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Donald Trump Apparently Wants a Cold War With Mexico

by FaustoMacansh Posted on April 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump has finally explained how he would force Mexico to pay for a border wall, and it’s pretty much what you’d expect. Basically, the idea is to threaten Mexico with financial ruin unless they pay up:

Trump would also threaten to raise tariffs, cancel visas, and raise visa fees. But if Mexico writes us a big check, all the threats go away and we can be friends again.

Trump didn’t threaten to send troops over the border, but otherwise this is a very Roman Empire approach to foreign affairs. In that sense, it’s reminiscent of his threat to pull out troops from other countries unless they pony up big bags of tribute to pay for protection. Trump really does believe that the biggest, richest, most militarily dominant country in the history of the world is just a poor little waif being taken advantage of by everyone else.

Needless to say, anyone with a handful of working brain cells knows that Mexico would never pay this extortion money. Their voters wouldn’t put up with it any more than ours would. If Trump actually went through with this—which is questionable since it would end up in court on day 2—he’d create a permanent enemy on our Southern border. Just what we need. And Mexico would probably retaliate by encouraging even greater illegal immigration into the US.

What a fuckwit. I really don’t know what we did to deserve this.

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Donald Trump Apparently Wants a Cold War With Mexico

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Climate change is sucking the Colorado River dry

by WileyReal78 Posted on April 2, 2016

Climate change is sucking the Colorado River dry

By on 2 Apr 2016comments

Cross-posted from

ClimateCentralShare

Even as the number of Americans relying on the Colorado River for household water swells to about 40 million, global warming appears to be taking a chunk out of the flows that feed their reservoirs.

Winter storms over the Rocky Mountains provide much of the water that courses down the heavily tapped waterway, which spills through deep gorges of the Southwest and into Mexico.

Low water levels in late 2014 at Lake Powell, which is a Colorado River water reservoir built along the border of Utah and Arizona.

Jessica Mercer

But flows in recent decades have been lighter than would have been expected given annual rain and snowfall rates — and a new study has pinpointed rising temperatures as the likely culprit.

“For a given precipitation over the cool season, from October through April, we’re seeing less flow than we’ve seen in the past,” said James Prairie, a researcher with the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Upper Colorado Regional Office. He was not involved with the new study.

As greenhouse gas pollution piles up in the atmosphere, it’s trapping heat and raising global temperatures, which is beginning to parch the Colorado River watershed. Heavier impacts on drinking water supplies in the West and elsewhere are projected for the future as warming accelerates.

The new research, published in Geophysical Research Letters by academics and a federal scientist, focused on the upper stretches of the river. It attempted to parse out the different roles of temperature, precipitation, and soil moisture on the variability of yearly water flows since reliable record-keeping began in 1906.

Annual Colorado River flows have naturally swung up and down over time, but the natural trends have been bucked in recent years and decades.

“What we’re seeing now is that, consistent with more of the global observations in terms of warming, that it’s not just a fluctuation that’s within that historical back and forth,” Prairie said. “That oscillation is starting to break from that range.”

Temperatures appear to have been playing a larger role in reducing the flows of water down the Colorado River since the late 1980s, the findings from the new study suggested.

“If you look at the trend in temperature over this period, we see a warming trend,” said Connie Woodhouse, a University of Arizona professor who led the new research. “We’re finding in those years temperatures explaining a lot more of the variability.”

Warmer temperatures cause more snow to fall instead as rain, and they cause snowpacks to melt earlier. Both of those effects lengthen growing seasons of riverside vegetation, which allows it to suck up more water as it grows. Higher temperatures also increase evaporation.

The likely effects of climate change on rainfall, snow, and streamflow in the West remain difficult to assess, though they’re expected to lead to more rain and less snow, reducing the water volume of the snowpack that melts slowly to fill up the rivers. Storms may also shift southward.

Recent assessments suggest that even without changes to precipitation, the flow through “most of the Colorado River” would “shift to moderately lower” levels as the planet continues to warm, said Andy Wood, a National Center for Atmospheric Research scientist who was not involved with the study.

Although more research is needed, the new study indicates that climate change has been worsening the effects of the recent Western drought on some of the country’s biggest reservoirs.

