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Donald Trump Announces Something, Press Goes Wild

by ChanaWhelan445 Posted on September 14, 2016

Mother Jones

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A couple of weeks ago Hillary Clinton announced a plan to rein in excessive price increases by pharmaceutical companies. It was a hot topic at the time thanks to outrage over the 6x price increase of the EpiPen. However, if my sleuthing is accurate, Clinton’s plan wasn’t covered at all in the print editions of the New York Times and Washington Post, and got only a short blurb in the Wall Street Journal.

Today Donald Trump announced a modest child-care and maternity leave plan that was almost comically underfunded. The New York Times produced a long front-page story. The Washington Post ran a long story in the A section and added a second analysis piece online. The Wall Street Journal provided Ivanka Trump with prime op-ed real estate to tout her father’s plan. That’s some great coverage! And all of these pieces barely mentioned that Trump offered no remotely plausible way to pay for his proposal.

I suppose you can argue that Trump’s child-care plan is more important than Clinton’s drug pricing plan. Or that an actual policy proposal from Trump is so rare that it’s big news no matter what. Or that Republicans don’t normally propose spending money on people in need.

Sure, I guess. I mean, I realize that the marvel of the dancing bear is not that the bear dances well, but that the bear dances at all. Even so, it sure seems like the press really doesn’t care about Hillary Clinton’s policy proposals—oh God, another boring white paper from Hillz—but swoons every time Donald Trump blurps out one of his laughably ill-thought-out ideas—he’s using Ivanka to appeal to suburban women, we gotta get on this! But that’s editorial judgment for you. I’m sure the pros know what they’re doing.

POSTSCRIPT: Can I gripe about something else as long as we’re on the subject? Thanks. Here’s the New York Times:

But in selling his case, Mr. Trump stretched the truth, saying that his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, has no such plan of her own and “never will.”

The Washington Post doesn’t even mention this, and needless to say, neither does Ivanka Trump’s bit of puffery in the Journal. So props to the Times. But seriously: stretched the truth? As Trump knows perfectly well, Hillary Clinton has been pressing for better child-care and family leave policies for decades, and her current proposal has been on her website for months. It’s far more extensive, more generous, and better thought out than Trump’s.

This is why Trump feels like he can simply say anything he wants, no matter how ridiculous. The obvious way to describe Trump’s statement is to call it a lie. That’s what it is. Instead, it either goes unmentioned or, at best, gets tiptoed around inaccurately. In what way, after all, did Trump “stretch the truth”? That implies there’s some kernel of truth to what Trump said, but he exaggerated it. But that’s not what he did. He just lied.

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Donald Trump Announces Something, Press Goes Wild

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Here’s More Evidence That Trump Did Not Oppose the Iraq War Before It Began

by ZacGiordano Posted on September 2, 2016

Mother Jones

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One of the many mysteries of the bizarre 2016 presidential campaign is how GOP nominee Donald Trump has seemingly gotten away with the big lie that he opposed the Iraq war. The celebrity mogul has repeatedly boasted that he had the foresight and judgment to be against George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq. Yet there is nothing in the public record suggesting that Trump was anti-war before it began. The only known public statement from Trump on this subject shows the opposite: that he favored the military action. In September 2002, he appeared on Howard Stern’s show, and the shock-jock asked him if he supported invading Iraq, a move that the Bush-Cheney administration was obviously prepping for. “Yeah, I guess so,” Trump replied. Not very Churchillian, but it was definite.

Yet Trump has insisted—as he did during a speech in June—that he “was among the earliest to criticize the rush to war, and yes, even before the war ever started.” And during this campaign he has not always been called out when bragging that he opposed the war. During a joint 60 Minutes interview in July with his running mate Mike Pence, Trump asserted, “I was against the war in Iraq from the beginning,” and he added, “Frankly, I’m one of the few that was right on Iraq.” Interviewer Lesley Stahl did not challenge Trump on this point and instead focused on the fact that Pence had voted for the war while serving as a member of Congress.

Now there is more evidence that Trump was not a foe of the war before it was launched.

In a 2011 video interview with the Wall Street Journal, Trump was asked by the newspaper’s Kelly Evans about the ongoing US intervention in Libya. He indicated that he was no fan of this Obama move and that he was opposed to intervening in Libya on humanitarian grounds: “I’m only interested in Libya, if we take the oil. If we don’t take the oil, I have no interest in Libya.” Trump then turned toward the subject of Iraq: “I always heard that when we went into Iraq, we went in for the oil. I said, ‘Ah that sounds smart.'”

