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The House Just Voted to Ban Those Tiny Pieces of Plastic in Your Toothpaste

by MatthiasFyo Posted on December 8, 2015

Mother Jones

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Yesterday, the US House of Representatives voted to phase out microbeads, the little pieces of plastic that act as exfoliants in personal-care products ranging from face wash to toothpaste. The bill, which was introduced last year by Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), would ban the use of synthetic microplastics in cosmetics by 2018. Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and Gary Peters (D-Mich.) introduced companion legislation in May.

Environmental advocates have expressed concern for years over the beads, which are so small that they aren’t caught in water treatment plants. There are roughly 300,000 microbeads in a single tube of face wash; by some estimates, Americans dump roughly 300 tons of the beads per year into US waterways. The microplastics, which serve as a sponge for toxins, are frequently confused by fish as food and make their way up the food chain—they’ve turned up in tuna and swordfish.

Several states have enacted microbead bans, starting with Illinois in 2014. California passed the strictest legislation yet in October this year, banning both synthetic and biodegradable plastics. (Many experts argue that there is no such thing as plastic that can biodegrade in ocean conditions.) If it becomes law, the national legislation, which only focuses on synthetic plastics, would supersede these state bans.

Here are a few products with and without the plastic beads. If you’re curious about a product you use, look for polyethylene on the ingredient list.

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The House Just Voted to Ban Those Tiny Pieces of Plastic in Your Toothpaste

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Don’t Feel Bad About the Guy(s) You Fucked Last Night

by DottyArent Posted on November 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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A few years ago, New York City-based stand-up comedian Corinne Fisher, 30, was going through a personal slump: She’d just been dumped unexpectedly by the man she thought she was going to marry, in a Panera Bread of all places. “I had what I would describe as a nervous breakdown,” she says. “I lost 20 pounds, my hair was falling out because I wasn’t eating properly.” She spent hours sobbing on the shoulder of her friend and fellow comic Krystyna Hutchinson, 27. But amid the moping, Fisher got an idea for a new project: She would take the High Fidelity approach and interview all of her ex-boyfriends and lovers to figure out what went wrong.

Hutchinson—who, like Fisher, is unabashedly horny and not shy about sharing her sexual escapades—was on board, but for a slightly different reason. She’d become frustrated by the “notion of shame around women who have a lot of sex and enjoy it.” So in December 2013, the duo, collectively known as Sorry About Last Night, launched Guys We Fucked: The Anti-Slut Shaming Podcast.

Every episode begins with an update on each woman’s sex life, but the podcast quickly evolved away from its focus on past paramours. There’s still plenty of chatter about threesomes and sex toys, but the show also takes on touchy topics like pedophilia, pimps, and sexual violence in frank conversations with comedians, actors, sex workers, and activists. Guests have included the likes of sex columnist Dan Savage, Daily Show creator Lizz Winstead, and female pornographer Stoya. Two years into its run, Guys We Fucked began to pick up speed, and it now boasts more than a half million listeners. In August, it became the top comedy podcast on iTunes for a stint. It’s still in the top 10—despite initially being blocked by Apple due to its profane title. I caught up with Fisher and Hutchinson to talk about Miley Cyrus, capitalism in the bedroom, and “no bullshit feminism.”

Mother Jones: What made you decide you were comfortable airing your sexual exploits and questions to hundreds of thousands of listeners?

Corinne Fisher: Nothing. Because we didn’t know that was going to happen. And now sometimes I’m like, “Damn.”

Krystyna Hutchinson: Corinne and I are really good friends and we’ve been working together for four or five years now, so our chemistry is really good. I say, “Okay, I’m just going to talk to Corinne”—and I can forget the fact that 100,000 people are about to hear me talk about my pussy.

MJ: Have you experienced any negative side effects of being so open about your sex lives?

CF: The negative side effects are very directly to my personal life. Being single and talking about being “a big old whore,” is not going to be the best sell for yourself for dating. But to play devil’s advocate, I don’t really want to date somebody who’s not comfortable with everything I’m saying.

MJ: What’s the best reaction you’ve gotten to the show so far?

CH: A couple credited us with them being able to conceive!

KF: The first email we got that blew my mind was from a girl in India who was raped by a member of her family, and then she started listening to the podcast. She said, “For the first time in my life I can look at myself as a sexual being.” We did one with Wendi Starling about the night she was raped. After that aired, we were inundated with emails from girls that experienced almost the exact same thing, with someone familiar. It really pushed home the message that this happens way too much. We’re opening up topics that not a lot of people are comfortable talking about. It’s exciting to know that at least it helps some people.

MJ: Why did you include “anti-slut-shaming” in the title?

KH: Just having a vagina made me want to include that in the title. There’s this shame around women who have a lot of sex and enjoy it. It’s one of the huge parts about being a woman that’s really frustrating. I really wanted to speak to that, and talk about our experiences with men who have been assholes, with men who have been great. Because that’s the one common denominator between all of my friends and me: We all have stories of a time that we were sexually harassed.

MJ: There are plenty of sex podcasts out there already. What was the void you hoped to fill?

CF: The one in my soul.

KH: One of the voids that we didn’t set out to fill but I feel like we are filling is no-bullshit feminism. We want to talk about the shitty stuff. We want to talk about what we’re bad at. We talk about how women are physically weaker than men. Some people don’t want to say that, but it’s true. Why can’t we just talk about it? And just scrape all the bullshit away. I respond to that type of feminism so much better. And I think it’s something that men can really get on board with, too.

