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Donald Trump Is a Pathological Liar. It’s Time to Stop Tiptoeing Around This.

by WalterHillen Posted on November 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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Let’s take a look at a few headlines about Donald Trump lately:

CNN: Does Donald Trump transcend the truth?

New York Times: Donald Trump’s shortcuts and salesmanlike stretches

ABC News: Donald Trump gaining strength despite questionable comments

The Atlantic: Donald Trump’s fact-free weekend

Washington Post: Donald Trump is leading an increasingly fact-free 2016 campaign

NBC News: Amid outcry, Trump continues campaign of controversy

BBC: Trump ‘wrong’ in claiming US Arabs cheered 9/11 attacks

CBS New York: Evidence supporting Trump’s claim of Jersey City Muslims cheering on 9/11 is hard to come by

Business Insider: Donald Trump declares massive victory on his widely disputed claim about 9/11

Los Angeles Times: When it comes to Syrian refugees and fighting Islamic State, Trump wings it

USA Today: Trump defends tweet with faulty crime stats as ‘a retweet’

Fox News: Trump tweet on black crime sets off firestorm

It’s way past time for this stuff. You can call Trump’s statements lies or fabrications or even falsehoods if you insist on being delicate about it. But you can’t call them questionable or controversial or salesmanlike or disputed or even faulty. The man is a serial, pathological liar. Isn’t it about time for the journalistic community to work up the courage to report this with clear eyes?

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Donald Trump Is a Pathological Liar. It’s Time to Stop Tiptoeing Around This.

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Americans Both Love and Hate Government

by PamCarstensen83 Posted on November 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Pew Research once again shows us that Americans are hopelessly confused. Do they distrust government? You bet! Only 19 percent say they trust the government most or all of the time.

Does the government do a good job? Hell n—wait, what? Majorities think the government is doing a pretty good job in almost all areas—including keeping the country safe from terrorism. In fact, the only two areas that get a low score are immigration and poverty.

So why all the distrust? I haven’t read the whole report yet, so I don’t know what ideas they have. Maybe I’ll do that later tonight. Basically, I just think this shows once again that Americans are schizophrenic. They hate education but love their local schools. They hate Congress but love their local member. The hate the government but….yeah, it’s actually doing a decent job. The French may have a problem governing a country with 246 kinds of cheese, but what do you about Americans? You could always just ban a couple hundred kinds of cheese if you really wanted to, but how do you get Americans do adopt some kind of coherent view of how they want to be governed?

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Americans Both Love and Hate Government

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Friday Cat Blogging – 11 September 2015

by Rachele6065 Posted on September 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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Like all cats, Hilbert and Hopper love staring out the window. So much cool stuff: birds, squirrels, rabbits, bugs, butterflies, and invisible pixies. I don’t know what had them entranced in this picture, but it was probably a butterfly. We’ve had several monarchs hatch lately, and they are very attention-grabbing critters. Especially if you’re a cat.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 11 September 2015

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Let’s Have More God Talk in This Campaign

by HalleyEgrseobisv Posted on September 11, 2015

Mother Jones

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“Liberal Jewish atheist” Paul Waldman thinks we should talk about God more:

The United States has far and away the highest levels of religiosity of any industrialized democracy, and all presidential candidates are expected, at least at some point, to be photographed going to church and testify to their deep and abiding faith in God. As long as that’s the case, we have not just a right but an obligation to ask them specific questions about what they believe and how it would affect their actions in office.

….But journalists are extremely squeamish about getting into those details, no doubt because they’re worried that it will come off sounding like criticism of the candidates’ beliefs instead of a worthwhile exploration of them….We spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to get inside the heads of those who would be president, but when the topic of religion comes up, we take a tentative step forward, then rush back lest we give offense.

This is quite a change from 1960, isn’t it?