This suggests that Trump was not initially opposed to the invasion and, moreover, that he was fine with it, as long as the United States somehow ended up with control of Iraq’s oil. The remark is hardly the comment of someone who prior to the invasion considered the war a big mistake. It indicates that Trump came to see the war as wrong because his initial expectation—the United States would seize Iraq’s oil—was not met.

After making this comment, Trump had a difficult time answering Evans’ follow-up questions about his assertion that the United States could still take over Iraq’s oil supplies and make a profit. It was typical Trump: he just insisted that were he in charge he could do it. (At the time, Trump was considering entering the 2012 presidential race, a contest he eventually avoided.)

By the way, in this WSJ interview, Trump contradicted his own position on Libya. Weeks earlier, he had called on Obama to intervene in Libya—not to grab oil but to stop Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi from slaughtering rebel forces and civilians. In a video blog, Trump had proclaimed, “I can’t believe what our country is doing, Qaddafi in Libya is killing thousands of people, nobody knows how bad it is, and we’re sitting around we have soldiers all over the Middle East, and we’re not bringing them in to stop this horrible carnage and that’s what it is. It’s a carnage.”

Policy consistency is not a Trump trait. He often appears to spout whatever he thinks is politically necessary at the moment. On the campaign trail, he has attacked President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for withdrawing US troops from Iraq—actually, it was Bush’s decision, not theirs—even though that was what Trump himself called for at the time. And he keeps citing his opposition to the Iraq war as proof of his national security savvy. But this claim is more likely proof of a penchant to change positions and a willingness to say anything.

Watch Trump’s full Wall Street Journal interview below.

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Here’s More Evidence That Trump Did Not Oppose the Iraq War Before It Began

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Self-driving cars are good. Too good

by DrewKilfoyle Posted on October 9, 2015

Self-driving cars are good. Too good

By on 9 Oct 2015 3:37 pmcommentsShare

Guys, we’re so not ready for the future. The chrome-plated, fuel-efficient, robot-everything future we’ve been working toward? Trust me, we can’t handle it.

Exhibit A: Engineers at Google have been running road tests with a fleet of some 20 autonomous vehicles for six years, and in that time the robo-drivers have been involved in 11 “minor incidents.” I know what you’re thinking: “Not bad! I’d like to see the average human driver cover a million miles without getting into a scrape or 11.”

But with the sensory data of an omniscient god and reflexes that make the rest of us looks like drunk, mitten-handed babies, how did the autonomous fleet get in so much as a single fender bender?

Well, it comes back to said mitten-handed babies. Just because Google’s cars are extremely good at avoiding accidents doesn’t mean they can keep US from hitting THEM. In many of the 11 recorded incidents, a driverless car edging into an intersection or hesitating at a stop sign was rear-ended by an overeager human driver behind it.

That’s right. The robots are here, and they drive like my gran. Where a human driver, used to cruising alongside fellow jerks, might accelerate to cut into the flow of traffic, a driverless car will stop short to minimize risk. Smart? Maybe — but that doesn’t count for much if it’s too smart for the rest of us to catch on.

So we COULD all take a lesson from the robot cars and chill … or, we could program autonomous vehicles to be a little more like us. Which, in the Wall Street Journal, Google admits they’re already doing, by making their cars drive a bit more “humanistically.”

You hear that, future? Stay in your corner. Right now, we need driverless cars that can tailgate and ignore speed limits with the best of us — really, it’s for the greater good.

Source:

All the Accidents California’s Driverless Cars Got in by Being Too Good at Driving

, gizmodo.

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Self-driving cars are good. Too good

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Check Out This Amazing Presidential Debate Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush Just Had

by AlyceL77dvcyrf Posted on January 9, 2015

Mother Jones

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On Friday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Mitt Romney may be running for president again in 2016. Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is also considering a run! Mother Jones DC bureau chief David Corn, who broke the news of this little video back in 2012, had a couple of thoughts about how that battle for the GOP nomination might play out:

We can’t wait.

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Check Out This Amazing Presidential Debate Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush Just Had

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Tesla abandons its patents, aims to spur electric-car revolution

by AlenaBowie Posted on June 12, 2014

It’s open season

Tesla abandons its patents, aims to spur electric-car revolution

By

Tesla

Tesla, maker of the most critically acclaimed car ever, is going open source.

Every patent that the Silicon Valley electric-car pioneer has ever secured will now be available for any company in the world to use, free of charge.

“Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk wrote in a blog post published Thursday. “Our true competition is not the small trickle of non-Tesla electric cars being produced, but rather the enormous flood of gasoline cars pouring out of the world’s factories every day.”