“The paper is intriguing, but it also leaves open a number of questions that I would think probably need to be addressed by a more detailed analysis,” Wood said.

Worldwide surface temperatures have warmed by about 1 degree C (1.8 degrees F) since the 1800s, worsening heatwaves and droughts. Last year easily broke a global temperature record that had been set one year prior.

Based on computer modeling, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation in 2012 warned that each 1 degree C of global warming could increase the amount of water that gets evaporated and sucked up by plants from the Colorado River by 2 to 3 percent. One of the models used suggested the effects would be twice as severe as that.

With 4.5 million acres of farmland irrigated using Colorado River water, and with nearly 40 million residents of seven U.S. states from cities as far afield as San Diego depending on it for municipal supplies, those incremental losses can have a heavy impact — particularly during times of drought.

Until the 1990s, yearly supplies of available Colorado River water outpaced demand. Now, the opposite is true.

Demand for Colorado River water has begun outstripping supply.U.S. Bureau of Reclamation.

Much of the West has endured drought in recent years, with Lake Powell and Lake Mead — both large reservoirs storing freshwater and producing hydropower in the Colorados River’s downstream stretches — falling to ominously low levels.

Colorado River water shortfalls during the past decade have fueled a rapid and unsustainable frenzy of drilling for groundwater from beneath the watershed.

The Reclamation Bureau officials said the heaviest impacts of higher temperatures are being felt at smaller reservoirs that are relied on by farmers further upstream. Agriculture accounts for about 70 percent of Colorado River water use.

Because those upstream reservoirs are smaller, they’re less capable of storing enough water following wet years to buffer the effects of dry ones.

“Less water in the reservoirs means less water for people who actually want and need the water,” said Peter Soeth, a spokesperson for the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. The effects aren’t just being felt by farmers and other water customers, Soeth said. They’re also impacting electrical grids, with less water flow meaning less hydropower.

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Climate change is sucking the Colorado River dry

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Trump says nuclear weapons are the riskiest kind of climate change

by LinneaDuesbury Posted on March 22, 2016

Trump says nuclear weapons are the riskiest kind of climate change

By on 21 Mar 2016commentsShare

National embarrassment and presidential hopeful Donald Trump met with The Washington Post’s editorial board on Monday and spouted some nonsense about climate change, among many other topics. The takeaways: He’s “not a big believer” in human-caused climate change; instead, he believes “our biggest form of climate change we should worry about is nuclear weapons.”

Here’s the full climate exchange:

FRED HIATT, WASHINGTON POST EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR: You think climate change is a real thing? Is there human-caused climate change?

DONALD TRUMP: I think there’s a change in weather. I am not a great believer in man-made climate change. I’m not a great believer. There is certainly a change in weather that goes – if you look, they had global cooling in the 1920s and now they have global warming, although now they don’t know if they have global warming. They call it all sorts of different things; now they’re using “extreme weather” I guess more than any other phrase. I am not – I know it hurts me with this room, and I know it’s probably a killer with this room – but I am not a believer. Perhaps there’s a minor effect, but I’m not a big believer in man-made climate change.

STEPHEN STROMBERG, EDITORIAL WRITER: Don’t good businessmen hedge against risks, not ignore them?

DONALD TRUMP: Well I just think we have much bigger risks. I mean I think we have militarily tremendous risks. I think we’re in tremendous peril. I think our biggest form of climate change we should worry about is nuclear weapons. The biggest risk to the world, to me – I know President Obama thought it was climate change – to me the biggest risk is nuclear weapons. That’s – that is climate change. That is a disaster, and we don’t even know where the nuclear weapons are right now. We don’t know who has them. We don’t know who’s trying to get them. The biggest risk for this world and this country is nuclear weapons, the power of nuclear weapons.

FREDERICK RYAN JR., WASHINGTON POST PUBLISHER: Thank you for joining us.

No, thank you, Frederick Ryan Jr. and the WaPo editorial board, for reminding us to check out Mexico’s immigration policies. We hear the food’s great and there’s going to be a really big wall. Maybe that’ll keep Trump out.

