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President Trump Is Mad As Hell and He’s Not Going To Take It Anymore

by Patricia27G Posted on May 18, 2017

Mother Jones

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I missed President Trump’s press conference this afternoon, but Josh Marshall sums it up for me:

The only real consistency in Trump’s remarks are that he did nothing wrong and his anger at whomever he’s angry at at that moment. Everything else is mutable and up for grabs. He’s mad, mad at everyone, mad at Comey, also mad at Rosenstein and he made that anger clear in something like a million ways during this brief performance.

That’s our president. Mad at everybody, all the time—except himself. I wonder if he really lacks self-awareness so utterly that he has no idea he’s the one causing all the chaos? Or that he almost certainly broke the law pretty seriously when he asked Comey to kill the Russia investigation? Is he that clueless?

Probably. Trump always thought the business world was a lot tougher than politics, so being president would be a breeze. That was a level of cluelessness that’s truly mind-boggling. Leaving aside the fact that Trump never actually ran his business in any real sense of the word—and was never as successful as he thought he was—that world was patty-cake compared to big-league politics. In only a few months Washington DC has eaten him alive.

And the rest of the planet is even worse. Trump has already shown signs of being taken to the cleaners by foreign leaders, and this is almost certain to continue. That’s because despite his big talk, he’s never shown any real talent for negotiation. Dan Drezner makes the case here, and it’s not pretty.

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President Trump Is Mad As Hell and He’s Not Going To Take It Anymore

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Iowa Just Showed Us What Defunding Planned Parenthood Under Trumpcare Would Look Like

by kathrynhudgens7 Posted on May 18, 2017

Mother Jones

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In a harbinger of what’s to come if the Obamacare repeal bill becomes law, Planned Parenthood has announced that it will close four health clinics in Iowa next month that serve nearly 15,000 patients.

The move is a direct result of a defunding measure signed into law by Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad last week that will go into effect on July 1. The new law rejects federal Medicaid dollars and replaces them with a state-run family planning program that will prohibit low-income patients from using their publicly funded insurance for care at providers, like Planned Parenthood, that also offer abortions.

“What is happening in Iowa is what we could see across the country if Congress passes this dangerous law to defund Planned Parenthood,” said Dr. Raegan McDonald-Mosley, chief medical officer at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, in a statement. “This is hardest on people who already face barriers to accessing health care—especially people of color, young people, people with low to moderate incomes, and people who live in rural areas.”

The defunding measure enacted by Iowa is similar to the one attached to the Obamacare repeal bill, the American Health Care Act (AHCA), that passed the House earlier this month and must now head to the Senate. That proposal would undo a federal statute that allows Medicaid patients to use their coverage broadly, prohibiting states from excluding abortion providers in doling out Medicaid reimbursements for nonabortion care. (The Hyde Amendment prohibits the use of federal Medicaid funds for most abortions.) Iowa’s new law rejects federal Medicaid funding and replaces it with state money so as not to run afoul of this federal requirement.

A number of other states have attempted to exclude abortion providers from their Medicaid programs, but only Texas has ever done so successfully, doing in 2011 exactly what Iowa did last week. Texas’ state-funded program promised to maintain the same level of care for patients without Planned Parenthood, through community health clinics, federally qualified health centers, and more. In reality, there was a significant drop in care for low-income patients: A number of clinics closed. Other health centers attempted to step in, but nearly 26,000 fewer women received reproductive health care. Medicaid contraception claims declined by 35 percent, suggesting that fewer low-income women were obtaining contraceptive care. There was also an increase in childbirths among women receiving Medicaid who’d previously received contraception from Planned Parenthood clinics. The areas that saw the largest drops in women served were those where Planned Parenthood clinics had to close.

The Iowa counties that will be losing Planned Parenthood clinics are poised for a similar decline in access to care: In three out of the four counties with health centers closing—Burlington, Keokuk, and Sioux City—Planned Parenthood served at least 80 percent of the family planning patients using publicly funded insurance, according to 2015 data.

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Iowa Just Showed Us What Defunding Planned Parenthood Under Trumpcare Would Look Like

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Charles Murray Still Convinced That Whites Are Smarter Than Blacks

by Sheeritwern Posted on May 18, 2017

Mother Jones

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I didn’t realize that Charles Murray was still talking about his belief that African-Americans are genetically less intelligent than whites. But he is. Over at Vox, Eric Turkheimer, Kathryn Paige Harden, and Richard E. Nisbett report on a two-hour podcast he did recently with Sam Harris:

The consensus, he says, is that IQ exists; that it is extraordinarily important to life outcomes of all sorts; that it is largely heritable; and that we don’t know of any interventions that can improve the part that is not heritable. The consensus also includes the observation that the IQs of black Americans are lower, on average, than that of whites, and — most contentiously — that this and other differences among racial groups is based at least in part in genetics.

