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Dem Candidate for Pennsylvania Governor Vows to Block Texas-Style Abortion Bill

by Stacey Kawano Posted on September 11, 2014

Mother Jones

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Tom Wolf, the Democratic candidate for Pennsylvania governor, promises that if he’s elected he won’t support a controversial bill that could force some abortion clinics in the state to close. Wolf’s opponent, Republican Gov. Tom Corbett, has trailed in recent polls and is expected to back the bill in the slim chance it clears a vote.

“Tom Wolf would not sign this bill. This is just an attempt to make it more difficult for women to access reproductive health care,” says Beth Melena, a spokeswoman for Wolf’s campaign. Corbett’s campaign did not respond to comment, but the bill’s sponsor, Republican Rep. Bryan Cutler, says that he expects that Corbett would support it. The governor has backed other abortion restrictions in the past, defending a bill that would require women seeking abortions to first obtain ultrasounds by noting, “You just have to close your eyes.”

The newer bill, introduced in February, would require doctors who perform abortions to get admitting privileges from a hospital which offers obstetrical or gynecological care less than 30 miles away from their clinic. Abortion rights supporters say the legislation is unnecessary because only 0.3 percent of abortions lead to major complications and abortion providers don’t need admitting privileges to transfer sick patients to hospitals. They believe the bill will limit Pennsylvania women’s access to safe and legal abortions, because not all doctors may work within 30 miles of a hospital and some religiously affiliated hospitals will not grant admitting privileges to doctors who perform abortions. The Pennsylvania bill has nearly identical language to the admitting-privileges requirement that passed last year in Texas. Since the passage of that requirement (and other abortion restrictions), many of the Lone Star State’s 41 abortion clinics have closed.

Some Pennsylvania women say they already have trouble accessing clinics. This week, a woman was sentenced to prison for ordering abortion pills online for her 16-year-old daughter, who did not want to have the baby. The Bloomsburg Press Enterprise reported that she ordered the pills because the daughter did not have insurance to pay for a hospital abortion and there were no clinics nearby.

Fortunately for abortion rights advocates, people familiar with Pennsylvania’s political scene say that the bill is doomed. “They did this before with one of those ultrasound bills and that died an ugly death too. As conservative as this Legislature can be, it seems to me to be seized by fits of common sense,” says John Micek, editorial and opinions editor for PennLive and the Patriot-News.

The legislation hasn’t gone to a vote yet and Cutler, who sponsored the bill, says that he doesn’t expect it to before the Senate session ends on November 12. He says he will consider reintroducing it next year.

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Dem Candidate for Pennsylvania Governor Vows to Block Texas-Style Abortion Bill

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How Hillary Clinton’s State Department Sold Fracking to the World

by ReinaPalmerston Posted on September 10, 2014

Mother Jones

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One icy morning in February 2012, Hillary Clinton’s plane touched down in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, which was just digging out from a fierce blizzard. Wrapped in a thick coat, the secretary of state descended the stairs to the snow-covered tarmac, where she and her aides piled into a motorcade bound for the presidential palace. That afternoon, they huddled with Bulgarian leaders, including Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, discussing everything from Syria’s bloody civil war to their joint search for loose nukes. But the focus of the talks was fracking. The previous year, Bulgaria had signed a five-year, $68 million deal, granting US oil giant Chevron millions of acres in shale gas concessions. Bulgarians were outraged. Shortly before Clinton arrived, tens of thousands of protesters poured into the streets carrying placards that read “Stop fracking with our water” and “Chevron go home.” Bulgaria’s parliament responded by voting overwhelmingly for a fracking moratorium.