“Given that annual new vehicle production is approaching 100 million per year and the global fleet is approximately 2 billion cars, it is impossible for Tesla to build electric cars fast enough to address the carbon crisis. … We believe that Tesla, other companies making electric cars, and the world would all benefit from a common, rapidly-evolving technology platform,” he wrote.

Following a conference call with Musk, The Wall Street Journal reported that hundreds of patents, covering everything from batteries to electric control systems, would be affected, helping to spur growth in an industry in which Tesla is a global leader.

Mr. Musk also hinted at another reason for the offer: achieving greater economies of scale. For example, Tesla’s patents for its vehicle Supercharging stations could be shared with other auto makers, which could help Tesla spread costs and more quickly make more stations available.

More manufacturers should use small battery cells, as Tesla does, Mr. Musk said. “That would be one thing I would recommend.” He has outlined plans to build a large battery factory, which he calls the gigafactory, to produce more battery packs in the U.S.

Tesla has “several hundred” patents related to all areas of its electric vehicles, Mr. Musk said, including batteries and electric control systems. Tesla isn’t worried a competitor could use its patents to undercut the company, he said.

Tesla’s business model doesn’t just emphasize the manufacture and sale of electric cars. The company is also a major producer of electric-vehicle components used by other manufacturers. Thursday’s announcement could help competitors move in on those sales, but Tesla apparently feels confident enough in its own capabilities to embrace, rather than fear, that potential threat.

“Technology leadership is not defined by patents, which history has repeatedly shown to be small protection indeed against a determined competitor, but rather by the ability of a company to attract and motivate the world’s most talented engineers,” Musk wrote in his post. “We believe that applying the open source philosophy to our patents will strengthen rather than diminish Tesla’s position in this regard.”


Source
All Our Patent Are Belong To You, Tesla Motors
Tesla Motors Offers Open Licenses to Its Patents, The Wall Street Journal

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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The Wall Street Journal Needs to Find Some New Clip Art

by qdyedut Posted on April 3, 2014

Mother Jones

Wait a second. Did the Wall Street Journal editorial page really use the Daily Kos logo to illustrate an op-ed by billionaire arch-conservative Charles Koch? Sure, it’s an out-of-date logo, but even so, do they not have any idea that this piece of clip art has long been associated with the Great Orange Satan? Color me amused.

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The Wall Street Journal Needs to Find Some New Clip Art

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The Trade Deficit Is Down, But There’s a Catch

by John Grit Posted on March 19, 2014

Mother Jones

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The Wall Street Journal reports on the latest trade deficit numbers:

The U.S. current-account deficit sank to the lowest level in more than 14 years at the end of 2013, reflecting a smaller trade gap and better returns on assets Americans own abroad….The gap, which has narrowed 20% from a year earlier, now represents 1.9% of U.S. gross domestic product. That’s the smallest shortfall as a share of the U.S. economy since 1997.

That’s all good, but there’s a caveat: since 2009, the overall trade deficit has been flat while net imports of oil have decreased by about $50 billion per quarter. This means that net imports of all other goods have actually increased. The fracking boom is helping us out, but only temporarily. We still have a fairly chronic trade deficit problem everywhere else. More here on why this was probably inevitable.

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The Trade Deficit Is Down, But There’s a Catch

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Defending Their Bottom Line

by Posted on October 8, 2013

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Defending Their Bottom Line

Posted 8 October 2013 in

National

When it became apparent that the oil industry has been doing everything in its power to block renewable fuel alternatives like E15 from coming to gas stations, a bipartisan team of Sens. Grassley (R-IA) and Klobuchar (D-MN) asked the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department to investigate these anti-competitive practices. While one might expect that the self-described champions of the free market at the Wall Street Journal would embrace this initiative, their editorial in this morning’s edition points to a more troubling trend: at every opportunity, the Wall Street Journal has defended the oil industry’s bottom line at the expense of cheaper, less carbon-intensive alternatives.

Most tellingly, the Journal’s editorial relies on one of Big Oil’s favorite talking points, the so-called “blend wall”:

Refiners are thus crashing against the 10% “blend wall”; beyond that concentration in gasoline, ethanol begins to damage motors.

The truth? Gasoline containing 15% ethanol is safe for all cars model year 2001 or later. What’s more, the Department of Energy put E15 through 6.5 million miles of trials, making it the most tested fuel in history, and the EPA has approved its sale in American gas stations. Here’s how the editorial concludes:

If ethanol is the miracle its supporters claim, it shouldn’t need a mandate or subsidies. And it shouldn’t need to bully the oil industry to do its selling for it.