I’ve read The Bell Curve, so I’m not just talking out of my ass about it. And it’s a weird book. The vast bulk of it is about the first five bolded items above, which really are part of the scientific consensus. You can argue the details, but it’s safe to say that intelligence is real; it’s important; it’s partly genetically heritable; it’s difficult to change; and blacks score lower on IQ tests than whites. The evidence in The Bell Curve on these scores is fine. But then the book gets to a couple of chapters about the genetic basis of the black-white IQ gap, and suddenly the evidence gets very, very fuzzy. In fact, I want to share a brief boxed item included on page 310:

The German Story

One of the intriguing studies arguing against a large genetic component to IQ differences came about thanks to the Allied occupation of Germany following World War II, when about 4,000 illegitimate children of mixed racial origin were born to German women. A German researcher tracked down 264 children of black servicemen and constructed a comparison group of 83 illegitimate offspring of white occupation troops. The results showed no overall difference in average IQ. The actual IQs of the fathers were unknown, and therefore a variety of selection factors cannot be ruled out. The study is inconclusive but certainly consistent with the suggestion the B/W difference is largely environmental.

In one sense, I applaud Murray and his co-author for including this. At the same time, they spend no time engaging with it in the text of the book. But they should: it’s only one study, and as they suggest, it has some missing pieces. Still, it’s one of the very few studies of African-American and white American children raised in middle-class environments outside of America. The fact that it shows no difference between black and white children is pretty significant—especially since it’s highly unlikely that any of these children received any kind of special treatment.

I don’t want to pretend that this study is definitive. It’s not. But a single disconfirming case is all you need to demonstrate that the black-white IQ gap is entirely non-biological, and this one is pretty close.

It’s not impossible that there’s a biological difference in intelligence between blacks and whites. That’s fundamentally a scientific question, and it hasn’t been conclusively proven one way or the other. But the effect of American culture on blacks is so toxic that it’s all but impossible to believe that any conclusions drawn in a study of Americans can ever be free of environmental contamination. After all, the Irish used to have low IQs. Jews used to have low IQs. And everyone was quite sure it was due to biology. But when anti-Irish and anti-Semitic animus died out, their IQs increased to normal levels. Amazing, isn’t it?

Maybe eventually Murray will find his long-sought gene complexes for cognitive ability, and will be able to show that there really is a genetic difference between blacks and whites. But I doubt it. The evidence just doesn’t point in that direction. Maybe in ten or twenty years we’ll know for sure.

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Charles Murray Still Convinced That Whites Are Smarter Than Blacks

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Turkey Says They Beat the Crap Out of Protesters Because of a "Provocative Demonstration"

by DarioMottfr Posted on May 18, 2017

Mother Jones

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This would normally be big news, but it’s been overshadowed by all things Trump:

WASHINGTON – Supporters of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, including his government security forces and several armed individuals, violently charged a group of protesters outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence here on Tuesday night in what the police characterized as “a brutal attack.”

Eleven people were injured, including a police officer, and nine were taken to a hospital, the Metropolitan Police chief, Peter Newsham, said at a news conference on Wednesday. Two Secret Service agents were also assaulted in the melee, according to a federal law enforcement official.

The current story from Erdogan is that his folks were acting in “self defense,” which is absurd. Eyewitness accounts, along with the testimony of Washington DC’s police chief, confirm that the protest was loud but peaceful until Erdogan’s goons waded in and attacked.

This was all happening while President Trump was hosting a visit with Erdogan in the White House. Naturally they haven’t said anything about this. Hell, Trump probably wishes he had a security force that would do stuff like this.

I don’t have anything non-obvious to say about this. The descent of Turkey into a strongman state is discouraging, and there’s no sign that it’s going to turn around any time soon. I just didn’t want to let this pass without at least a mention.

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Turkey Says They Beat the Crap Out of Protesters Because of a "Provocative Demonstration"

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Trump "Witch Hunt" Is, Naturally, the Greatest in American History

by Alisha3763 Posted on May 18, 2017

Mother Jones

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Poor President Trump:

This makes sense. If Trump is going to be the victim of a witch hunt, you just know it has to be the greatest of all time.

And we’d like to help make it even greater! We’ve already met our goal for matching gifts from the Glaser Progress Foundation, which will kickstart our muckraking fund to investigate the Trump-Russia connection. But we want to keep going. Our overall goal is $500,000, and we’re getting close to that. Read more about it here. Or go straight to the donation page here. If Trump wants a witch hunt, let’s give it to him.

