Cruise Missiles Still Need a Little Work.

by JanellGlasheen Posted on October 8, 2015

Mother Jones

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I guess Vladimir Putin’s cruise missiles aren’t quite as awesome as he thought:

Cruise missiles fired by Russia from warships in the Caspian Sea at targets in Syria crashed in a rural area of Iran, senior United States officials said on Thursday.

Bummer, dude. Can we now have at least one day where we don’t have to hear about how Russia’s crappy military is going to upend everything in the Middle East and send the US scurrying for cover?

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Oops. Putin’s Cruise Missiles Still Need a Little Work.

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Hillary Clinton Announces Opposition to TPP, But Her Reasons Are Pretty Weak

by KrystynUpshaw Posted on October 7, 2015

Mother Jones

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Hillary Clinton announced today that she’s opposed to the TPP trade deal. That’s fine. But her reasons seem less than compelling:

In her statement, Clinton said she is “continuing to learn about the details of the new Trans-Pacific Partnership, including looking hard at what’s in there to crack down on currency manipulation, which kills American jobs, and to make sure we’re not putting the interests of drug companies ahead of patients and consumers.”

She had said months ago that the currency provision would be a key test for her.

The pharmaceutical provisions are indeed a point of considerable controversy, but the final draft of the agreement weakens them compared to what the US was asking for back when Hillary was involved. As for currency manipulation, TPP doesn’t address that at all.

So one provision she mentions has been improved, and the other does no harm because it’s not addressed. If the deal looked OK a year ago, it should still look OK today. Likewise, if it looks bad today, it should have looked bad a year ago. So what really changed? Bernie Sanders, most likely. Just as the Republican side of things has been buffeted by the Trump Effect, the Democratic race has been been influenced by the Bernie Effect—which is just what he wanted, since I don’t think he entered the race because he truly believed he had a chance to become president. He just wanted to move the conversation to the left, and he’s succeeded at that.

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Hillary Clinton Announces Opposition to TPP, But Her Reasons Are Pretty Weak

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Quote of the Day: You’d Have to Be Nuts to Want a Leadership Role in the Republican Party

by UIVJodiexgz Posted on October 7, 2015

Mother Jones

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We all know that John Boehner quit the speakership because he was finally fed up trying to deal with the lunatics in his own party. But how about some of the tea party darlings, like Trey Gowdy or Paul Ryan? Apparently they feel about the same:

Gowdy insists he’s not interested in joining leadership, not in any capacity. He is funny, and biting, about the chaos of the present House.

“I don’t have a background in mental health, so I wouldn’t have the right qualifications to lead right now,” he says. Who wants you to be in leadership? “No friend does,” he says.

….“To me, just speaking as one member, the smartest kid in the class is Paul Ryan,” Gowdy said. “If I had one draft choice and I was starting a new country, I would draft Paul to run it. Not because I agree with him on everything, but because he’s super, super smart. And when someone is super, super smart and is not interested, that tells you something. It tells me a lot.”

By coincidence, this is sort of related to the conservative fantasy I talked about in the previous post. Folks like Gowdy and Ryan are smart enough to see it too, even though they’re both stone conservatives themselves. A leadership role wouldn’t give them the power to actually implement the conservative agenda, but too many conservatives these days don’t care. They’re living the fantasy that if only their leaders fought hard enough, they could win. So when they don’t win, it must mean that they didn’t fight very hard. Right now, there’s just no way to puncture that fantasy.

And why the squirrel illustration? Nothing to do with Gowdy or Ryan or the tea party or conservatives being squirrely or nuts. Honest! This is just our household squirrel, who was outside feeding his face a few minutes ago. So I went out and took his picture. And speaking of squirrels, here’s an interesting squirrel factlet: if you Google “squirrel saying,” 7 of the top 20 hits are about the difficulties that German speakers have saying “squirrel.”

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Quote of the Day: You’d Have to Be Nuts to Want a Leadership Role in the Republican Party

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Perhaps We Should Retire the Idea That Joe Biden Is "Authentic"

by AundreaShinn Posted on October 6, 2015

Mother Jones

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Back in August, Maureen Dowd wrote several hundred words about what a horrible person Hillary Clinton is. No surprise there. She could pretty easily write a million if the Times gave her the space. But then, having obsessed over Hillary’s sinister psyche for the thousandth time, she turned to the possibility of white knights jumping into the presidential race to save us all. In particular, there was Joe Biden, who was now reconsidering a run after the death of his son Beau:

When Beau realized he was not going to make it, he asked his father if he had a minute to sit down and talk….“Dad, I know you don’t give a damn about money,” Beau told him, dismissing the idea that his father would take some sort of cushy job after the vice presidency to cash in.

