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13 Weird Headlines From North Korea’s State-Run News Agency

by TeshaPersinger Posted on September 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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North Korea’s state-run news, the Korean Central News Agency, is one of the few places for what passes for news in the so-called Hermit Kingdom. Every day, the KCNA posts its top stories, and much of it is predictable: harsh invective against South Korea and its “imperialist” backers in the United States, mixed in with effusive praise of leader Kim Jong Un and the previous Kims. (The younger Kim’s recent “discomfort”—thought to be gout—is conspicuously absent from its coverage.) This is an example of what’s considered front-page news:

The KCNA’s tone is singularly weird: an odd mix of stiffly-worded propaganda and attempts at hard-hitting, American-style political rhetoric. In its mission to portray North Korea as a prosperous, powerful, and widely-admired nation, the KCNA struggles mightily to write clickworthy headlines . Here are some of its best attempts from Juche 103 (that’s 2014 in the North Korean calendar):

“Kim Jong Un Gives Field Guidance to Pyongyang Hosiery Factory”

“Feats Made by Great Persons to Turn DPRK into Thick Woodland”

“Soy-based Dishes Popular at Cooking Festival”

“Exploits of Peerlessly Great Persons Highly Praised”

“US Troops Had Better Quit South Korea in Good Time”

“Congratulatory Group of Koreans in Japan Visits Various Places”

“Pyongyang in Ecstasy of Joy at Asian Games News”

“Korean in U.S. Admires Reality of DPRK”

“Korean Organization in Germany Slams S. Korean Authorities’ Sycophantic Treachery”

“U.S. Periodically Renders Situation of Korean Peninsula Strained”

“Dancing Parties of Youth and Students Held”

“Kim Il Sung, Great Man Always Living in Hearts of World Progressives”

“Syrian President Supports Korean People in Their Struggle for National Reunification”

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13 Weird Headlines From North Korea’s State-Run News Agency

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This Legendary Accounting Firm Just Ran the Numbers on Climate Change

by JeseniaYnh Posted on September 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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With every year that passes, we’re getting further away from averting a human-caused climate disaster. That’s the key message in this year’s “Low Carbon Economy Index,” a report released by the accounting giant PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The report highlights an “unmistakable trend”: The world’s major economies are increasingly failing to do what’s needed to to limit global warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit above preindustrial levels. That was the target agreed to by countries attending the United Nations’ 2009 climate summit; it represents an effort to avoid some of the most disastrous consequences of runaway warming, including food security threats, coastal inundation, extreme weather events, ecosystem shifts, and widespread species extinction.

To curtail climate change, individual countries have made a variety of pledges to reduce their share of emissions, but taken together, those promises simply aren’t enough. According to the PricewaterhouseCoopers report, “the gap between what we are doing and what we need to do has again grown, for the sixth year running.” The report adds that at current rates, we’re headed towards 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit of warming by the end of the century—twice the agreed upon rate. Here’s a breakdown of the paper’s major findings.

The chart above compares our current efforts to cut “carbon intensity”—measured by calculating the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per million dollars of economic activity—with what’s actually needed to rein in climate change. According to the report, the global economy needs to “decarbonize” by 6.2 percent every year until the end of the century to limit warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit. But carbon intensity fell by only 1.2 percent in 2013.

The report also found that the world is going to blow a hole in its carbon budget—the amount we can burn to keep the world from overheating beyond 3.6 degrees:

The report singles out countries that have done better than others when it comes to cutting carbon intensity. Australia, for example, tops the list of countries that have reduced the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per unit of GDP, mainly due to lower energy demands in a growing economy. But huge countries like the United States, Germany, and India are still adding carbon intensity, year-on-year:

Overall, PricewaterhouseCoopers paints a bleak picture of a world that’s rapidly running out of time; the required effort to curb global emissions will continue to grow each year. “The timeline is also unforgiving. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and others have estimated that global emissions will need to peak around 2020 to meet a 2°C 3.6 degrees F budget,” the report says. “This means that emissions from the developed economies need to be consistently falling, and emissions from major developing countries will also have to start declining from 2020 onwards.” G20 nations, for example, will need to cut their annual energy-related emissions by one-third by 2030, and by just over half by 2050. The pressure will be on the world’s governments to come up with a solution to this enormous challenge at the much-anticipated climate talks in Paris next year.

