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Can Donald Trump Make It Through an Entire 90-Minute Debate?

by JennyFod91002277 Posted on September 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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The New York Times tells us today how the two candidates are prepping for Monday’s debate. You can probably guess how Hillary Clinton is going about it: methodically, studiously, and seriously. Donald Trump, of course, has no use for actual prep, but nonetheless his team is trying to prepare him for the devious curveballs Clinton is likely to throw at him:

His advisers will try to throw him off balance, and measure his response to possible Clinton jabs like “You’re lying, Donald.”

Clever! Who would ever have guessed she might say something like that to a guy who tells about a dozen lies every day? Then there’s this:

He has paid only cursory attention to briefing materials….Mr. Trump can get bored with both debate preparations and debates themselves….His advisers see it as a waste of time to try to fill his head with facts and figures….Some Trump advisers are concerned that he underestimates the difficulty of standing still, talking pointedly and listening sharply for 90 minutes.

Vulnerabilities

Tendency to lie on some issues (like his challenge to President Obama’s citizenship) or use incorrect information or advance conspiracy theories — all of which opens him to counterattack from Mrs. Clinton or rebukes from the moderator. Advisers are urging him to focus on big-picture themes rather than risk mangling facts. If Mrs. Clinton says he is lying, his advisers want him to focus on her trustworthiness and issues like her State Department email and accusations of favors for donors.

Basically, then, Trump’s team is just hoping that he can remain in one place for 90 minutes; not get too obviously bored; tell only a bare minimum of lies; avoid facts and figures since he’ll just screw them up; and pay attention to what Clinton says. Jonathan Chait comments:

There are two ways to read today’s New York Times report from Donald Trump’s debate preparations, or lack thereof. One is that Trump’s advisers are deliberately setting expectations at rock bottom, so the media will proclaim him the winner if he can merely remain upright for the entire time. A second possibility is that they have come to the horrifying realization that their candidate is delusional, uninformed, lazy, and utterly unsuited to the presidency, and they’re hoping without evidence that these traits can somehow be hidden from the viewing public.

Or maybe both!

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Can Donald Trump Make It Through an Entire 90-Minute Debate?

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My Book Is Better Than the Tarzan Movie

by BoydHowerton Posted on July 24, 2016

Mother Jones

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This story, which contains spoilers, first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Some time ago, I wrote a book about one of the great crimes of the last 150 years: the conquest and exploitation of the Congo by King Leopold II of Belgium. When King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa was published, I thought I had found all the major characters in that brutal patch of history. But a few weeks ago I realized that I had left one out: Tarzan.

Let me explain. Although a documentary based on my book did appear, I often imagined what Hollywood might do with such a story. It would, of course, have featured the avaricious King Leopold, who imposed a slave labor system on his colony to extract its vast wealth in ivory and wild rubber, with millions dying in the process. And it would surely have included the remarkable array of heroic figures who resisted or exposed his misdeeds.

Among them were African rebel leaders like Chief Mulume Niama, who fought to the death trying to preserve the independence of his Sanga people; an Irishman, Roger Casement, whose exposure to the Congo made him realize that his own country was an exploited colony and who was later hanged by the British; two black Americans who courageously managed to get information to the outside world; and the Nigerian-born Hezekiah Andrew Shanu, a small businessman who secretly leaked documents to a British journalist and was hounded to death for doing so. Into the middle of this horror show, traveling up the Congo River as a steamboat officer in training, came a young seaman profoundly shocked by what he saw. When he finally got his impressions onto the page, he would produce the most widely read short novel in English, Heart of Darkness.

How could all of this not make a great film?

I found myself thinking about how to structure it and which actors might play what roles. Perhaps the filmmakers would offer me a bit part. At the very least, they would seek my advice. And so I pictured myself on location with the cast, a voice for good politics and historical accuracy, correcting a detail here, adding another there, making sure the film didn’t stint in evoking the full brutality of that era. The movie, I was certain, would make viewers in multiplexes across the world realize at last that colonialism in Africa deserved to be ranked with Nazism and Soviet communism as one of the great totalitarian systems of modern times.

In case you hadn’t noticed, that film has yet to be made. And so imagine my surprise, when, a few weeks ago, in a theater in a giant mall, I encountered two characters I had written about in King Leopold’s Ghost. And who was onscreen with them? A veteran of nearly a century of movies—silent and talking, in black and white as well as color, animated as well as live action (not to speak of TV shows and video games): Tarzan.

The Legend of Tarzan, an attempt to jumpstart that ancient, creaking franchise for the 21st century, has made the most modest of bows to changing times by inserting a little more politics and history than dozens of the ape man’s previous adventures (see trailers) found necessary. It starts by informing us that, at the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, the European powers began dividing up the colonial spoils of Africa, and that King Leopold II now holds the Congo as his privately owned colony.