MJ: Some people think sex motivates pretty much every decision we make, what we wear, who we talk to, everything we do all day. So why don’t women talk about it more?

KH: It all comes back to shame. The reason I don’t wear tops that show cleavage, because I have giant tits, is because one time in the eighth grade this girl accused me of sticking out my boobs to get boys to like me. These little tiny scarring things. I think you just get inside your head, and because no one else is talking about it, you stay inside your head and you think you’re alone in this kind of struggle to be open about your sexuality. That’s pretty much the core.

CF: There’s a lot more value on the sexuality of a woman than a man. If there’s too much sex on the market, the value of the item decreases. If you’re a woman who’s giving away your sexuality, even if you feel good about it, men look at you as something that has a lower value. I think we somehow got that into our heads that that is true. When really it’s just a mechanism of control.

MJ: So really your podcast is about trying to rethink capitalism?

CF: Kind of.

KH: Exactly.

MJ: A lot of your listeners are teens and college kids. Do you feel a sense of responsibility?

KH: We feel a huge sense of responsibility when someone young writes us. And we are very clear that we are not doctors. If we give you anything medical, it’s because we Googled it. The last thing we’d want to do is give anybody the wrong info, especially someone who’s impressionable.

MJ: You have a very lighthearted rapport about some pretty serious issues. Do listeners ever take offense?

CF: We always have to keep reminding the listeners: This is not a sex podcast. This is a comedy podcast where we talk about sex. Anyone who knows anything about comedians knows that we are very morbid people. We can find humor in pretty much anything.

MJ: Apple was censoring your podcast for a while. Did you ever figure out why?

KH: iTunes has third-party censors that kind of comb through everything to make sure nothing was missed. In our podcast the word “fucked” was not bleeped, because we were never told it had to be, and they just eliminated it from all search fields and charts. All the fans tweeting at iTunes podcast is actually what got Apple to call us personally to sort it out. And they were very cooperative and understanding and they apologized—so that was nice.

CF: But then they just bleeped out the word “titties.” I don’t understand that. There’s way worse words in our titles than “titties.” Apple is a notoriously conservative company, as are a ton of big companies. It’s not surprising—it’s just disappointing.

MJ: Is part of your strategy to lure people in talking about boobs and threesomes, and then subtly school them about safe sex and female empowerment?

CF: Would you want to listen to a podcast called “Sex Is Like Really Cool When We Consent?” or would you want to listen to a podcast called “Guys We Fucked”? I want to listen to “Guys We Fucked.” Those girls seem fun.

KH: So much of the sex talk is so clinical and boring and dull. I think what keeps people listening is that we are funny, and we do tackle some interesting topics.

CF: It was very specifically called “Guys We Fucked.” Yes, it’s crude, but the women hold the power in that title. Most times, a guy says, “Yeah, I fucked that girl.” No, no, no. This is guys we fucked. We did the fucking!

KH: It’s taking ownership of your sex life.

MJ: Journalist Rachel Hills had a book come out this year called The Sex Myth. She said, “We internalize this idea of sex as something that is constantly available and that everyone is doing, and if you’re not doing it, there’s something wrong with you.” Do you think our culture today is oversexualized?

CF: We can only speak to our own libidos. We just both coincidentally are hypersexual people. But we’ve had people on that are more vanilla, as we call them. There’s nothing wrong with that. We had a man well into his 30s who was a virgin, and there’s nothing wrong with that either. But yeah, of course we’re oversexed. We always talk about how we need crazier porn to get off, or a bigger vibrator. We’re an oversexualized society. But it’s also mind-blowing that in this oversexualized society, we’re also so ashamed of sex. We’re getting very mixed messages.

KH: I think what society is obsessed with is comparing themselves with everybody else. Everybody needs to relax. Stop comparing yourself to everybody. You walk down the street in New York and see billboards with beautiful women, and it’s like, yeah, they’re beautiful women. You don’t have to be that thin. You don’t have to be that beautiful. They’re nice to look at. The end.

MJ: If you could interview any celebrity or politician about his or her sex life, who would it be?

KH: Assumes a high-pitched Southern drawl. Beyoncé, because I love her. She is my Jesus. No, but really: Beyoncé.

CF: Miley Cyrus. She’s someone who’s made to look like an idiot. But if you really follow her online and listen to the things she says, she’s doing her own thing and being herself in the most basic way. Like yeah, you shaved your hair off and you sing in your backyard and you smoke weed and you’re sexual. Great! Do whatever the fuck you want. You’re an artist. That’s what you’re supposed to be doing.

KH: She deserves a lot more respect. Everyone loves to roll their eyes at her. The same way everyone loves to roll their eyes at Kim Kardashian. Who cares? She is not interrupting your life. It astounds me how people can hate certain celebrities so much. When, honestly, 99 times out of 100, it’s just because they hate something about themselves.

MJ: If you were moderating one of the debates, what would you ask the candidates?

KH: My question would be around the Planned Parenthood videos. Every single GOP candidate was really using propaganda at its finest. I was so frustrated that no one called them out to say, “No, Planned Parenthood is getting consent from the mother of that fetus to extract fetal cells to donate for research.” It’s so different. What’s happening is that all these idiots watching the debate, a lot of them are impressionable, and it’s kind of dangerous. They’re going to hop on this train of, “They’re selling baby parts for money? Fuck that.” And now everyone wants to defund Planned Parenthood.

