Tag Archives: official

It’s Crunch Time for the Republican Party

by Curtis Tangredi Posted on May 10, 2017

Mother Jones

How the world works, 2017 edition:

July 2016: Republicans are united in outrage when James Comey declines to recommend charges against crooked Hillary Clinton despite mountains of evidence that she is totally guilty.

Today: Republicans are united in disappointment at Comey’s decision to harm poor Hillary Clinton by breaching agency guidelines against commenting on investigations and interfering with an upcoming election. Thank God he’s finally been fired.

The official story about Comey’s firing goes something like this. On April 25, Rod Rosenstein was confirmed as deputy attorney general. It takes him less than two weeks to put together a memo arguing that: Comey was wrong to usurp the attorney general’s prosecutorial authority. He was wrong to hold a “derogatory” press conference about Clinton. He was wrong three months later to claim that keeping quiet about the Huma Abedin emails amounted to “concealing” them. He shouldn’t have said anything on October 28. Rosenstein concludes by saying that everyone from the janitor to the pope agrees that this was obviously egregious behavior on Comey’s part. Within hours, Attorney General Jeff Sessions recommends Comey be fired and Trump immediately announces Comey’s termination. Comey hears about it on TV.

Needless to say, there is precisely nothing new in any of this. As Rosenstein says, these criticisms of Comey have been obvious from the start, and Trump could have used them as justification for firing Comey at any time. But he didn’t. Until now.

The difference between then and now, of course, is that then Comey was helping bury Hillary Clinton, and now Comey is investigating ties between Russia and Trump. So only now is it time for Comey to go.

So far, there are a tiny handful of Republicans who are “troubled” by Comey’s firing. Will they go any farther? Will any more Republicans join them? Or is everyone going to take one for the team and pretend that Comey really was fired because of how badly he treated Hillary Clinton?

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It’s Crunch Time for the Republican Party

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Trump Simmers and Priebus Lies: Just Another Weekend at the White House

by EdithCMYkdwjq Posted on March 6, 2017

Mother Jones

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Over at the Washington Post, Philip Rucker, Robert Costa and Ashley Parker report on the Trump White House:

Trump was mad — steaming, raging mad….“He was pissed,” said Ruddy, the chief executive of Newsmax, a conservative media company. “I haven’t seen him this angry.”…At the center of the turmoil is an impatient president increasingly frustrated….Trump [] has been feeling besieged, believing that his presidency is being tormented in ways known and unknown by a group of Obama-aligned critics, federal bureaucrats and intelligence figures….The next morning, Trump exploded….Trump summoned his senior aides into the Oval Office, where he simmered with rage….In a huff, Trump departed for Mar-a-Lago….Trump was brighter Sunday morning as he read several newspapers, pleased that his allegations against Obama were the dominant story, the official said….But he found reason to be mad again.

That’s the president. Here’s his chief of staff, Reince Priebus:

As reporters began to hear about the Oval Office meeting, Priebus interrupted his Friday afternoon schedule to dedicate more than an hour to calling reporters off the record to deny that the outburst had actually happened, according to a senior White House official….Ultimately, Priebus was unable to kill the story. He simply delayed the bad news, as reports of Trump dressing down his staff were published by numerous outlets Saturday.

In other words, the president’s chief of staff spent a full hour of his time on Friday lying to reporters off the record. Why? To cover up for the fact that Trump routinely melts down when he gets bad press. The only thing that cheered him up was all the attention he got when he told an outrageous lie about Barack Obama.

Finally, this: “Some Trump advisers and allies were especially disappointed in Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.), who two days earlier had hitched a ride down to Florida with Trump on Air Force One.” This is truly their world view. Trump let Rubio fly on Air Force One, so Trumpworld expected Rubio to back up Trump’s lie. Transactional to the end.

And this: the Post’s story was based on 17 interviews with “top White House officials, members of Congress and friends of the president.” In other words, people who are basically sympathetic to Trump. What’s up with that? Do these people really think that painting Trump as a petulant two-year-old will make him look better?

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Trump Simmers and Priebus Lies: Just Another Weekend at the White House

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Chart of the Day: Obama Era Ends With 152 Million People at Work, an Increase of 9.9 Million

by MelinaBivins35 Posted on February 3, 2017

Mother Jones

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The American economy added 227,000 new jobs last month. Unemployment ticked up slightly from 4.72 percent to 4.78 percent, so the headline rate increased from 4.7 percent to 4.8 percent. The whole jobs report was a little strange, though, due to a whopping revision in BLS’s estimate of the total population of the country. Without the controls, 413,000 people re-entered the labor force and the total number of people employed rose by 457,000. Those are both excellent numbers, even if they did cause the official unemployment rate to rise slightly. The labor participation rate rose from 62.7 percent to 62.9 percent regardless of the population revision.

Hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees went up at an annual rate of 2.3 percent. By coincidence, that’s also the average annual increase for the entire Obama presidency. In an era of low inflation, that’s OK but not great. Altogether, this is the last jobs report of the Obama era and the starting point for judging the economic policies of the Trump era:

Headline unemployment rate: 4.8 percent
U6 unemployment rate: 9.4 percent
Labor participation rate: 62.9 percent
Hourly earnings of production and nonsupervisory employees: $21.84

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Chart of the Day: Obama Era Ends With 152 Million People at Work, an Increase of 9.9 Million

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Here’s a New, Simpler Unemployment Rate For Our New, Simpler President

by BonnyMcclellan8 Posted on January 26, 2017

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump thinks the official unemployment rate is “fiction,” so Jordan Weissmann suggests we judge him by a different metric. Instead of a complicated measure that tries to divine whether someone “wants” to work, or whether they “want” full-time work but can’t get it, or any of that nonsense, let’s use a simpler measure for this new, simpler era:

The BLS even produces a data point that Trump himself might like: The employment-to-population ratio for adults between the ages of 25 and 54—or “prime-age EPOP.”…It gives us a raw look at the employment rate, without any fancy caveats about who is and isn’t part of the labor force. And because it only tracks workers 25 to 54, it isn’t really distorted by the wave of retiring boomers or growing college attendance. It’s a simple snapshot of the portion of the population we most need to worry about….Best of all, from Trump’s perspective at least, prime-age EPOP has plenty of room for improvement….If Trump wants to argue that Obama left him an economy that was still hurting, this is one stat that will easily help make the case.

Fine. But we don’t really want to know how many people are working, we want to know how many people aren’t working. So here’s the inverse prime-age EPOP, since 1990:

IPA-EPOP1 fell steadily during the postwar period as more and more women left the (unpaid) household workforce and entered the (paid) market workforce, but it’s been relatively stable since 1990. That means we can think of the period from 1990 until the start of the Great Recession as sort of a baseline for normal. The average during this period was 20.2 percent, and right now we’re still 1.6 percentage points away from that. As Weissmann says, this gives Trump some room to show improvement.

Now, naysayers are going to complain that this doesn’t really make sense. After all, this number includes lots of people who don’t want to work, mostly stay-at-home mothers and fathers. Shouldn’t we take them out of this calculation? Sure, we should, but then we’re back to that whole tedious discussion of who’s in the labor force and who’s just given up and all that stuff. We want simple: working or not working, end of story. And in fairness, when the economy is hot, wages go up and more stay-at-home parents are drawn back into the workforce. That makes this an OK measure of economic hotness.

So there you have it. Trump’s starting point is an IPA-EPOP of 21.8 percent. In four years we’ll see if he’s managed to bring that down.

1Rolls right off the tongue, doesn’t it?

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Here’s a New, Simpler Unemployment Rate For Our New, Simpler President

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John Kerry Plans to Give a Speech

by HarrisBenefield Posted on December 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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In the aftermath of the UN vote condemning Israeli settlements on the West Bank, John Kerry plans to give a speech today:

In a last-chance effort to shape the outlines of a Middle East peace deal, Secretary of State John Kerry is to outline in a speech on Wednesday the Obama administration’s vision of a final Israeli-Palestinian accord based on bitter lessons learned from an effort that collapsed in 2014.

….Mr. Kerry, the official said, has long wanted to give a speech outlining an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal but was held back by White House officials, who saw it as unnecessary pressure on Israel that would anger Mr. Netanyahu. But that objection was lifted last week as Mr. Obama and Mr. Kerry agreed the time had come to abstain on the United Nations resolution.

I don’t really understand the motivation at work here. This has nothing to do with my skepticism about the peace process in general, but with the pointlessness of the speech itself. It’s sort of like writing a piece of fanfic, where you get to demonstrate to your circle of friends how cleverly you’d tie up all the questions and loose ends in the original work. Except it’s not even fanfic: it’s more like an outline for a piece of fanfic, and without the opportunity to even display any cleverness.

