Tag Archives: motherjones-com

Trumpmentum Has Been Losing Steam Ever Since the Debate

by DonnieWhited Posted on August 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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I hopped over to RealClear Politics this morning to take a look at their latest poll averages, and it shows something interesting: Donald Trump may have hit his ceiling. On August 5, he hit a peak at 24.3 percent. He then plateaued for a few days and has been falling ever since. He now stands at 22.0 percent.

Not all poll averages show the same thing. I also took a look at Pollster, and they show Trump’s climb starting to slow down, but not quite peaking yet. Even there, though, it looks like Trump is going to hit a ceiling soon.

At the risk of making a hard prediction that will soon look foolish, it looks to me like Trump has peaked at about 25 percent. Even among the Republican base, his blustery showmanship only gets him so far.

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Trumpmentum Has Been Losing Steam Ever Since the Debate

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China Seems to Be Lying About Its Unemployment Rate

by EzekielMontoya Posted on August 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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What’s the unemployment rate in China? Last month it was 4.1 percent. The month before it was 4.1 percent. Last year it was also 4.1 percent. And in 2013? That’s right: 4.1 percent.

A new NBER paper calls this “abnormally low and suspiciously stable,” which seems like a fair judgment. So the authors, their suspicions piqued, used a nationally representative household survey to calculate the actual unemployment rate. Unsurprisingly, it turns out to differ substantially from 4.1 percent. The chart above (modified from the paper to show the two series more clearly) shows data through 2009, which is as far as the household series goes. The actual unemployment rate has been above 10 percent ever since 2002, and is likely even higher than that now, given the sputtering economic problems in China.

As of 2009, unemployment was highest among young, non-college educated women (about 17 percent). It’s lowest among older college-educated men and women. But college is no longer a job guarantee for the young: the unemployment rate among young, college-educated men is 8 percent. Among women it’s about 10 percent.

“Keep an eye on China and don’t be surprised by the unexpected,” says Alex Tabarrok. “In China it’s not just the unemployment rate that is more volatile than it appears.”

Read this article: 

China Seems to Be Lying About Its Unemployment Rate

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E-Cigarettes May or May Not Be a Gateway Drug. (But Probably Not.)

by Juliann48Z Posted on August 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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Are e-cigarettes a gateway drug to traditional cigarettes? There’s a new study out that suggests they might be:

The study focused on ninth-graders at 10 public schools in Los Angeles who had tried e-cigarettes before the fall of 2013. Researchers surveyed those students in the spring of 2014 and fall of 2014, and discovered that they were about 2½ times as likely as their peers to have smoked traditional cigarettes.

This is a classic case of correlation which may or may not also be causation (something the authors acknowledge). Did more of the e-cigarette kids take up smoking because e-cigarattes gave them a taste for it? Or do the kids who are most likely to take up smoking in the first place simply start with e-cigarettes? There’s no way to tell just from this study.

That’s not to say it’s worthless, though. If the study found no correlation, then you could be pretty sure that e-cigarettes don’t lead to cigarette smoking. That would be worth knowing. But since it did find a correlation, we need more research to know if there’s causation here.

One way to get a tentative read on this is to look at total cigarette smoking among teens. If it’s up, then e-cigarettes might be leading more kids to cigarettes. If it’s not up, then e-cigarettes are probably just temporarily replacing cigarettes for kids who were going to take up smoking anyway. So which is it?

As it happens, we know the answer to this: cigarette smoking has plunged among teenagers over the past four years. On the other hand, total cigarette use among teens (cigarettes + e-cigarettes) has gone up. The cigarette plunge makes it unlikely that e-cigarettes are a gateway to traditional cigarettes. But the increase in total cigarette use suggests that e-cigarettes really are creating a new market. It’s complicated.

Link: 

E-Cigarettes May or May Not Be a Gateway Drug. (But Probably Not.)