CF: Mine would be—no bullshit, “Why do you want to be president?” But it’s just full of fake answers and bullshit. I like who I like, Hillary Clinton! I am not really holding out for a hero to help change the world. I’m going to change the world my fuckin’ self as much as I possibly can. I can’t be waiting around for other people to do it.

KH: Insert slow clap.

MJ: What inspires you about Hillary?

CF: I love a hard worker. She’s fucking put in the time. I don’t think there is in history someone who’s wanted and tried to be president more. Give her a shot. I think she’s really shown up and she’s going to give it her all.

MJ: Who are you hoping to talk to in future episodes of the podcast?

KH: People who have had something really dark happen to them and want to talk about it. Or sex workers. There are so many people whose jobs are related to sex that we’d love to talk to. And comedians we really admire who are comfortable talking openly about their sex life. Models. We have a dream list of guests. It’s very long.

MJ: So, you won’t be interviewing many people that you’ve slept with anymore?

CF: Honestly, I talk about sex so much now that I’ve become more conservative in my personal life. I’m not as into it anymore. That sounds terrible, but it’s like my job.

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Don’t Feel Bad About the Guy(s) You Fucked Last Night

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The Big Problem With Electric Cars: They’re Too Reliable

by Larissaiyb Posted on November 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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Matt Richtel has an intriguing article today in the New York Times about electric cars. The question is: why aren’t they selling better? Is it because they have weak performance? Because they can only go a hundred miles on a charge? Because they’re expensive?

Those are all issues.1 But it turns out that people who want to buy an electric car anyway have a hard time getting dealerships to sell them one:

Kyle Gray, a BMW salesman, said he was personally enthusiastic about the technology, but…the sales process takes more time because the technology is new, cutting into commissions….Marc Detsch, Nissan’s business development manager for electric vehicles said some salespeople just can’t rationalize the time it takes to sell the cars. A salesperson “can sell two gas burners in less than it takes to sell a Leaf,” he said. “It’s a lot of work for a little pay.”

He also pointed to the potential loss of service revenue. “There’s nothing much to go wrong,” Mr. Deutsch said of electric cars. “There’s no transmission to go bad.”….Jared Allen, a spokesman for the National Automobile Dealers Association, said there wasn’t sufficient data to prove that electric cars would require less maintenance. But he acknowledged that service was crucial to dealer profits and that dealers didn’t want to push consumers into electric cars that might make them less inclined to return for service.

I suppose this makes sense. And to all this, you can add the fact that none of these cars can fly. There are so many hurdles to overcome before we make it into the Jetson’s future we were all promised.

1We are, of course, talking about the non-Tesla market here.

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The Big Problem With Electric Cars: They’re Too Reliable

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The Pfizer-Allergan Merger Uses a Tax Trick That Lets US Companies Stash Billions Overseas

by BurtonStrehlow Posted on November 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Earlier today, the pharmaceutical giants Pfizer and Allergan announced a merger worth $160 billion. There’s a wrinkle to this deal between the makers of Viagra and Botox: It’s being facilitated by a controversial tax trick known as an inversion, which lets American companies move their headquarters abroad, avoiding the IRS while keeping executives stateside. If it goes through, the Pfizer-Allergan agreement will be the largest tax inversion ever.

Hillary Clinton has already criticized the pharma deal and has called for “cracking down on inversions that erode our tax base.” In the past, President Barack Obama has slammed inversions as unpatriotic. His administration and congressional Democrats estimate that tax inversions will result in nearly $20 billion in lost taxes through 2024.

Inversions have been around since the early ’80s, when a tax lawyer masterminded a move known as the “Panama Scoot”. Since then, more than 100 companies have renounced their American citizenship. Here’s where they went:

And inversions are just one of many ways US companies stash earnings abroad. Between 2008 and 2013, American firms had more than $2.1 trillion in profits held overseas—that’s as much as $500 billion in unpaid taxes.

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The Pfizer-Allergan Merger Uses a Tax Trick That Lets US Companies Stash Billions Overseas

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How Come Trump Didn’t Mention Arab Americans Cheering 9/11 in This Interview Two Days After Attacks?

by JeromeGott Posted on November 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump did it again. And then again.

At a rally on Saturday in Birmingham, Alabama, the leader in the GOP presidential contest claimed that on September 11, 2001, “I watched in Jersey City, N.J., where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering.” Clearly, he meant thousands of Arab and Muslim Americans. Quickly he was challenged on this point—local police denied any such event had happened, no one could find news video of it, and various observers pointed out that this story was a specious internet rumor. Yet on Sunday on ABC News’ This Week, Trump stuck to his claim in an interview with George Stephanopoulos:

There were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations. They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down. I know it might be not politically correct for you to talk about it, but there were people cheering as that building came down—as those buildings came down. And that tells you something. It was well covered at the time, George. Now, I know they don’t like to talk about it, but it was well covered at the time. There were people over in New Jersey that were watching it, a heavy Arab population, that were cheering as the buildings came down. Not good.