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How Hillary Clinton’s State Department Sold Fracking to the World

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3 Ways the Baltimore Ravens Completely Screwed Up the Ray Rice Mess

by RalphIsabel Posted on September 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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This afternoon, the Baltimore Ravens released running back Ray Rice in response to a video released by TMZ showing Rice knocking his then-fiancée (and current wife) Janay Palmer unconscious in an Atlantic City elevator in February. Rice has been the subject of intense scrutiny since the NFL suspended him for two games—earlier today, it suspended him indefinitely—but some had given the star running back the benefit of the doubt after he claimed he was simply defending himself. (Indeed, both Rice and Palmer were charged with assault following the incident.)

This new footage, though, clearly shows that wasn’t the case, and as outrage mounted today, the Ravens had little choice but to take decisive action against Rice. But we should hardly be praising the team. If anything, the Ravens have been defending Rice and victim-blaming from the very beginning. For example:

1. In May, the Ravens decided it’d be a good idea to sit Rice and Palmer in front of the media and have them publicly address the Atlantic City incident. The result was a complete PR disaster. Rice began by apologizing not to Palmer, but to senior Ravens management and coach John Harbaugh. Rice also chose his words poorly, defining failure as “not getting knocked down, but not getting back up.”

2. Even more tone-deaf than the press conference itself was how the Ravens presented it. The team had a staffer live-tweeting the spectacle, and the team’s official account sent out this unbelievable tweet, straight out of Victim-Blaming 101:

The tweet was deleted today.

3. After Rice’s two-game suspension was handed down in late July, people were outraged that occasional pot smokers got harsher punishments from the NFL. The Ravens PR machine thought it was the perfect time to start rehabilitating Rice’s image, releasing a glowing dispatch from his first major public appearance after the punishment. The article, posted on the team’s website, says Rice got a “standing ovation” from fans who “showed him a lot of love,” even though he had been under “national scrutiny.” After noting that he showed his “usual fun-loving side,” the piece observed with remarkable subtlety that “Rice jerseys sprinkled the crowd, worn by both males and females.”

The NFL has earned much-deserved flak for toughening its domestic-violence penalties only when the national criticism ramped up. Today’s move by the Ravens should be seen in a similar light: Cutting Rice was the right decision, but it’s clear the organization has never taken his offenses all that seriously. It took an even-worse leaked video to make the Ravens finally act.

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3 Ways the Baltimore Ravens Completely Screwed Up the Ray Rice Mess

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Powerful Reporting From Steven Sotloff, the Journalist ISIS Claims to Have Executed

by ErnestoCTL Posted on September 2, 2014

Mother Jones

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Steven Sotloff (center with black helmet) talks to Libyan rebels on the Al Dafniya front line near in Misrata, Libya in 2011.

A video released today appeared to confirm the worst fears for the fate of captured American journalist Steven Sotloff: a beheading at the hands of Islamic State extremists. The video’s authenticity has not yet been confirmed by US officials, but the New York Times reports that Sotloff’s family believes he has been killed. If so, that means the 31-year-old Sotloff—who went missing a year ago while reporting in Syria—becomes the second American journalist executed by the Islamic State.

Last month, a video surfaced showing ISIS fighters executing American journalist James Foley. Many on the Internet seethed that the gruesome circumstances of his death appeared to overshadow his important work. The same shouldn’t happen to Sotloff. Ignore the sensational headlines and instead explore some of the brave, intelligent journalism he devoted his life to producing:

“Syrian Purgatory”: In this 2013 piece for Foreign Policy, Sotloff traveled to a Syrian refugee camp to report on the hundreds of thousands displaced by the civil war there. His chilling opening sets the tone for a story about the plight of refugees and the pitfalls of humanitarian aid: “It was less than 40 degrees Fahrenheit, and the winter wind cut to the bone. When I asked why she didn’t have a blanket like everyone else at the Atmeh refugee camp, Um Ibrahim shrugged and looked down. ‘I sold it to buy bread for my children.'”

“From Bread Lines to Front Lines:” Again in Foreign Policy, Sotloff went to Aleppo—one of the most devastated cities in Syria—to show how traumatic the daily lives of ordinary Syrians had become by late 2012. “The 21-month long Syrian revolution is taking its toll on residents of the country’s largest city,” he wrote. “With everything from medicine to firewood in scarce supply, and with winter bringing temperatures down to near freezing, people here are struggling to cope with a war they just hope will end.”

