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Two Corinthians Walk Into a Bar….

by FelixHuddleston Posted on January 19, 2016

Mother Jones

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Here is a very short history of Donald Trump and the Bible verses that he likes:

August 26: That’s very personal. You know, when I talk about the Bible it’s very personal. So I don’t want to get into verses, I don’t want to get into—the Bible means a lot to me, but I don’t want to get into specifics.

September 16: Proverbs, the chapter “never bend to envy.” I’ve had that thing all of my life, where people are bending to envy.

January 18: I asked Jerry, and I asked some of the folks, because I hear this is a major theme right here, but Two Corinthians, right? Two Corinthians 3:17, that’s the whole ballgame. Where the spirit of the lord—right? Where the spirit of the lord is, there is liberty. And here there is Liberty College, Liberty University.

See? Trump is willing to study. At first he knew nothing. Then he boned up and kinda sorta named one verse that kinda sorta exists—but not really. Finally he boned up some more and named an actual Bible verse which he quoted accurately. Sure, he had to ask for one, and he had to read it off notes, but still. Progress!

But there’s still one more step: learning how to accurately cite Bible references. In front of a crowd of thousands of Christian students at Liberty University, he talked about “Two Corinthians” instead of “Second Corinthians.” Here’s what’s weird about that. It’s not just that anyone who’s so much as gone to Sunday School knows that you say “Second Corinthians.” Even if you’d never been to church in your life, you’d know it from watching movies or TV or listening to ministers at weddings and funerals. It’s just standard background knowledge in any culturally Christian country.

Now, nobody with a brain has ever believed that Donald Trump is a Christian in any serious sense. I don’t think he could pass a third-grade test of Bible knowledge. But today’s gaffe, as trivial as it seems, suggests more: that he literally has paid no attention to Christianity at all. In fact, given how hard that is in a country as awash in religious references as the United States, it suggests much more: Donald Trump has spent most of his life actively trying to avoid religion as completely as possible. And yet, apparently evangelicals love him anyway. Go figure.

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Two Corinthians Walk Into a Bar….

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We’re Still Waiting to Find Out What Happened Off Farsi Island Last Week

by JacklynHume Posted on January 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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A week after two Navy boats were taken into custody in Iranian waters, the Pentagon still doesn’t seem to have any idea what happened:

The two boats were supposed to follow a course that would keep them in international waters. They were scheduled to refuel at a rendezvous with the Monomoy, a Coast Guard cutter, at about 5 p.m. But the two boats veered off course Into Iranian waters.

….The crews then stopped to try to fix a mechanical problem in one boat’s diesel engine. “This stop occurred in Iranian territorial waters, although it’s not clear the crew was aware of their exact location,” the report said.

At about 5:10 p.m., one of the boats apparently sent a brief radio report that Iranian boats were approaching. A second message was garbled. All communications were cut off by 5:45 p.m., the report said

This is all still pretty peculiar. On a trip from Kuwait to Bahrain, all these boats had to do was stay within 60 miles of the shoreline and they would have been fine. Why were they so far out? Where was the Monomoy? Did they really suffer an engine failure, two GPS failures, and two comms failures all at once? I know that a thorough investigation can take some time, but this one doesn’t seem very complex. What the hell happened out there?

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We’re Still Waiting to Find Out What Happened Off Farsi Island Last Week

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Bernie Sanders Releases Outline of Universal Health Care Plan—And It’s Pretty Good

by DamonJobeo Posted on January 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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With only moments to go before tonight’s Democratic debate, Bernie Sanders has finally dropped his universal health care plan. Exciting! I imagine that Team Clinton is poring over it pretty carefully right about now. Here’s what he says it does:

Bernie’s plan will cover the entire continuum of health care, from inpatient to outpatient care; preventive to emergency care; primary care to specialty care, including long-term and palliative care; vision, hearing and oral health care; mental health and substance abuse services; as well as prescription medications, medical equipment, supplies, diagnostics and treatments….As a patient, all you need to do is go to the doctor and show your insurance card. Bernie’s plan means no more copays, no more deductibles and no more fighting with insurance companies when they fail to pay for charges.

….Under this plan, a family of four earning $50,000 would pay just $466 per year to the single-payer program, amounting to a savings of over $5,800 for that family each year.