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Trump says nuclear weapons are the riskiest kind of climate change

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Climate activists gear up to protest new oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico

by LacyC35223213562 Posted on March 21, 2016

Climate activists gear up to protest new oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico

By on 21 Mar 2016commentsShare

Louisiana’s Superdome has been a controversial setting for climate emergencies in the past, serving as the refuge for 30,000 people who were washed out of their homes during Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Now, it’s about to become a site for a battle between activists and a leading climate culprit: the oil and gas industry.

Federal regulators will be auctioning off 43 million acres of offshore oil and gas leases in the central and eastern Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday. The proposed sale includes 7,919 federally owned oil and gas drilling tracts located three to 230 miles offshore, some of them at depths of more than 11,000 feet.

Several national environmental organizations, including the Rainforest Action Network and 350.org, community members, and indigenous rights groups plan a rally outside the site this Wednesday to oppose new leases for offshore drilling leases. Inside the arena, the real action will be happening: The reserves, which activists say contain the eighth-largest carbon reserve on Earth, could be snapped up by oil and gas companies looking to tap into the Gulf’s still-vast fossil fuel resources.

“We want the administration to stop treating the Gulf like an energy sacrifice zone,” Marissa Knodel, a climate campaigner at Friends of the Earth who was en route to New Orleans to lead the rally, told Grist. “Louisiana is already seeing the devastating impacts from changing climate, with relocation efforts already underway.”

In his final year in office, President Barack Obama has charged forward with sweeping environmental policies, including a moratorium on new coal leases and, just last week, a five-year plan that closes the door the on fossil fuel drilling off the Atlantic coast for the next five years. Drilling opponents hope that the late-term pro-climate president will continue his streak by reversing his plan to offer 10 new leases in the Gulf. He was the president who acknowledged that the 2010 BP oil spill in the Gulf was the “worst environmental disaster America has ever faced.”

The rich deposits lying untapped under thousands of feet of ocean in the Gulf of Mexico are a driller’s dream: The Gulf’s 8,000 seeps, or natural springs where oil and gas leak out of the seafloor. Scientists estimate that the Gulf may contain as many as 42 billion barrels of crude oil, even with the drilling that began in the area in 1954.

There’s a large reserve in the Gulf that already contains infrastructure needed for drilling, like dozens of refineries located close by. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management estimated last September that the new leases could lead to the production of as many as 894 million barrels of oil and as much as 3.9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. Unlike Atlantic drilling, which faced relatively large opposition because offshore drilling had never taken hold in the area, the battle to closing drilling in the Gulf of Mexico is a bigger challenge, requiring the Gulf to turn away from a lucrative industry that has kept it afloat for decades. But given the effects of rapid climate change and rising sea levels in Gulf states, turning to renewables may be the only way they stay afloat, in a much more literal sense.

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Climate activists gear up to protest new oil drilling in the Gulf of Mexico

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Here’s What Happens When John Oliver Tries to Take Donald Trump’s Biggest Campaign Promise Seriously

by evandickson73 Posted on March 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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John Oliver continued his campaign to #MakeDonaldDrumpfAgain this week with a takedown of the Republican front-runner’s repeated calls to build a massive wall at the US-Mexico border—a plan Trump first introduced last June with the inflammatory statement that Mexicans were crime-peddling “rapists.”

“The border wall is one of the few policy proposals Trump has talked about in details, so instead of mocking or dismissing it out of hand, let’s take a serious proposal by a serious presidential candidate seriously,” Oliver said.

The Last Week Tonight host went on to expose the major problems with the real estate magnate’s signature immigration policy (other than the sheer xenophobia embedded in the plan), explaining to viewers that such a wall would likely cost $26 billion—far more than the $4 billion Trump tells his supporters it would take.

“It’s a big dumb thing that only gets more expensive over time,” Oliver said. “It’s like getting a pet walrus: You think it’s stupid now—wait until you learn what a bucket of sea cucumbers costs. You’re not prepared for that.”

More here – 

Here’s What Happens When John Oliver Tries to Take Donald Trump’s Biggest Campaign Promise Seriously

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Tax Plan Showdown: Now We Have Bernie Sanders Too

by WinnieHeim2 Posted on March 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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And now we are five. The Tax Policy Center has analyzed Bernie Sanders’ tax plan, and we now have data for everyone still running except John Kasich, who hasn’t produced any tax proposals yet. The full reports are here: Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Hillary Clinton, and Sanders. Click the links for details. Or just look at the charts below for the nickel summary.