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Raw Data: How Many Unarmed Victims Do Police Shoot Each Year?

by YRUAlphons Posted on July 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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Via Bob Somerby, here’s some raw data from the Washington Post’s ongoing analysis of police shootings in America:

According to the Post, about 16 percent of the victims weren’t carrying a deadly weapon at the time they were killed. That breaks down like this:

26 blacks out of 132, or about 20 percent.
35 whites out of 253, or about 14 percent.
17 Hispanics out of 83, or about 20 percent.

These percentages are roughly similar across races, but don’t account for total population. When you account for that, unarmed blacks are killed at about 4x the rate of whites and 2x the rate of Hispanics.

See the original article here:  

Raw Data: How Many Unarmed Victims Do Police Shoot Each Year?

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Quote of the Day: Mike Huckabee Wants American Wars to Last Ten Days Max

by Steven Posted on July 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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From noted national security expert Mike Huckabee:

Here is what we have to do: America has to have the most formidable, fierce, military in the history of mankind. So when we have a threat, whether it is ISIS, Boko Haram, Al Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah, the Iranians, whatever it is, we make it very clear that we plan to push back and destroy that threat to us. And we won’t take 10 years doing it, we hopefully won’t even take 10 months, it will be like a 10 day exercise, because the fierceness of our forces would mean that we can absolutely guarantee the outcome of this film. That’s how America needs to operate in the world of foreign affairs, and foreign policy.

Damn! If only we’d known this before. If we had taken this stuff a little more seriously, we could have wiped out all these guys in a short series of ten-day bloodbaths. No more Al-Qaeda. No more ISIS. No more Hamas or Hezbollah. Even the entire country of Iran would apparently have fallen to our fierceness in ten days or so. Booyah!

Generally, speaking, I try not to obsess over each and every Idiocy of the Day™, since they fly fast and furious during campaign season. But I have to assume that Huckabee is being more than astonishingly ignorant here. He’s also channeling the beliefs of a lot of base conservatives, who figure if we stopped pussyfooting around and spending all our time worrying about PC crap like gay soldiers and whatnot, we could unleash the full might of America and destroy our enemies in a matter of days or weeks. And that would be that.

I wonder how many people are out there who believe this? More than we think, probably. Maybe someone should take a poll.

See original article here – 

Quote of the Day: Mike Huckabee Wants American Wars to Last Ten Days Max

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Canada Warns: "Goldfish the Size of Dinner Plates Are Multiplying Like Bunnies"

by Eleanor60D Posted on June 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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A Fish Out of Water was one of my favorite childhood books. A boy buys a goldfish and is warned not to feed him too much. But he does, and the goldfish outgrows his tank. Then he outgrows a flower vase. Then he outgrows the bathtub. Then he outgrows the swimming pool. Finally, the owner of the shop comes to the rescue and gets the fish back to its normal size. The boy promises never to overfeed his fish again. Lesson learned: listen to your elders. The End.

Except….what if this was more than just a charming kids’ book? Could it actually have been a premonition of 21st century ecological disaster? What if there really were gigantic goldfish out there rampaging through our lakes and ponds?

If you have a goldfish, and you are kind of over that goldfish, to the point where you are now wondering whether it might be best to set that goldfish free, please rethink that decision. That’s the request from the Alberta government, which is trying to get Canadians to refrain from dumping out their fish tanks into ponds. Because those ponds are filling up with those discarded goldfish, which are getting really, really big in the wild.

Or, as the CBC notes: “Goldfish the size of dinner plates are multiplying like bunnies.”

If it can happen in Canada, it can happen in America. You have been warned.

From:

Canada Warns: "Goldfish the Size of Dinner Plates Are Multiplying Like Bunnies"

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Jeb Bush Doesn’t Want to Repeal Obamacare. Maybe.

by LawrencB82 Posted on June 16, 2015

Mother Jones

This is interesting from Sarah Kliff:

Jeb Bush laid out his top policies Monday in a speech announcing his run for the 2016 Republican nomination. But he left out one big Republican priority: repealing Obamacare….This reflects the changing politics of Obamacare. As Obamacare becomes more and more entrenched, it builds a constituency. As more people sign up for Obamacare, it becomes increasingly difficult to take away both practically and politically. So Republicans, who once ran and won calling for its end, are beginning to abandon the line.