Well, that sure sounds good. And I’m all in favor of universal health care. But I’m also curious about how he’s going to provide comprehensive care like this with no payment by patients at all and at such a low cost. Here are his basic claims:

He will raise $630 billion by increasing the employer part of the payroll tax by 6.2 percent.
He will raise $220 billion via a 2.2 percent progressive income tax on everyone (he calls it a “premium”).
He will raise $548 billion in various taxes on the rich along with the end of current tax breaks that subsidize health care
That’s a total of $1.4 trillion
Current public spending on health care (mostly Medicare and Medicaid) runs around $1.2 trillion.
This means that Sanders is figuring that under his plan total national health care spending will be about $2.6 trillion.

This is considerably less than the $3 trillion we spend now, and Sanders also says that his plan will keep spending growth down. This accounts for his claim that his plan will reduce total national spending on health care by $6 trillion over ten years.

So is this credible? It’s close. His taxes will probably raise about what he says. I’m not sure that he can reduce spending as dramatically as he hopes, but he can probably reduce it some. In other words, his sums might not add up perfectly, but they’re pretty close.

If there’s anything to criticize, it’s his statement that the average family of four will pay only $466 per year. The problem here is that while his payroll tax might come from employers, it will end up being paid for by workers—just as existing employer health plans are ultimately paid for by workers. That would cost his family of four about $3,100, putting their total at around $3,600. And if you figure that Sanders is being optimistic about cost savings and will probably need to raise taxes more than he says, our family’s total bill probably clocks in at around $4,000.

That’s still not bad. An average family pays a whole lot more than that right now via employer health coverage and copays. There’s a wee bit of smoke and mirrors here—counting employer plans when he talks about savings but not counting employer taxes when he talks about costs—but that’s a small thing. Overall, his numbers are pretty honest.

As for the details of exactly how the plan would work, I don’t know. The document on Sanders’ website doesn’t say much about that. I assume there’s another document somewhere, or maybe more to come. Stay tuned.

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Bernie Sanders Releases Outline of Universal Health Care Plan—And It’s Pretty Good

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Can We Spare a Tear for Ted Cruz?

by HershelAllie Posted on January 17, 2016

Mother Jones

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For the past couple of decades conservatives have routinely railed against “coastal elites,” “left coast liberalism,” and “San Francisco values.” The latter is so popular that it has its own Wikipedia page and Bill O’Reilly insists on credit for inventing the term. And it’s not just San Francisco that’s the target of conservative scorn. It’s big cities in general, with Los Angeles, Boston, Washington DC, and New York leading the pack.

Of these, New York City is probably second only to San Francisco. It’s home to the soda nazis, the Upper West Side, rent control, the Village, abortion on demand, and, above all, the hated liberal media. Conservatives might live in New York, but they sure don’t like its values.

Nonetheless, a whole lot of them are apparently ready to crucify Ted Cruz over his quip about Donald Trump and New York values. They all knew what he meant. Hell, they all agree with him. But any port in a storm, I guess.

Life isn’t fair, and Cruz has his share of defenders. And I know it’s hard to work up any sympathy for the guy. Anything Cruz does to hasten his own doom is surely karmic justice. But of all the things to go down for, a routine crack about big city liberals surely tops the list for irony.

POSTSCRIPT: But speaking of New York values, has anyone bothered to put together a short montage of Donald Trump saying liberal things throughout the years? It wouldn’t be hard, and 60 seconds would be plenty. It seems like a no-brainer, but I don’t recall seeing anything like this. Have I just missed it?

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Can We Spare a Tear for Ted Cruz?

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Finally, Police Misconduct Against an Unarmed Black Man Gets Bipartisan Attention

by LeonHeadrick Posted on January 16, 2016

Mother Jones

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“I normally incline to give the police the benefit of the doubt,” says Ian Tuttle over at National Review. And that’s true. In fact, it’s fair to say that pretty much everyone at National Review supports the police under almost all circumstances. Nobody at NR ever manages to mount much concern over charges of racism—except to ridicule and disparage them as products of liberal victimology, of course—and they have especially little patience for charges of racism in police conduct.

