Tag Archives: obama

Gay People, Liberal Nun Fail to Embarrass Pope at the White House

by dkqmqscwx Posted on September 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Pope Francis survived his visit to the White House this morning without anyone flashing boobs at him. That news might come as a surprise to conservatives, who for the past week have been attacking President Barack Obama for indecorously inviting LGBT activists and a liberal nun to attend the pope’s speech at the White House. They warned that the potential of these guests to embarrass the pontiff was scandalously high.

Among those on the guest list were the first gay Episcopal bishop, Gene Robinson, and Nuns on the Bus organizer Sister Simone Campbell, who defied American bishops to organize American nuns to publicly support Obamacare, which the bishops have said is akin to endorsing abortion because it mandates insurance coverage for contraceptives. Others included a gay Catholic blogger and a couple of transgender activists.

When the news broke of their inclusion in the papal event, GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee went on a tear, telling Fox’s Megyn Kelly that inviting them to the White House was like setting up an open bar at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. He has claimed the guest list was evidence that Obama was more interested in respecting the religious views of Osama bin Laden than those of the pope. He wrote in the Daily Caller:

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Gay People, Liberal Nun Fail to Embarrass Pope at the White House

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Solitary Confinement Coffee May Be The Worst Branding Idea Ever

by NikiPaceecyot Posted on September 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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Jailhouse Coffee

Do prison cells sell? That seems to be the idea behind Solitary Sumatra, an organic, fair trade coffee blend sold by Jailhouse Coffee, a newish small-batch roastery in New York City. The coffee is not made by prisoners or ex-felons and the company’s only connection to incarceration is that, according to its website, “there is a ‘bighouse’ just near the roastery” in Queens.

The 83 marks scratched into the coffee bag far surpass the 15 days the United Nations specifies as the maximum amount of time anyone should spend in solitary confinement. Anything beyond that “constitutes torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.” The Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that more than 80,000 prisoners are in isolation at a given time in the United States. Some of these are the “worst of the worst,” but many are not. In New York, prisoners have been thrown in the hole for “wasting food” or having an “untidy cell or person.” On Rikers Island, not far from Queens, 16-year-old Kalief Browder spent long stretches in solitary confinement during the three years he spent in pretrial detention for allegedly stealing a backpack. Two years after his release, he committed suicide. Nearly two out of five suicides in prison happen in solitary confinement. The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, President Obama, and Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy have spoken out against the excessive use of solitary confinement in this country.

So who thought solitary confinement would make a good branding idea? Is it just hipster irony that makes our prison system’s most extreme aspects somehow cute? Perhaps it’s the Orange Is The New Black effect, a consequence of the popularization and romanticization of prison life. (Like the woman who dressed a girl in an orange jumpsuit and blackface for Halloween last year.)

I couldn’t reach anyone at the company to explain their marketing strategy. So far, they seem to have gotten little flack for their brand, though one person has taken it upon himself to circulate a petition asking the company to change its name. Jailhouse Coffee’s blends also include Solitary Peru, Good Behavior Organic Blend, and Chain Gang Espresso, which harkens to the time when black prisoners were used as free labor across the South.

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Solitary Confinement Coffee May Be The Worst Branding Idea Ever

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Hillary Clinton Opposes the Keystone Pipeline

by MildredUnwin Posted on September 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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Hillary Clinton has long declined to take a position on whether or not the Obama administration should approve the Keystone XL oil pipeline. That just changed. At a campaign event Tuesday in Des Moines, Iowa, Clinton came out against the controversial project.

Here’s her statement, via NBC:

“I think it is imperative that we look at the Keystone XL pipeline as what I believe it is: A distraction from the important work we have to do to combat climate change, and, unfortunately from my perspective, one that interferes with our ability to move forward and deal with other issues,” she said during a campaign event in Iowa Tuesday.

“Therefore, I oppose it. I oppose it because I don’t think it’s in the best interest of what we need to do to combat climate change.”

