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The US Has No Clean Battle Lines in the Middle East

by DelorasMueller Posted on March 29, 2015

Mother Jones

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From The Corner:

The United States is sending mixed signals to its allies in the Middle East by simultaneously giving support to the Saudi-led Sunni coalition fighting in Yemen and negotiating with Shiite Iran on its nuclear program, according to NBC chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel.

Engel pinpoints an apparent contradiction: Even as the U.S. is assisting Saudi Arabia and other nations in “confronting the Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen” by providing intelligence and other support, it continues to negotiate with Tehran on its nuclear program, and to collaborate with Iranian forces in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq.

As a result, Engel says, “the Saudis, and the larger Sunni Muslim world, doesn’t sic feel the U.S. can really be trusted.”

Gee, no kidding. Saudi Arabia is a Sunni ally of the US that hates Iran. Iraq is a Shiite ally who’s cozy with Iran. The US itself is hostile toward Iran, but shares a common enemy in ISIS. Syria is a total mess with no clear good guys. And, yes, a good nuclear deal with Iran would be a bonus for the safety of the entire region.

That’s it. That’s the way the world is. The United States is not allied solely with Shiite or Sunni regimes and hasn’t been since at least 9/11. It’s confusing. It’s messy. And maybe President Obama hasn’t handled it as skillfully as he could have. But who could have done any better? There just aren’t any clean battle lines here, and the sooner everyone faces up to that, the better off we’ll be.

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The US Has No Clean Battle Lines in the Middle East

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Peculiar Eyesight Question

by MarcoBownqkoxw Posted on March 28, 2015

Mother Jones

I’ll be asking my optometrist about this shortly, but just for fun I thought I’d throw it out to the hive mind to see if anyone knows what’s going on.

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve noticed that my distance vision is a little fuzzy. Time for new glasses, you say, and you’re probably right. But here’s the odd thing. I keep all my old glasses, and last night I tried them all on just to see if an older prescription worked better than my current glasses. What I discovered was a little strange.

Right under my TV I happen to have two LED clocks. One uses red LEDs and the other uses blue LEDs. With my current glasses, the blue LEDs are sharp and the red LEDs are fuzzy. But when I put on glasses that are a few years old, it changes. The red LEDs are sharp and the blue LEDs are fuzzy. The difference is quite noticeable, not a subtle thing at all.

Anyone know what this is all about?

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Peculiar Eyesight Question

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Friday Cat Blogging – 27 March 2015

by KayleeAlcantar Posted on March 27, 2015

Mother Jones

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Today I get to spend six hours in a chair getting Cytoxin pumped into my body. So this is it. No more tests or consults. This is the first actual step in the second stage of my chemotherapy. Following this infusion, I will spend a week injecting myself with a drug that (a) stimulates white blood cell production and (b) will apparently make me feel like I have the flu. Next, I spend a week in LA sitting in a chair several hours a day while they extract stem cells from my body. Then a week of rest and then the stem cell transplant itself, which will put me out of commission for a minimum of three weeks.

So no blogging today. Next week is iffy. Probably nothing much the week after that either. Then maybe some blogging during my rest week. And then I’ll go offline probably completely for a month or so. It all depends on just how quickly I recover from the transplant. We’ll see.

In the meantime, here are Hopper and Hilbert, hale and hearty as ever. Have a nice weekend, everyone.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 27 March 2015

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Beware the Hype of New Medical Studies

by UlrikeDelong Posted on March 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Julia Belluz thinks the democratization of medical research may have gone too far:

I often wonder whether there is any value in reporting very early research. Journals now publish their findings, and the public seizes on them, but this wasn’t always the case: journals were meant for peer-to-peer discussion, not mass consumption.

Working in the current system, we reporters feed on press releases from journals and it’s difficult to resist the siren call of flashy findings. We are incentivized to find novel things to write about, just as scientists and research institutions need to attract attention to their work. Patients, of course, want better medicines, better procedures — and hope.

But this cycle is hurting us, and it’s obscuring the truths research has to offer.

The truth, Belluz says, is that virtually all initial studies of promising new therapies fail to pan out. Only 6 percent of new journal articles each year are well-designed and relevant enough to inform patient care. Of these, only a fraction end up in a product that successfully makes it to market.