In any case, I’ll toss out an alternative explanation: most mainstream reporters aren’t very religious themselves and don’t think they can keep up their end of an interview about faith. When the Rev. Jeremiah Wright says “God damn America,” that’s catnip for the press: it’s not really about religion, it’s about somebody saying something outrageous and then tallying up the responses. Easy peasy. But a serious discussion about the ins and outs of various faith traditions and how different candidates ended up where they did? It’s sort of like talking about the details of handgun design. There’s a serious chance of a liberal journalist embarrassing himself badly.

The reason I don’t think that mainstream journalists are genuinely worried about religious questions coming off as criticism is because plenty of journalists do ask questions about religious faith. And presidential candidates talk to them. The thing is, these are mostly journalists for religious publications, who have the background to talk about this stuff without sounding ignorant. Mainstream reporters are well aware of this, and well aware that most presidential candidates are happy to talk about it. They’re just uneasy about their ability to do the job right.

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Let’s Have More God Talk in This Campaign

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Jeb Bush Has a Tax Plan, But He’s a Little Shy About Sharing It

by MartyWhitehouse Posted on September 10, 2015

Mother Jones

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This is nuts. Apparently there is a detailed Jeb Bush tax plan. His website now features a document laden with specific savings that various taxpayers can expect, which can exist only if there are specific proposals to work from. And a team of friendly economists has produced a paper scoring the tax plan, which can also exist only if there’s a detailed document to draw on. And yet, that document doesn’t appear on his website. What’s going on? Why is Jeb’s plan a secret?

For what it’s worth, the economists say that:

The plan will cost $3.4 trillion over ten years.
But the tax cuts, along with Jeb’s proposed regulatory changes, will supercharge the economy enough to reduce the actual cost to $1.2 trillion.
If we limit federal budget growth to 3.2 percent per year, that will save $1.4 trillion. Voila! We’re ahead by $200 billion.

If you believe all this, Jeb has some swampland in his home state he’d like you to take a look at. But on the bright side, this paper does finally solve the mystery of where we can find the details of Jeb’s tax plan: they’re outlined in an appendix at the end of the paper. I guess it’s meant as a special treat for people who actually read the whole thing.

But why is this the only place the details of Jeb’s tax plan are available? Why not post it on his website? It’s a mystery. But at least there’s enough there that independent folks like the Tax Policy Center can probably take a pretty good swipe at scoring it themselves and figuring out the distributional impact. I can’t wait.

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Jeb Bush Has a Tax Plan, But He’s a Little Shy About Sharing It

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Tales From City of Hope #7: Weekend Update

by 0xo4cdr4 Posted on April 25, 2015

Mother Jones

Since my actual stem cell transplant happened on Thursday, that counts as Day Zero. Today is Day +2. It turns out that part of the prep for the transplant was an IV injection of both Benadryl and Ativan, so I was pretty conked out the entire day. Friday was about the same. Strong stuff, but today I seem to be more alert. For now, anyway.

My white cell count continues to drop, which is paradoxically a good thing. Basically, my immune system will drop nearly to zero, probably around Monday or Tuesday, and then begin rebounding. Assuming nothing goes wrong, the main effect will be lots of fatigue and poor appetite. So let’s hope nothing goes wrong, shall we?

In the meantime, while I wait for a guest post from President Obama, my mother has promised to deliver me a traditional chocolate birthday cake of my childhood on Sunday. We shall christen it the Day +3 cake since we’re not even within shouting distance of my birthday at the moment.

Otherwise, today is busy! Marian is here, doing some laundry while I’m being hydrated for four hours. Later my sister is coming, and our friend Eileen a little after that. Should be quite the party.

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Tales From City of Hope #7: Weekend Update

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Tales From City of Hope #6: What Does Kevin Smell Like?

by ELTKassandra Posted on April 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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As you recall from yesterday, the DMSO preservative used to keep my stem cells fresh was alleged to cause a distinct body odor. So today, after the transfusion, I asked everyone who came into my room what I smelled like. The results are displayed on the right in chart form because Science™.