Clinton now joins the ranks of two of her opponents in the Democratic presidential primary, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley, who have both opposed the pipeline. Democrat Jim Webb, however, supports the project, along with all of the Republican candidates. A final decision, which has been years in the making, is expected from the Obama administration by the end of this year.

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Hillary Clinton Opposes the Keystone Pipeline

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Pope Francis Just Arrived For His First Visit to the United States

by LouellaBenjamin Posted on September 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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By Scott Malone and Philip Pullella

JOINT BASE ANDREWS, Md. (Reuters) – Pope Francis arrived on his first visit to the United States on Tuesday, bringing to Washington a message that its power and wealth should be made to serve humanity, and not the other way around.

An Alitalia plane carrying the Argentine-born leader of the world’s 1.2 billion member Roman Catholic church touched down at Joint Base Andrews after a flight from Cuba.

Schoolchildren who gathered on the tarmac to welcome Francis cheered as the plane descended. “We love Francis, yes we do. We love Francis, how about you?” they chanted.

In a sign of the importance that the White House gives to the visit, President Barack Obama took the unusual step of traveling to the air base with his family to welcome Francis.

The two men meet again on Wednesday at the White House, after which the 78-year-old pope will parade past Washington’s major monuments before a crowd expected to reach tens of thousands.

The pontiff has electrified liberal-leaning U.S. Catholics with his shift in emphasis towards forgiveness and concern for the poor. He has dismayed some conservative followers with comments of concern over climate change and a pivot away from messages focused on the church’s ban on birth control and opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage.

Francis was also expected to talk about immigration during his six-day visit, a top issue for him since his first days as pope in 2013.

He will make the first address by any pope to the U.S. Congress on Thursday, a speech to the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Friday and an open-air Mass in Philadelphia where 1.5 million people are expected to attend.

Francis spent four days in Cuba, where he urged a continued reconciliation between the Communist-run island and its superpower neighbor, building on a new detente he helped to broker earlier this year.

(Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton at Joint Base Andrews and Laila Kearney in Philadelphia; Writing by Alistair Bell; Editing by Mary Milliken and Grant McCool)

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Pope Francis Just Arrived For His First Visit to the United States

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The Feds Just Accused Volkswagen of an Unbelievable Scheme to Evade Pollution Laws

by SamualKaufman Posted on September 18, 2015

Mother Jones

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Volkswagen produced hundreds of thousands of cars with a device made to intentionally evade air pollution standards, according to a citation issued today by the Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA alleges that nearly 500,000 VW cars sold in the United States over the last several years were equipped with the device, which the EPA says enabled the onboard computer to detect when the car was undergoing an emissions test. At that time, the engine would operate in a way that complied with emissions standards; at all other times, the car would produce emissions of harmful gases up to 40 times greater than allowed by federal law. The primary gas in question is nitrogen oxide, which causes smog, which is a leading cause of respiratory ailments.

This table from the citation lists the models that were allegedly outfitted with the illegal device. All of the cars in question had diesel engines:

EPA

The EPA cites a 2014 study by the International Council on Clean Transportation that found a troubling gap between real-world and laboratory emissions in some diesel cars, without naming specific manufacturers.

“When you test it in the lab, they looked great,” said Anup Thiruvengadam, one of the study’s authors. “But when you actually drive them around, emissions were much higher.”

The citation issued today lifted the curtain on the specific cars in question and delineates the federal laws VW is accused of violating. The EPA is continuing to investigate the charges and has passed the citation to the Justice Department, where it will be up to federal prosecutors to prove the charges. Volkswagen could be compelled to fix all the cars and pay up to $3,750 per car (roughly $18 billion altogether) in fines.

In a statement, a Volkswagen spokesperson said the company was cooperating with the investigation but declined to comment further.

