Tag Archives: Real

Here’s What Vladimir Putin Really Said About Donald Trump Today

by FatimaZavala Posted on December 17, 2015

Mother Jones

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LA Times reporter Michael Hiltzik has spent time reporting from Russia and speaks the language well. Via email, he offers this explanation of what Vladimir Putin really said about Donald Trump today:

From what I can hear from the video you posted, he calls Trump a “yarkom chelovekom.” In my dictionary, “yarkii” can be “clear, bright, dazzling.” You sometimes hear Russians using the term to denote the bright sky of a bracing, clear morning.

Brilliant I think would be wrong to the extent it connotes intelligence—that’s not what Putin’s driving at. Outstanding is a pretty lazy translation. Bright personality captures the meaning, but not the idiomatic tone, of the word. Very colorful is downplaying the real meaning.

I’d go with something like vivid. The word also could mean garish, but I think Putin was trying to be complimentary, and garish would be criticism.

I’d guess that the reason all the translations agree on “talented” is that —though I can’t hear it in the clip—Putin probably used “talantlivii,” which is a common Russian adjective, stolen from the French.

So Putin was probably just trying to say that Trump is a big personality. Hiltzik says—and I agree—that Putin wasn’t especially trying to say anything either good or bad about Trump—though knowing Putin, it’s a good guess that he approves of big personalities. Basically, he was just trying to state the obvious about Trump. In any case, there you have it.

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Here’s What Vladimir Putin Really Said About Donald Trump Today

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Trump Soars to New Heights in Poll After Proposing Muslim Ban

by Aaron Small Posted on December 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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A week after proposing to ban all Muslims from entering the United States, Donald Trump has reached new heights in the polls.

The real estate tycoon has 41 percent nationally in the Republican presidential contest, according to a survey released Monday by Monmouth University—27 points ahead of the rest of the field. Ted Cruz comes in a distant second at 14 percent, followed by Marco Rubio at 10 percent and Ben Carson at 9 percent. No other candidate exceeds 3 percent.

Monmouth’s findings are based on interviews with 385 registered Republican or Republican-leaning voters, with a margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.

Among that sample, 67 percent responded that they would feel either “enthusiastic” or “satisfied” if Trump became the GOP nominee, while 28 percent reported that they would be “dissatisfied” or “upset.” Trump is also enjoying his peak favorability among these voters: 61 percent have a favorable impression of him, 29 percent are unfavorable, and just 10 have no opinion.

While continuing to gain in nationwide polls, Trump’s only recent bad news comes out of Iowa, where Cruz, the tea-party-aligned senator from Texas, has recently gained on him and now holds a small lead over Trump in most recent polls.

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Trump Soars to New Heights in Poll After Proposing Muslim Ban

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Don’t Blame Ted Cruz for Facebook’s Sins

by CelindaBeliveau Posted on December 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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A Guardian headline today blares: “Ted Cruz using firm that harvested data on millions of unwitting Facebook users.” Interesting! But you sure have to read a long way into the story to figure out what the real problem is. Is it the fact that Cambridge Analytica—the firm Cruz is using—compiled “psychographic profiles” of Facebook users? Nah. Call it what you will, but that’s practically old hat these days. Is it that fact that Dr. Aleksandr Kogan, founder of CA’s parent, paid users of Mechanical Turk a dollar to fill out a questionnaire and turn over their Facebook profiles? No again. If people want to sell their profiles for a dollar, they can do it. So what’s the problem?

Crucially, Kogan also captured the same data for each person’s unwitting friends. For every individual recruited on MTurk, he harvested information about their friends, meaning the dataset ballooned significantly in size. Research shows that in 2014, Facebook users had an average of around 340 friends.

….By summer 2014, Kogan’s company had created an expansive and powerful dataset. His business partner boasted on LinkedIn that their private outfit, Global Science Research (GSR), “owns a massive data pool of 40+ million individuals across the United States — for each of whom we have generated detailed characteristic and trait profiles”.

Consumer research firms do this kind of stuff routinely, so there’s not really any big news here. And if there’s anyone at fault, it’s our old friend Facebook. Once again, they’re allowing people to take advantage of the fact that Facebook’s default settings open users up to this kind of harvesting. Very few people ever bother to change their defaults, and Facebook knows it.