Beau was losing his nouns and the right side of his face was partially paralyzed. But he had a mission: He tried to make his father promise to run, arguing that the White House should not revert to the Clintons and that the country would be better off with Biden values.

It’s a touching scene, but also an odd one: Dowd didn’t attribute it to anyone. Not even “a friend” or “someone with knowledge of the situation.” In Politico today, Edward-Isaac Dovere says there’s a reason for that:

According to multiple sources, it was Biden himself who talked to her….It was no coincidence that the preliminary pieces around a prospective campaign started moving right after that column. People read Dowd and started reaching out, those around the vice president would say by way of defensive explanation. He was just answering the phone and listening. But in truth, Biden had effectively placed an ad in The New York Times, asking them to call.

….“Calculation sort of sounds crass, but I guess that’s what it is,” said one person who’s recently spoken to Biden about the prospect of running.

….At the end of August, while friends were still worrying aloud that he was in the worst mental state possible to be making this decision, he invited Elizabeth Warren for an unannounced Saturday lunch at the Naval Observatory. According to sources connected with Warren, he raised Clinton’s scheduled appearance at the House Benghazi Committee hearing at the end of October, even hinting that there might be a running-mate opening for the Massachusetts senator.

Needless to say, I don’t have any independent knowledge of whether Dovere is right about this. But it sure sounds plausible, and it’s a good illustration of why you should take claims of “authenticity” with a big shaker of salt. Biden is an outgoing guy and gets along well with the press. But that just means he’s an outgoing guy who gets along well with the press. Authenticity has nothing to do with it.

It’s one thing for people close to a candidate to leak information that makes their man look good—that’s so common I’m not sure it even has a name—but for the candidate himself to use his son’s death as a way of worming his way into a weekly column written by a woman who detests Hillary Clinton more fanatically than anyone this side of Ken Starr? I’m not quite sure what to call that, but authentic isn’t it.

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Perhaps We Should Retire the Idea That Joe Biden Is "Authentic"

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Here’s One Simple Rule For Deciding Who the Media Covers

by JayEastham Posted on October 6, 2015

Mother Jones

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Paul Waldman notes today that Marco Rubio is the latest beneficiary of the media spotlight. Why?

If history is any guide, the “outsider” candidates will eventually fall, and Rubio is the only “insider” candidate whose support is going up, not down. Scott Walker is gone, Jeb Bush is struggling, and none of the other officeholders seem to be generating any interest among voters. Rubio has long had strong approval ratings among Republicans, so even those who are now supporting someone else don’t dislike him. He’s an excellent speaker both with prepared texts and extemporaneously. When you hear him talk he sounds informed and thoughtful, and much less reactionary than his actual ideas would suggest. He presents a young, Hispanic face for a party that desperately needs not to be seen as the party of old white guys.

This is all true, but it gives the media way too much credit. Here’s the rule they use for deciding who to cover:

If you’re leading or rising in the polls, you get coverage.

That’s it. All the other stuff about Rubio has been true all along, and nobody cared about him. Now he’s rising in the polls and is currently in about fourth place. So he’s getting coverage.

This happened first to Donald Trump, then to Ben Carson, then to Carly Fiorina, and now to Rubio. Bernie Sanders, oddly enough, remains fairly immune. Maybe this rule only applies to Republicans this year.

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Here’s One Simple Rule For Deciding Who the Media Covers

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California Legalizes Assisted Suicide For Terminal Patients

by ColumbusReilly Posted on October 5, 2015

Mother Jones

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After months of maintaining a stony silence about California’s right-to-die bill, Gov. Jerry Brown signed it today:

The Golden Rule isn’t always the best guide to public policy, but in this case I think it is. California has an obligation to make sure assisted suicide isn’t abused, either by doctors rubber stamping requests or by friends or relatives pressuring sick patients to end their lives. Beyond that, though, deciding when and how to die is about as personal a decision as someone can make. It’s not that assisted suicide doesn’t affect other people—it does—but as a matter of public policy it’s best for the state to remain resolutely neutral. This is something that should be left up to the patient, her doctor, and whichever of her friends, family, and clergy she decides to involve.