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The Feds Just Accused Volkswagen of an Unbelievable Scheme to Evade Pollution Laws

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Republicans Hate Planned Parenthood but Want to Put One of Its Backers on the $10 Bill

by RufusDuterrau Posted on September 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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At the end of last night’s GOP debate, moderator Jake Tapper asked the candidates which woman they would choose to put on the $10 bill. Several of the 11 candidates on stage named their daughters or wives. Mike Huckabee awkwardly poked fun at his wife’s spending habits in nominating her. “That way,” he said, “she could spend her own money with her face!”

But Sen. Marco Rubio, Sen. Ted Cruz, and Donald Trump went for gravitas. All three picked Rosa Parks, the civil rights leader whose refusal to give up her seat sparked the Montgomery bus boycott, to be the first woman pictured on US paper currency. “An everyday American that changed the course of history,” said Rubio. “She was a principled pioneer that helped change this country,” noted Cruz, clarifying that he would put her on the $20 bill, in order to keep Founding Father Alexander Hamilton on the $10 bill.

The candidates are right that Parks was a “principled pioneer,” but her advocacy went beyond racial justice. Later in life, Parks was an avid supporter of Planned Parenthood, and she even served on its board.

That’s an inconvenient fact for the GOP candidates who have been eager to demonize Planned Parenthood. Throughout the debate, all of them repeatedly touted their pro-life records and vowed to defund Planned Parenthood. Cruz is currently leading the charge against Planned Parenthood in the Senate, threatening to shut down the government over a spending bill that includes federal funding for the women’s health organization.

Cruz elaborated on that ongoing funding battle at the debate, honing in on the doctored sting videos that purport to show Planned Parenthood officials selling fetal organs for profit—a criminal allegation that state after state has found to be false. “Absolutely we shouldn’t be sending $500 million of taxpayer money to funding an ongoing criminal enterprise,” Cruz said of Planned Parenthood. “And I’ll tell you, the fact that Republican leadership in both houses has begun this discussion by preemptively surrendering to Barack Obama and saying, ‘We’ll give in because Obama threatens a veto.’ We need to stop surrendering and start standing for our principles.”

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Republicans Hate Planned Parenthood but Want to Put One of Its Backers on the $10 Bill

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Did Jeb Bush Call for a Cyber War Against China?

by DaisyNewsom Posted on September 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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In between all the theatrics and back-and-forth of the second GOP presidential debate—Donald Trump and Carly Fiorina facing off about his derogatory comment regarding her looks, Ben Carson declining to high-five Trump, Rand Paul calling Trump a junior high school bully—something interesting happened that few seemed to notice: Jeb Bush called for launching a cyber attack against China.

In the middle of the lengthy debate, CNN anchor Jake Tapper asked Paul, the senator from Kentucky, if he agreed with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s demand that President Barack Obama cancel the state dinner for Chinese President Xi Jinping because of China’s currency manipulation and its alleged cyber assaults against the United States. Paul replied, “I don’t think we need to be rash, I don’t think we need to be reckless, and I think need to leave lines of communication open.” Walker stuck to his stance: “When it comes to China, why would we be giving an official state visit to a country that’s been involved in a massive cyber attack against the United States?”

Tapper then turned to Bush, the former governor of Florida, and asked, “Your father was the chief diplomatic envoy to China back when Nixon opened relations to China. Is Scott Walker’s approach the right one, canceling the state dinner?” Here’s what Bush said:

No, I don’t think so, but we need to be strong against China. We should use offensive tactics as it relates to cyber security, send a deterrent signal to China. There should be super sanctions in what President Obama has proposed. There’s many other tools that we have without canceling a dinner. That’s not going to change anything, but we can be much stronger as it relates to that. Emphasis added.

Offensive tactics—what does that mean? I asked a cybersecurity expert, who wishes not to be named, and this person noted that this terminology would generally imply cyber attacks aimed at knocking out Chinese networks and information systems. And Ralph Echemendia, a cybersecurity expert who goes by the handle the Ethical Hacker, said in an email that “to use the word offensive implies to attack the Chinese government.”

