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Here’s How the White House Shapes Foreign Affairs Coverage

by DeniceQBJxtzjf Posted on May 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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In the New York Times Magazine this week, David Samuels has a long profile of Ben Rhodes, the chief messaging guru for foreign affairs in the White House. Generally speaking, Rhodes seems like my kind of guy, but what’s most interesting about the profile isn’t really Rhodes himself, but his take on modern journalism. For example:

It is hard for many to absorb the true magnitude of the change in the news business — 40 percent of newspaper-industry professionals have lost their jobs over the past decade….Rhodes singled out a key example to me one day, laced with the brutal contempt that is a hallmark of his private utterances. “All these newspapers used to have foreign bureaus,” he said. “Now they don’t. They call us to explain to them what’s happening in Moscow and Cairo. Most of the outlets are reporting on world events from Washington. The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience consists of being around political campaigns. That’s a sea change. They literally know nothing.”

Or this on how to spin the news:

Ned Price, Rhodes’s assistant, gave me a primer on how it’s done. The easiest way for the White House to shape the news, he explained, is from the briefing podiums, each of which has its own dedicated press corps. “But then there are sort of these force multipliers,” he said, adding, “We have our compadres, I will reach out to a couple people….And I’ll give them some color,” Price continued, “and the next thing I know, lots of these guys are in the dot-com publishing space, and have huge Twitter followings, and they’ll be putting this message out on their own.”

….In a world where experienced reporters competed for scoops and where carrying water for the White House was a cause for shame, no matter which party was in power, it was much harder to sustain a “narrative” over any serious period of time. Now the most effectively weaponized 140-character idea or quote will almost always carry the day, and it is very difficult for even good reporters to necessarily know where the spin is coming from or why.

Or this:

Rhodes developed a healthy contempt for the American foreign-policy establishment, including editors and reporters at The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker and elsewhere, who at first applauded the Iraq war and then sought to pin all the blame on Bush and his merry band of neocons when it quickly turned sour. If anything, that anger has grown fiercer during Rhodes’s time in the White House. He referred to the American foreign-policy establishment as the Blob. According to Rhodes, the Blob includes Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates and other Iraq-war promoters from both parties who now whine incessantly about the collapse of the American security order in Europe and the Middle East.

….Barack Obama is not a standard-issue liberal Democrat. He openly shares Rhodes’s contempt for the groupthink of the American foreign-policy establishment and its hangers-on in the press. Yet one problem with the new script that Obama and Rhodes have written is that the Blob may have finally caught on.

The Blob “catching on” means that a lot of members of the foreign policy establishment have decided that maybe they don’t like Obama so much after all. He’s just too unwilling to send in the military when there’s a problem somewhere. At least, that seems like their big complaint to me.

Anyway, the whole thing is worth a read—not so much for what it says about Rhodes or Obama, but for what it says about the news business circa 2016. In a way, nothing has changed: presidents always try to shape the news, and they use whatever tools are at hand in their particular era. But in another way, everything has changed. It’s not just the tools that have changed this time, it’s the entire press corps.

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Here’s How the White House Shapes Foreign Affairs Coverage

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Americans Aren’t Really Very Angry — Except Toward Uncle Sam

by ZoilaSandes65 Posted on May 6, 2016

Mother Jones

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Are voters really angry this year? The Associated Press says no:

All that talk of an angry America?

An Associated Press-GfK poll finds that most Americans are happy with their friends and family, feel good about their finances and are more or less content at work. It’s government, particularly the federal government, that’s making them see red.

Hmmm. People are generally pretty happy with their finances and their personal lives, but they’re really pissed off at the federal government. We’ve seen this dynamic before. Here’s a long-term look at polling data from the Washington Post:

Anger toward the federal government has been on a steady upward trend ever since 2003 (though voters in 2016 are less angry than they were in 2014). And this trend is notably unaffected by economic conditions. Anger didn’t spike during the 2000 dotcom bust and it didn’t spike during the 2008 crash. So what’s going on? The obvious culprits are:

Fox News and the rest of the conservative outrage machine
The Iraq war, which explains why anger started to rise in 2003
The tea party, which explains the spike in 2010
The election of Barack Obama, which would explain a spike beginning around 2008 (there’s no data between 2004-2010)

Take your pick. Maybe it’s a combination of things. But the bottom line seems fairly simple: there’s voluminous data suggesting that, in general, Americans are fairly happy with their personal finances and fairly happy with their lives in general. As happy as they’ve ever been, anyway. But they’re pretty pissed off at the federal government. If there’s anything interesting to be said about voter anger, this is the puzzle to focus on.