Dr. Oz may be the face of bad medical advice, but the fact is that it’s all around us. We’re all desperate for cures—I’d certainly like to see one for multiple myeloma—but most of them just don’t go anywhere. Belluz has more about the siren call of new miracle cures at the link.

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Beware the Hype of New Medical Studies

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Ted Cruz Throws His Hat In General Direction of Presidential Ring

by Anderso7849 Posted on March 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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The big news sweeping my Twitter feed last night was Ted Cruz’s rather sudden decision to announce that he’s running for president. Usually there’s a warmup period of some kind (an “exploratory committee,” etc.) but apparently Cruz decided to dispense with all that and simply throw his hat in the ring posthaste. The motivation for his sudden haste is a little mysterious at this point.

The other thing sweeping my Twitter feed was the fact that the URL tedcruz.com leads to the site on the right. Patrick Caldwell explains this and much more in his brisk overview of potential candidates and their unfortunate lack of attention to the basics of internet campaigning:

Unfortunately for the Texas Republican, long before he ran for Senate in 2012, TedCruz.com had been nabbed by an Arizona attorney who shares his name. Based on a search of the Wayback Machine, an internet archive, the Arizona Cruz’s website dates back to at least early 2008, when it was a normal, if slightly Geocities-tinged, business website. “Putting All Your Real Estate Needs In ‘CRUZ CONTROL,'” the attorney’s tagline said at the time. But sometime within the past year he ditched his law site to instead mock the would-be-president. On a simple black background, in large font, the website screamed: “COMING SOON, Presidential Candidate, I Luv CHRISTIE!!!!!” Attorney Cruz wouldn’t say anything to Mother Jones over email except to acknowledge that he has owned the domain for several years. But he deleted the section about loving Christie shortly thereafter. Given the initial message, though, it seems unlikely that the Arizona attorney will be easily persuaded to relinquish control of the domain to the senator.

That’s bad luck, no? Still, at least Cruz has control of tedcruz.org. It was obviously thrown together pretty quickly, though at least it’s got the basics. But why the slapdash approach? According to the New York Times this morning, Cruz was afraid of being upstaged: “By becoming the first candidate to declare himself officially in the race, Republicans briefed on his strategy said, Mr. Cruz hopes to reclaim the affection and attention of those on the party’s right wing who have begun eyeing other contenders, particularly Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.”

Cruz’s official announcement, inevitably, will be done at Liberty University, Jerry Falwell’s shrine to the Christian Right. I think we can expect many, many more speeches and announcements from Republican wannabes there. But Cruz will be the first! Take that, Bobby Jindal!

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Ted Cruz Throws His Hat In General Direction of Presidential Ring

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After Mother Jones Report, University of Arkansas Pulls Diary Critical of the Clintons

by k8qxuani Posted on March 20, 2015

Mother Jones

On Tuesday, I reported on the newly public diary of retired Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.), the longtime Clinton ally, which is included in the 89-year-old’s personal papers at the University of Arkansas. In entries penned during the 1980s, Bumpers was highly critical of the Clintons, dishing on the future First Couple’s “obsessive” qualities and alleged “dirty tricks” by Bill Clinton’s gubernatorial campaign. Bumpers, who gave the closing argument for the defense in President Clinton’s impeachment trial, became a close friend and confidante of the president later in his career. But the previously unreported entries revealed a more tense relationship in the early going, as Clinton vied for political elbow room with the Democratic icon.

In response to the Mother Jones piece, the University of Arkansas library has pulled the diary from its collection at the request of Bumpers’ son, Brent. Per the Arkansas Democrat–Gazette:

Brent Bumpers of Little Rock, son of the former senator, said he was “shocked” by the diary. He has questioned its origin and authenticity, saying nobody in the family had ever heard anything about Dale Bumpers keeping a dairy.

Brent Bumpers said his father, who is 89 years old, doesn’t remember keeping a diary. He said Dale Bumpers always admired the Clintons and wouldn’t have written the things the diary contains.

Brent Bumpers said he wants to review the diary, but he won’t have the opportunity for several days.

Although Dale Bumpers hasn’t personally requested that the diary be pulled, Laura Jacobs, UA associate vice chancellor for university relations, said Brent Bumpers is speaking and acting on behalf of his father regarding the Dale Bumpers Papers.