Echemendia added,

There is a fine line between the use of technology for intelligence gathering to make a strategic move and actually making a move. Without ‘legitimate’ proof of attacks by the Chinese, offensive actions could be considered by many as an offensive action on our part. State-sponsored cyber warfare has and will continue. However due to the nature of the digital domain, having proper proof of an attack’s source can be tricky. Misinformation is very simple to spread and even a teenager with some skills can create a geopolitical situation. Political leaders barely understand how to use their email, much less do they understand the issues surrounding the use of digital weaponry.

US spy agencies have mounted offensive cyber operations—secretly. Public knowledge of what this has entailed is extremely limited. But Bush appeared to be openly calling for a cyber blast on China to deter Beijing. (The unnamed cybersecurity expert quoted above notes, “There’s no reason that we need to respond to cyber with cyber. We could always respond in another way of our choosing.”) This was a bold—high-energy?—recommendation. Yet it drew no comment at the debate and not much afterward. And a Bush campaign spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.

At the GOP debates, Trump is usually the contender talking tough about China. But with this remark, Bush out-hawked Trump. Yet he did so in a sideways manner not likely to win him points from GOP voters. The Chinese, though, probably took heed.

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Did Jeb Bush Call for a Cyber War Against China?

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Obamacare Has Now Been MIA in Two Debates

by deqc16rl Posted on September 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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In the first Republican debate, Obamacare was barely mentioned. Over at National Review, Ian Tuttle notes that last night it was also MIA:

Beyond a few brief in media res mentions from candidates, a repeal line in Cruz’s closing address, and an allusion or two (e.g., the question about John Roberts), the president’s signature piece of legislation was a non-issue.

Which makes one wonder: Is it a non-issue?….I suspect that the anti-Obamacare fervor is in a period of quiescence. We have now seen Obamacare implemented sans “death spiral.” The website works. The Supreme Court has handed the Obama administration two affirmative Supreme Court decisions. And the president has made sure to do much in the interim — immigration executive actions and Iran deals, for example — to draw fire away from his healthcare law. Conservative heads have a limited supply of steam.

Tuttle is right. Obamacare has become a brief, pro forma applause line these days, but not much more. Partly this is for the reason Tuttle rather surprisingly concedes: It’s up, it’s running, and it’s working reasonably well. The nation still stands, and it’s hard to keep whipping up hysteria for years and years over something that, it turns out, just isn’t affecting all that many people.

I don’t think this means that Obamacare is going away as a political issue. But I do think that the repeal movement has lost a lot of steam as a winning issue for Republicans. The tea party types are starting to realize that nothing in their lives has changed, and the more moderate types realize—maybe via personal experience, maybe via news reports—that it’s doing a lot of good for poor and working class folks. So it’s become something of a wedge issue: Pounding on it loses about as many votes as it gains.

This is becoming a real problem for the GOP. A lot of issues that used to be pretty reliable winners have now turned into dangerous wedge issues: gay marriage, taxes, terrorism, illegal immigration, military adventurism, abortion, crime, education, global warming, Ukraine, free trade, Social Security cuts—the list goes on and on. And this is coming at the same time that their bread and butter, the angry white guy demographic, is declining. I’m not sure what they’re going to end up doing about this. The GOP has a tough decade ahead.

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Obamacare Has Now Been MIA in Two Debates

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Who Won the Fiction Sweepstakes in Last Night’s Debate?

by HFVLisette Posted on September 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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I just took a quick survey of all the various fact checks of last night’s debate and totted them up. The following list includes only items that I judged (a) fairly important and (b) pretty clearly wrong or misleading, which means I left out several close calls. Here they are:

Trump says Wisconsin is $2.2 billion in the hole
Trump denied lobbying Bush for casino gambling in Florida
Trump says he never went bankrupt
Trump says vaccines lead to autism
Trump says illegal immigration costs us $200 billion per year
Trump says Mexico doesn’t have birthright citizenship
Fiorina says HP doubled its revenue under her leadership
Fiorina says sting video showed baby “with its heart beating, its legs kicking”
Fiorina says Obama did nothing on immigration reform
Christie says Social Security will be insolvent in “seven or eight years”
Christie says he supported medical marijuana
Cruz says Planned Parenthood sells fetal body parts for profit
Cruz says Iran gets to inspect itself
Paul says vaccines lead to autism
Huckabee says Hillary Clinton is under investigation by the FBI
Carson says a better fence was responsible for cutting illegal immigration in the Yuma sector

So the final score is: Trump 6, Fiorina 3, Christie 2, Cruz 2, Paul 1, Huckabee 1, and Carson 1.