The results were disappointing. My sample size was dismally small, and 100 percent female. No single result rose to the level of significance at the 95 percent level. There wasn’t even a modal response. In fact, it was worse than that. One respondent said garlic, but all four of the others said definitely not garlic. One said sweet and another said not sweet. And one person said there was no odor at all.

The best I can conclude is that there is an odor of some kind, but everyone smells something different. I should add, however, that the test conditions were suboptimal. I’m such a good stem cell producer that I only needed two bags of cells. Some people need as many as ten. This means less DMSO for me and therefore less odoriferousness. Beyond that, given the poor state of the data, your guess is as good as mine.

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Tales From City of Hope #6: What Does Kevin Smell Like?

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Tales From City of Hope #5: My Stem Cells Have Come Home to Papa

by BrianneJessep Posted on April 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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It is 9:49 am PDT on April 23, and my stem cell transfusion is complete. It took less than 20 minutes. Now the stem cells just have to graft and start multiplying, each of them eventually maturing into some kind of blood product (red blood cell, white blood cell, platelet, etc.). This will take about a month, but I’m not home free even then. It turns out that these will initially be “baby” cells, and it takes them about a year to fully learn how to do their jobs. Who knew that itty bitty cells had to attend cell training school?

The entire remainder of my visit at City of Hope is just waiting for my immune system to recover and to keep an eye out for severe side effects in case they happen. In a few days I’ll be losing my appetite, but apparently this is because I’ll be losing my sense of taste. In the past, I’ve lost my appetite due to IV painkillers in the hospital or extreme fatigue at home. In both cases food tasted normal, but I just couldn’t stand the thought of eating anything.

So will this be better or worse? Presumably, food will be tasteless but not repulsive. That strikes me as no fun, but actually more tolerable than being actively repulsed by food. We’ll see.

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Tales From City of Hope #5: My Stem Cells Have Come Home to Papa

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By Immense Coincidence, GOP Benghazi Probe Scheduled to Finish Up During Height of 2016 Hillary Campaign

by LatiaChumleigh Posted on April 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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From Bloomberg News:

The findings of a Republican-led committee investigating Hillary Clinton’s response to the deadly 2012 attack in Benghazi, Libya, likely will not be released until next year, just months before the 2016 presidential election.

I am shocked, shocked to hear this news.

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By Immense Coincidence, GOP Benghazi Probe Scheduled to Finish Up During Height of 2016 Hillary Campaign

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We’re Bombing Syria, Just Like Obama Said He Would

by AntoineScroggin Posted on September 23, 2014

Mother Jones

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The front page is dominated almost entirely this morning by the news that we’re bombing ISIS militants in Syria. I confess that this doesn’t strike me as worthy of quite such breathless coverage. Two weeks ago President Obama said he was going to bomb Syria, and now he’s doing it. Did anyone expect him not to follow through on this?

But of course I get it. Bombs are headline generators whether they’re expected or not. After reading all the reports, though, Dan Drezner is pessimistic:

I said last week that I’d start making point predictions here. So, here goes: I’m 70 percent certain that there will be no fundamental change in the Islamic State’s hold on territory in Syria and Iraq for the rest of this calendar year.

That’s probably a good bet. This isn’t because aerial campaigns have no value. Of course they do. It’s because in most cases they have limited value unless they’re used in support of ground troops with a well-defined mission. And so far, there’s no well-defined mission and no one is committing ground troops to the fight. Presumably the new Iraqi government will send in troops eventually, and then we’ll see whether our commitment of air resources was worthwhile. Until then we just won’t know.

As an aside, for the next few months I’d treat virtually every announcement from either ISIS or the Pentagon with extreme skepticism. Some of what they say may be true and some may not, but there’s really no way to know which is which. We can parse all this stuff til the cows come home, but that won’t change our fundamental ignorance. Don’t take anything at face value no matter where it comes from.

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We’re Bombing Syria, Just Like Obama Said He Would

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