As for Cruz, there are plenty of places to get information like this. I don’t know if CA is one of the best or not. But every serious campaign does this kind of microtargeting. As Cruz explained last month, he’s a big admirer of Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign strategy—which just goes to show that there’s at least one thing that Cruz and Obama agree about.

Bottom line: I don’t think Cruz really did anything wrong here. Facebook probably did. Big surprise.

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Don’t Blame Ted Cruz for Facebook’s Sins

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The Time Donald Trump Tried to Get Mike Tyson Out of Going to Prison for Rape

by BethBolendjcmjr Posted on December 7, 2015

Mother Jones

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In October, GOP front-runner Donald Trump got a surprise endorsement from infamous boxer Mike Tyson. “He should be president of the United States,” Tyson told the Huffington Post. “Hell yeah, big time!” Tyson said he liked Trump’s business instincts: “The guy is winning fair and square, he’s not bribing anybody.”

Trump and Tyson are old friends who did business together in the late 1980s, when the real estate mogul promoted and hosted several of Tyson’s fights at his Atlantic City casinos and even fashioned himself for a time as the boxer’s “business adviser.” And in a largely forgotten episode, Trump came to the boxer’s aid during one the darkest moments of Tyson’s career—his 1992 conviction for raping a beauty queen. To save the champ from being locked up, Trump pitched a highly controversial proposal that would have essentially allowed Tyson to buy his way out of prison. To some observers, it looked like Trump was engaging in a form of bribery—or at least attempting to rig the system.

Over the years, Tyson’s bouts had been highly lucrative for Trump’s casinos, which paid millions to host the fights but reaped millions more in revenues from the surge in gambling that resulted during these highly anticipated events. In 1991, Tyson seemed destined for one of the biggest fights of his career, a face-off with then-heavyweight champion Evander Holyfield. As the groundwork was laid for this epic bout, it seemed like Trump might lose this event to his competitors in Las Vegas.

Then Tyson was arrested and convicted of raping 18-year-old Desiree Washington in Indianapolis.

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The Time Donald Trump Tried to Get Mike Tyson Out of Going to Prison for Rape

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How Big a Deal is the SAFE Act?

by HollisDjfrzp Posted on November 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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Dante Atkins on the SAFE Act:

The bill requires the specific signatures of three high-ranking officials to personally approve refugees into the United States, a burden that both Republicans and the White House believe would all but cease the flow of refugees into the United States because it is believed that said officials would be too fearful of the career implications should one of the detainees turn out to become even a mere criminal, much less a terrorist.

I have to say, this bill has me confused. After looking into it, I wrote a post a couple of days ago suggesting that it was mostly symbolic. The vetting process didn’t change, it just needed to be documented and “certified” by the White House. Beyond that, some top officials would get half a dozen refugee approvals every day for their autopen to sign. Big deal. The only real effect would be a short pause while the certification was drafted and signed off.

Since then, though, every single story I’ve read about this bill describes it on a spectrum from “tightening” requirements to virtually shutting down the flow of refugees from Syria entirely. None of them ever provide any details, though. They talk about background checks, but the FBI already does background checks on refugees from Syria and Iraq. They talk about tougher procedures, but there are no new procedures in the bill. The actual vetting process itself is left up to the executive branch.

And yet, the White House is dead set against this bill, which it probably wouldn’t be if it was mostly just symbolic. So I remain puzzled. What’s the real deal with this bill? Is it really likely that, say, the Director of National Intelligence would simply refuse to ever sign off on a refugee approval? Hell, the DNI already signs off on hundreds of things with more potential for blowback than that.

I dunno. It’s all very strange.

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How Big a Deal is the SAFE Act?

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Here’s the Latest in the GOP Horserace

by FranCarranza Posted on November 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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Apropos of nothing in particular, here’s the latest Pollster aggregate for the Republican nomination. It looks to me like Trump is finally sliding, while Carson seems to have plateaued around 20 percent or so. Rubio and Cruz are up over the past few weeks, but it’s too soon to tell if this just a blip, or the start of something real. Jeb Bush is declining slightly, but not out of it yet.

So who gets all the Trump and Carson votes when those two inevitably implode? And is it really inevitable? Beats me. This is just the weirdest Republican race ever. Ever since Scott Walker, my early favorite, displayed such awesome ineptitude that he literally dropped to 0 percent in the polls, I’ve been reluctant to utter a peep about who seems likely to win this year. Who knows? Maybe it will all come down to a savage brawl between the two Floridians.