Apparently Bush, Rubio, Walker, and Kasich didn’t say a single thing that was badly wrong. Good for them.

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Who Won the Fiction Sweepstakes in Last Night’s Debate?

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Use behavioral science to help fight climate change, says Obama executive order

by EmmaY68hrsarhc Posted on September 16, 2015

Use behavioral science to help fight climate change, says Obama executive order

By on 16 Sep 2015commentsShare

When you hear “climate policy,” you probably think of things like carbon markets, the Clean Power Plan, and, if you got a lot of extra credit in high school, forestry and land use changes. You probably don’t think of things like computer pop-ups and government mailings — unless, of course, you’re part of the Obama administration’s Social and Behavioral Sciences Team (SBST). Which is kind of the point. The SBST, which is a little over a year old and released its first annual report yesterday, is all about making the kinds of policy tweaks you and I don’t notice: the minor, stealthy, behaviorally targeted tweaks with big payoffs.

And while many of these policy “nudges” often focus on areas like government efficiency, nutrition, and program uptake, a new executive order cites the behavioral sciences as holding great potential for complementing the administration’s efforts at meaningful climate action, too. “By improving the effectiveness and efficiency of Government,” states the executive order, “behavioral science insights can support a range of national priorities, including … accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy.”

Can we actually nudge our way to a better climate? While not the primary solution, it’s perhaps useful to conceptualize these kinds of policy changes as rounding out the often “all-of-the-above” American approach to climate and energy policy. Here’s more, from ClimateWire:

The administration suggests that behavioral cues, like comparing your energy use with a neighbor, can be used to increase participation in energy efficiency and other federal goals. …

[Other methods include] a pop-up computer window that urges people to save paper by printing on both sides. The experiment resulted in a 5.8 percent increase in double-sided printing, a potentially significant reduction in the 18 billion pages printed annually by federal workers.

Let’s just pause for a moment and consider those 18 billion printed pages. How is that even physically possible? How many printers are in the Eisenhower Building? Do people have printers instead of desks? Has the White House somehow misunderstood the concept of a 3D printer? Is the White House made of paper?

If most of that printing is single-sided, a 5.8 percent increase in double-sided printing represents over A BILLION saved pages. JUST CHANGE THE DEFAULT SETTINGS, SHEEPLE.

Anyway. ClimateWire continues:

The administration also says climate-related programs could benefit. Behavioral changes being pursued by the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team could result in more people buying federal flood insurance, which suffers from low take-up rates. Public materials will be “redesigned to present information more clearly,” the White House said.

The team is also working on ways to increase energy efficiency in government buildings, in part by providing more access to daylight. And efforts are being designed to increase the use of renewable fuels in the federal fleet of vehicles, as well as encourage greater use of efficient appliances by communicating the benefits with homeowners.

The team’s annual report also announces the results of pilot projects related to college attendance and Affordable Care Act sign-ups. While many of the SBST’s policies target internal government operations, it’s not unreasonable to imagine uptake in broader public or private settings. Indeed, one year in, the SBST seems poised for success — if only at the margin. And with respect to climate change, we need all the help we can get closing the gap between current national commitments and the emission reductions necessary for keeping warming below 2 degrees C.

But seriously, 18 billion pages. Is there some obscure regulation that mandates printing in 72-point font?

Source:

Obama Seeks Psychological Help with Climate Change

, Scientific American / ClimateWire.

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Use behavioral science to help fight climate change, says Obama executive order

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