“The Other 9/11: Libyan Guards Recount What Happened in Benghazi:” For this TIME article, Sotloff—who covered Libya extensively for the magazine—interviewed Libyan security guards present when the US consulate in Benghazi was attacked. The result is a vivid, meticulous timeline of the events of September 11, 2012. One example: “Abdullah ran towards the cantina east of C villa where a grenade exploded nearby. ‘I remember the shrapnel that landed in my leg was very hot and I was shaken, a bit dizzy,’ he recalled. A group of attackers then passed him on the way to encircling the cantina. They shot him twice in the leg. Others beat him so hard he lost consciousness.”

“Libya’s New Crisis: A Wave of Assassinations Targeting Its Top Cops:” Here, Sotloff reported on the deadly aftershocks of the Benghazi attacks. In explaining the rash of killings of major Libyan security officials, Sotloff paints a compelling picture of the deterioration of post-Qaddafi Libya. “But the biggest loser today is a Libyan state stumbling from one crisis to the next,” he writes. “The government has not investigated the bombings and no one has been prosecuted.”

“The Alawite Towns That Support Syria’s Assad—in Turkey:” TIME featured some of Sotloff’s early reporting on the war in Syria. In 2012, he traveled to Turkey to report on Turkish Alawites’ support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. In doing so, he put himself in the thick of anti-American protests. “When an American journalist stops to ask about the group’s activities, though, a burly man in his 30s hisses him away, shouting, “America is funding terrorists in Syria!'”

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Powerful Reporting From Steven Sotloff, the Journalist ISIS Claims to Have Executed

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Will Democrats Keep Control of the Senate This Year?

by AugustTCKaxuwc Posted on August 29, 2014

Mother Jones

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Sam Wang of the Princeton Election Consortium thinks that Democrats currently have a 72 percent chance of retaining control of the Senate this year. Most other forecasting outfits think Republicans have a 60-70 percent chance of winning control. Why the difference?

In most cases, added assumptions (i.e. special sauce) have led the media organizations to different win probabilities — which I currently believe are wrong….The major media organizations (NYT, WaPo, 538)…all use prior conditions like incumbency, candidate experience, funding, and the generic Congressional ballot to influence their win probabilities — and opinion polls.

….Longtime readers of PEC will not be surprised to know that I think the media organizations are making a mistake. It is nearly Labor Day. By now, we have tons of polling data. Even the stalest poll is a more direct measurement of opinion than an indirect fundamentals-based measure. I demonstrated this point in 2012, when I used polls only to forecast the Presidency and all close Senate races. That year I made no errors in Senate seats, including Montana (Jon Tester) and North Dakota (Heidi Heitkamp), which FiveThirtyEight got wrong.

I’d sure like to believe this. PEC is my go-to political polling site, after all. But it sure doesn’t feel like Democrats are in the driver’s seat right now, does it? All of my political instincts scream that Wang’s forecast is wrong.

That’s probably because I’m a pessimist by nature. But you either believe in poll aggregation or you don’t. I do, and PEC has performed well in every election for the past decade. So just as I wouldn’t “deskew” bad poll results I didn’t like, I guess I won’t try to second guess good poll results that don’t seem quite right. If Wang thinks Democrats are currently favored to keep control of the Senate, then so do I.

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Will Democrats Keep Control of the Senate This Year?

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The Dirty Secret Behind Europe’s Renewable Energy Industry

by BeulahOezkfxb Posted on August 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

If you’re driving through the South and you see a denuded field filled with stubby new plantings where lush forest once stood, the blame might lie with an unlikely culprit: the European Union and its well-intentioned clean energy rules.