Jeb has been fuzzy on Obamacare for a while, to the point where it’s been hard to know where he actually stands. It’s clear enough that he doesn’t like Obamacare—it’s a “monstrosity” and the “greatest job suppressor of the recovery”—but he never goes much beyond this kind of pro forma denunciation. So it’s not surprising that he didn’t give it a lot of attention in his announcement speech.

Still, it’s something to watch. Will he be gung ho for repeal once he’s on a debate stage with all the other candidates? Or will he stay soft and get pilloried? And if he does, how will this affect him with Republican voters?

Have any of the other ten GOP candidates who have announced so far gone soft on Obamacare repeal? This should be a research project for someone other than me. Inquiring minds want to know.

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Jeb Bush Doesn’t Want to Repeal Obamacare. Maybe.

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No, We Won’t Leave You Alone

by HenrietTKQ Posted on June 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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In response (I assume) to my nasty post about libertarians a few days ago, Cameron Belt tweets:

leaving people alone, what a radical idea!

This is pretty standard libertarian stuff, and on a personal level I’m sympathetic. I’m not quite a hermit, but I really do like to be left alone most of the time.

But for some reason it got me thinking. I wonder if the people who repeat this bromide understand just how radical an idea it actually is. Humans are, and always have been, social, hierarchical creatures. In every society since civilization began,1 it’s been all but impossible to be left alone. It’s such an unusual thing, in fact, that those who manage to spend a lot of time in solitude are often spoken of with reverence and awe. Spending even a few days in solitude is powerful enough that it’s been a rite of passage in a surprising number of cultures.

But for the other 99.9 percent of us, the norm is to be among, dependent, and answerable to other people. Family members, priests, bosses, governments, neighbors, police, creditors, merchants, and hundreds of others. In any society with more than about two people this is, and always has been, how humans organize themselves. We are gossipy and we are bossy. We are busybodies, we are rulemakers, we are rebels, we are moral scolds, and we are friends. (And enemies.)

So yes: leaving people alone really is a radical idea. Probably unworkable too, but that’s secondary. We are all merely hairless primates and we just aren’t going to mind our own business. Best get used to it.

1Yes, yes, I’m sure there’s an exception somewhere. Spare me.

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No, We Won’t Leave You Alone

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Bonus Friday Cat Blogging – 15 May 2015

by ElaineDAPY Posted on May 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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It’s been a traumatic week for Hilbert. He and Hopper were upstairs chasing each other around when he made the fateful decision to climb onto the bathroom counter and then leap to the top of the shower door. Why? Who knows. But he did it, and immediately discovered that the shower door railing is only about an inch wide. So he tumbled into the bathtub, and was then faced with an even bigger problem: my sister keeps the shower doors closed when they’re not in use.

A good deal of piteous meowing ensued until Karen investigated and found poor Hilbert trapped in the bathtub. She let him out—after taking a picture, of course—and reports that he spent the rest of the evening cuddled on her lap recovering from the indignity of it all.

Karen now leaves the door open and says that the bathtub has quickly become the final resting place for a succession of cat toys. This is probably Hopper’s doing. Either that or Hilbert got over his trauma mighty fast.

Link: 

Bonus Friday Cat Blogging – 15 May 2015

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Tales From City of Hope #10: Rebound Is Here!

by AsaM81harwerqg Posted on May 2, 2015

Mother Jones

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Yesterday my white blood count was <0.1. How much less? No telling, but my doctor called it an “honorary” 0.1.

But! Today my count is 0.1. Not much difference, you say, but it doesn’t matter. It’s higher than yesterday, and that means my transplanted stem cells are busily engrafting themselves and morphing into various blood products. Progress will be slow at first, but Friday was officially my bottom. Within a few days, my counts should start taking off much more rapidly. Huzzah.

In less good news, I slipped in the bathroom last night and got a pulled neck muscle and a black eye for my trouble. All I need now is a swastika tattoo and I’ll have the whole skinhead look down cold.

Link: 

Tales From City of Hope #10: Rebound Is Here!

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