Tarzan, however, is no longer in the jungle where he was born and where, after his parents’ early deaths, he was raised by apes. Instead, married to Jane, he has taken over his ancestral title, Lord Greystoke, and has occupied his palatial manor in England. (Somewhere along the line he evidently took a crash course that brought him from “Me Tarzan, you Jane” to the manners and speech of a proper earl.)

But you won’t be surprised to learn that Africa needs him badly. There’s a diamond scandal, a slave labor system, and other skullduggery afoot in Leopold’s Congo. A bold, sassy black American, George Washington Williams, persuades him to head back to the continent to investigate, and comes along as his sidekick. The villain of the story, Leopold’s top dog in the Congo, scheming to steal those African diamonds, is Belgian Captain Léon Rom, who promptly kidnaps Tarzan and Jane. And from there the plot only thickens, even if it never deepens. Gorillas and crocodiles, cliff-leaping, heroic rescues, battles with man and beast abound, and in the movie’s grand finale, Tarzan uses his friends, the lions, to mobilize thousands of wildebeest to storm out of the jungle and wreak havoc on the colony’s capital, Boma.

With Jane watching admiringly, Tarzan and Williams then sink the steamboat on which the evil Rom is trying to spirit the diamonds away, while thousands of Africans lining the hills wave their spears and cheer their white savior. Tarzan and Jane soon have a baby, and seem destined to live happily ever after—at least until The Legend of Tarzan II comes along.

Both Williams and Rom were, in fact, perfectly real people and, although I wasn’t the first to notice them, it’s clear enough where Hollywood’s scriptwriters found them. There’s even a photo of Alexander Skarsgård, the muscular Swede who plays Tarzan, with a copy of King Leopold’s Ghost in hand. Samuel L. Jackson, who plays Williams with considerable brio, has told the press that director David Yates sent him the book in preparation for his role.

A version of Batman in Africa was not quite the film I previewed so many times in my fantasies. Yet I have to admit that, despite the context, it was strangely satisfying to see those two historical figures brought more or less to life onscreen, even if to prop up the vine swinger created by novelist Edgar Rice Burroughs and played most famously by Johnny Weissmuller.

Williams, in particular, was a remarkable man. An American Civil War veteran, lawyer, journalist, historian, Baptist minister, and the first black member of the Ohio state legislature, he went to Africa expecting to find, in the benevolent colony that King Leopold II advertised to the world, a place where his fellow black Americans could get the skilled jobs denied them at home. Instead he discovered what he called “the Siberia of the African Continent”—a hellhole of racism, land theft, and a spreading slave labor system enforced by the whip, gun, and chains.

From the Congo, he wrote an extraordinary “open letter” to Leopold, published in European and American newspapers and quoted briefly at the end of the movie. It was the first comprehensive exposé of a colony that would soon become the subject of a worldwide human rights campaign. Sadly, he died of tuberculosis on his way home from Africa before he could write the Congo book for which he had gathered so much material. As New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis observed, “Williams deserves a grand cinematic adventure of his own.”

By contrast, in real life as in the film (where he is played with panache by Christoph Waltz), Léon Rom was a consummate villain. An officer in the private army Leopold used to control the territory, Rom is elevated onscreen to a position vastly more important than any he ever held. Nonetheless, he was an appropriate choice to represent that ruthless regime. A British explorer once observed the severed heads of 21 Africans placed as a border around the garden of Rom’s house. He also kept a gallows permanently erected in front of the nearby headquarters from which he directed the post of Stanley Falls. Rom appears to have crossed paths briefly with Joseph Conrad and to have been one of the models for Mr. Kurtz, the head-collecting central figure of Heart of Darkness.

The Legend of Tarzan is essentially a superhero movie, Spiderman in Africa—even if you know that the footage of African landscapes was blended by computer with actors on a sound stage in England. Skarsgård (or his double or his electronic avatar) swoops through the jungle on hanging vines in classic Tarzan style. Also classic, alas, is the making of yet another movie about Africa whose hero and heroine are white. No Africans speak more than a few lines and, when they do, it’s usually to voice praise or friendship for Tarzan or Jane. From The African Queen to Out of Africa, that’s nothing new for Hollywood.

Nonetheless, there are, at odd moments, a few authentic touches of the real Congo: the railway cars of elephant tusks bound for the coast and shipment to Europe (the first great natural resource to be plundered); Leopold’s private army, the much-hated Force Publique; and African slave laborers in chains—Tarzan frees them, of course.

While some small details are reasonably accurate, from the design of a steamboat to the fact that white Congo officials like Rom indeed did favor white suits, you won’t be shocked to learn that the film takes liberties with history. Of course, all novels and films do that, but The Legend of Tarzan does so in a curious way: It brings Leopold’s rapacious regime to a spectacular halt in 1890, the year in which it’s set—thank you, Tarzan! That, however, was the moment when the worst of the horror the king had unleashed was just getting underway.