As before, the Republican plans are all the same: a tiny tax cut for the middle class as a sop to distract them from the enormous payday they give to the rich, and a massive hole in the deficit.

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton’s plan is fairly modest. It leaves the middle class alone and taxes the rich a little more. Once her domestic proposals are paid for, it’s probably deficit neutral. Bernie Sanders is far more extreme. He’s basically the mirror image of the Republicans: he’d tax the middle class moderately more and soak the hell out of the rich. This would raise a tremendous amount of money, which he’d use to pay for his health care plan and his other domestic proposals. It’s impossible to say for sure how this would affect the deficit, but the evidence suggests that it would blow a pretty big hole since he plans to spend quite a bit more money than he’d raise.

So that’s that. Quite a choice we have this year.

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Tax Plan Showdown: Now We Have Bernie Sanders Too

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Top Ten List of Things That Are Going Great in America

by HalPXOcxgddti Posted on March 4, 2016

Mother Jones

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I get requests from time to time:

I can do better than that. How about a top ten list of all the things going well in America right now?

  1. Unemployment = 4.9 percent. By virtually every measure, more people are re-entering the labor force and more people are finding work.
  2. Inflation = 1.4 percent. The annual inflation rate for food is 0.8 percent.
  3. Economic growth = 2.4 percent. This could be better, but it’s not bad: the US economy is stronger than China, Japan, or Mexico. We’re not losing, we’re winning.
  4. The average price of a gallon of gas is $1.81, its lowest price in a decade.
  5. 20 million people have gained health insurance since 2013, and health care costs are rising at the most moderate rate in decades.
  6. The abortion rate has been declining for 30 years and is now lower than at any time since the early 70s.
  7. Among teens, alcohol use is down, crime is down, violent behavior is down, illicit drug use is down, sexual intercourse is down, condom use is up, pregnancy is down, and cigarette smoking is down.
  8. High school test scores and graduation rates are up.
  9. There were only 22 US military fatalities in the Middle East in 2015, the lowest number since 9/11.
  10. Net illegal immigration has been negative for seven straight years. Since 2008, the population of undocumented workers in the US has fallen from 12 million to 11 million.

Unfortunately, there is also one big thing that’s not going so well:

  1. Despite a reasonably strong economy, wages have declined since 2000 and have rebounded only slightly over the past couple of years.

It’s quite possible that this one thing is more important than all the others put together. And needless to say, anyone can put together their own list of ten things that are going badly: police shootings, ISIS, income inequality, etc. Nonetheless, when you look at the big picture, there’s an awful lot going right at the moment.

From:

Top Ten List of Things That Are Going Great in America

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We Are Live-Blogging the GOP Debate in Houston

by ChaunceKozak Posted on February 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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Well, that was bracing. Rubio and Cruz obviously both decided to take on Donald Trump at the same time, and they actually gave Trump some trouble. Aside from simply attacking him more than usual, they adopted the Trumpian tactic of interrupting at every opportunity so he had a hard time responding coherently. The downside is that it made the whole debate look a bit like kindergarten play time. The upside is that they finally got under Trump’s skin.

Trump ran into a couple of land mines tonight. Asked about his tax returns, he made up a feeble excuse about how he’s always being audited and that’s why he can’t release his returns. He could release them anyway, of course, and he can certainly release returns from a few years ago, since presumably those audits are done. He’s going to have to address that, though he can probably bluster his way past it long enough to get through Super Tuesday. In any case, Trump tried to make it look like he’s being persecuted by the IRS with all these audits, but Rubio and Cruz now have a really good attack line: If Trump is being audited, maybe there’s something fishy going on. Shouldn’t the public know about that?

The other land mine was on health care. Dana Bash joined Cruz and Rubio in pressing Trump on whether there was anything more to his health care plan than simply allowing insurance companies to compete across the entire country (in debatespeak, this was “getting rid of the lines”). Oddly enough, Trump allowed himself to get pressured into saying that this was literally his entire plan, which even for Trump strains the boundaries of idiocy. “Getting rid of the lines” might or might not be a good idea (it’s probably a good idea if it’s properly regulated), but its effect on health care costs would be quite modest. Beyond that, suggesting that insurance companies would all be happy to insure people with pre-existing conditions if the lines were eliminated—well, I’m not sure what to say about that. It’s fantasy land.