In other words, Trump saw something that did not occur. And the fact-checkers pounced. Politifact.com awarded Trump a “Pants on Fire” rating for peddling this false anecdote. The Washington Post hit him with four Pinocchios—the lowest (or highest) mark a politician can receive for lying—for his “outrageous claim,” and it noted, “Trump has already earned more Four-Pinocchio ratings than any other candidate this year.”

It’s hard to figure out what this episode says about Trump. Is he delusional? Is he merely unable to admit any error? (Trumpites and other conservatives often respond to accusations of GOP fabrications by noting that Hillary Clinton during the 2008 campaign told a false story about landing in Bosnia in 1996 and coming under sniper fire. At least, Clinton, after being called out on this, acknowledged she had committed a “mistake.”) Or is Trump consciously making stuff up to play to nativist GOP voters? As two GOP strategists working against Trump noted in a recent memo, “Trump voters are exceedingly low-information voters. They do not read The Washington Post or Politico or even conservative blogs. They do not watch cable news rigorously.” To put it less politely, Trump voters are susceptible to his BS that reinforces their own assumptions and biases.

But if Trump really did see thousands of Americans cheering the traumatic demise of the World Trade Towers and the horrific deaths of thousands of their fellow citizens—which, of course, he did not—this did not seem to affect him greatly at the time. Two days after 9/11, Trump granted an interview to a German television station. With the smoke still rising from the remains, Trump was…well, completely sane. He described the horrors he had seen at Ground Zero. He noted that he was sending over 200 workers to help with the removal and rescue operation underway. He called for the rebuilding of a “majestic” project on the site. And when asked how the United States ought to respond, Trump calmly replied, “I think they have to respond quickly and effectively. They have to find out exactly what the cause was, who did it. And they have to go after these people because there is no other choice.”

You can watch here:

Notice what’s missing from Trump’s reaction? He says nothing about witnessing thousands of Americans celebrating the attack. True, he wasn’t asked directly about this. But had he actually seen such activity, he could have been expected to be seething about it, and he certainly did not bring it up here.

All of this is a reminder that once upon a time Trump was merely an arrogant, bombastic, celebrity real estate magnate, not a loony arrogant, bombastic, celebrity real estate magnate. Yet now he routinely says crazy crap that isn’t true and doubles or triples down when challenged. And sorry, fact-checkers, but so far none of this appears to register with his “low-information” fans. This fabulist remains the Republican front-runner.

(h/t @KatieAnnieOakly)

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How Come Trump Didn’t Mention Arab Americans Cheering 9/11 in This Interview Two Days After Attacks?

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Lice Ladies Reveal Their Itchy Little Secrets

by SandraJohansen Posted on November 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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Comb It Out salon in Concord, California, won’t give you a haircut, a new hairdo, or even a blowout. Comb It Out doesn’t give. It removes. Specifically, lice—from your hair.

Along with their combing staff, salon co-owners Pamela Fakui and Sofia Deleuse (it’s not French for “delouse”—I checked) spend all day every day using lice-repelling rosemary conditioner and fine-toothed metal combs to rid clients of those infernal scalp-dwelling pests.

Radio producer and Mother Jones alum Casey Miner let me tag along with her as she visited Comb It Out for The Specialist, her awesome podcast about “work you don’t think about and the people who do it.” This episode is titled “Lice Ladies.”

During our visit, Casey and I learned many disgusting and amazing facts about lice—and about what it’s like to be a professional nit-picker. Here are a few of my favorites:

  1. That drugstore lice shampoo from when you were a kid might not work so well anymore. In 25 states, lice now show resistance to pyrethroids, the pesticides commonly used in over-the-counter lice shampoos. “From what our clients tell us, they don’t seem to think it works,” says Deleuse. “A lot of people put the stuff on their kids’ heads, and they still end up here.” Some people skip the shampoo for other reasons. “A lot of parents are like, “No, I don’t want to put any pesticides or toxic chemicals on my kid’s head.”
  2. In the lice business, discretion is key. A passerby might assume Comb It Out is closed—the shades are always drawn. That’s because, for obvious reasons, people don’t necessarily want friends and neighbors to know they have lice. Some clients are super sensitive: “We have an occasional person that tells us when they make the appointment, ‘Please don’t mention the word “lice” to my child,'” says Deleuse. They think their kid is “going to overreact and freak out. But usually the parents are overreacting and freaking out.”
  3. Some people firmly believe that mayonnaise is key to getting rid of lice. “They’ll put like a whole jar of mayonnaise on their head and get a plastic bag tied up and go to sleep all night like that,” says Fakui. “They’ll keep their kids out of school for like two weeks trying all these home remedies.” Other popular DIY lice treatments include Raid (yes, the stuff you use to kill ants), gasoline, kerosene, Lysol, Listerine, coconut oil, olive oil, vinegar, and lime juice. When those fail—the lice ladies say they invariably do, although my editor swears Cetaphil lotion and careful combing with a lice pick does the trick—clients call Comb It Out. The service doesn’t come cheap: A treatment costs $85 an hour, and most clients have to come back two or three times before all the lice and nits are completely gone. But “they don’t really mind about the cost,” says comber Alexandra Guzman. “They’re just like, ‘Please, just take care of it.'”
  4. Lice prefer clean hair. If your hair is greasy, the lice ladies explain, it’s harder for the bugs to make it to your scalp. “It’s easier for them to crawl onto a clean head and start laying eggs,” Fakui says. But “once they lay those eggs, you’ve got it and they’re not going to…crawl off because your hair is dirty.”
  5. You can have lice for months without knowing it. For each session, the lice ladies use a single white towel to wipe their combs on. As a general rule, the dirtier the towel at the end of the session, the longer the lice have enjoyed the client’s head. During our visit, the ladies showed us a towel that looked roughly like someone had spilled a whole bunch of pepper on it.
    Photo by Kiera Butler

    That “pepper” is lice, and this towel particular, the ladies told us, represents about three months’ worth. The worst case they’ve ever seen, Deleuse recalls, resulted in “a black, moving towel.” (Ew.)