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Trump "Witch Hunt" Is, Naturally, the Greatest in American History

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Ryan, McCarthy Both Deny Nasty Remark About Trump, But It Turns Out There’s a Recording

by LorrineBucher Posted on May 17, 2017

Mother Jones

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Last year, after a meeting with the Ukranian prime minister, the #2 Republican in the House turned to Paul Ryan and said, “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.” That’s from Rep. Kevin McCarthy, and it’s apparently what he thought back in June after Trump had won the Republican nomination. Ryan quickly shushed him, but the Washington Post found out about it today:

When initially asked to comment on the exchange, Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Ryan, said: “That never happened,” and Matt Sparks, a spokesman for McCarthy, said: “The idea that McCarthy would assert this is absurd and false.”

After being told that The Post would cite a recording of the exchange, Buck, speaking for the GOP House leadership, said: “This entire year-old exchange was clearly an attempt at humor. No one believed the majority leader was seriously asserting that Donald Trump or any of our members were being paid by the Russians. What’s more, the speaker and leadership team have repeatedly spoken out against Russia’s interference in our election, and the House continues to investigate that activity.”

Good on Adam Entous of the Post for getting a response from both men before they knew he had a recording. It’s good for the public to understand how shamelessly and effortlessly they’ll flatly lie about anything they think they can get away with.

Anyway, the new story is that this was just a big joke.1 That’s also the latest excuse making the rounds for Trump asking James Comey to kill the Russia investigation.2 There sure are a lot of jokers in the Republican Party these days.

UPDATE: The transcript is here. McCarthy says, “There’s…there’s two people, I think, Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump…laughter…swear to God.” Then there’s more laughter. So yeah, it sounds like it was just a joke, though probably in a “funny cuz it’s true” sort of sense.

1Actually, I can buy this. McCarthy’s comment really does sound like dark humor. Still, even if he didn’t mean it literally, it shows just what he thought about Trump and the Russians. In humor, veritas.

2This is pretty ridiculous in the case of Trump, since as near as I can tell he has no sense of humor and never laughs about anything. That’s probably because he’s too busy obsessing about how badly everyone treats him.

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Ryan, McCarthy Both Deny Nasty Remark About Trump, But It Turns Out There’s a Recording

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David Clarke, America’s Most Terrifying Sheriff, Says He’s Joining the Trump Administration

by RhondaLtvl Posted on May 17, 2017

Mother Jones

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David Clarke, the controversial sheriff of Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, will “accept an appointment as an assistant secretary in the Department of Homeland Security,” he reportedly told a local radio host Wednesday. Clarke said he will take a position at the Office of Partnership and Engagement. In that role, he would help coordinate DHS outreach to local law enforcement agencies, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

So far, DHS isn’t confirming Clarke’s appointment. “Such senior positions are announced by the Department when made official by the Secretary,” a department spokeswoman said in an email to Mother Jones. “No such announcement with regard to the Office of Public Engagement has been made.”

Clarke, who rose to national prominence last year as a vocal Trump supporter and a frequent guest on Fox News, has made headlines in recent months due to lawsuits filed against him alleging mistreatment of inmates in the jail he oversees. Last year, four people died in that jail. As we reported in March:

Clarke has faced two federal lawsuits since December, in the wake of four deaths that occurred last year in the Milwaukee County Jail. In mid-March, the family of a man who died of dehydration in April 2016 sued Clarke and the county, alleging that jail staff subjected the man to “torture” by denying him water as he pleaded for it over 10 days. County prosecutors are considering bringing felony charges against jail staff for neglect. Another lawsuit, filed last December, seeks damages for the death of a newborn in the jail last July, after jail staff ignored the infant’s mother as she went into labor and for more than six hours thereafter, according to the suit.

A grand jury recently recommended charges against several jail employees in the case of the man who died of thirst. A separate lawsuit alleges mistreatment of pregnant inmates at the jail:

In that suit, a woman alleges that, during a seven-month stint at the jail in 2013, she was forcibly shackled with a “belly-chain” that tied her wrists and legs to her stomach during her hospitalization for pre-natal care, while she was in labor, and while she received treatment for post-partum depression after she gave birth. The restraints made giving birth more painful for the woman, left marks on her body, and made it more difficult for doctors—who insisted she be freed—to give her an epidural, the lawsuit says. The jail has a policy that inmates be shackled while receiving medical care that makes no exceptions for pregnancy, according to the lawsuit, which also states that more than 40 women were subjected to the same treatment.

Clarke has apparently been angling for a job with the Trump administration for months. Last year, he spent so many days away from his office while stumping for Trump that local officials have called for his resignation:

Clarke visited 20 states in 2016, according to financial disclosure documents he filed with the county, often to give paid speeches in which he praised Donald Trump. He spent about 60 days out of state last year, the documents show. (Before he campaigned for Trump, Clarke took a trip to Moscow in December 2015 with a delegation from the NRA, during which they met with Russian officials.)