Trump had a minor hiccup when he claimed that the US has the highest taxes in the world. He probably meant to say that we have the highest corporate rates—which is close to true if you look at statutory rates—but instead he insisted that this applied to everything: “We pay more business tax, we pay more personal tax. We have the highest taxes in the world.” That’s basically the opposite of the truth. But I suppose this is the kind of flub that never seems to hurt him.

Best line of the night: After Trump reminded everyone about Rubio’s repeat-o-matic meltdown a couple of weeks ago, Rubio produced the night’s best zinger: “I see him repeat himself every night, he says five things: everyone’s dumb, he’s gonna make America great again, we’re going to win, win win, he’s winning in the polls, and the lines around the state. Every night.” It’s funny because it’s true! And I’m not even sure if it was rehearsed.

Scorecard: I think Trump took some real hits tonight. He could start to lose a few points in the polls, especially if he spends the next week fending off questions about his tax returns and his $1 million fine and his health care plan. Rubio and Cruz both did well, but I give Rubio the edge. His attacks were a little sharper and the rest of his debate performance was a little better. Carson and Kasich were, of course, nonentities. Never has it been so obvious that no one cares about them anymore.

Debate transcript here.

10:53 – And that’s a wrap.

10:52 – Trump: Politicians are all talk, no action. Vote Trump!

10:51 – Cruz: Blah blah blah. He’ll do everything.

10:50 – Rubio: The time for games is over. We need to bring an end to “the silliness, the looniness.”

10:50 – Kasich says he has loads of experience. He wants people to “think about” giving him their vote.

10:49 – Closing statements! Carson says his hands have saved lots of lives.

10:44 – When are we going to get a question about general relativity?

10:39 – Kasich thinks President Obama should have brokered an agreement with Apple. You bet. That would have worked great.

10:36 – Rubio says the government isn’t asking Apple to create a backdoor for the iPhone. In fact, that’s exactly what they’re asking for. Rubio clearly has no idea what a backdoor is.

10:34 – Wolf has completely lost control of this debate. In fairness, I’m not sure anyone could do any better.

10:32 – Cruz does an extended riff on Trump being a liar. Trump responds with an attack on Cruz for his Iowa shenanigans.

10:30 – Trump, Cruz, and Rubio are now in a three-way fight. Trump: “He’s a joke artist Rubio and he’s a liar Cruz.”

10:25 – Donald Trump is not just criticizing the Libya war, he’s literally praising Qaddafi.

10:21 – Carson whines about not getting called on. This is true, but it’s because no one cares about him anymore. Now that he finally gets some time, he complains that the IRS suddenly started auditing him after he began criticizing President Obama. The IRS is corrupt and it should be eliminated.

10:17 – Wolf asks about North Korea. Trump wanders off on the $21 trillion deficit. “We can’t afford to defend everyone.” Japan, Korea, Europe, they should all be paying us to defend them.

10:15 – The Rubio-Cruz-Trump fights have been great! The gloves are finally off, I guess. I wonder if it’s doing Trump any damage?

10:10 – Trump says he doesn’t want to take sides between Israel and the Palestinians. “But I’m totally pro-Israel.” Okey doke.

10:07 – Cruz asks again why Trump won’t release past tax returns. Trump: I’m being audited. Cruz: How many years? Trump: Four or five. (It was two or three ten minutes ago.) Unfortunately, Wolf goes to a commercial just as it gets good. Trump really has no excuse for not releasing returns from before the years he’s being audited. He blew it big time on this. He should never have used the audits as an excuse.

10:05 – Marian is distracted. She says the debate background looks like a hot dog.

10:03 – Cruz: The only reason Trump isn’t releasing past returns is because there’s something bad in them.

10:01 – Cruz says Trump needs to release his taxes because he’s being audited. Public needs to know if there’s some kind of fraud the government is investigating.

9:57 – Trump says you don’t learn anything from tax returns. Now he says he’ll release his tax returns when the audit is done. Uh huh. Hugh Hewitt says Trump promised to release his tax returns on his radio program. Trump says no one heard that because no one listens to Hewitt’s program.