It was in 1890 that workers started constructing a railroad around the long stretch of rapids near the Congo River’s mouth; Joseph Conrad sailed to Africa on the ship that carried the first batch of rails and ties. Eight years later, that vast construction project, now finished, would accelerate the transport of soldiers, arms, disassembled steamboats, and other supplies that would turn much of the inland territory’s population into slave laborers. Leopold was by then hungry for another natural resource: rubber. Millions of Congolese would die to satisfy his lust for wealth.

Here’s the good news: I think I’m finally getting the hang of Hollywood-style filmmaking. Tarzan’s remarkable foresight in vanquishing the Belgian evildoers before the worst of Leopold’s reign of terror opens the door for his future films, which I’ve started to plan—and this time, on the film set, I expect one of those canvas-backed chairs with my name on it. Naturally, our hero wouldn’t stop historical catastrophes before they begin—there’s no drama in that—but always in their early stages.

For example, I just published a book about the Spanish Civil War, another perfect place and time for Tarzan to work his wonders. In the fall of 1936, he could swing his way through the plane and acacia trees of Madrid’s grand boulevards to mobilize the animals in that city’s zoo and deal a stunning defeat to Generalissimo Francisco Franco’s attacking Nationalist troops. Sent fleeing at that early moment, Franco’s soldiers would, of course, lose the war, leaving the Spanish Republic triumphant and the Generalissimo’s long, grim dictatorship excised from history.

In World War II, soon after Hitler and Stalin had divided Eastern Europe between them, Tarzan could have a twofer if he stormed down from the Carpathian mountains in late 1939, leading a vast pack of that region’s legendary wolves. He could deal smashing blows to both armies, and then, just as he freed slaves in the Congo, throw open the gates of concentration camps in both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. And why stop there? If, after all this, the Japanese still had the temerity to attack Pearl Harbor, Tarzan could surely mobilize the dolphins, sharks, and whales of the Pacific Ocean to cripple the Japanese fleet as easily as he sunk Léon Rom’s steamboat in a Congo harbor.

In Vietnam—if Tarzan made it there before the defoliant Agent Orange denuded its jungles—there would be vines aplenty to swing from and water buffalo he could enlist to help rout the foreign armies, first French, then American, before they got a foothold in the country.

Some more recent wartime interventions might, however, be problematic. In whose favor, for example, should he intervene in Iraq in 2003? Saddam Hussein or the invading troops of George W. Bush? Far better to unleash him on targets closer to home: Wall Street bankers, hedge-fund managers, select Supreme Court justices, a certain New York real-estate mogul. And how about global warming? Around the world, coal-fired power plants, fracking rigs, and tar sands mining pits await destruction by Tarzan and his thundering herd of elephants.

If The Legend of Tarzan turns out to have the usual set of sequels, take note, David Yates: Since you obviously took some characters and events from my book for the first installment, I’m expecting you to come to me for more ideas. All I ask in return is that Tarzan teach me to swing from the nearest vines in any studio of your choice, and let me pick the next battle to win.

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My Book Is Better Than the Tarzan Movie

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No, the Summer Olympics Will Not Be Leaving Rio

by Daniella76U Posted on May 19, 2016

Mother Jones

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Last week, as Brazil was grappling with the ouster of President Dilma Rousseff, University of Ottawa professor Amir Attaran called on the International Olympic Committee to postpone this summer’s Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro—or move them elsewhere—due to the continued threat of the Zika virus. He argued in the Harvard Public Health Review that exposure to the mosquito-borne virus in the heart of Rio, where he said the number of suspected cases has reached 26,000, could result in a “full-blown global health disaster” and should prompt Olympic officials to take action as a “precautionary concession.”

“Simply put,” wrote Attaran, a legal and medical scholar, “Zika infection is more dangerous, and Brazil’s outbreak more extensive, than scientists reckoned a short time ago.”

For months, would-be Olympians have expressed their concerns about the virus. Some even have refused to participate in this year’s Games. On May 12, the World Health Organization and the Pan American Health Organization reiterated a series of precautions for athletes and tourists planning on attending the Games, like avoiding impoverished and overcrowded parts of Rio and urging pregnant women to not visit Zika-stricken areas. And on Tuesday, after Attaran’s article had prompted a new level of scrutiny, WHO chief Dr. Margaret Chan told reporters the Olympics should go ahead as scheduled: “You don’t want to bring a standstill to the world’s movement of people.”