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Americans Aren’t Really Very Angry — Except Toward Uncle Sam

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Here’s Why OxyContin Is So Damn Addictive

by GrettaRupert Posted on May 5, 2016

Mother Jones

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Why has OxyContin become the poster child for opioid abuse? The LA Times has a long investigative piece today which suggests that a big part of the blame should be laid at the feet of Purdue Pharma, the makers of the drug. When OxyContin was launched, it was billed as a painkiller that would last 12 hours—longer than morphine and other opioids. That 12-hour dosing schedule was critical to its success. Without it, Oxy didn’t have much benefit. Unfortunately, it turned out that it wore off sooner for a lot of people:

Experts said that when there are gaps in the effect of a narcotic like OxyContin, patients can suffer body aches, nausea, anxiety and other symptoms of withdrawal. When the agony is relieved by the next dose, it creates a cycle of pain and euphoria that fosters addiction, they said.

OxyContin taken at 12-hour intervals could be “the perfect recipe for addiction,” said Theodore J. Cicero, a neuropharmacologist at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and a leading researcher on how opioids affect the brain.

Patients in whom the drug doesn’t last 12 hours can suffer both a return of their underlying pain and “the beginning stages of acute withdrawal,” Cicero said. “That becomes a very powerful motivator for people to take more drugs.”

But Purdue refused to accept shorter dosing schedules, since that would eliminate its strongest competitive advantage. Instead, they launched a blitz aimed at doctors, telling them to stick with the 12-hour dosing but to prescribe larger amounts. Sometimes this worked and sometimes it didn’t, and when it didn’t it increased the chances of addiction:

In the real world practice of medicine, some doctors turned away from OxyContin entirely. San Francisco public health clinics stopped dispensing the painkiller in 2005, based in part on feedback from patients who said it wore off after eight hours. The clinics switched to generic morphine, which has a similar duration and costs a lot less.

“What I had come to see was the lack of evidence that it was any better than morphine,” Dr. Mitchell Katz, then head of the San Francisco public health department, said in an interview.

The whole piece is worth a read. Purdue has known from the start that 12-hour dosing didn’t work for a significant number of patients, but they relentlessly focused their marketing in that direction anyway. Why? Because without it, Oxy wouldn’t be a moneymaker. As for the danger this posed, that was mostly suppressed by keeping documents under seal in court cases “in order to protect trade secrets.” Welcome to the American pharmaceutical industry.

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Here’s Why OxyContin Is So Damn Addictive

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Obama drinks to his first Flint visit since lead poisoning crisis

by SilviaLamar6141 Posted on May 4, 2016

U.S. President Barack Obama drinks a glass of filtered water during a visit to Flint. REUTERS/Carlos Barria – RTX2CVDN

Obama drinks to his first Flint visit since lead poisoning crisis

By on May 4, 2016Share

President Obama’s first visit to Flint, Michigan since declaring a state of emergency was heavy on the optics from the start. Flanked by Flint residents and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder, Obama worked to restore faith in a city that’s been totally betrayed by local, state, and federal levels of government over its water crisis.

The details of the trip appeared to be up in the air until the very last minute. Particularly the detail of whether Obama would drink the tap. The day before, staffers from Snyder’s office (who’s in the midst of a 30-day pledge to only drink Flint’s filtered tap water, in an effort to convince residents it’s safe) told the press he hoped Obama would drink from the tap while in town. Speaking from Air Force One this morning, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said it was “unclear” whether Obama would drink it.

In the end, the president tried the filtered water from the Flint public water system — twice.

“Generally, I haven’t been doing stunts, but here you go,” Obama said, taking a sip from a glass on a table after a meeting with federal officials at a food bank. “Filtered water is safe and it works.”

Later in the day, POTUS had a coughing fit during a speech at Northwestern High School and asked for another glass. This time it wasn’t a stunt. “I really did need a glass of water,” he insisted. “This is not a stunt.”

The trip was on the same day that the Michigan legislature appropriated an additional $128 million in aid for Flint, some of which will go towards replacing the city’s lead pipes — a process that could take another two years.

Flint residents aren’t letting local or state officials off the hook: One city and two state officials were recently hit with criminal charges. Governor Snyder — who says he can’t eat in a public restaurant these days without being heckled — was basically booed off the stage at Northwestern High School while introducing the President.

Speaking to a restless crowd of around 1,000 people at the high school, Obama did his damnedest to stay positive and constructive. He encouraged Flint residents to flush contaminants from their pipes by running the water in sinks in bathtubs, part of the “Flush for Flint” program — “not the most elegant title,” POTUS quipped, to some laughs. He also announced expanded Medicaid access for Flint residents though a state and federal collaboration, and strongly urged parents to get their kids checked.

But Obama also acknowledged the government’s failure to protect Flint. “This is a man-made crisis,” the President said.