The text of the bill is here. Brown did the right thing today by signing it.

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California Legalizes Assisted Suicide For Terminal Patients

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House Dems Fight Back on Benghazi

by NevaLefler Posted on October 5, 2015

Mother Jones

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A few weeks ago, Hillary Clinton aide Cheryl Mills testified before the Benghazi committee. Apparently several Republican members of the committee talked to reporters about this. Here is Politico on September 3:

Raising alarms on the right, Mills, Clinton’s former chief of staff at the State Department, also told the House Select Committee on Benghazi that she reviewed and made suggestions for changes to the government’s official, final report on what happened in Benghazi, according to a separate, GOP source familiar with what she said.

The source said it “calls into question the ‘independence’” of the report’s conclusions….The report was supposed to be independent from state officials that may be involved, and the GOP argues top officials should not have had input, long questioning how independent the findings were.

Today, in the wake of Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s boasting about how the Benghazi committee had been a great tool to bring down Hillary, Elijah Cummings, the ranking Democrat on the committee, lobbed a shot across the bow of the Republican chairman:

Republicans began leaking inaccurate information about Ms. Mills’ interview within minutes after your public declaration that it should be treated as classified….During her interview, Ms. Mills corroborated both Ambassador Pickering’s testimony and the Inspector General’s findings:

Q: Did you ever, in that process, attempt to exert influence over the direction of the ARB’s investigation?

A: No.

Q: Did you ever try to—did Secretary Clinton ever try to exert influence over the direction of their investigation?

A: No.

Ms. Mills also explained that the Secretary’s objective in selecting members of the ARB was, “could they be people who could give hard medicine if that was what was needed. And I felt like, in the end, that team was a team that would speak whatever were their truths or observations to the Department so that we could learn whatever lessons we needed to learn.”

….We believe it is time to begin releasing the transcripts of interviews conducted by the Select Committee in order to correct the public record after numerous inaccurate Republican leaks….Please notify us within five days if you believe any information in the full transcript should be withheld from the American people.

No response yet from committee chairman Trey Gowdy, who has insisted all along that the Benghazi investigation is purely an enlightened search for the truth with no trace of partisan overtones. But I’m all in favor of holding all of the committee’s hearings in public with occasional exceptions for genuinely classified testimony. Stay tuned.

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House Dems Fight Back on Benghazi

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All 8,400 Apollo Moon Mission Photos Just Went Online. Here Are Some of Our Faves.

by Greg3678myvmzjm Posted on October 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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Every photo ever taken by Apollo astronauts on moon missions is now available online, on the Project Apollo Archive’s Flickr account. That’s about 8,400 images, grouped by the roll of film they were shot on. You can finally see all the blurry images, mistakes, and unrecognized gems for yourself. The unprocessed Hasseblad photos (basically raw scans of the negatives) uploaded by the Project Apollo Archive offer a fascinating behind-the-scenes peek at the various moon missions…as well as lots and lots (and lots) of photos detailing the surface of the moon. Here’s a very small taste. All photos by NASA/The Project Apollo Archive.

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All 8,400 Apollo Moon Mission Photos Just Went Online. Here Are Some of Our Faves.

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John Kasich on How to Reduce Mass Shootings: More Death Penalty

by RodolfoSpowers4 Posted on October 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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Ohio Governor John Kasich told reporters in New Hampshire on Friday that he considers the death penalty and long prison sentences a better approach than gun control when it comes to reducing the number of mass shootings.

Kasich, who voted for a federal assault weapons ban as a Republican congressman two decades ago, demurred when asked what steps Washington should take in the wake of the Thursday massacre at Umpquah Community College in Oregon that left 10 people dead. “I don’t believe that gun control would stop this,” he told a scrum of journalists after a town hall in Goffstown, during which the subject did not come up.

Kasich continued:

I think they have very tough gun laws in that state. The fact is that more and more people believe that they should be able to defend themselves. And if take guns away from people who are law-abiding the people who are going to cause these horrible things are still gonna have them. I don’t agree with that. That is not—you know I favor, in Ohio, the death penalty. I favor long prison sentences.That’s the way I would go.