And yet, Tuttle says the case of Cedrick Chatman “bears close scrutiny.” Why is that? What’s different about Chatman’s case? Just this:

Following the release of the Laquan McDonald video and the revelations that Rahm Emanuel & co. almost certainly worked to bury it until after his tough reelection contest, the newly released video of the shooting of Cedrick Chatman in 2013 raises serious questions….The video is not conclusive. But the optics are not reassuring….Policing, even the “routine” aspects of it, is dangerous work, especially on the South Side of Chicago. But this is a case that bears close scrutiny — and so does the relationship between the city’s elected officials and its law enforcement.

Whew. For a moment I thought that NR had gone soft. I figured I might wake up tomorrow and find them running sympathetic stories about #BlackLivesMatter and railing against institutional racism in American law enforcement.

But no. It’s just that this makes good ammunition against Rahm Emanuel. All is right with the world.

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Finally, Police Misconduct Against an Unarmed Black Man Gets Bipartisan Attention

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New York Company Claims Trademark Rights to "Yosemite National Park"

by yX8kD0qE3l Posted on January 15, 2016

Mother Jones

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A company in New York claims that it owns the trademark rights to “Yosemite National Park” and wants $50 million to give it up. This is not a joke. It’s actually happening. The Park Service isn’t yet giving in on this, but it is caving on a bunch of other names, including the Ahwahnee Hotel:

On March 1, the famed Ahwahnee — a name affixed to countless trail guides and family memories — will become the Majestic Yosemite Hotel. And Curry Village, a collection of cabins near the center of the park that has carried the same name since the 1800s, will become Half Dome Village, park spokesman Scott Gediman said Thursday.

….Also affected will be: Yosemite Lodge at the Falls, becoming Yosemite Valley Lodge. Wawona Hotel, becoming Big Trees Lodge. Badger Pass Ski Area, becoming Yosemite Ski & Snowboard Area.

Coming soon: Yellowstone National Park will be renamed Majestic Geysers Park. Redwood National Park will become Incredible Trees Park. And Everglades National Park will become Big Swampy Park.

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New York Company Claims Trademark Rights to "Yosemite National Park"

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We Are Live-Blogging the GOP Debate in South Carolina

by MadelaineM07 Posted on January 15, 2016

Mother Jones

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Overall, this was sort of a boring debate, though it heated up a bit at the end. On a substantive level, there’s not much to say: nobody really said anything new. I guess that’s just the nature of things when you get to the sixth debate. My take:

Bush: He relentlessly tried to be reasonable. Apparently he thinks that eventually this will be a winning strategy, and maybe he’s right! But not tonight. He didn’t do anything to help himself.

Carson: At his best, he was in snoozeville. At his worst, he was incoherent. He’s a goner.

Rubio: He’s a hard duck to analyze. Rubio basically has a bunch of index cards in his head, and he recites one of them whenever he gets a question. The thing is, his index cards aren’t bad. And he recites them reasonably well. But eventually they just get old. That’s how it felt tonight—until he pulled out a brand new index card and attacked Cruz hard at the end. It was a good attack! It might help him. Maybe.

Trump: Fairly quiet by his standards. He did well responding to Cruz about “New York values.” His closing statement about the sailors was probably effective. His endless prevarication on the 45 percent tariff was a loser. Not his most dynamic performance, but he did OK. His numbers will probably go up.

Cruz: He was good tonight. He handled the natural-born citizen thing pretty well. Trump pwned him on New York values, but that helped Trump more than it hurt Cruz. His explanation of his tax plan was pretty much incomprehensible, and it was made worse when Rubio went after it, but I think that was his only real stumble. He’s a good debater, and probably picked up a few points tonight.

Kasich: He seemed like an island, totally disengaged from everyone else on the stage.

Christie: As always, he tried to seem like (a) the adult in the room and (b) the toughest guy in the room. It worked OK tonight, and he might pick up a point or two. But nothing more.

Overall, I’d say Trump, Cruz, and Rubio might gain a bit. Bush and Carson will drop a bit. Kasich and Christie will stay in nowhere-land.

Transcript here.

10:20 – Kasich: Mailman father blah blah blah. Bush: “Detailed plans count.” Oh Jeb…. Christie: Dammit, America is a hellhole and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Carson: Zzzzz. Rubio: Obama wants to ruin America. Hillary too. Cruz: Benghazi! Radical Islamic terrorism! Political correctness! Trump: If I’m president, we will win on everything we do.

