Tag Archives: mother

Marco Rubio Sure Does Have a Lot of (Very, Very) Secret Admirers

by ChelseaI05 Posted on November 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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We all know that dark money is this year’s hotness, right? So who’s the king of dark money? It turns out the answer is Marco Rubio. Other candidates all have their Super PACs, but Super PACs disclose their donors. Rubio has the Conservative Solutions Project, a 501(c)(4) that doesn’t. And as Andrew Prokop points out, CSP has been responsible for virtually all of the TV ads so far promoting Rubio.

Wait—allow me to revise and extend. 501(c)(4) groups aren’t allowed to promote candidates, so of course CSP isn’t doing so. It’s doing “issue education.” Like this, for example:

Can you feel the education? Sure you can! So far Rubio’s buddies who run CSP have spent $8.4 million educating us about the problems facing America and the types of fresh, young, Cuban-American men who are leading the charge to solve them. For some reason though, none of the worthies involved in this issue education care to make their largesse public. I wonder what they’ve got to hide?

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Marco Rubio Sure Does Have a Lot of (Very, Very) Secret Admirers

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Russia Is Paying a Price for Vladimir Putin’s Napoleon Complex

by FRXJaneen858603 Posted on November 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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Russia says its pilot received no warning before Turkey shot down one of its fighters on Tuesday. Turkey says it gave plenty of warning. Here’s the New York Times today:

A United States military spokesman, Col. Steven Warren, confirmed on Tuesday that Turkish pilots had warned the Russian pilot 10 times, but that the Russian jet ignored the warnings….At the emergency NATO meeting, Turkish officials played recordings of the warnings Turkish F-16 pilots had issued to the Russian aircraft. The Russian pilots did not reply.

The fact that the US says this doesn’t automatically make it true. On the other hand, I wouldn’t believe Vladimir Putin without checking for myself if he told me the sky was blue. So while it’s entirely likely that both sides have been testing each other for the past couple of weeks, my best guess at this point is that Russia has flown over the Hatay peninsula repeatedly and been warned about it, but continued doing it anyway. This kind of provocation is pretty common in Putin’s Russia. This time, though, he did it to a country headed by a guy much like himself, and he paid the price for it.

So what happens now? “We’re not going to war against Turkey,” the Russian foreign minister said today, but Russia will probably announce some kind of symbolic reprisal soon. And that will be that. Putin is discovering to his sorrow that Syria is not quite the same as Crimea or South Ossetia. It’s all great when you can show off your shiny new cruise missiles on the nightly news, but this isn’t a war that will be over in a few weeks because there’s nobody to fight back. It’s a never-ending quagmire, and there’s not really much in it for Russia.

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Russia Is Paying a Price for Vladimir Putin’s Napoleon Complex

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President Obama Has a Different Job Than President Hollande

by MarcyEllington Posted on November 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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Dana Milbank was unimpressed by the contrast Barack Obama made yesterday during his press conference with French president François Hollande. Hollande was animated and can-do about destroying ISIS, while Obama was….a little more realistic about things:

Tough talk won’t defeat terrorists — but it will rally a nation. It’s no mere coincidence that the unpopular Hollande’s support has increased during his forceful response to the attacks, while Obama’s poll numbers are down.

The importance of language was very clear at the White House on Tuesday, even in translation. There was little difference in their strategies for fighting the Islamic State, but Hollande was upbeat and can-do, while Obama was discouraging and lawyerly. It was as if the smoke-’em-out spirit of George W. Bush had been transplanted into the body of a short, pudgy, bespectacled French socialist with wrinkled suit-pants.

….Hollande spoke of a new era. “There is a new mind-set now,” Hollande said. “And those who believed that we could wait” now realize “the risk is everywhere . . . . We, therefore, must act.”

Then came President Oh-bummer. “Syria has broken down,” he said. “And it is going to be a difficult, long, methodical process to bring back together various factions within Syria to maintain a Syrian state.”

Maybe you can motivate people when you sound so discouraging. But it’s hard.

Aside from the fact that Milbank is cherry picking a bit here, I think he misses a few things. First is the most obvious: France is the country that was just attacked. Of course its president is the more emotional one. Hollande would seem more emotional than pretty much anyone he was paired up with. Have you ever seen Angela Merkel at a press conference?

Second, let’s face facts: over the past year France has probably conducted a few hundred airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq. It only started strikes against ISIS in Syria last month. When Hollande says “we must act,” he’s basically asking the United States to act.