But the Bumpers diary could not have been written by anyone but Dale Bumpers. When not commenting on the various politicians he interacted with, it is filled with personal musings on his wife, Betty, and three kids; the strains of the job; can’t-miss events such as the annual Bradley County Pink Tomato Festival; and the trials of a first-time candidate at an Iowa presidential cattle call—all interspersed with the thoughtful reflections of a lawmaker who was generally regarded as such.

This is the second time in the last year that the University of Arkansas has made news by restricting access to a political archive in its special collections. Last year, the university’s library blocked the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news outlet, from accessing its collections because of a dispute over publishing rights. (The library ultimately backed down.)

With Hillary Clinton and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush both running for president, reporters (and opposition researchers) will have more access to archival records than perhaps ever before. The two candidates have nearly a century of public life between them; that’s a heck of a paper trail. This may not be the last time a little-noticed archive makes news.

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After Mother Jones Report, University of Arkansas Pulls Diary Critical of the Clintons

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Friday Cat Blogging – 20 March 2015

by LavadaGrattan Posted on March 20, 2015

Mother Jones

Appearances to the contrary, I might be getting better this morning. Cross your fingers, and we’ll see how things go tomorrow.

Our hummingbird babies are fully mobile! I took some pictures of them this morning, and when I carefully edged in for a slightly closer angle they took off like a shot. This was plainly not their maiden voyage. They’re all grown up now. Sniff.

In other news, longtime readers will remember that I once blogged about Louis the cathedral cat after a visit to Wells Cathedral in 2008. He was very friendly. However, in one of those inevitable town-gown controversies, Louis is now being accused of attacking dogs in the nearby area. But it might just be a case of mistaken identity: “I’ve heard there is another ginger cat around at the moment,” said one witness, “and it’s quite possible that it’s him attacking dogs. We don’t know for sure whether or not Louis was involved. Louis had definitely been in the shop just before the incident happened outside, but it could have been a different cat.”

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Friday Cat Blogging – 20 March 2015

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Thursday Hummingbird Blogging – 19 March 2015

by LakeshaDQZ Posted on March 19, 2015

Mother Jones

Sorry for the lack of blogging yet again. In the meantime, here’s the latest pic of our baby hummingbirds. They look perilously close to flapping their wings and leaving the nest.

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Thursday Hummingbird Blogging – 19 March 2015

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Republicans Are Making Obama Popular Again

by RebeccaEanes Posted on March 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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This isn’t exactly Oprah levels of adulation or anything, but President Obama’s Gallup approval ratings have been rising steadily ever since Republicans won the midterm elections last year. He’s been bouncing around positive territory ever since the start of 2015, and today he clocks in at 48-47 percent approval.

Is this because the economy is picking up and people are just generally happier? Is it because his executive actions have made a favorable impression on the public? Is it because Republican incompetence makes him look good by comparison? Hard to say, but it certainly suggests that Democrats are pretty happy with him. As Ed Kilgore says:

Among Democrats, who are supposedly on the brink of a “struggle for the soul of the party,” and ideologically riven between Elizabeth Warren “populists” and Obama/Clinton “centrists,” Obama’s approval rating stands at 81%. And looking deeper, he’s at 86% among self-identified “liberal Democrats,” 78% among “moderate Democrats,” and yes, 67% among “conservative Democrats,” such as they are….This is another example of isolated data being somewhat limited in value, but worth a couple of dozen Politico columns.

Yep. And I’ll bet that once things get going, Hillary Clinton will poll about the same way.

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Republicans Are Making Obama Popular Again

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Factlet of the Day: Mutual Funds Suck

by MonserrDalgarno Posted on March 15, 2015

Mother Jones

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Jeff Sommer summarizes the results of actively managed mutual funds over the past five years:

If all of the managers of the 2,862 funds hadn’t bothered to try to pick stocks at all — if they had merely flipped coins — they would, as a group, probably have produced better numbers.

I am not an investment advisor, so do whatever you want to do. But if you’re smart, you’ll invest in a few low-fee index funds and then just leave them alone. That is the path of wisdom.

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Factlet of the Day: Mutual Funds Suck

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