  6. Sometimes, what you think is lice is actually something else. Some people who come into the salon thinking they have lice actually have fruit flies in their hair—like Pig Pen from Peanuts. Others, say the lice ladies, have tiny green bugs that usually live in grass, or dandruff, or little flakes of chocolate.
  7. Lice ladies rarely get lice themselves. In fact, Deleuse has only found one louse in her hair ever. That’s largely thanks to the lice ladies’ secret weapon: the lint roller. When they get home, they give their clothes a once-over with the roller. It prevents lice from getting a free ride when the ladies pull off their outer layers.
  8. There’s no such thing as “lice season.” It’s true that September is National Lice Prevention Month. That’s because kids “go back to school, and the teachers check,” Deleuse says. “And that’s when they find it.” But lice are no more active in the fall than they are at any other time of year.
  9. Your kid’s school probably won’t send anyone home for lice. Schools used to have policies that banned kids with lice from classrooms, but that’s becoming less common. The American Academy of Pediatrics discourages schools and parents from keeping kids with lice home. While lice can itch, the group points out, they “cause no medical harm.” Guzman thinks that’s the right approach. “I really don’t think it’s necessary to take them out of school,” she says. “That’s them missing a day of education and learning.”
  10. Lice-removal salons will not treat your crabs. When someone calls about treating the kind of lice that, um, don’t live on the head “we’re like, ‘No, I actually don’t deal with that,” says Deleuse. “You need to go to the doctor.'”
  11. Some people go a little nuts when trying to rid their homes of lice. Comb It Out recommends that clients vacuum their furniture and wash their clothes and bedding—lice can live for a little while off the scalp. But unlike bedbugs, they don’t set up permanent homes in mattresses or furniture. “I get people who want to throw their mattresses and their pillows out,” says Deleuse. “They’re like, ‘We’re just going to get new couches; we’re going to get new mattresses.’ I’m like, ‘There’s no reason for that.'” And sometimes they listen. Guzman says one of her favorite parts of the job is reassuring stressed out clients. “It’s very nice to calm somebody down,” she says. “Just let them know about the facts of lice.”

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Lice Ladies Reveal Their Itchy Little Secrets

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Yo La Tengo Is Here for the Long Haul

by HarrisSowers Posted on November 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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Yo La Tengo: Ira Kaplan, Georgia Hubley, James McNew Jacob Blickenstaff

Coming out of the close-knit music community of late-1980s Hoboken, New Jersey, Yo La Tengo was the product of the romantic and musical relationship between guitarist and music journalist Ira Kaplan and drummer Georgia Hubley, the daughter of well-known animation producers John and Faith Hubley. With help from a rotating cast of supporting musicians, the husband-and-wife duo released four albums, including their 1990 breakout, Fakebook, before bassist James McNew came on board as a permanent and stabilizing member.

Last month, Yo La Tengo released its 14th album, Stuff Like That There, which serves as a companion of sorts to Fakebook. Both albums draw on an eclectic mix of covers as well as remakes of the band’s previously recorded songs. Guitarist Dave Schramm also returns to lend his guitar work.

Active for more than 30 years, the band owes its staying power to its ability to absorb and integrate a vast range of influences. Stuff Like That There singles out and connects some of those myriad points of reference—including The Cure, the outsider doo-wop of Sun Ra, and Yo La Tengo’s 1980s alt-rock contemporaries Antietam—to reveal the band’s musical center. I visited with the trio at their Hoboken rehearsal space.

Mother Jones: How did the thematic similarity between Stuff Like That There and Fakebook come to pass?

Ira Kaplan: We’ve been asked a lot over the years about doing another album like Fakebook. When people ask you to do stuff, it’s not your idea anymore, so it’s tough to get behind it. But over time, we started realizing that that didn’t make it a bad idea.

MJ: Reinterpreting and re-recording your own songs is something you’ve done on other albums, too. Do you think that’s unusual?

IK: It may be unusual-ish. James was just listening to Country Joe and the Fish—all the San Francisco bands were very free with the interpretations of their material. If you listen to Jefferson Airplane’s God Bless Its Pointed Little Head, the live versions of their old songs don’t sound much like the studio versions. The Velvet Underground’s live versions changed constantly. And as Beatles bootlegs keep surfacing, you hear all the different sketches and ways they approached things, so it’s always felt pretty natural for us.

MJ: When Georgia and Ira created Yo La Tengo, you guys were very much amateur musicians.

IK: I still feel like an amateur! I remember being in college and taking a class on classical music and getting a big laugh when I said very sincerely that I was not really into trained voices. Some of the greatest singers can transcend their technical perfection and still sound great.

Georgia Hubley: They have to get over that stumbling block of talent!