9:53 – Now Wolf pushes Trump on what he’s going to cut to make up for his $10 trillion tax cut. Trump: “Waste fraud and abuse.” That’s it!

9:52 – Trump says we have the highest taxes in the world. Naturally Wolf doesn’t question this. Even for Trump, this is wildly removed from reality.

9:50 – Now Cruz going after Trump on health care too. Wolf wants to move on, but none will let him.

9:43 – Hmmm. Rubio must have been practicing holding his ground against a loudmouth. He’s dishing pretty well against Trump.

9:41 – Bash asks Trump to talk more about his health care plan. He drones on some more about the lines. Bash: “Is there anything you’d like to add to that?” Trump: “No! There’s nothing to add. What’s to add?”

9:39 – Trump: I watched Rubio melt down two weeks ago. Rubio: Trump only knows five things: Everyone’s dumb, we’re going to make America great again, win win win, we’re leading in the polls, and lines around the states. Bash breaks up the fight.

9:38 – Trump: Rubio doesn’t know about the lines. Rubio, sarcastically: That’s it? What’s your plan? Trump: You’ll have so many different plans. It’ll be beautiful.

9:36 – Bash: “Getting rid of state lines will solve all our health insurance problems?” Trump: You betcha.

9:35 – Trump says insurance companies are wrong when they say they need a mandate if they’re required to cover people with pre-existing conditions. Just another insurance company hustle.

9:33 – Zzzzz. Rubio reciting his index card on health care.

9:29 – Rubio says Trump was pro-life until recently. He wouldn’t trust him to appoint judges who defend religious freedom.

9:27 – Trump now hares off on a spiel about Cruz attacking his sister. He wants an apology. Cruz isn’t buying.

9:25 – Trump goes off on a tangent about Ted Cruz supporting the appointment of John Roberts, who allowed Obamacare to stand. Cruz throws Roberts under a bus, saying he only supported him because he was the nominee of the party.

9:22 – Cruz refuses to say whether he’d trust Donald Trump to appoint conservative justices.

9:20 – Trump: Hispanics love him, Univision loves him. He’ll be the greatest president for Hispanics ever.

9:09 – Trump accuses Rubio of lying. Rubio accuses Trump of lying. Trump says it was 30 years ago. Rubio: “I guess there’s a statute of limitation on lies.”

9:06 – Rubio now asking people to google “Trump Polish workers.” I think they were Romanian workers, but whatever. Then some stuff about Trump going bankrupt and Trump University getting sued. Then Trump goes after Rubio for his mortgage. Then they just start shouting at each other.

9:03 – How is Trump going to get Mexico to pay for the wall? Trump doesn’t answer, of course. He starts ranting about the president of Mexico using a bad word on television.

8:56 – Trump is now just randomly insulting Cruz for not having any friends.

8:54 – Rubio doing his best to take on Trump over immigration: he hired illegal immigrants and paid a fine, he hired foreigners at Mar-a-Lago, etc. Seems to have drawn a little blood.

8:45 – Kasich, Rubio, and Cruz are having none of Carson-geddon. America is great, anyone can become president, etc.

8:42 – Ben Carson starts off apocalyptic: “America is heading off the abyss of destruction.” Um….

8:40 – Hey! The debate is starting already? I guess I screwed up. I thought 8:30 was for the pregame chitchat. But it looks like we’ll be starting up any second.

Source – 

We Are Live-Blogging the GOP Debate in Houston

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2016 Is the Year That Voters Finally Got Tired of Reality

by merinenty Posted on February 21, 2016

Mother Jones

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Jeff Stein makes a potentially important point today:

On Saturday, about 80,000 voters participated in Nevada’s caucus — roughly two-thirds of the total that came out in 2008….Low turnout in Nevada wasn’t an outlier. New Hampshire saw 10 percent fewer voters in 2016 than it did eight years ago. In Iowa, turnout was also down — from 287,000 in 2008 to 171,000 this year.

….Sanders thinks “the core failure” of Obama’s presidency is its failure to convert voter enthusiasm in 2008 into a durable, mobilized organizing force beyond the election. Sanders vows to rectify this mistake by maintaining the energy from the campaign for subsequent fights against the corporate interests and in congressional and state elections.