Third and most important: Obama isn’t trying to rally a nation. Just the opposite, maybe. He’s been down this road before, and he’s well aware that revving up the public for a splendid little war requires no effort at all—especially during campaign season. When reporters demand to know why we can’t just “take out the bastards,” it’s obvious that Obama has a different job than Hollande. He’s not trying to rally a nation, he’s trying to keep everyone grounded about exactly what we can do. And for that I say: good for him. It’s harder and less satisfying than preaching fire and brimstone, but in the long run it’s better for the country.

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President Obama Has a Different Job Than President Hollande

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Quote of the Day: Here’s What the Republican Primary Has Come To

by JanellBbqoc Posted on November 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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Gideon Resnick shows us what the Republican primary has come to:

A Carson campaign official told CBS News on Sunday that the candidate has considered taking a trip to Asia, Africa, or Australia in order to do something “eye-opening” prior to the Iowa caucus in February….(Australia was likely in the mix because Carson says he spent time working there at Charles Gairdner Hospital in 1983, according to his autobiography Gifted Hands. The Daily Beast has reached out to the hospital to confirm.)

A leading presidential candidate makes a simple, entirely plausible statement in his autobiography and yet a reporter feels like maybe he ought to make a call to double check it. Just in case. And I can’t say that I blame him.

(Fine: I’m being snarky. For the record, I believe that Carson really was there.)

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Quote of the Day: Here’s What the Republican Primary Has Come To

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Donald Trump Is a Pathological Liar. It’s Time to Stop Tiptoeing Around This.

by WalterHillen Posted on November 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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Let’s take a look at a few headlines about Donald Trump lately:

CNN: Does Donald Trump transcend the truth?

New York Times: Donald Trump’s shortcuts and salesmanlike stretches

ABC News: Donald Trump gaining strength despite questionable comments

The Atlantic: Donald Trump’s fact-free weekend

Washington Post: Donald Trump is leading an increasingly fact-free 2016 campaign

NBC News: Amid outcry, Trump continues campaign of controversy

BBC: Trump ‘wrong’ in claiming US Arabs cheered 9/11 attacks

CBS New York: Evidence supporting Trump’s claim of Jersey City Muslims cheering on 9/11 is hard to come by

Business Insider: Donald Trump declares massive victory on his widely disputed claim about 9/11

Los Angeles Times: When it comes to Syrian refugees and fighting Islamic State, Trump wings it

USA Today: Trump defends tweet with faulty crime stats as ‘a retweet’

Fox News: Trump tweet on black crime sets off firestorm

It’s way past time for this stuff. You can call Trump’s statements lies or fabrications or even falsehoods if you insist on being delicate about it. But you can’t call them questionable or controversial or salesmanlike or disputed or even faulty. The man is a serial, pathological liar. Isn’t it about time for the journalistic community to work up the courage to report this with clear eyes?

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Donald Trump Is a Pathological Liar. It’s Time to Stop Tiptoeing Around This.

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An Incomplete Catalog of Donald Trump’s Never-Ending Fabrications

by JoseBooker Posted on November 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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There’s a legal term applied to advertising called “puffery.” For example, if Coca-Cola says that Coke is the best tasting soda in the world, that’s just puffery. They can’t prove it, but that’s OK even if polls show that most people prefer Pepsi. Legally, statements like this are evaluated not as strictly factual claims, but as mere ordinary boasting, something that “ordinary consumers do not take seriously.”

The same concept applies to politics. Presidential candidates always say their tax plans will balance, they’ll crush every one of our enemies, and the current incumbent is the worst ever in history. This is just puffery. It’s worth pushing back on, but it’s not generally a hanging offense.

But Donald Trump is different. Sure, his picture is probably in the dictionary next to the word “puffery,” but he also tosses out wild howlers with a con man’s breezy assurance and tells flat-out lies as a matter of routine. He’ll say things one day, and 24 hours later he’ll blandly insist he’s being malignly misquoted even though it’s all on tape. These aren’t just exaggerations or spin or cherry picking. They’re things that are flatly, incontrovertibly wrong.

And that’s not all. Trump doesn’t do this only in private or only when he’s under pressure. Nor does he do it to cover up dubious past deeds. That would at least be normal human weakness. Rather, he does it again and again in front of huge crowds and on national TV, whether he needs to or not. It’s just his normal, everyday behavior.