In March 2007, the E.U. adopted climate and energy goals for 2010 to 2020. The 27 member countries set a goal of reducing carbon emissions 20 percent by 2020 and increasing renewables to 20 percent of their energy portfolio. Unfortunately, they underestimated the carbon intensity of burning wood (a.k.a. “biomass”) for electricity, and they categorized wood as a renewable fuel.

The result: E.U. countries with smaller renewable sectors turned to wood to replace coal. Governments provided incentives for energy utilities to make that switch. Now, with a bunch of new European wood-burning power plants having come online, Europeans need wood to feed the beast. But most European countries don’t have a lot of available forest left to cut down. So they’re importing our forests, especially from the South.

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The Dirty Secret Behind Europe’s Renewable Energy Industry

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There Have Been 5—Yes, 5!—Monster Hurricanes in the Eastern Pacific This Year

by Gilbert30I Posted on August 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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Right now, swirling south of the Baja California peninsula, is a monster hurricane named Marie. Currently a Category 4 storm with 145 mile per hour maximum sustained winds, yesterday the storm was a full fledged Category 5, with 160 mile per hour winds. That makes Marie the first Category 5 in the Eastern Pacific hurricane basin so far this year—but there have been at least three other Category 4 storms so far, and one Category 3 to boot.

By any measure, these numbers are pretty striking.

According to NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center, the average Eastern Pacific hurricane season runs from May 15 through the end of November, and sees 15.4 total named storms, including 8.4 hurricanes, and 3.9 major hurricanes (Category 3 and greater). This year, by contrast, has already seen 13 storms, including 8 hurricanes, and 5 major hurricanes! And there are still fully 3 months to go.

In fact, for 2014, the Climate Prediction Center forecast “3 to 6” major hurricanes in the East Pacific. We’re already there, but we’re only halfway through the season! Just for comparison, in the jaw-dropping 2005 Atlantic hurricane season—the season featuring Katrina, Rita, and Wilma—there were a total of 7 major hurricanes.

Moreover, all this activity has been accompanied by numerous hurricane records. Back in May, Category 4 Hurricane Amanda was the strongest May storm ever seen in the basin. And just weeks later, Category 4 Hurricane Cristina set another new record, becoming the “earliest 2nd major hurricane formation” in the basin.

Now, the National Weather Service office in San Diego adds yet another record for Marie:

Note, though, that this record would appear to include Category 4 Hurricane Genevieve, which seems questionable. Genevieve was a truly rare storm that started in the Eastern Pacific as a tropical storm, and then tracked all the way across the Pacific from east to west, only attaining Category 4 strength in the Central Pacific region west of Hawaii, before then crossing the international dateline and becoming classified as a typhoon.

But with or without Genevieve, we’re still talking about a ton of strong hurricane activity. So what’s going on here? Note that even as the Eastern Pacific has been gangbusters, the Atlantic basin, where hurricanes tend to threaten the United States, has been pretty quiet. That’s no coincidence, explains Weather Underground blogger Jeff Masters by email:

…hurricane activity in the Epac East Pacific and the Atlantic are usually anti-correlated—when one is very active, the other is usually quiet. This occurs because when sinking air occurs over one ocean basin, there must be compensating rising air somewhere—typically over the neighboring ocean basin. Large-scale rising air helps encourage thunderstorm updrafts and thus tropical storm formation. Since ocean temperatures are much warmer than average over the Epac and near average over the Atlantic, the atmosphere over the Epac has tended to have more rising air this season than the Atlantic. Warm waters heat the air above it and make the air more buoyant, causing rising motion.

Right now, there are two major questions: Just how many more records will the 2014 Northeast Pacific Hurricane season set? And will one of those be a new record strongest hurricane ever recorded in the basin?

The current strongest storm, recorded in 1997, was Category 5 Hurricane Linda, which had maximum sustained winds of 184 miles per hour and a minimum central pressure of 902 millibars.