But at this point, is it even possible to move the multibillion-dollar spectacle? I got in touch with two Olympic insiders—A.D. Frazier, who served as chief operating officer of the Atlanta Olympic Committee, and Olympic historian David Wallechinsky—to see what they thought about a last-minute change. They were…less than optimistic. “Just forget it,” Frazier said. “The International Olympic Committee won’t cancel unless Rio goes completely bankrupt.” Wallechinsky was even more blunt: “I understand that this is no joke, but in terms of moving them at the last minute, unless there was suddenly an epidemic of people falling over dead in Rio, it’s not going to happen.”

Here are the three main reasons why:

It would be unprecedented. Wallechinsky, president of the International Society of Olympic Historians, noted that the only times the Olympics have been canceled were during World War I and World War II. They’ve endured violence before and during the Games: Ten days before the 1968 Summer Games in Mexico City, for example, police and military officers opened fire into a crowd of student demonstrators, killing and wounding hundreds; at the 1972 Summer Games in Munich, 11 members of the Israeli team were killed by terrorists; and in 1996, a bombing during the Atlanta Games killed two and injured more than 100. (Atlanta COO Frazier recalled being briefed about dozens of bomb threats each day during the 17-day event.)

Still, Wallechinsky admitted that Rio 2016’s Zika problem is a unique one. The closest parallel that he could think of came two years ago, when Africa’s Ebola crisis spurred concerns at the summer Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, China. Officials from China and the International Olympic Committee announced that athletes from affected areas would not be allowed to compete in combat sports or swimming out of fear that athletes could transmit the virus. The event took place as scheduled, but three athletes were unable to compete.

There’s too much cash riding on Rio 2016. “Sponsors and the TV networks have put so much money into these Olympics being in Rio that it’s impossible to imagine moving them at this late date,” Wallechinsky said. The organizing committee, Frazier noted, would have locked in place sponsorship deals and contracts for buses, hotels, and other infrastructure long before the event. Moving the Olympics to a new host city would require advanced notice not just for top international sponsors that typically support the Games, but also for local sponsors like the ones in Brazil helping fund Rio 2016, Wallechinsky said. Local and international sponsor deals account for 52 percent of the Rio Organizing Committee’s revenue, or $962 million, making it the dominant source of funding. (The bulk of those sponsorship agreements were made in 2014, right around the time of World Cup, which was also held in Brazil.)

Earlier this year, organizers trimmed expenses by $500 million to balance its $1.85 billion operating budget, eliminating thousands of seats from venues and taking away televisions from rooms in the Olympic Village. Still, economists project that the overall costs for this year’s events could reach more than $10 billion. “You can’t just pick up and move carte blanche,” Wallechinsky said.

Possible sites would need a “pickup squad” of organizers, fast. Two years ago, rumors surfaced that organizers were considering moving the Rio Games to London—host of the 2012 Olympics—out of concern for Brazil’s preparation. But finding a replacement site at this late stage with available venues is just one piece of the puzzle, Frazier said. Preparing the surrounding roads and infrastructure for a massive influx of athletes, business personnel, and spectators, as well as coordinating a flawless 17-day spectacle in three months with thousands of contractors and vendors, would pose a virtually impossible challenge for the “pickup squad” of organizers who would have come together at the last moment.

And that’s putting aside the travel schedules for the spectators and athletes themselves, as well as the need for safe, comfortable accommodations for athletes at an Olympic village. “The village itself is too complex to start in three months,” Frazier said. “If you’re talking about 15,000 athletes and officials and their safety, do you think somebody would organize a totally secure Olympic village in three months? No, not a chance.” He added that since the Munich Games, the security of the venues and athletes’ housing has been a pressing issue for organizers. Moving an event is one thing, but Frazier noted that moving an entire Games—opening ceremony and all—is “folly.”

“You can’t do it. Two years ago, I would’ve felt differently,” Frazier said. “Today they’ve got three months to go, man. Only a fool would take on the responsibility of taking the Games away from Rio.”

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No, the Summer Olympics Will Not Be Leaving Rio

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How to Create a Wildflower Garden

by EJPStefanie Posted on May 2, 2016

Wildflowers can be an excellent low-cost and low-maintenance option for your garden. Like any garden, some set up is required at first. But with some basic planning and preparation, you can create a beautiful wildflower garden that will flourish for years to come.

Why go wild?

In order to highlight the value and benefits of wildflowers, the first week of May is designated as National Wildflower Week in the United States.

A wildflower garden is lower-maintenance than a traditional ornamental garden because you dont need to spend as much time keeping it tidy. It requires less mowing and fossil fuel input. You also dont need to apply any pesticides or synthetic fertilizers because wildflowers are typically pest-resistant and do well in a variety of soils.

In addition, wildflowers tend to be drought-tolerant and require less water than many of their cultivated cousins. Wildflower gardens can also provide valuable habitat for pollinaters and other beneficial insects and wildlife, as well as preventing soil erosion.