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Obama drinks to his first Flint visit since lead poisoning crisis

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It’s Looking Like Another Trump Blowout in Indiana

by TamikaMordaunt4 Posted on May 3, 2016

Mother Jones

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There’s not much more to say about the Republican primary. The polls now show Donald Trump with a commanding lead in tomorrow’s primary in Indiana, and he’s got a big lead in California too. It’s all over but the shouting.

Original article – 

It’s Looking Like Another Trump Blowout in Indiana

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Is Bernie Sanders Just the Latest Goo-Goo Candidate?

by ReganRojas Posted on May 2, 2016

Mother Jones

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Jonathan Chait argues that the appeal of Bernie Sanders isn’t truly rooted in his ideology:

It is certainly true that Sanders pushed the debate leftward, by bringing previously marginal left-wing ideas into the Democratic discussion….But to understand the Sanders campaign as primarily a demand for more radical economic policies misses a crucial source of his appeal: as a candidate of good government.

American liberalism contains a long-standing tradition, dating back to the Progressive Era, of disdain for the grubby, transactional elements of politics….Candidates who have fashioned themselves in this earnest style have included Adlai Stevenson, Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, Jimmy Carter, Gary Hart, Jerry Brown, Howard Dean, and Barack Obama. These candidates often have distinct and powerful issue positions, but their appeal rests in large part on the promise of a better, cleaner, more honest practice of politics and government.

I’ve made much the same argument myself, so you’d think I’d agree with Chait. But after hearing from a lot of pissed-off Bernie supporters over the past few days, I’m not so sure anymore. For example, here is Ryan Cooper explaining why non-Boomers like Bernie’s ideas:

Though I can’t speak for everyone, I’d wager that young people are attracted to those ideas because they know what it’s like to graduate with a crushing load of student debt or to have a baby in a country with no paid leave but which also expects both parents to work full-time. Or maybe they can just feel that the bottom half of the income ladder is getting a raw deal. They’re not idiots in thrall to a political charlatan.

I’ve gotten an awful lot of responses like this. The gist is usually a combination of (a) my “statistics” about the state of the economy are totally bogus, and (b) I’m too fat and contented to understand what life is like for anyone less fortunate than me. But here’s the thing: most of these responses seem to come from folks who themselves have student debt or low incomes. There’s nothing wrong with that, and I’d fully expect these folks to appreciate Bernie’s message. But they’re not arguing for good government, they’re arguing for policies that would help them personally. That’s your basic transactional politics, no matter how you dress it up.

POSTSCRIPT: I think Cooper is very, very wrong about the history of health care reform too, but I’ll leave that for another time.

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Is Bernie Sanders Just the Latest Goo-Goo Candidate?

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Friday Fundraising and Cat Blogging – 29 April 2016

by MattKetner Posted on April 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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Why do we beg you for money three times a year? Clara and Monika explain:

Remember when Chris Hughes put The New Republic up for sale earlier this year? His letter to TNR staff subtly blamed the very same people it was addressed to: “I will be the first to admit that when I took on this challenge nearly four years ago, I underestimated the difficulty of transitioning an old and traditional institution into a digital media company in today’s quickly evolving climate.”

Bullshit. “Transitioning” was not The New Republic’s main challenge. Refusing to work on, with, and for the internet was once a pervasive problem in news organizations, but while vestiges of that still linger, it is no longer what keeps publications from succeeding financially.

What keeps them from making money now is that online advertising pays pennies….From the very beginning, 40 years ago this year, our newsroom has been built on the belief that journalism needs to be untethered from corporate interests or deep-pocketed funders—that the only way a free press can be paid for is by its readers. This can take a few different forms: subscriptions, donations, micropayments, all of which we’re experimenting with. It can be something the audience is forced to do (via the paywalls you’ll find at the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal) or something they choose to do, as in public radio.

At Mother Jones, we’ve gone the latter route: Our mission is to make our journalism accessible to as many people as possible. Instead of requiring you to pay, we bet on trust: We trust you’ll recognize the value of the reporting and pitch in what you can. And you trust us to put that money to work—by going out there and kicking ass.

So please help us out! This is my final pitch for the spring fundraiser, and it includes more options than ever before. You can donate via PayPal or credit card, as usual, or you can sign up to make a monthly donation. If enough of you do this, maybe we can cut back on the fundraising begs? Maybe.

Click here to donate via PayPal.
Click here to donate via credit card.

And with that out of the way, it’s finally time for catblogging. Hopper’s new favorite place lately is…me. When I settle down on the sofa these days, she comes right over and flops down on my stomach. After a good tummy rub, she snoozes while I peruse the news on my tablet. It works out pretty well for everyone.