As for Marie: While the storm is far out at sea and unlikely to directly threaten any major land areas, it is kicking up huge waves that may be felt as far away as Los Angeles. Eastern Pacific hurricanes occasionally strike Mexico, and on rare occasions travel west far enough to menace the Hawaiian islands.

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There Have Been 5—Yes, 5!—Monster Hurricanes in the Eastern Pacific This Year

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Robyn: Rökysopp’s New Album Is “Fucking Amazing”

by RoseannLascelle Posted on August 25, 2014

Mother Jones

Under the harsh fluorescent lights in the basement of a suburban DC concert venue, as they picked at a pre-show dinner of salmon and rice—I interrogated Swedish superstar Robyn and her Norwegian collaborators, the electro-pop duo Rökysopp, for details about their upcoming releases. The hugely popular Scandinavian acts are on a joint tour promoting Do It Again, their five-song, 35-minute, “mini-album” released in May.

Robyn got her start back in the ’90s as a teen-pop idol, only to leave that image behind in the mid-2000s, ditching her major label and transforming herself into an electro-pop superstar who has pumped out a string of club bangers with the sort of feminist messages seldom heard on the radio. Norwegian duo Svein Berge and Torbjørn Brundtland formed Röyksopp in 1998, and since then have remained at the forefront of a worldwide boom in electronic music.

During our chat, Berge dropped the previously undisclosed title of their upcoming album: The Inevitable End is slated for release in November. “It’s fucking amazing!” Robyn chimed in. The duo’s last full-length album, 2010’s Senior, was a relatively downtempo affair, full of instrumental tracks that lacked the electro-pop dance sensibilities defining the band’s previous work. With The Inevitable End, Röyksopp will return to its roots, re-adding vocals, while still holding onto a bit of that introspective tone. “It’s got a dark energy,” Berge says. “And I think it’s very sincere in many ways. Well, all the music we make is hopefully sincere, but it sits with me.”

Berge and Brundtland said they might just have to steal Robyn’s description of their album: “It’s sad, but it’s not cold. It’s very warm.” If Röyksopp keeps its promise to fans, a new version of “Monument,” the opening track of their partnership with Robyn, will be on the tracklist.

Robyn has been working on a new album herself, a follow-up to her three-part Body Talk series, which spawned megahits like “Dancing On My Own” and “Call Your Girlfriend” (below).

She’s hoping to have the new one out by year’s end, co-produced with her longtime collaborator Christian Falk, who died of cancer just a few weeks ago. “I worked with him for the first time on my first album—when I was 16. So I’ve known him half of my life. We became good friends and we kept working in different ways,” she told me. “We’re finishing the album without him, which is a really strange experience, but also a really beautiful thing because we get to be around the memory of him and the music a little bit longer.”

She’s been testing out some of the new material onstage recently. The show I saw this past Thursday included three fresh songs, which blended in seamlessly alongside her old hits.

Once the Röyksopp tour wraps up, she and Markus Jägerstedt, a member of her touring band and key collaborator on her latest songs, plan to head into the studio to put the finishing touches on the album. “I think it’s maybe messier than what I usually do, because Christian was messy,” she says. “It’s a raw energy and it’s based on a club world. I think it’s going to be fantastic, I’m really happy about it.”

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Robyn: Rökysopp’s New Album Is “Fucking Amazing”

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Robyn: Rökysopp’s New Album Is "Fucking Amazing"

by ReggieGRSccub Posted on August 25, 2014

Mother Jones

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Under the harsh fluorescent lights in the basement of a suburban DC concert venue, as they picked at a pre-show dinner of salmon and rice—I interrogated Swedish superstar Robyn and her Norwegian collaborators, the electro-pop duo Rökysopp, for details about their upcoming releases. The hugely popular Scandinavian acts are on a joint tour promoting Do It Again, their five-song, 35-minute, “mini-album” released in May.