10:19 – Time for closing statements. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief.

10:13 – Bush: We just heard a big spat between two “backbench” senators. Burn!

11:11 – Ooh. Big attack on Cruz from Rubio. Cruz says half the things Rubio said were false. But what about the other half?

11:04 – “We want Rand! We want Rand!” Well, don’t we all?

11:01 – Is it a blind trust if Don, Eric, and Ivanka Trump run the company? Um, no. Pretty sure it’s not. But I’ve actually been a little curious about what Trump would do with his company if he won.

10:57 – Christie says current Republican Congress “consorted” with Barack Obama. Quelle horreur!

10:55 – Big fight between Rubio and Cruz. Now Christie comes in to break it up. Let’s talk entitlement reform!

10:52 – Rubio says that Cruz’s tax plan would be bad for seniors. He’s right, but I doubt anyone understood what he said.

10:49 – Carson just gave an answer that I flatly didn’t understand. I’ll have to review it later.

10:46 – It’s tax time. I’m guessing everyone is in favor of cutting them. Especially on corporations and the rich.

10:43 – Now Cruz says his business tax is like a tariff. No, it’s not. But who’s counting, anyway?

10:41 – Cruz says Trump and Bush are both right about China. Such a peacemaker. The answer is a flat tax. Wait, what? What did I miss?

10:40 – Boos when Trump attacks Bush. The arena must have a big Bush cheering section.

10:39 – Trump also wants a trade war against Japan.

10:38 – Rubio: the answer to all our problems is to do the opposite of Barack Obama.

10:36 – So…Trump says the NYT lied, but I guess they didn’t. Imagine that. Trancript here.

10:35 – OK, but what about the tariff, Donald? Blah blah blah. Biggest bank in the world has an office in his building. But he’s totally open to a tariff.

10:35 – Did Trump call for 45 percent tariff on China? He says, of course not. He says he’d only do it if he stayed mad at them. Or something.

10:30 – Bush still trying to be reasonable. It’s so crazy it might work!

10:29 – “Radical Islamic terrorism.” Say it. SAY IT!

10:24 – Trump: “There’s something going on and it’s bad.” I guess that’s Trump’s campaign in a nutshell.

10:22 – Bush: “You can’t make rash statements.” Exciting as always!

10:21 – Jeb Bush steps up and defends letting Muslims into the country. Good for him.

10:19 – No follow-up, of course.

10:18 – These guys have lots of criticism of Obama, but they sure are shy about proposing actual concrete measures to step up the fight against ISIS.

10:15 – Should we send 20,000 ground troops to Iraq to fight ISIS? Carson says we should just give the military whatever they ask for. That’s it. And we should send in lots of special ops to put ISIS on the run. Uh huh.

10:11 – The fights between Trump and Cruz have been amusing, but generally speaking this debate has been pretty boring. Lots of canned applause lines and not a lot else.

10:10 – Does Saudi Arabia suck? Kasich says they need to stop funding radical clerics and madrasses. But what if they don’t?

10:07 – Ooh. Bush brings out the old Jerusalem chestnut. Go Jeb!

10:05 – New York values? William F. Buckley came out of Manhattan! New Yorkers were great after 9/11! So there.

10:01 – Sorry for the hiatus. So what’s going on? Guns? Looks like everyone is in favor of guns, guns, and more guns.

9:37 – The hamsters that power motherjones.com seem to be tired tonight. Sorry about that. If you’re having trouble commenting, keep trying!

9:34 – Cruz mostly treats natural-born citizen controversy as a joke. Probably smart.

9:31 – Audience booing Trump again.

9:30 – Audience booing Trump when he starts talking about polls.

9:27 – Audience not happy that Neil Cavuto asks Cruz about whether he’s a natural-born citizen. Cruz calls it a “birther” theory.

9:23 – Ah, an old favorite: Cruz turns a million-dollar loan from Goldman Sachs into an attack on the liberal media. That never gets old, does it?

9:20 – Trump says Syrian refugees are Trojan horses.

9:19 – Carson: What if someone hit us with an EMP, cyber-attack, and dirty bomb all at once? That would be pretty bad.

9:18 – Carson already whining about not getting enough questions.