MJ: You seems always to be evolving, yet Yo La Tengo maintains a consistent core identity. Is that deliberate? Like, are there parameters that you follow?

IK: I don’t think there are really that many rules. We are willing to change, and we’re willing not to, but we just try to be listening. This has been a crazy year. Every time we play live, it feels diametrically opposed to how we played the last time. We’ve been playing with different people and different configurations, and just allowing those things to happen. At the same time, we’re consciously going back in time and playing with Dave Schramm again to just see what that would be like.

MJ: The band began as a duo, with other musicians coming in and out. How did James’ involvement change things?

IK: We thought we had a band, but when James joined, it was, “Oh, I see! This is a band!” Everything we do now, even though we had four records before he joined, traces back to when he joined. May I Sing With Me was the first record he plays on, but with Painful, I think that’s when we were really a band for the first time.

MJ: Did it feel natural when you began, James, or did you find it tough to integrate?

JM: There’s a Halloween episode of The Simpsons where Homer goes back in time. If he touches one thing and then flashes back to the present, everything is different. I didn’t want to do that in the band. I was a fan; I already thought they were doing great. It was like, “Don’t touch anything! Don’t ruin that band you like!” So I tried to find that spot where I felt, “I didn’t ruin things today? Let’s move it a little further.” I’m still toeing that line. But it was natural in a sense of our personalities. The first day we practiced together, we spent just as much time discussing Second City Television episodes as we did playing music.

MJ: Georgia and Ira, how do you keep your marriage from interfering with the business of the band?

IK: It’s pretty jumbled, and it is a challenge. But I feel like it has to be that way when you are passionate about your work—as opposed to waiting until five o’clock so you can do the things you really care about. Like James mentioned about SCTV, there is a gray line. Like, what is band practice? These things just work their way in. That goes back to being receptive, and being confident that the experiences you are having are going to find their way into what you’re doing. It’s not a matter of “We gotta learn that bridge today!” Things happen more formlessly.

MJ: How would you say your dynamic has changed since you first started playing?

IK: I think there’s less panic, and more acceptance that not everything is going to go the way that you thought it might. We are much more accepting of the days, or the weeks, when nothing we really liked happens. Or we’ll like something and try to play it again and find that it’s gone. I think there was a lot more anxiety about that in the past. Now it’s more like, “Oh well, that’s part of it.”

GH: We always are learning something, whether its, “Let’s not do that again,” or “How do we make that better?” Making music is really fun. Some of the other stuff can get to you, but I think we do a pretty good job of riding it out.

MJ: What other stuff?

JM: Everything but music!

GH: Everything else is terrible!

JM: There’s an actual physiological thing that happens to me on tour. There’s that moment where I sit in my seat and click the seatbelt, and five seconds later I fall asleep. There’s the excitement, and I guess anxiety, about what the shows will be like, but it’s overwhelmed by, “Thank God, here we go!” It’s letting go of all that other shit I had to do to get to this moment. It’s done—or at least it can’t touch me until we land.

MJ: So, to what do you attribute Yo La Tengo’s longevity?

IK: We managed to not ever be part of a movement. Even “indie” is a word we run from—that word is so amorphous. We’ve never been trendy, so consequently we’ve never fallen out of fashion. We didn’t have a hit, so we’ve never been locked into anything. As far as we know, maybe we are locked in somewhere from a few years ago in other peoples’ perceptions. Maybe we’re too stupid to know it.

GH: Or delusional? I think it’s probably a good thing.

MJ: Is there anything about your group temperament that allows you to keep going?

IK: We were never a group that thrived on volatility. We just don’t work well calling each other out, saying, “That sucks!” Some sports teams hate each other in the locker room and that’s what makes them great, but we’re not that team.

We did a show recently in Spain where the sound on stage was miserable and no one knew what to do about it. Georgia stopped a song that had begun, which is not the response anyone was expecting, even Georgia. There’s no question in my mind that if that had happened years ago, the band’s response and my response would have been so much worse. We just kept going. It didn’t derail the show in ways that it would have. It wasn’t even something I had to reflect on later.

JM: Mindfulness in action. When you’re in the audience and you’re seeing a band and shit’s falling apart, that’s thrilling! But when it’s happening to you, you think, “This sucks! I hope nobody is seeing this.”

IK: Even if we do look awful, it was a human moment. But it’s not always easy, seeing yourself.

GH: This trip we just did was fairly difficult. We were on this bill with a lot of bands, and it was very hard to connect to the audience. It’s a strange way to feel when you’re about to pour your heart out—to get on stage and feel like, “Does this matter to anyone?”

JM: I was reacting to the same feeling, that there are some people who aren’t watching the show. I thought, “Okay, so this is for us.” It was a really beautiful, emotional feeling—just joyful: I love doing this so much, and I hope you do too. I left with a smile. Or something close to a smile. I was very tired.

You can catch Yo La Tengo at their upcoming tour dates in the United States and Japan. They’ll also be appearing at the Ann Arbor Folk Festival and Big Ears Festival in early 2016.

Original article – 

Yo La Tengo Is Here for the Long Haul

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Head Witch Hunter Now Wants Fewer Witch Hunts

by ErwinX26bghrinc Posted on October 30, 2015

Mother Jones

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Today’s Charles Krauthammer column cracks me up:

Skip the investigations, win the election

I’m all for demonstrating malfeasance. But the GOP House has given a five-year display of its inability to successfully demonstrate anything…. Operation Fast and Furious….IRS….Planned Parenthood….Benghazi.