Preparation

1. Site

A few points are helpful to consider before planning your wildflower garden:

How large is your space? You could have mass plantings on a rural property, whereas a small patch of flowers is more apt for a city lot.
What direction is your garden facing? The amount of sun it gets throughout the day will affect how you use it and what to plant. Overall, a sunny location is best for wildflowers.
What is your purpose for the site? Determine if you want a purely wild space or if youd prefer walkways and seating areas where you and visitors can appreciate it.

Your wildflowers will have the best start possible if you remove all existing vegetation from the planting area. Otherwise, its easy for weeds to take over and choke out your wildflowers.

The easiest ways to do this is either physically with a shovel or sod remover, or by a process called solarization. To solarize the area, mow it as short as you can, water it well, then cover it with a layer of thick plastic sheeting. Leave it in place to bake for 6 to 8 weeks. It will be obvious when its done as any previous plant life underneath will be brown and dead. You can remove the plastic and clear away the debris.

2. Soil

Have a close look at your soil on the site. If the soil is low in organic matter, perennials are a good choice. These are plants that come back each year. Poorer soils will allow the perennials time to establish and get the upper hand over many aggressive weeds.

Annual plants are more appropriate if you have soil thats rich with nutrients. Annuals last for only one growing season and die over winter. They are usually fast-growing enough to compete on their own against weeds.

Either way, start by tilling the surface of the soil to a depth of 3 inches or less to break it up for easier planting. You can do this by hand with a shovel or use a mechanical tiller for larger areas. Its beneficial to work some bone meal or rock phosphate into the soil as you till to encourage root development in the seedlings.

You can also add lots of organic matter and compost to the soil, especially if youre planning to use annual flowers.

Poppies andLarkspur

3. Choosing Your Plants

Many wildflower seed mixes are available in stores. If you need larger amounts of seeds, you can order bulk seeds by weight through mail-order seed companies.

You can also check if your local garden center carries a mix of flowers native to your area. These will naturally grow better in your soil and climate.

If you cant find a commercial seed mix you like, its often easier to make your own. Feel free to mix perennials and annuals to see which do better in your location. These are some popular wildflowers you could try:

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium) 25 to 35 tall, perennial. Available in shades of white, pink, red and yellow. The short, ferny leaves make a good ground cover.
Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta) 35 to 45 tall, often a short-lived perennial, although reseeds well. Make excellent cut flowers.
Cosmos (Cosmos bipinnatus) 30 to 45 tall, annual. Come in shades of pink, purple and white. Sweet fragrance.
Blanket Flower (Gaillardia spp.) 20 to 35 tall, perennial. Showy blooms can be a mix of orange, red and yellow.
Cornflower (Centaurea cyanus) 30 to 40 tall, annual. Bright blue flowers.
Marigold (Tagetes spp.) up to 36 tall, annual. Make sure to use the taller varieties, there are many shorter types that could get overshadowed by larger plants.
Poppies (Papaver spp.) 20 to 40 tall, with many annual and perennial varieties and colors available.
Golden Tickseed (Coreopsis tinctoria) 30 to 40 tall, annual. Abundant yellow flowers with red centers.
Wild Lupine (Lupinus perennis) 15 to 30 tall, perennial. Dark blue flower spikes. The roots of lupines can fix nitrogen in the soil.

4. Planting

First, calculate how much seed you will need for your space. A good estimate is to buy a half-ounce of seed for every 100 square feet of planting space or a quarter pound for every 1000 square feet.

Rake the surface of your prepared soil to create some depth to plant your seeds in. Sprinkle your seeds evenly over the surface of the soil. Birds might eat a portion of your new seeds, so make sure to sow them heavily. Rake the bed lightly again to cover the seed.

Water the whole area well and keep it moist until the seedlings are at least a few inches tall. Adding a light layer of straw, peat or compost mulch will improve moisture retention in the soil.

Most wildflower seeds will take one to three weeks to germinate.

Cosmos

4. Maintenance

Weed seedlings typically germinate along with your new wildflowers. Weeding these out will help encourage the plants you want. If you cant recognize the weed seedlings, its alright to leave them. Weeds are often out-competed by the wildflowers as the area becomes established.

Its recommended to mow wildflower gardens once a year. When the annuals have all gone to seed in the fall and the perennials are going dormant, the whole area should be cut down to a height of 4 to 6 inches. You can do this by hand for a small area, or with a lawn mower or other cutter for larger spaces. A mowing helps all the seeds reach the ground for next year, recycles the organic matter and prevents any woody perennials from taking over.

The annual wildflowers may seed themselves year after year. But if youre seeing too many bare areas, you may need to add more seed as your wildflower garden ages.