9:17 – Rubio: Benghazi! Also: Obama has betrayed Israel, gutted the military, and apologized on ten world tours. That’s quite the memorized applause list.

9:13 – Bush: ISIS has a caliphate the size of Indiana! Also, US military has been totally gutted. Can’t even project power anymore.

9:11 – I wonder if anyone is going to acknowledge that American sailors did cross into Iranian waters near a major military base?

9:09 – If economy collapses next January, Kasich will balance the budget. That should work great.

9:06 – Cruz just can’t wait to bring up the American sailors. Ugh. Apparently he would have nuked Tehran immediately upon their capture.

8:57 – “The pirates are fighting in advance.” Huh?

8:48 – What will Donald Trump say tonight? In just a few minutes we’ll find out!

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We Are Live-Blogging the GOP Debate in South Carolina

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Come On, Folks, Give Nikki Haley a Break

by JuliannDiggs Posted on January 14, 2016

Mother Jones

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My Twitter feed has been alight with mockery of the latest from South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley: “We’ve never, in the history of this country, passed any laws or done anything based on race or religion,” she said at a press conference today. What an idiot!

But, you know, always click the link. Here’s the full quote:

When you’ve got immigrants who are coming here legally, we’ve never in the history of this country passed any laws or done anything based on race or religion. Let’s not start that now.

This still isn’t quite correct: After World War I a series of immigration restrictions were passed that explicitly favored northern European whites; limited immigration of Southern and Eastern Europeans; and banned Asian immigrants almost entirely. Still, Haley can be forgiven for not knowing this. It’s not especially common knowledge these days. In any case, she obviously wasn’t pretending that Jim Crow and its ilk never existed.

So let’s dial down the faux outrage. Haley was doing the Lord’s work here, criticizing Donald Trump’s call to bar Muslims from entering the country. In fact, given the context, she might have meant to refer not to immigrants at all, but merely to people visiting the country on ordinary visas—in which case she didn’t really say anything wrong at all. Either way, though, she did nothing worse than betray an incomplete knowledge of American history while talking off the cuff. It’s hardly a big deal.

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Come On, Folks, Give Nikki Haley a Break

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Wheaton College: Still Standing Despite a Bit of Mild Criticism

by ElisabettaBerger56 Posted on January 13, 2016

Mother Jones

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Perhaps you remember the case of Larycia Hawkins. She’s the professor at Wheaton College who declared on her Facebook page that Muslims and Christians worship the same god. Wheaton College follows the “evangelical Protestant tradition,” which apparently has different thoughts on this matter, and as a result Hawkins is in the process of being fired.

Over at National Review, David French says that this ought to be entirely uncontroversial:

But this is Christian higher education, and the Left is taking direct aim at Christian academic freedom and institutional liberty. In 2014, it launched an ill-fated attack on Gordon College’s accreditation, and last month the LGBT Left issued a report loudly condemning Christian colleges for having the audacity to exercise their statutory and constitutional right to opt out of Title IX. So it should come as no surprise that the Left is rallying around professor Hawkins, trying to pressure Wheaton into yielding on its statement of faith.

I read this over lunch, and with nothing more pressing on my mind than eating a slice of pizza, I decided to click those four links to find out just what kind of pressure the Left was bringing to bear. I urge you to click yourself to check my work. The first three go to a trio of little-read diaries at the Huffington Post. Here are the most impassioned statements I could find in each of the three:

Letter endorsed by Su’ad Abdul Khabeer and 26 others: In our view, the measures taken by Wheaton administrators…dampen the spirit of free inquiry so crucial to the academic environment; ultimately depriving the student body of the benefit of a deeply dedicated educator….We call upon her employers to renew their own commitment to the principles of tolerance and academic freedom.

Ken Wilson: There’s a way out of this morass. But it requires a commitment to the apostolic counsel of Romans 14-15. In a nutshell it boils down to this: we’re going to disagree over highly contentious issues….In the meantime, we can feast ourselves on the rich fare of mere Christianity. In a community shaped by Romans 14-15, there would be plenty of room for Julie Rodgers and Dr. Larycia Hawkins at the table.