….In each of these cases, Republicans had the facts and the argument. And yet in every one, they failed. What makes them think that they will fare any better in the next iteration, the impeachment of a minor official in an expiring administration?

Krauthammer is a hardcore conservative, but he’s also a very high-IQ conservative. So this makes me wonder: does he really believe this? Or does he know it’s baloney but figures he needs some kind of acceptable cover to get Republicans off their Ahab-like zeal for investigating nothingburgers?

As I’m sure Krauthammer knows, the problem Republicans have with their mania for investigations is that what turned out to be scandalous wasn’t high-ranking, and what was high-ranking wasn’t scandalous. Fast & Furious was scandalous, but it was a local botch. The IRS was slightly scandalous, but never went beyond middle management. Planned Parenthood did nothing wrong at all. And Benghazi—well, that reached the very highest levels, but there’s just no scandal to be uncovered. There may have been some bad security decisions, but the evidence of malfeasance by anyone in the Obama administration is all but nonexistent.

Anyway, it probably doesn’t matter. All through the Clinton administration and now the Obama administration, Republicans have been fixated on uncovering the scandals they just know have to be out there. But the plain truth is that Obama has run perhaps the cleanest administration in modern history. It’s actually sort of remarkable. There’s plenty of stuff you can legitimately disagree about with him, but there’s been virtually no scandal of the conventional sort.

Either way, though, Krauthammer is probably right. The latest obsession in the House is to impeach the head of the IRS. It’s idiotic because he did nothing wrong, and it’s doubly idiotic because it would never pass in the Senate. It devalues the whole notion of impeachment and makes Republicans look like crackpots.

Then again, PPP recently polled Republicans in North Carolina, and 66 percent supported the idea of impeaching Hillary Clinton “the day she takes office.” This is the conservative movement people like Krauthammer have built. It can hardly come as a surprise to him that their primary mode of governance now consists mostly of an endless quest for malevolent phantoms that Krauthammer and his buddies have been assuring them all along are out there.

Continued – 

Head Witch Hunter Now Wants Fewer Witch Hunts

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"Back to the Future Part II" Makes No Sense

by CierraSummerfiel Posted on October 21, 2015

Mother Jones

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Today is October 21st, 2015, the day that Marty McFly travels to in the future in Back to the Future Part II. It’s #BacktotheFutureDay. To celebrate, I woke up my brother Harry in Los Angeles and forced him to talk about the film with me.

This conversation has been edited slightly for clarity.

Ben Dreyfuss: Today is October 21st, 2015. Happy Back to the Future Day, Harry.

Harry Dreyfuss: Mazel tov.

BD: The internet is going nuts right now with listicles about us not having hoverboards.

HD: We do have hoverboards! They just need huge floors of magnets.

BD: We have “hoverboards,” but they aren’t real hoverboards! They have wheels!

HD: No. They really hover! They just need huge floors of magnets. LOOK IT UP—TONY HAWK DID IT.

BD: OKAY, OKAY, MAYBE AT NASA. But the hoverboards all the teens say they are using have wheels.

HD: Oh yeah, you mean those Segway rip-offs without the handle that everyone drove at Burning Man this year?

BD: OF COURSE THEY WERE AT BURNING MAN.

HD: They looked nuts on acid.

BD: My real problem with Back to the Future 2 is that it really makes no sense.

HD: No movie about time travel makes perfect sense. But this movie has bigger problems as well. Like when they just dump Marty’s girlfriend in an alley.

BD: That is just a questionable thing for a caring boyfriend to do.

HD: Yeah, and not only did he not check the crime rate in 2015, but he also dumped her body right next to a mountain of asbestos.

BD: Hahahaha. Okay, but wait.

HD: I’m serious, look it up.

BD: I haven’t seen this movie in a while. When was the last time you saw it?

HD: It’s been a while, but I have strong memories of it because it was my first favorite franchise after you guys made me feel that it wasn’t okay for me to like Ace Ventura anymore.

BD: We were right then. We are right now. But let’s quickly recap what happens in Back to the Future 2. So, okay, in the beginning of the film Doc comes to Marty and Jennifer in 1985 and tells them that they need to go to 2015 to stop their son from ruining his life.

HD: Yeah. Because he’s a coward? I can’t remember the first plot point.

BD: Their kid is going to be bullied by a 2015 Biff descendant into doing some criminal thing and then he’s going to end up in jail.

HD: They got a lot of stuff right about the future in that movie, and one of them was bullying.

BD: A timeless tradition. But here, right off the bat, there is already a problem. Simply telling Marty and Jennifer about their son’s future mistakes should be enough to change the future. They don’t need to go into the future. Marty and Jennifer can just decide to be better parents.

HD: That’s a humdinger, Ben. I have no argument.

BD: Okay, so then they go into the future and a bunch of things happen, blah blah, including that they spy on their old 2015 selves. But why are their old selves even there? In 2015, the McFly family would be celebrating the 30th anniversary of Marty’s mysterious disappearance.

HD: I mean…celebrating?

BD: Remembering? Lighting a candle?

HD: Wait, let’s get something clear. Marty came BACK. So he didn’t disappear.

BD: So you’re saying that the future takes into account the presumption of Marty’s return to 1985?