Related:
Permaculture: Landscaping That Works With Nature
How to Coexist with Bees and Wasps
4 Surprising Reasons to Eat Ugly Fruit

Disclaimer: The views expressed above are solely those of the author and may not reflect those of Care2, Inc., its employees or advertisers.

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Florida Is Sinking. Where Is Marco Rubio?

by CandacePaquin3 Posted on February 1, 2016

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared in Newsweek and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

An unusual January storm bent palm trees and turned city sidewalks into creeks as a small group of Miami-area mayors and administrators huddled in Pinecrest, one of Miami-Dade County’s 34 municipalities. They had come at the invitation of Pinecrest’s mayor to discuss rising sea levels, long predicted by climate change scientists and now regularly inundating their towns. The mood in the room was somewhere between pessimism and panic.

On the agenda: making flood prediction maps to help prioritize which roads, schools and hospitals to save as waters rise; how to keep saltwater from leaching into the aquifer; and what to do about 1.6 million septic tanks whose failure could create a Third World sanitation challenge. Someone also brought up the alarming possibility of the sea engulfing the nearby Turkey Point nuclear power plant.

The scale of South Florida’s looming catastrophe—$69 billion worth of property is at risk of flooding in less than 15 years—is playing out like a big-budget disaster movie, but dealing with it has been largely left to local political and business leaders in tiny rooms like the Pinecrest Municipal Center’s Council Chamber. Their biggest problem is the one climate scientists have struggled with for decades: creating a sense of urgency. Before adjourning, the mayors considered finding a mascot to get people’s attention, like a climate change Smokey Bear or Woodsy Owl of the “Give a hoot, don’t pollute” campaign. Coral Gables Mayor Jim Cason suggested a WWE wrestler could be hired for television and billboard ads with the slogan “Climate change: The problem is bigger than you think.”

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Florida Is Sinking. Where Is Marco Rubio?

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Extreme Transformation – Chris Powell & Heidi Powell

by Myrna Posted on December 22, 2015

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

Extreme Transformation

Lifelong Weight Loss in 21 Days

Chris Powell & Heidi Powell

Genre: Health & Fitness

Price: $13.99

Publish Date: December 22, 2015

Publisher: Hachette Books

Seller: Hachette Digital, Inc.


Chris and Heidi Powell, hosts and transformation specialists from the hit TV show, Extreme Weight Loss , now share their proven, life-changing, step-by-step guide for losing weight and keeping it off in their first co-authored book, Extreme Transformation. They are the hosts of television&apos;s most popular weight-loss documentary show, Extreme Weight Loss, and now the Powells provide a blueprint for changing your health in just 21 days. Whether you&apos;re looking to lose the baby weight, that last ten pounds, or several hundred, this is the program that can change your life forever. They share their most effective secrets for weight loss success through diet and exercise and go into detailed focus on how to develop a powerful, sustainable mental change to keep the weight off forever. With their help, readers will &quot;see&quot; the hidden path of transformation; be guided through fast and fun exercises; enjoy loads of recipes (both quick and gourmet) along with advice for food shopping, preparation, and more! With an incredible expansion of the Carb-cycling core that has driven Chris&apos;s first two national bestsellers, the Powells guide you from the very first step to reach your ideal weight and transition to lifelong maintenance–high-impact results in as little as three weeks.

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Extreme Transformation – Chris Powell & Heidi Powell

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Donald Trump’s Worst Idea Isn’t Even Original

by HiramTeelnle Posted on December 8, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Monday, Donald Trump unveiled a plan to block Muslims from entering the United States. On Tuesday, he suggested he might have been okay with the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

Almost immediately, critics looked for historical parallels. The Philadelphia Daily News put him on its front page with the headline “The New Furor,” while the New York Daily News‘ Shaun King wrote that Trump has gone “full-blown Nazi.” Even Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling got in on the game, calling Trump worse than Voldemort.

Comparing Trump to Hitler doesn’t really do justice to what made Hitler Hitler, but it also lets the country off the hook. Trump isn’t introducing the idea of discriminatory immigration bans and internment camps to an innocent nation. These are American ideas, with a long dark history of being used in American elections by politicians we now hold in high esteem. As one of Trump’s New Hampshire co-chairs, state Rep. Al Baldasaro, put it, improbably in defense of Trump, “What he’s saying is no different than the situation during World War II, when we put the Japanese in camps.”

It’s a history worth grappling with, because as Richard Reeves’ 2015 history, Infamy, makes clear, Franklin Roosevelt’s Civilian Exclusion Orders were deeply influenced by the pressures of electoral politics. It was a governor’s race in California that brought the issue to the fore in 1942. Two years later, it was a looming presidential election that compelled Roosevelt to keep the camps open long past the time the government knew they were unnecessary.