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This Legendary Accounting Firm Just Ran the Numbers on Climate Change

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Quote of the Day: The Bane of the Magic Asterisk

by OlgaBrunson Posted on August 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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Brad DeLong on the debasement of budget policy since the Reagan era:

Ever since the start of 1981 and the miseducation of David Stockman, the bane of a sensible American fiscal policy has most often been the magic asterisk: the implicit claim that some policy that the politician dares not name or some magical Budget Fairy will fly down from above and make everything OK. When this magic asterisk is found, by my guess 90% of the time it is in budget “plans” from Republicans—but a good 10% of the time it is found in plans from Democrats (yes, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Gene Sperling, I am looking at you).

This has reached its zenith in the budget “plans” of Paul Ryan and his fellow tea partiers. I can’t remember the last time I saw a budget plan from a Republican that was even remotely honest.

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Quote of the Day: The Bane of the Magic Asterisk

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Republicans Hate Obama, Therefore Obama Should Avoid Making Them Even Madder

by Georgia3464 Posted on August 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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Ron Fournier ponders the wisdom of President Obama issuing executive orders on immigration and tax inversions:

For argument’s sake, let’s say Obama is right on the issue and has legal authority to act. The big question is …

Would it be wrong to end-run Congress? Another way to put it might be, “Would more polarization in Washington and throughout the country be wrong?” How about exponentially more polarization, gridlock, and incivility? If the president goes too far, he owns that disaster.

Wait a second. If you think Obama is wrong on the merits, then naturally you’ll oppose any new executive action. If you think he’s right, but unfortunately lacks the constitutional authority to do anything about it, you’ll also oppose any new executive action.

But what if he’s both right and has the proper authority? That certainly sounds like the right formula for supporting executive action. But no. Obama still shouldn’t do anything because….wait for it….it would cause more polarization, gridlock, and incivility.

I frankly doubt it, but leave that to one side for the moment. What Fournier is saying is that President Obama shouldn’t do anything that might make Republicans mad. But this means the president is literally helpless: No proposal of his has any chance of securing serious Republican engagement in Congress, but he’s not allowed to take executive action for fear of making them even more intransigent. Obama’s only legitimate option, apparently, is to persuade Republicans to support his proposals, even though it’s no secret that Republicans decided years ago to obstruct everything, sight unseen, that was on Obama’s agenda. So that leaves Obama with no options at all.

And that means the next column will be all about Obama’s lack of leadership. Count on it.

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Republicans Hate Obama, Therefore Obama Should Avoid Making Them Even Madder

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Congress Needs Its Own Dormitory

by MartaMarko Posted on August 6, 2014

Mother Jones

Paul Waldman is exasperated with the latest fad among members of Congress: sleeping in your office to demonstrate to your constituents just how much you really, truly hate the Sodom that is modern Washington DC. It started after the Gingrich revolution of 1994, and has now become so popular among the tea party set that even the womenfolk are getting into the act. “It was never my goal to come to DC and be comfortable,” says South Dakota’s Kristi Noem. Waldman is unamused:

Oh, spare me. If you’re doing it because you don’t want to get too settled in Washington, then I assume you won’t be running for re-election, right? I thought so.

I’ll grant that as far as affectations go, this one certainly takes commitment. But how exactly is sleeping in your office supposed to keep you connected with the real America? What’s going to make you more “out of touch,” getting an apartment so you can have a good night’s sleep when you’re doing the people’s business, or literally never leaving Capitol Hill? Is signing a one-year lease on a studio going to suddenly make you change your views on deficit spending or tax cuts or the next trade deal? If it is, your constituents probably shouldn’t have elected you in the first place.

Maybe Congress should just set up its own dormitory, along the lines of a youth hostel, maybe, and let our nation’s representatives bunk down there. They’ve already got a barbershop and a gym, after all, so why not just add a few photogenically spartan cells and allow the office suites to revert to being actual offices?

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Congress Needs Its Own Dormitory

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Chart of the Day: How Austerity Wrecked the Recovery

by BobbyLomas Posted on August 4, 2014

Mother Jones

I’ve previously nominated a version of the illustration below as chart of the year, and last year I wrote an entire piece for the print magazine as basically just an excuse to get it in print. Bill McBride’s version focuses on public sector payroll, not total public sector spending, but it tells the same story: after every previous recession of the past 40 years, the subsequent recovery was helped along by increased government outlays. In the 2007-08 recession—and only in this recession—the recovery was deliberately hobbled by insisting on declining government outlays. This is despite the fact that it was the worst recession of the bunch.