In January, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published an editorial calling for the sheriff to step down, citing the jail deaths, his habit of attacking his political opponents on social media—which he does on his department’s official Facebook page—and the fact that Clarke seemed more focused on “pining for a job in the Trump administration” than on his responsibilities as county sheriff. County auditors have launched an investigation into whether Clarke abused his power following an airplane flight in January when he had six deputies and two K-9 units confront a passenger at the gate with whom Clarke had an unfriendly exchange on the plane.

Clarke has also faced pushback from local activists and officials critical of his plan to enroll his sheriff’s department in a controversial immigration enforcement partnership with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of the Department of Homeland Security. In his role at DHS, Clarke would presumably be recruiting other agencies to participate in the program.

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David Clarke, America’s Most Terrifying Sheriff, Says He’s Joining the Trump Administration

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Islamaphobe Picked to Write Speech on Islam for Saudi Arabia Visit

by CarinFroude2383 Posted on May 17, 2017

Mother Jones

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Yesterday the White House announced that President Trump will deliver a speech about Islam when he visits Saudi Arabia this weekend. This sounded very, very bad, sort of like the Ayatollah Khamenei dropping by Wittenberg to deliver a speech about Christianity. Still, maybe we’re overreacting. After all, it’s not as if Trump is going to write the speech himself. It will probably be drafted by regional experts in the State Department who are able to navigate the minefields of—

Wait. What’s this?

Stephen Miller? This guy? The 31-year-old zealot who started his political career working for Michele Bachmann and Jeff Sessions? The guy who makes Steve Bannon look sort of reasonable?

We are doomed.

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Islamaphobe Picked to Write Speech on Islam for Saudi Arabia Visit

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Unrecorded diesel emissions kill 38,000 people a year.

by TedPmuzswto Posted on May 16, 2017

In early May, laborers harvesting cabbage in a field near Bakersfield, California, caught a whiff of an odor. Some suddenly felt nauseated.

A local news station reported that winds blew the pesticide Vulcan — which was being sprayed on a mandarin orchard owned by the produce company Sun Pacific — into Dan Andrews Farms’ cabbage patch.

Vulcan’s active ingredient, chlorpyrifos, has been banned for residential use for more than 15 years. It was scheduled to be off-limits to agriculture this year — until the EPA gave it a reprieve in March. Kern County officials are still confirming whether Sun Pacific’s insecticide contained chlorpyrifos.

More than 50 farmworkers were exposed, and 12 reported symptoms, including vomiting and fainting. One was hospitalized. “Whether it’s nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, seek medical attention immediately,” a Kern County Public Health official warned.

If chlorpyrifos’ presence is confirmed, the EPA may have some explaining to do. The Dow Chemical compound is a known neurotoxin, and several studies connect exposure to it with lower IQ in children and other neurological deficits.

The Scott Pruitt–led agency, however, decided that — and stop me if you’ve heard this one before — the science wasn’t conclusive.

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Unrecorded diesel emissions kill 38,000 people a year.

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Republican Senator Doesn’t Want to Run Trump’s FBI

by EUEJeanaikai Posted on May 16, 2017

Mother Jones

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One of the leading contenders to replace James Comey as the next director of the FBI withdrew from consideration on Tuesday.

“Now more than ever the country needs a well-credentialed, independent FBI Director,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said in a statement. “I’ve informed the Administration that I’m committed to helping them find such an individual, and that the best way I can serve is continuing to fight for a conservative agenda in the US Senate.”

Cornyn was one of several candidates who interviewed for the position last weekend after President Donald Trump unceremoniously fired Comey on May 9. During an interview last week, the president said Comey was a “showboat” and a “grand-stander” and said that the “Russia thing” was on his mind as he decided to fire the head of the FBI.

The prospect of Cornyn—or any other partisan politician—running the FBI as it investigates the sitting president gave those on both sides of the aisle pause. “John Cornyn under normal circumstances would be a superb choice to be FBI director,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said last weekend. “But these are not normal circumstances.” Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said, “The nominee should not be a partisan politician, not part of either party.”

Cornyn’s track record with the Trump/Russia matter justified those concerns, as Mother Jones reported Monday. Although the Texas senator has said the investigation should go on, he has devoted more of his attention to leaks from intelligence sources to the media. He’s also focused on the “unmasking” of disgraced former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn, which Trump supporters have said supports the argument that President Barack Obama had Trump under surveillance during the campaign. Cornyn has also said that the idea that Trump fired Comey because of the FBI’s Russia investigation was a “phony narrative.” He has resisted calls for a special prosecutor in the Russia case even though he wanted one for the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

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Republican Senator Doesn’t Want to Run Trump’s FBI

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