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Here’s the Latest in the GOP Horserace

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New Suitcase Offers Nothing New, Gets Big Writeup in Slate

by LukeSackett Posted on November 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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Today, in what is apparently not an ad, Slate is running an ad for Away, a fabulous new carry-on suitcase designed by two former Warby Parker executives. Here’s the skinny:

To create their carry-on, Rubio and Korey spoke with thousands of people to determine what travelers look for most. They found that many consumers want attractive, well-constructed luggage that provides organization and….

With that in mind, they created a carry-on that has four durable double wheels—a design detail that alone took 20 designs iterations to get right—plus a laundry separation system that keeps belongings organized, YKK zippers that provide stability, and a….

Hmmm. So far that sounds like pretty much every other carry-on suitcase in the galaxy. But wait! What’s behind those ellipses? This:

….and a built-in 10,000 mAh battery that can be charged beforehand and power a smartphone up to five times during a trip.

So let me get this straight. The big selling point of this suitcase is that it includes a built-in battery that’s a lot less convenient than a standalone battery you can put anywhere you want? Or is it just that it has a special pocket for a battery? Either way, who cares? Buy a suitcase and a 10,000 mAh battery (about 20 bucks on Amazon) and you’ll have the same thing the Warby Parker execs are hawking. And probably pay less.

What am I missing? Why did Slate run this?

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New Suitcase Offers Nothing New, Gets Big Writeup in Slate

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Paging Garry Trudeau

by BeatrizViner Posted on November 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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So who was in charge of the Yale parody paper in 1970, when it printed a fake notice that students in Psychology 10 needed to sit for a retest of their final exam? According to a tweet from Rapid Rar:

The editors of the Yale Record (creators of fake paper) in 1970 were Garry Trudeau (Doonesbury creator) and Tim Bannon.

So there you have it. It seems like these are the first two guys to ask about how this hoax played out, and whether Ben Carson’s account is accurate. Trudeau is obviously easy to find, and Bannon appears to a big cheese in Connecticut public affairs. Let’s make some phone calls, people!

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Paging Garry Trudeau

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Pick Out Kevin’s Lunch Today

by TammaraGrinder Posted on November 7, 2015

Mother Jones

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A few days ago, for no special reason, I began to wonder how many different fast food places I had eaten at during my life. So naturally I hopped over to Quick Serve Restaurant and took a look at the latest QSR 50, their ranking of the 50 biggest fast food joints. Then I went to lunch at Chick-fil-A, which was my 28th out of 50. Only 22 to go!

It’s getting close to lunchtime. Which fine dining establishment should I cross off my list today?

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Pick Out Kevin’s Lunch Today

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Are Conservatives Really Going All-In on Ben Carson?

by CarrieGottshall Posted on November 6, 2015

Mother Jones

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Wow. I gather that conservatives are making a big U-turn on Ben Carson. This morning most of them were wringing their hands over Carson’s deception about being accepted at West Point. Now they’re defending him and blaming the whole thing on Politico and its typical liberal media hatred of conservatives. Their basic defense seems to be that Carson never said he “applied” to West Point, or even that he was “accepted” at West Point. All he said is that he was offered a scholarship to go there.

Well, here’s what he said in August:

I was the highest student ROTC member in Detroit and was thrilled to get an offer from West Point. But I knew medicine is what I wanted to do.

Come on, folks. “An offer from West Point” is the same as “being accepted at West Point.” It’s obvious what he was saying here, and it’s equally obvious it isn’t true. Here is Carson’s defense:

In an interview with The New York Times on Friday, Mr. Carson said: “I don’t remember all the specific details. Because I had done so extraordinarily well you know I was told that someone like me — they could get a scholarship to West Point. But I made it clear I was going to pursue a career in medicine.”

“It was, you know, an informal ‘with a record like yours we could easily get you a scholarship to West Point.’”

That might have happened—though no one would have used the word “scholarship” since West Point is free to begin with. But for the past two decades it’s not what Carson has said. It’s not even close. There’s a world of difference between (a) someone telling you that you could probably get into West Point and (b) actually getting into West Point.

Carson is a nutcase, a policy buffoon, and at the very least, a serial personal embellisher. With a guy like that, you just know more stuff is going to come out. Conservatives should quit while they’re behind and dump the guy. If they stick with him, eventually he’s going to make them all look like dopes.

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Are Conservatives Really Going All-In on Ben Carson?

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