The relatively low voter turnout in the Democratic primary so far makes this more sweeping plan seem laughably implausible. Three states have voted, we’ve had countless debates and town halls, and there’s been wall-to-wall media coverage for weeks….And yet … we have little evidence that Sanders has actually activated a new force in electoral politics. If he can’t match the excitement generated by Obama on the campaign trail, how can he promise to exceed it once in office?

Of course, it’s one thing to say that Sanders hasn’t generated huge turnouts in a primary against a fellow Democrat, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t generate a huge turnout against a Trump or a Cruz. The problem, of course, is that Hillary Clinton would quite likely generate a huge turnout as well. The prospect of either Trump or Cruz in the Oval Office would do wonders for Democratic panic no matter who the nominee is.

Sadly, turnout is a red herring. The real lesson of this year’s election is that candidates have learned there are no limits to what they can promise. Campaigning is always an exercise in salesmanship, and salesmen always overpromise. This year, though, we have two candidates who cavalierly and repeatedly promise the moon without making even a pretense that they have the slightest notion of how to accomplish any of it. And voters love it! Trump’s crowds go wild over the idea of Mexico paying for a wall and Sanders’ audiences go equally wild over his plan to blow away the entire American health care system and replace it with the NHS. This is the year that fantasy sells, and it sells big.

The conventional wisdom is that this is happening because voters are uniquely angry this year and attracted to outsiders who say they’re going to blow up the system. Maybe so. But I’ve heard that story pretty much every year for nearly my entire adult life, and weak economy or not I don’t really buy it. What’s different this year isn’t the electorate, it’s the candidates. American voters have always had an odd habit of simply believing whatever presidential candidates say, regardless of plausibility or past record, and this year two candidates have tested this to destruction. And guess what? It turns out that a lot of Americans will almost literally believe anything. I mean, China bashing and Wall Street bashing have always been good for some cheap applause, but this year we’re hearing blithe claims about crushing China by taxing them to death and smashing big banks into little bitty pieces, and the crowds are applauding even harder.

Trump and Sanders have shown that you can take overpromising to a far higher level than anyone ever thought possible. Is this unique to 2016? Or will others learn this lesson too? I guess we’ll have to wait for 2020 to find out.

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2016 Is the Year That Voters Finally Got Tired of Reality

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Ted Cruz Attacks Sean Penn—and Here’s Penn’s Response

by JunePounds Posted on February 4, 2016

Mother Jones

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At an addiction policy forum in Hooksett, New Hampshire, on Thursday, Sen. Ted Cruz, the winner of the Republican Iowa caucuses, turned his talk about the awful consequences of addiction into a rant against…illegal immigration. And, of course, the media and Hollywood. After describing how addiction has affected his family—his half sister died of a drug overdose in 2011—Cruz quickly pivoted to discuss the flood of “undocumented Democrats” (Freudian slip?) coming across the border from Mexico and the need to build a wall to keep them out. He suggested the wall was also needed to protect the United States from drug cartels. Then he turned to the entertainment industry and one member in particular:

El Chapo. You know, Sean Penn seems to think he is a sexy and attractive character. I so appreciate Hollywood for glorifying vicious homicidal killers. What a cute and chic thing to celebrate. Someone who murders and destroys lives for a living. El Chapo’s organization brings vast quantities of drugs into this country, vast quantities of heroin.

Of course, this was a reference to Sean Penn’s recent Rolling Stone article, in which Penn conducted an interview with the fugitive drug cartel chieftain in a secret jungle location. The piece did not celebrate El Chapo—but Cruz was looking to blame all the usual suspects for the drug epidemic in New England: the media, Democrats, and a big-name actor.

Asked to respond to Cruz’s effort to link him to the addiction plague in the Granite State, Penn, in an email, told Mother Jones:

Ted Cruz is a generically funny and dangerously adept thought-smith. Clearly, he watches too much television and neglected to read my article before criticizing. It’s understood. He’s busy trading genius and raising aspirations with Mr. Trump. Blame Canada.

Penn’s last sentence is a reference to this.

We’ve asked the Cruz campaign if it would like to respond—and whether the senator is a fan of South Park.

Read the article:

Ted Cruz Attacks Sean Penn—and Here’s Penn’s Response

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