The result, of course, was that there was no Obama Miracle in 2011. In fact, there was barely even an Obama Recovery. If you think that’s just a coincidence, I have a bridge to sell you.

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Chart of the Day: How Austerity Wrecked the Recovery

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Lotus Watching in LA

by CESKatheri Posted on August 4, 2014

Mother Jones

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I spent the afternoon up in LA with my mother, and she wanted to go over and check out the new, rejuvenated Echo Park along with its new, rejuvenated lotus plants. It’s a little late in the season to see them in all their glory, but they’re still blooming. See here for the rather remarkable backstory about how the lotuses, once thought dead and gone forever, were brought back to life.

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Lotus Watching in LA

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California Projects Very Modest Obamacare Rate Hikes in 2015

by FrederiHeffner Posted on August 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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Good news from the Golden State!

Defying an industry trend of double-digit rate hikes, California officials said the more than 1.2 million consumers in the state-run Obamacare insurance exchange can expect modest price increases of 4.2% on average next year.

….”We have changed the trend in healthcare costs,” said Peter Lee, Covered California’s executive director. “This is good news for Californians.”….State officials and insurers credited the strong turnout during the first six-month enrollment window that ended in April for helping to keep 2015 rates in check.

It’s still early days for Obamacare, and it’s not yet clear if it deserves credit for keeping California’s rate hikes low. It may instead be due to the recent slow growth of medical costs nationally. Nonetheless, this is a very positive sign. California is a big market, and it’s one that’s traditionally seen steep rate hikes in the individual insurance market. At the very least, we can certainly say that conservative predictions of catastrophically high rate increases thanks to Obamacare have turned out to be groundless. Again.

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California Projects Very Modest Obamacare Rate Hikes in 2015

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Yes, the CIA Spied on the Senate

by Jeff Peterson Posted on July 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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Earlier this year, CIA Director John Brennan accused staffers from the Senate Intelligence Committee of removing classified material from the CIA office where they were researching a report on the agency’s use of torture during the Bush administration. This turned out to be very poor tradecraft on Brennan’s part, since it implicitly revealed the fact that the CIA was spying on Senate staffers even though it wasn’t supposed to. Brennan tried to mount a suitably aggressive counterattack to Senate outrage over this, but today it all came crashing down:

CIA employees improperly accessed computers used by the Senate Intelligence Committee to compile a report on the agency’s now defunct detention and interrogation program, an internal CIA investigation has determined.

….The statement represented an admission to charges by the panel’s chairwoman, Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., that the CIA intruded into the computers her staff used to compile the soon-to-be released report on the agency’s use of harsh interrogation methods on suspected terrorists in secret overseas prisons during the Bush administration.

CIA Director John Brennan briefed Feinstein and the committee’s vice chairman, Saxby Chambliss, R-GA, on the CIA inspector general’s findings and apologized to them during a meeting on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, Boyd said.

I find that my reaction remains one of schadenfreude. Dianne Feinstein and the rest of the Intelligence Committee seem to be mostly unconcerned with the omnipresent surveillance apparatus constructed by the US intelligence committee, so it’s hard to feel very sorry for them when they learn that this apparatus is also sometimes directed at Senate staffers. If this affair had persuaded a few senators that maybe our intelligence chiefs are less than totally honest about what they do, it might have done some good. But it doesn’t seem to have done that. With only a few exceptions, they’re outraged when the CIA spies on them, but that’s about it.

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Yes, the CIA Spied on the Senate

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Why American Politics Is Broken In One Sentence

by AundreaLyzht Posted on July 31, 2014

Mother Jones

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Dave Weigel explains modern politics in a single sentence:

Voters are aware of a border crisis, they are aware that Barack Obama is president—they blame him for nothing getting done.

Yep. Republicans can basically do anything they want and never get blamed for it. Most voters don’t even know who’s in control of Congress anyway. When something goes wrong, all they know is (a) something went wrong, and (b) Barack Obama is the president and he should have done something about it.

That being the case, what incentive do Republicans have for making things go right? Pretty much none. This is, roughly speaking, a fairly new insight, and it explains most of what you need to know about American politics in the Obama era.

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Why American Politics Is Broken In One Sentence

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