Both Israel and the Palestinians are keenly aware of every issue separating them. Their inability to make a deal has nothing to do with the lack of a clever-enough plan. They just don’t agree with each other and they don’t trust each other. Actual negotiations, in which Kerry applied pressure to compromise and helped to build trust, were perfectly defensible even if I personally think there was never any chance of success. But a speech outlining a plan? Why bother?

I dunno. With everything in tatters and only three weeks left in the Obama administration, maybe Kerry feels like he can rip off the diplo-mask and give a truly bracing speech of the kind that no American has ever dared to give. I suppose that could have a modest effect. But what are the odds he has that in mind?

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John Kerry Plans to Give a Speech

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Here’s Why "Repeal and Delay" Is Suddenly So Hot Among Republicans

by HenryRjg87497 Posted on December 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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As long as we’re talking about health care this morning,1 it’s worth mentioning why Republicans are suddenly so gung-ho about “repeal and delay”—that is, repealing Obamacare now but waiting a couple of years to replace it with something else.

The official excuse is that health care is hard. Sure, Republicans have had six years to come up with something since the passage of Obamacare, but dammit, that’s just not enough time! Unlike Democrats, who jammed Obamacare down everyone’s throats in a mere 14 months, Republicans want to do the job right. They care about policy details, you see?

Does this sound unlikely? Your instincts are sound. Both Paul Ryan and Tom Price have legislative templates that could be turned into statutory language in a few months if Republicans wanted to. So why don’t they want to?

There are two reasons. First, they’re hoping that the mere passage of a repeal plan will cause insurers to abandon the exchanges and destroy Obamacare without any Republican fingerprints on it. But that’s dangerous. It could leave a lot of registered voters completely uncovered until the replacement plan passes. Even worse, there’s a chance this could destroy the entire individual health insurance market, not just Obamacare. That would earn them the ire of the insurance industry, the health care industry, and plenty of Republican voters.

So why take that chance? Because of the second reason for delay: If Republicans offer up a replacement plan immediately, it will inevitably be compared to Obamacare. And that won’t be pretty. There will be lots of losers, and every one of them will suddenly barrage their representatives with complaints. The media will aid and abet this with endless point-by-point comparisons of the two programs. The contrast with Obamacare will be so plainly and obviously negative that even outlets like Fox News will have trouble spinning the GOP alternative as a good thing.

Smart Republicans are keenly aware of this, and under no circumstances do they want to unveil a concrete plan that can be concretely compared to Obamacare. This is the reason for delay. The rest is just pretense.

1Remember, it’s still morning in California.

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Here’s Why "Repeal and Delay" Is Suddenly So Hot Among Republicans

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NBC News: Putin Personally Directed Anti-Clinton Hacking

by BrodieGetty6520 Posted on December 15, 2016

Mother Jones

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NBC News tells us today that the CIA assessment of Russia’s hacking goes further than previous reports have suggested:

Two senior officials with direct access to the information say new intelligence shows that Putin personally directed how hacked material from Democrats was leaked and otherwise used. The intelligence came from diplomatic sources and spies working for U.S. allies, the officials said.

Putin’s objectives were multifaceted, a high-level intelligence source told NBC News. What began as a “vendetta” against Hillary Clinton morphed into an effort to show corruption in American politics and to “split off key American allies by creating the image that other countries couldn’t depend on the U.S. to be a credible global leader anymore,” the official said.

….The latest intelligence said to show Putin’s involvement goes much further than the information the U.S. was relying on in October, when all 17 intelligence agencies signed onto a statement attributing the Democratic National Committee hack to Russia….Now the U.S has solid information tying Putin to the operation, the intelligence officials say. Their use of the term “high confidence” implies that the intelligence is nearly incontrovertible.

This comes from William Arkin, Ken Dilanian, and Cynthia McFadden, who are all pretty careful reporters. Arkin adds this via Twitter:

This makes sense. Nobody had any idea that Donald Trump would run, let alone win the Republican nomination, when the hacking operation started. And even after Trump did win the nomination, nobody thought he had much of a chance to win. All of Putin’s hacking would have been for nought if he hadn’t had some help from James Comey and a rogue group of FBI agents in New York.

So yes, Putin got lucky. But that’s the way intelligence operations work. You try a lot of stuff and hope that a fraction of it pans out. This probably seemed like a low-cost-low-probability exercise when it was first started, and ended up succeeding beyond anyone’s wildest dreams.