Robyn got her start back in the ’90s as a teen-pop idol, only to leave that image behind in the mid-2000s, ditching her major label and transforming herself into an electro-pop superstar who has pumped out a string of club bangers with the sort of feminist messages seldom heard on the radio. Norwegian duo Svein Berge and Torbjørn Brundtland formed Röyksopp in 1998, and since then have remained at the forefront of a worldwide boom in electronic music.

During our chat, Berge dropped the previously undisclosed title of their upcoming album: The Inevitable End is slated for release in November. “It’s fucking amazing!” Robyn chimed in. The duo’s last full-length album, 2010’s Senior, was a relatively downtempo affair, full of instrumental tracks that lacked the electro-pop dance sensibilities defining the band’s previous work. With The Inevitable End, Röyksopp will return to its roots, re-adding vocals, while still holding onto a bit of that introspective tone. “It’s got a dark energy,” Berge says. “And I think it’s very sincere in many ways. Well, all the music we make is hopefully sincere, but it sits with me.”

Berge and Brundtland said they might just have to steal Robyn’s description of their album: “It’s sad, but it’s not cold. It’s very warm.” If Röyksopp keeps its promise to fans, a new version of “Monument,” the opening track of their partnership with Robyn, will be on the tracklist.

Robyn has been working on a new album herself, a follow-up to her three-part Body Talk series, which spawned megahits like “Dancing On My Own” and “Call Your Girlfriend” (below).

She’s hoping to have the new one out by year’s end, co-produced with her longtime collaborator Christian Falk, who died of cancer just a few weeks ago. “I worked with him for the first time on my first album—when I was 16. So I’ve known him half of my life. We became good friends and we kept working in different ways,” she told me. “We’re finishing the album without him, which is a really strange experience, but also a really beautiful thing because we get to be around the memory of him and the music a little bit longer.”

She’s been testing out some of the new material onstage recently. The show I saw this past Thursday included three fresh songs, which blended in seamlessly alongside her old hits.

Once the Röyksopp tour wraps up, she and Markus Jägerstedt, a member of her touring band and key collaborator on her latest songs, plan to head into the studio to put the finishing touches on the album. “I think it’s maybe messier than what I usually do, because Christian was messy,” she says. “It’s a raw energy and it’s based on a club world. I think it’s going to be fantastic, I’m really happy about it.”

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Robyn: Rökysopp’s New Album Is "Fucking Amazing"

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Russian Sanctions Mostly Hitting Russian Consumers

by TandyChavers Posted on August 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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The BBC reports on how those Russian sanctions against Western food have put the squeeze on European and American suppliers:

Moscow officials say frozen fish prices in the capital’s major supermarkets have risen by 6%, milk by 5.3% and an average cheese costs 4.4% more than it did before the 7 August ban took effect. Russia has banned imports of those basic foods, as well as meat and many other products, from Western countries, Australia and Japan. It is retaliation for the West’s sanctions on Russia over the revolt by pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine.

And it is not just Moscow. On the island of Sakhalin, in Russia’s far east, officials say the price of chicken thighs has soared 60%. Before the sanctions these were among the cheapest and most popular meat products in Russia.

Oops. Sorry about that. It’s actually Russian consumers who are paying the price. And for now, that seems to be OK:

Polls show that the vast majority of Russians approve of the sanctions against Western food. They have been told by government officials and state-controlled TV that the embargo will not affect prices, and that it will actually allow Russia’s own agriculture to flourish. And that message is being believed.

At a guess, Russian consumers aren’t very different from American consumers. Nationalistic pride will work for a while, as people accept higher prices as the cost of victory against whoever they’re fighting at the moment. But that won’t last any longer in Russia than it does in America. Give it a few months and public opinion is likely to turn decidedly surly. Who really cares about those damn Ukrainians anyway? They’re just a bunch of malcontents and always have been, amirite?

This is why Vladimir Putin needs a quick victory. The fact that he’s not getting it will eventually prompt him to either (a) quietly give up, or (b) go all in. Unfortunately, there’s really no telling which it will be.

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Russian Sanctions Mostly Hitting Russian Consumers

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