It’s convenient that the Journal ignores the century of subsidies and special privileges afforded to the oil industry, advantages that have enabled it to cement its near-monopoly on our fuel supply to the detriment of our environment, our economy and our national debt. If the Wall Street Journal were truly committed to healthy, competitive markets, it would support the introduction of viable alternatives. There is a market for renewable fuels like E15 (as our recent polling indicates), but as long as the oil industry and its allies in the media continue to spread misinformation, American consumers will continue to lose out.

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Defending Their Bottom Line

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Sorry, Wall Street Journal: Renewable Fuel Lowers Gas Prices

by Posted on July 22, 2013

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Sorry, Wall Street Journal: Renewable Fuel Lowers Gas Prices

Posted 22 July 2013 in

National

In its new editorial, the Wall Street Journal is concerned you might be feeling some extra pain at the pump:

The summer is high driving season, so $4 gasoline in many parts of the country will add to the cost of family vacations.

And we couldn’t agree more. As they concede early on, the price of gas is mostly set by global supply and demand. But when the WSJ goes on to claim that the Renewable Fuel Standard is driving prices up even more, that’s when their argument fallsl apart. Renewable fuel actually lowers the price of gas, plain and simple.

Here’s what the WSJ gets wrong:

  1. The so-called blend wall is a fabrication, essentially the oil industry’s attempts to evade its responsibilities under the Renewable Fuel Standard. E15 fuel has been extensively tested and is ready for sale, and misinformation about its safety or efficiency only confuses consumers (who we know want more renewable fuel options when they fill up).
  2. The RFS and its associated “RIN credits” have not been a factor in higher retail gasoline prices, according to an analysis conducted by Informa Economics, Inc. In fact, the study found ethanol costs significantly less than gasoline at the wholesale level and is reducing pump prices for consumers across the country.
  3. Renewable fuel and the Renewable Fuel Standard are helping reduce carbon emissions. In 2012, the use of renewable fuel slashed greenhouse gas emissions by 33.4 million metric tons.

Remember this: as long as the WSJ continues to take its talking points straight from the oil companies, we’ll be here to make sure you’re getting the facts.

 

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Climate change hurts women. Wall Street Journal sneers.

by Roger Frost Posted on May 1, 2013

Climate change hurts women. Wall Street Journal sneers.

By John Upton

Shutterstock /

Donya Nedomam

Women in the developing world, many of whom work in agriculture, are vulnerable to climate change.

Apparently the idea of girls being sold off into early marriage and women being pushed into prostitution is fucking hilarious.

Or so thinks the right-wing media machine, confronted this week with warnings about the negative ways climate change could affect women around the world.

Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and 11 other House Democrats, both men and women, introduced a resolution that aims to raise awareness about the vulnerability of women and girls to global warming.

From the resolution [PDF], via The Hill:

Whereas climate change exacerbates issues of scarcity and lack of accessibility to primary natural resources, forest resources, and arable land for food production, thereby contributing to increased conflict and instability, as well as the workload and stresses on women farmers, who are estimated to produce 60 to 80 percent of the food in most developing countries; …

Whereas food insecure women with limited socioeconomic resources may be vulnerable to situations such as sex work, transactional sex, and early marriage that put them at risk for HIV, STIs, unplanned pregnancy, and poor reproductive health; …

The resolution lists many other threats and goes on to encourage the president to “integrate a gender approach in all policies and programs in the United States that are globally related to climate change” and to “ensure that those policies and programs support women globally to prepare for, build resilience for, and adapt to climate change.”

Heavy stuff, right? And it’s heavy stuff that’s not often talked about. The resolution got some people in politics and the media to consider these issues for the first time.

But conservative commentators decided against spending too much time thinking about it. They jumped right to snickering about the sex references. The Wall Street Journal wrote about the resolution in a mocking piece with the headline, “Baby, It’s Warm Outside,” and the subhed, “The climate is changing. Lock up your daughters.” The first paragraph:

Is “climate change” corrupting the morals of women around the world? That’s a question nobody is asking if ever there was one, yet a dozen left-wing congressmen, led by Rep. Barbara Lee of California, are answering in the affirmative.

The Daily Caller followed right up with “Democrats: Global warming means more hookers.”

Needless to say, Lee has been unimpressed by some of the coverage, particularly by the near singular focus on sex work. She told the Los Angeles Times that “it’s unfortunate that this resolution has been misrepresented as to its goals.”

John Upton is a science aficionado and green news junkie who

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