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NBC News: Putin Personally Directed Anti-Clinton Hacking

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Exclusive: The Democratic National Committee Has Told the FBI It Found Evidence Its HQ Was Bugged

by CristinDraper Posted on November 4, 2016

Mother Jones

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In an episode reminiscent of Watergate, the Democratic Party recently informed the FBI that it had collected evidence suggesting its Washington headquarters had been bugged, according to two Democratic National Committee officials who asked not to be named.

In September, according to these sources, the DNC hired a firm to conduct an electronic sweep of its offices. After Russian hackers had penetrated its email system and those of other Democratic targets, DNC officials believed it was prudent to scrutinize their offices. This examination found nothing unusual.

In late October, after conservative activist James O’Keefe released a new set of hidden-camera videos targeting Democrats, interim party chairwoman Donna Brazile ordered up another sweep. There was a concern that Republican foes might have infiltrated the DNC offices, where volunteers were reporting to work on phone banks and other election activities. (For some of their actions, O’Keefe and his crew have used people posing as volunteers to gain access to Democratic outfits.)

The second sweep, according to the Democratic officials, found a radio signal near the chairman’s office that indicated there might be a listening device outside the office. “We were told that this was something that could pick up calls from cellphones,” a DNC official says. “The guys who did the sweep said it was a strong indication.” No device was recovered. No possible culprits were identified.

The DNC sent a report with the technical details to the FBI, according to the DNC officials. “We believe it’s been given by the bureau to another agency with three letters to examine,” the DNC official says. “We’re not supposed to talk about it.”

A Democratic consultant who has done work for the DNC, who asked not to be identified, says he was recently informed about the suspected bugging.

The DNC officials will not say what countermeasures were subsequently taken. “As a general policy, we don’t talk about such efforts,” the other DNC official says. But this official adds, “You have to take all of this incredibly seriously.” The first DNC official notes, “We are the oldest political party in this country, and we are under constant attack from Russia and/or maybe others.”

Adam Hodge, a spokesman for the DNC, says, “The DNC is not going to comment on stories about its security. In all security matters, we cooperate fully with the appropriate law enforcement agencies and take all necessary steps to protect the committee and the safety and security of our staff.”

The FBI did not respond to a request for comment.

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Exclusive: The Democratic National Committee Has Told the FBI It Found Evidence Its HQ Was Bugged

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Sen. Barbara Boxer Slams Donald Trump Over MoJo’s Report on His Modeling Agency

by DorieBrooker476 Posted on August 31, 2016

Mother Jones

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As Donald Trump was landing in Mexico City for a last-minute meeting with the Mexican president, Sen. Barbara Boxer unleashed a tweetstorm on the Republican nominee, based on Mother Jones‘ report on his modeling agency’s use of foreign models who worked illegally in the US.

Boxer, a vocal critic of Trump, took to social media on Wednesday with the following:

Since launching his presidential campaign last summer, Trump has routinely issued inflammatory statements against undocumented workers, especially Mexicans, vowing to deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States and build a massive wall across the US-Mexico border if he were to become president. But in recent days, there have been conflicting reports about whether Trump was planning to soften his previous positions on immigration. On Wednesday night, Trump is slated to deliver a speech in Arizona clarifying his official position on the issue.

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Sen. Barbara Boxer Slams Donald Trump Over MoJo’s Report on His Modeling Agency

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Humans are gobbling up natural resources at a terrifying rate

by FranklyR14 Posted on August 3, 2016

Eat the rich

Humans are gobbling up natural resources at a terrifying rate

By on Aug 3, 2016Share

Humans are using too much crap.

That’s the official word from a new U.N. report on the use of natural resources. It found that, from the food we eat to the homes we live in to the fuels we burn, our rates of consumption are just unsustainable. That’s not too surprising, but the real shock is that our extraction of the primary materials used to make all of our stuff has more than tripled in the past 40 years.

United Nations Environment Programme

“We urgently need to address this problem before we have irreversibly depleted the resources that power our economies and lift people out of poverty,” said the U.N.’s Alicia Bárcena Ibarra.

Unfortunately, it’s a trend that’s likely to continue. Unless we drastically change our systems of production, according to the U.N., the world’s population will require almost three times the amount of resources we currently use by 2050. Rich nations, especially, are overusing materials, sucking up 10 times more than the world’s poorest nations and twice the global average.

So put down those diggers, humans! It’s time to save some stuff for the future.

Election Guide ★ 2016Making America Green AgainOur experts weigh in on the real issues at stake in this electionGet Grist in your inbox

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Humans are gobbling up natural resources at a terrifying rate

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