We need an official list of this stuff. Like I said: not exaggerations or spin or cherry picking. Things that are just plain wrong. Here’s a start:

  1. On 9/11, he personally saw thousands of Muslims in Jersey City cheering.
  2. He never said that Marco Rubio was Mark Zukerberg’s “personal senator.”
  3. There are actually 93 million people not working and the real unemployment rate is about 40 percent.
  4. The Obama administration is sending Syrian refugees to red states.
  5. Climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese.
  6. He opposed the Iraq War and has dozens of news clippings to prove it.
  7. Thirteen Syrian refugees were “caught trying to get into the U.S.” (Actually, they just walked up and requested asylum.)
  8. He never said the stuff Megyn Kelly accused him of saying in the first debate.
  9. He will allow guns at Trump golf resorts.
  10. People on the terrorism watch are already prohibited from buying guns.
  11. Among white homicide victims, 81 percent are killed by blacks.
  12. America has the highest tax rate in the world.
  13. CNN lied when they reported that a speech he gave in South Carolina was one-third empty.
  14. His criticism of Ford prompted them to move a factory from Mexico to Ohio
  15. Vaccines cause autism.
  16. The Obama administration wants to admit 250,000 Syrian refugees.
  17. ISIS built a luxury hotel in the Middle East.
  18. He was on 60 Minutes with Vladimir Putin and “got to know him very well.”
  19. He was never interested in opening a casino in Florida.
  20. November 17: The United States only started bombing ISIS oil fields “two days ago.”
  21. His campaign is 100 percent self-funded.
  22. Mexico doesn’t have birthright citizenship.
  23. The Iran deal forces us to “fight with Iran against Israel” if Israel attacks Iran.
  24. We still “really don’t know” if Barack Obama was born in the United States.
  25. More than 300,000 veterans have died waiting for VA care.
  26. The Bush White House begged him to tone down his “vocal” opposition to the Iraq War.

This is not normal political hucksterism. It’s a pathological disregard for the truth. Trump knows that the conventions of print journalism mostly prevent reporters from really calling him out on this stuff, and he also knows that TV reporters won’t usually press him too hard because they want him back on their shows. And when he does get called out, he just bluffs his way through. He knows his followers will believe him when he says the fault-finding is just another example of how the liberal media has it out for him. Within a day or three, he’s repeated the lie often enough that it’s old news and enters the canon of what “everyone knows.” Journalists don’t even bother with it anymore because they’re already trying to play catch-up with his latest whopper.

Anyway, this list is meant only as a start. It’s what I came up with just by digging through my memory and doing a bit of googling. I’m sure there are plenty of others. Feel free to add them in comments.

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An Incomplete Catalog of Donald Trump’s Never-Ending Fabrications

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Carson Joins Trump Idiocy About Jersey City, Then Backs Away

by DorcasScrymgeour Posted on November 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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The latest from la-la land:

Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson joined GOP rival Donald Trump in claiming that he, too, saw news footage of Muslim-Americans cheering as the World Trade Center towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001 — despite the fact that no such footage has turned up yet. “I saw the film of it, yes,” Carson told reporters at a Monday campaign event, adding that it was documented by “newsreels.”

Newsreels? What is this? 1943? But wait. We have breaking news via Twitter from Jon Karl of ABC News:

@RealBenCarson spox Doug Watts: Carson was mistaken when he said he saw film of Muslims celebrating on 9/11 in Jersey City….”He doesn’t stand behind his comments on New Jersey and American Muslims,” Watts told ABC’s @KFaulders….”He was rather thinking of the protests going on in the Middle East and some of the demonstrations” there on 9/11.

This is nuts. These guys are trying to put the Onion out of business for real. “We have investigated and discovered that East Jerusalem is not on the Hudson River after all.” But hell, at least Carson is willing to admit his error. One brownie point for that—though it does raise some questions about his vaunted memory. Trump will continue to insist forever that he saw it, and his supporters will continue to believe him because you can never trust the mainstream media, can you? They’re always covering up for Jersey City’s Muslim community.

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Carson Joins Trump Idiocy About Jersey City, Then Backs Away

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Robots Will Take Your Job Someday, But In the Meantime They’ll Decide Which Jobs You Can Have

by Rob028740809 Posted on November 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Are you worried about the robots coming to take your job? You should be! But that’s still a ways away for most of us. In the meantime, the robots will be deciding which jobs we’re allowed to have. Today, the consistently fascinating Lydia DePillis points us to a new study that evaluates how well computer algorithms do at hiring new workers. The test bed is a large company with multiple locations. The workers perform relatively rote cognitive work that the authors can’t reveal, but it is “similar to jobs such as data entry work, standardized test grading, and call center work.”

In order to hire better workers, this company rolled out a new test that consists of “an online questionnaire comprising a large battery of questions, including those on technical skills, personality, cognitive skills, fit for the job, and various job scenarios.” So how did stony-hearted Mr. Robot do?