White California politicians had for years used the presence of people of Japanese descent as a political wedge, but the matter blew up after Pearl Harbor. Ironically, Reeves explains, the push for internment started with a man who would one day become a liberal icon as a Supreme Court justice, then-California Attorney General Earl Warren:

The first public call for all American Japanese, aliens and citizens, men, women, and children, to be moved into “concentration camps” was on January 14, 1942, in the Placerville Times, the newspaper in a small town forty miles east of Sacramento. Two weeks later, on January 29, California’s attorney general, Warren, who had been an important voice for moderation essentially switched sides, issuing a press release that read, “I have come to the conclusion that the Japanese situation as it exists in this state today, may well be the Achilles Heel of the entire civil defense effort. Unless something is done it may bring about a repetition of Pearl Harbor.”

Governor Olson, a Democrat who expected that Warren, a Republican and a member of the whites-only Native Sons of the Golden West, would be his opponent in the election of November of 1942, did the same thing, testifying before a congressional hearing a week later, saying: “Because of the extreme difficulty in distinguishing between loyal Japanese-Americans, and there are many who are loyal to this country, and those other Japanese whose loyalty is to the Mikado, I believe in the wholesale evacuation of the Japanese people from coastal California.” Then he gave gave a statewide radio address, saying, “It is known that there are Japanese residents of California who have sought to aid the Japanese enemy by way of communicating information or have shown indications of preparation for Fifth Column activities.”

Other elected officials were happy to inflame Californians’ fears of the Japanese other. One congressman proposed sterilization; another called the conflict with Japan a “race war.” Advocates for internment didn’t just defend it as an extraordinary circumstance—they described it as wholly consistent with American ideals. Per Reeves:

In Los Angeles, Mayor Fletcher Bowron, after dismissing all employees of Japanese lineage, declared, “Right here in our own city are those who may spring to action at an appointed time in accordance with a prearranged plan wherein each of our little Japanese friends will know his part in the event of any possible attempted invasion or air raid…We cannot run the risk of another Pearl Harbor episode in Southern California.” He later added, “There isn’t a shadow of a doubt but that Lincoln, the mild-mannered man whose memory we regard with almost saint-like reverence, would make short work of rounding up the Japanese and putting them where they could do no harm.”

Not unlike Trump’s false claim of seeing “thousands” of Muslims in New Jersey celebrating the 9/11 attacks from rooftops, the hysteria over the Japanese-Americans was fueled by a number of false reports over their activities, including allegations from coastal residents who swore they’d heard their Japanese neighbors sending radio signals to the enemy. And it wasn’t just California politicians feeling the electoral pressure to put Americans in camps. As Reeves tells it, Roosevelt knew as early as May 1944 that the Japanese Exclusion Orders were unnecessary, and that it would be okay to shut down the camps. Interior Secretary Harold Ickes told him that keeping the camps open would be a “blot upon the history of this country.” But FDR had the voters to consider:

Two weeks later Roosevelt refined his thoughts in a memo to Secretary of State Edward Stettinius and Ickes: “The more I think of this problem of suddenly ending the orders excluding Japanese Americans from the West Coast the more I think it would be a mistake to do anything drastic or sudden. As I said at Cabinet, I think the whole problem for the sake of internal quiet, should be handled gradually.” Ickes and the others knew what he meant: after the elections.

It was easy for politicians to invoke internment as a logical solution to fears of a Japanese “fifth column,” in part because the nation already had a long and proud history of wholesale discrimination against people of Asian descent. Just 18 years earlier, Calvin Coolidge had signed the National Origins Act, which effectively barred immigration from East Asia and the Middle East, on top of the existing prohibition of Chinese immigration that had by that point been on the books for four decades. Trump is successful not because he’s mastered the German formula, but because he’s tapping into something that has proven successful before in American history.

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Donald Trump’s Worst Idea Isn’t Even Original

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Dr. Kellyann’s Bone Broth Diet – Kellyann Petrucci

by Myrna Posted on December 5, 2015

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Dr. Kellyann’s Bone Broth Diet – Kellyann Petrucci

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The Supreme Court Just Agreed to Hear a Case that Could Destroy Roe v. Wade

by Brenton1405 Posted on November 13, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Friday, the Supreme Court announced that it will hear its first abortion case in nine years. At issue in Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole is HB 2, an omnibus Texas abortion law that made national headlines in 2013 after Texas Sen. Wendy Davis spent 11-hours filibustering the bill that eventually passed anyway.

Since 1992, the court has ruled on three abortion cases, each time affirming further abortion restrictions. In 1992, in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a divided court upheld the right to abortion, but left it to the states to set abortion restrictions, saying that these regulations can’t put an “undue burden” on abortion access. This broad ruling opened the door for the hundreds of so-called Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers or TRAP laws that states have passed in recent years—onerous regulations placed on abortion providers, often purporting to protect women’s health. In its last ruling in 2007, the court upheld a law outlawing dilation-and-extraction second-trimester abortions. If the court continues its pattern of voting against abortion rights and rules to allow Texas to move forward with several burdensome abortion restrictions, it will open the door for other states to do the same, dealing a serious blow to the right to legal abortion guaranteed by Roe v. Wade.