Pamela A. Lewis: Do Christians and Muslims worship the same God? To the extent that Christians and Muslims come from the same Abrahamic tradition, yes they do….However, when it is a question about what these faiths call God and how they worship God, there are significant differences with respect to rituals and patterns of devotion….Whether or not Professor Hawkins has violated Wheaton College’s Statement of Faith will be decided by Wheaton College. But I am with those who believe that she was moved by her understanding of Christ’s commandment to love and stand with the vulnerable and the stranger, whoever they may be at the moment.

That’s…not…really very fiery stuff. I imagine the administrators at Wheaton College can still sleep nights. The fourth link goes to a pretty straightforward CNN story in which Hawkins herself is critical of Wheaton’s actions, which is hardly surprising since she’s the one being fired.

So where do these milquetoast statements leave us? French acknowledges that so far, “the Left has merely used its powers of persuasion to try to move Wheaton from its statement of faith.” But what about tomorrow? “Schools that don’t conform to leftist orthodoxy may soon consequences far worse than a barrage of negative news coverage.”

Maybe so. But it’s always worth clicking the links. If this is the best that the big, bad Left can do—and I assume French would have linked to worse if it existed—I think Christian colleges are probably not in any imminent danger. It’s pretty stunning sometimes just how little criticism it takes to bring out the victim in us all.

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Wheaton College: Still Standing Despite a Bit of Mild Criticism

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We Can All Breathe a Sigh of Relief: Star Wars Toymakers are Not Agents of the Patriarchy

by JuliHAVHqechv Posted on January 12, 2016

Mother Jones

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In an apparent effort to prove that you can do data journalism on literally any topic, Leah Libresco examines the merchandising bonanza of the latest Star Wars movie:

The most-recent “Star Wars” Monopoly set did what the villain of “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” couldn’t, sidelining Rey, the film’s female protagonist…. Fans signed petitions, wrote letters, and tweeted their outrage using the “#WheresRey” hashtag…. The controversy reached its climax when Hasbro, the maker of the game, said Rey will be represented in new editions.

To see whether Rey’s absence was local to Monopoly or more widespread across all “Force Awakens” toys, I did what any sensible data journalist would do: I went to a toy store. Well, a digital one. Toys R Us lists 256 toys in their online “Force Awakens” store, but only 70 of them include any of the major characters introduced in the new movie. Rey holds her own among this group.

“Rey holds her own”? I guess so. She and Finn are the main heroes of the movie, and they’re pretty close in the toy competition. The real news here is a clear anti-human bias: the biggest toy winners are Kylo and Captain Phasma, who spend most or all of the movie in masks, and BB-8, a droid so calculatingly adorable as to bring back involuntary memories of Ewoks.

Anyway, as long as we’re on the subject, you’ve probably all been waiting on the edges of your seats wondering what I thought of the movie. Well, the first week it was too crowded, so I didn’t go. I’m too old for standing in line. The next week, the kids were still out of school, and a friend was visiting who had no interest in the movie. The next week, my mother’s car broke, so I loaned her mine and had no way to get to the theater. By the time I got my car back, I had come down with a cold and didn’t feel like going. So it wasn’t until yesterday that I finally I saw it.

And I was stunned. I was prepared for anything from bad to pretty good, but it turned out to be stultifyingly boring. There’s nothing “wrong” with SWTFA. The acting is OK. The dialog is OK. The effects are OK. The pacing is OK. The direction is OK. The editing is OK. The characters are OK. As a piece of craft, it’s fine. But when you put it all together it’s two hours of nothing. And yet, the residents of Earth have spent a billion dollars on tickets! What the hell is wrong with you people?

The movie’s big mystery, of course, is “Who is Rey?” The answer is, “Who cares?” Here’s my guess: she’s a clone constructed from a preserved pubic hair of Obi-Wan Kenobi. We’ll find out in the exciting sequel!

Anyway, JJ Abrams has now ruined Lost. He’s ruined Star Trek. And he’s ruined Star Wars. He’s a one-man wrecking crew. But there’s a silver lining: at least I can now say with confidence that I’ll never waste money seeing a JJ Abrams production again.

And now for the worst part. I never thought it was possible I’d say this, but I have marginally more respect for George Lucas’s prequels now. They may have sucked, but at least he tried.

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We Can All Breathe a Sigh of Relief: Star Wars Toymakers are Not Agents of the Patriarchy

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