Better than humans, according to the authors. The test rates each applicant as green, yellow, or red, and they found that greens stayed on the job for 12 days longer than yellows, who in turn lasted 17 days longer than reds. This is significant since the average job tenure at this company is 99 days. More to the point, the authors find that more interference from hiring managers leads to worse results. “In our setting it provides the stark recommendation that firms would do better to remove discretion of the average HR manager and instead hire based solely on the test.”

But maybe hiring managers choose more productive workers? Nope. “In all cases, we find no evidence that managerial exceptions improve output per hour. Instead, we find noisy estimates indicating that worker quality appears to be lower on this dimension as well.”

Hmmph. I guess it’s HR managers who really need to be scared here. Apparently they simply add no value at all for jobs like this. Eventually, though, we’re going to start looking at whether these tests systematically discriminate against women or blacks or other protected classes. It would be pretty easy for this to happen either intentionally or unintentionally. Then the robots will either have to get smarter or else, ironically, find themselves out of a job.

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Robots Will Take Your Job Someday, But In the Meantime They’ll Decide Which Jobs You Can Have

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Marco Rubio Bravely Rules Out Negotiation With ISIS That No One Has Ever Proposed

by RXGAdam98611926 Posted on November 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Marco Rubio has aired his first TV ad, and I suppose it’s no surprise that we’ve already seen it. The whole thing is his schtick about the fight against ISIS being a civilizational struggle etc. etc. Here it is:

Once again, Rubio offers up his odd bit about ISIS hating us because we let women drive. But forbidding women to drive is actually one of the few odious things that ISIS doesn’t do. It’s our great and good friend Saudi Arabia that has a problem with women drivers. I’m pretty sure Rubio has never said a bad word about the Kingdom, so it seems a little odd to obsess about this when he’s got such a huge panoply of other horrific stuff to choose from (we don’t behead heretics, we don’t sanction slavery, and so forth).

At the end Rubio gravely intones that “there can be no arrangement or negotiation.” Where did that come from? Rubio would just as soon not let anyone know this, but the Obama administration is pretty firmly at war with ISIS. We’re bombing them. We’re taking territory from them. We’re doing out best to wipe out their financial infrastructure. Obama’s official policy is to “degrade and destroy” ISIS. Nobody—literally nobody—has ever suggested negotiating with them.

But I suppose none of that matters. Mostly, this is just Rubio trying his best to use dramatic lighting and a grave tone to avoid looking like he’s 22, which is probably his greatest drawback in the presidential race. It’s unfair, but with that baby face and breakneck speaking style that sounds like he’s still on the college debating team, he just doesn’t look old enough to be the leader of the free world. He seems more like a well-regarded up-and-comer, not the guy who already upped and came.

Does the ad work? It seems a little to strained to me, but I’m hardly his target audience. We’ll see.

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Marco Rubio Bravely Rules Out Negotiation With ISIS That No One Has Ever Proposed

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Alabama May Back Off Its Policy of Treating New Moms Like Meth Cooks

by 0dyqe2k7 Posted on November 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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A subcommittee of the Alabama Governor’s Health Care Improvement Task Force is examining proposals that aim to reform the nation’s harshest “chemical endangerment of a child” statute. The law states that “knowingly, recklessly, or intentionally” exposing a child to controlled substances or drug-making chemicals is a felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison if a child is unharmed, and 99 years if a child dies.

The enforcement of the law, originally intended to prosecute methamphetamine users who exposed children to the drug, has been unusually broad—including, as ProPublica’s Nina Martin previously reported in Mother Jones, the prosecution of pregnant women for exposing their fetuses to even small amounts of anti-anxiety medication. Nearly 500 women have been arrested on related charges since the law passed in 2006.

The law has been criticized by civil rights groups and public health experts for being harmful to those who need the most help—women who are faced with poverty and addiction—and for unfairly prosecuting women who were not drug users at all, but who might have simply taken a small dose of medication that eventually appeared appeared in the blood test of their new babies.

At the task force meeting on Wednesday, Dr. Darlene Traffanstedt, who heads the subcommittee, announced that three proposals were under consideration. One would require prosecutors to offer drug treatment to pregnant women instead of prosecution, another would protect women using drugs that have been legally prescribed to them (which has not been the case since 2006). The third option would hold the law to its “original intent” by preventing its use against women who are using pregnancy-related medication.

The subcommittee’s next meeting is in December, and a draft bill is expected by the beginning of February’s legislative session. Read more about the law and its consequences here.

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Alabama May Back Off Its Policy of Treating New Moms Like Meth Cooks

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