“The Court now has the opportunity to decide whether we will continue to allow elected officials to play politics with women’s health,” wrote Ilyse Hogue, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, in a statement. “This case represents the greatest threat to women’s reproductive freedom since the Supreme Court decided Roe vs. Wade over 40 years ago. Laws like the ones being challenged in Texas are designed to subvert the Constitution and end the right to a safe and legal abortion.”

In this case, the justices are expected to focus on two of the Texas law’s most onerous requirements: that abortions be performed in ambulatory surgical centers, hospital-like facilities that specialize in outpatient surgery, and the requirement that abortion providers obtain admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. Many medical professionals argue that these restrictions put unnecessary burdens on abortion providers: Building and maintaining an ASC is expensive, given the strict requirements regarding features like hallway width and ventilation. Nor do ASCs enhance the standard of care for abortion; the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists and other medical groups have repeatedly noted that the procedure can be safely performed in a typical doctor’s office. The admitting privileges’ provision gives hospitals in conservative communities or with a religious affiliation the power to effectively stop abortions by denying the necessary admission privileges to doctors.

“The common-sense measures Texas has put in place elevate the standard of care and protect the health of Texas women,” wrote Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in a statement released following Friday’s Supreme Court’s announcement. “We look forward to demonstrating the validity of these important health and safety requirements in Court.”

The number of abortion clinics in Texas has already been cut by more than half, as elements of HB 2, such as restrictions on medication abortion, a 20 week abortion ban, and the admitting privileges requirement, have gone into effect over the last two years. Before the law, there were 41 clinics in Texas. Today, there are 18. As my colleague Molly Redden reported in September, this has created large swathes of the state where women must travel hundreds of miles to get abortion care. If the Supreme Court upholds HB2 in full, including the ambulatory surgical center requirement, the number of abortion clinics in Texas could fall to ten.

The Supreme Court has intervened on HB 2 twice before. In October 2014, the court reinstated a district court’s ruling that blocked the ambulatory surgical center provisions of HB2 from going into effect and triggering more clinic closures while the Fifth Circuit court considered the case. At that time the high court also overturned the admitting privileges requirement for two Texas facilities. In June 2015, after the Fifth Circuit ruled to allow the HB2 provisions to go forward, the Supreme Court put an emergency stay on these requirements, to remain in effect while the court decided whether to take on Whole Woman’s Health for a full review.

Planned Parenthood and other abortion providers in Texas have been preparing to comply with HB2’s new requirements since mid-2014, when the law was originally slated to go into effect. Planned Parenthood, for instance, has spent millions to build or refurbish several ambulatory surgical centers in the state. Mother Jones traveled to Texas to observe these preparations for HB2. Check out our video footage below. (Some of the video numbers have since changed slightly.)

The court has not yet announced whether it will also take Jackson Women’s Health Organization v. Currier, a case that centers on a Mississippi law that requires abortion providers to obtain admitting privileges at a nearby hospital, but given that they’ve taken the Texas case, it is unlikely. Mississippi currently has only one abortion clinic, and its abortion providers are board-certified OB-GYNs. But because hospitals in the area have been unwilling to grant—or sometimes even process—the doctors’ applications for admitting privileges, if this law stands, it will close down Mississippi’s last abortion clinic. In July 2014, the fifth circuit court of appeals ruled that the law was unconstitutional, upholding a lower court’s ruling.

A decision in the Texas case will come down in the first half of 2016, likely making reproductive rights a central issue in the presidential election. “Although this is the first step in a much longer process,” said Amy Hagstrom-Miller, the president and CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, the main plaintiff in the case. “I am hopeful that the Supreme Court will uphold the rights that have been in place for four decades and reaffirm that every woman should be able to make her own decision about continuing or ending a pregnancy.”

This is a breaking story. We will update this post as the story develops.

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The Supreme Court Just Agreed to Hear a Case that Could Destroy Roe v. Wade

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Elizabeth Warren Launches Tweetstorm in Response to Ad Portraying Her as a Communist

by BeatrizViner Posted on November 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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Elizabeth Warren launched a tweetstorm in response to an ad that ran frequently during Tuesday’s GOP presidential debate that portrayed her as a Communist dictator and slammed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the watchdog agency that Warren launched before running for Senate.

Midway through the debate, Warren decided to rebut the attack ad with a series of tweets defending the myriad ways the CFPB has helped consumers since the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, which created the agency, passed:

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Elizabeth Warren Launches Tweetstorm in Response to Ad Portraying Her as a Communist

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