When a reporter asked him what specifically he would do to curb mass shootings as president, Kasich said it wouldn’t be his responsibility. “I don’t think any president can stop mass shootings,” he said. “And again I think that all of these places that are soft targets need to be hardened. My own state, as I’ve said, it’s frustrating to see some school districts not taking it seriously. These are terrible tragedies and we need to find out more about who this person is. If this person’s had mental illness they should never have had a weapon. That’s the rules.”

In an earlier interview with NBC News, Kasich offered a clearer idea of what he means by hardening “soft targets.” He said he wants all schools, including universities, to implement warning systems that would allow them to go into “lockdown” mode if there is a campus threat.

Kasich’s emphasis on the death penalty is curious given that more than half of the perpetrators of mass shootings over the last three decades took their own lives. The number goes up if you count “suicide by cop”—that is, those instances when a shooter was killed by law enforcement.

Moreover, Ohio’s death penalty process is notoriously flawed. Last spring, a federal judge placed a seven-month moratorium on all executions in the state after a lethal injection left a convicted killer writhing on his deathbed for 25 minutes. On Thursday, an Ohio court struck down an inmate’s death sentence, citing flaws in the state case.

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John Kasich on How to Reduce Mass Shootings: More Death Penalty

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I Can’t Stop Reading One-Star Yelp Reviews of National Parks

by EldenJenson Posted on August 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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The National Park Service turns 99 years old on Tuesday. To celebrate, the Department of the Interior has waived admission fees for all NPS sites for the day. That’s a pretty sweet deal. You should stop reading this right now, call in sick, and enjoy the great outdoors. National parks are great.

But not everyone agrees. Yelp is filled with one- and two-star reviews of America’s most pristine and majestic natural wonders. And honestly, they’re riveting. What makes a national park a one-star destination varies from one reviewer to the next. Maybe the tacos at the visitor center aren’t up to snuff. Maybe it was cloudy. Maybe the park was too cowardly to cut down some trees for spillover parking lots. Maybe it was President Barack Obama’s fault.

Whatever the case, you can thank these people for leaving the campgrounds a little bit less crowded for the rest of us:

Joshua tree:

The desert is too hot. Esther Lee/Flickr

I looked it up, and it’s true—the bees at Joshua Tree National Park are out of control. In 2000, a group of hikers was attacked by a swarm and one man was stung more than 100 times. They tried to get inside their car to escape, but some of the bees followed them inside the car and continued stinging them. Holy crap, bees! If you were stung 100 times by bees at Joshua Tree, you should give it one star. But maybe it shouldn’t have come as too much of a surprise that the desert gets hot in the summer. This is like downgrading a restaurant because you went there on a hunger strike.

Death Valley:

Pass. John Fowler/Flickr

Pinnacles:

Some rocks. sfbaywalk/Flickr

Yosemite:

And? Aaron & Carol/Flickr

Lassen volcanic:

Where’s the lava? Roy Scribner/Flickr

Crater Lake:

You could see Fantastic Four for the same price. Glenn Scofield Williams/Flickr

And a bonus two-star review of Crater Lake that’s kidding itself about not being a one-star review:

Olympic:

A big rock with glorified weeds. Esther Lee/Flickr

Do not let the National Park Service tell you how many friends you can have.

Grand Canyon:

Few amenities. Grand Canyon National Park/Flickr

Carlsbad Caverns:

Only go to this cave if you like caves. Greg Heartsfield/Flickr

Petrified Forest:

The trees are all dead! Park Ranger/Flickr

Yellowstone:

Good luck swimming here. A Davis/Flickr

Badlands:

Bad. Jim Bowen/Flickr

Arches:

One star. Max and Dee Bernt/Flickr

Zion:

Skip the tacos. Cyril Fluck/Flickr

Shenandoah:

Pure government overreach. David McSpadden/Flickr

(N.B.: There is an entire visitor center devoted to the mistreatment of former inhabitants.)

Acadia:

Nice try, try a state park. Robbie Shade/Flickr

Hawai’i Volcanoes:

Still no lava. Ed Dunens/Flickr

Haleakala:

This is it? Joe Parks/Flickr

But enough about the sunrise, already. How were the tacos?

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I Can’t Stop Reading One-Star Yelp Reviews of National Parks

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