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Friday Fundraising and Cat Blogging – 29 April 2016

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Here’s Why I Never Warmed Up to Bernie Sanders

by SarahMarquardt Posted on April 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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With the Democratic primary basically over, I want to step back a bit and explain the big-picture reason that I never warmed up to Bernie Sanders. It’s not so much that he’s all that far to my left, nor that he’s been pretty skimpy on details about all the programs he proposes. That’s hardly uncommon in presidential campaigns. Rather, it’s the fact that I think he’s basically running a con, and one with the potential to cause distinct damage to the progressive cause.

I mean this as a provocation—but I also mean it. So if you’re provoked, mission accomplished! Here’s my argument.

Bernie’s explanation for everything he wants to do—his theory of change, or theory of governing, take your pick—is that we need a revolution in this country. The rich own everything. Income inequality is skyrocketing. The middle class is stagnating. The finance industry is out of control. Washington DC is paralyzed.

But as Bill Scher points out, the revolution that Bernie called for didn’t show up. In fact, it’s worse than that: we were never going to get a revolution, and Bernie knew it all along. Think about it: has there ever been an economic revolution in the United States? Stretching things a bit, I can think of two:

The destruction of the Southern slave economy following the Civil War.
The New Deal.

The first of these was 50+ years in the making and, in the end, required a bloody, four-year war to bring to a conclusion. The second happened only after an utter collapse of the economy, with banks closing, businesses failing, wages plummeting, and unemployment at 25 percent. That’s what it takes to bring about a revolution, or even something close to it.

We’re light years away from that right now. Unemployment? Yes, two or three percent of the working-age population has dropped out of the labor force, but the headline unemployment rate is 5 percent. Wages? They’ve been stagnant since the turn of the century, but the average family still makes close to $70,000, more than nearly any other country in the world. Health care? Our system is a mess, but 90 percent of the country has insurance coverage. Dissatisfaction with the system? According to Gallup, even among those with incomes under $30,000, only 27 percent are dissatisfied with their personal lives.

Like it or not, you don’t build a revolution on top of an economy like this. Period. If you want to get anything done, you’re going to have to do it the old-fashioned way: through the slow boring of hard wood.

Why do I care about this? Because if you want to make a difference in this country, you need to be prepared for a very long, very frustrating slog. You have to buy off interest groups, compromise your ideals, and settle for half loaves—all the things that Bernie disdains as part of the corrupt mainstream establishment. In place of this he promises his followers we can get everything we want via a revolution that’s never going to happen. And when that revolution inevitably fails, where do all his impressionable young followers go? Do they join up with the corrupt establishment and commit themselves to the slow boring of hard wood? Or do they give up?

I don’t know, but my fear is that some of them will do the latter. And that’s a damn shame. They’ve been conned by a guy who should know better, the same way dieters get conned by late-night miracle diets. When it doesn’t work, they throw in the towel.

Most likely Bernie will have no lasting effect, and his followers will scatter in the usual way, with some doubling down on practical politics and others leaving for different callings. But there’s a decent chance that Bernie’s failure will result in a net increase of cynicism about politics, and that’s the last thing we need. I hate the idea that we might lose even a few talented future leaders because they fell for Bernie’s spiel and then got discouraged when it didn’t pan out.

I’ll grant that my pitch—and Hillary’s and Barack Obama’s—isn’t very inspiring. Work your fingers to the bone for 30 years and you might get one or two significant pieces of legislation passed. Obviously you need inspiration too. But if you don’t want your followers to give up in disgust, your inspiration needs to be in the service of goals that are at least attainable. By offering a chimera instead, Bernie has done the progressive movement no favors.

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Here’s Why I Never Warmed Up to Bernie Sanders

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Campaign Reporters Fess Up: They Really Can’t Stand Hillary Clinton

by FannyMileham Posted on April 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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Last month Politico polled 80 campaign reporters about this year’s race. It turns out they hate Nevada and Ohio but love South Carolina—mainly because it has good food, apparently. They think Maggie Haberman is the best reporter covering the race, and Fox News has done the best job of hosting a debate. Donald Trump has gotten the softest coverage, probably because they all agree that “traffic, viewership, and clicks” drives their coverage.

And who’s gotten the harshest coverage? Do you even have to ask? It turns out that even reporters themselves agree that it’s not even a close call:

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Campaign Reporters Fess Up: They Really Can’t Stand Hillary Clinton

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Quote of the Day: John Boehner Sure Doesn’t Think Much of Ted Cruz

by XavierT89k Posted on April 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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From former House speaker John Boehner, asked what he thinks of Ted Cruz:

I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.

The interesting thing about this is that it’s not very interesting. It’s just par for the course for Cruz.

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Quote of the Day: John Boehner Sure Doesn’t Think Much of Ted Cruz

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