HD: Yes. Detective Ben is going too far here.

BD: BUT THEN WHY DOESN’T THE FUTURE TAKE INTO ACCOUNT THE FACT THAT THEY FIXED THEIR SON’S LIFE?

HD: Ah well that’s another humdinger.

BD: But wait, wait, this isn’t even my biggest problem.

HD: Lay it on me.

BD: In 2015, Old Biff steals the time machine when Marty and Doc aren’t looking, and he travels to 1955 to give the gambling almanac to young Biff. He then returns to 2015 and puts the time machine back, and Marty and Doc retrieve Jennifer from the asbestos pile and go back to 1985.

HD: Go on.

BD: But when Old Biff goes back to 1955 and gives young Biff the almanac, he should then return to a different 2015. One in which he is a Casino tycoon.

HD: Do you hate movies?

BD: I love movies, but Doc and Marty and Jennifer should be stranded in their 2015!

HD: Look, if we all took issue with these kind of things, none of us would ever be able to like a Christopher Nolan movie.

BD: Christopher Nolan movies also make no sense.

HD: It’s called a fantasy, Ben. Movies are DREAMS. DREAM WITH ME.

BD: But they still have to abide by their own internal logic.

HD: “Have to” would mean that Back to the Future wouldn’t go on to become the beloved franchise that it has. But it did, and you are in your own world of high-horse complaints.

BD: Okay, sure, yes, like the movies are still good and enjoyable. “Have to” was too strong. This is America. People don’t “have to” do anything. This isn’t North Korea.

HD: Exactly. Back to the Future would not fly in North Korea.

BD: But the first Back to the Future actually doesn’t have all these problems, I don’t think. It’s fairly straightforward.

HD: Boy goes back in time. Boy’s mother gets not-okay feelings for son. Son has to redirect feelings toward his utter-loser father played by “Willard.”

BD: Exactly. A story as old as time! It makes perfect sense.

HD: It does. But it’s frankly not as good. Back to the Future Part II even goes BACK to Back to the Future Part I, when Marty goes to 1955 to sneak around his first-part counterpart. It’s so cool!

BD: Okay, okay, okay. So let’s talk about that because I have a problem with that too.

HD: Of course you do.

BD: One of the rules that Doc makes clear from the beginning of this film series is that if one version of a person interacts with another version of themselves from another time, either the universal will implode or they’ll pass out from shock. This happens in Back to the Future 2 when Jennifer sees herself in their 2015 house and they both immediately pass out.

HD: I see your rule. So you’re saying that Marty in Part II should pass out when he sees Marty in Part I?

BD: Probably, but Biff definitely should! Like Old Biff has a whole talk with Young Biff about the future and the gambling almanac!

HD: Yeah, but old biff wouldn’t pass out because he was expecting to see himself. It was his plan.

BD: But young Biff would!

HD: Young Biff is an idiot.

BD: But But but but but but but but but but but but…

HD: Look, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t react well, but then Old Biff does his old curmudgeon act of like, “Shut up, you young idiot, and listen to me,” and it breaks through the space-time continuum rule. Ben, just enjoy the goddamn movie.

BD: BUT YOU JUST HELPED MY POINT. Like when Young Biff first meets Old Biff, he doesn’t believe the old man is really him from the future. Like, maybe the fact that he doesn’t believe him is why he doesn’t immediately pass out. But then Old Biff convinces him! He predicts the sports score! Why doesn’t Young Biff at least pass out then?

HD: Maybe it isn’t a rule that they pass out when they see each other, but Jennifer and her future self are just weak, perhaps due to exposure to asbestos?

BD: HAHAHAHA. Okay, fair point.

HD: But I’ll grant you that you raise some good points, Detective Ben, about the rules of time travel. But I’m going to go ahead and reiterate that no movie about time travel does not raise these issues.

BD: I think I have more than raised questions. I have pointed out undeniable logical flaws.

HD: Yes, indeed, you have. Mostly you’re saying, “Why doesn’t what they eventually do at the end of the film already take effect at the beginning of the film?” But in that case, how could what happens at the end of the film even take place? The beginnings just wouldn’t happen anymore! Then you get stuck in a loop that nobody gets out of!

BD: No! No! My biggest problems are (1) that old Marty and Jennifer are even in the future, since they disappeared in 1985. There is even a shot of loser 1985 Biff running outside of the house and seeing that they’ve disappeared.

HD: They didn’t disappear! They came back, you schmuck.

BD: But remember in the first film? When Doc demos the time machine the first time with Einstein the dog in it? Einstein is gone for a few seconds, and in that time he really is gone. They acknowledge that he is gone. They are making a rule for the universe of the film that when you are gone in time, you are gone.

HD: You are gone until you return and you can set the return time for any time! If you return to “one second after you left,” then that is when you’d come back.

BD: So you’re the person now who is saying that whatever happens in the other times just is inevitable and forgives the temporary displacement.

HD: If I went into the future right now and stayed there for a week, but then came back to the past and set my return for one minute from now, I would only be gone for one minute, Ben.

BD: Sure, but what if in that future week someone stole your time machine and went back to 1990 and convinced our parents not to have you? Then that person took the time machine and traveled back to 2015. They would arrive in a 2015 in which you were never born and you would be stuck in an alternate 2015 with no time machine to get home.

HD: I mean, I don’t think I would even be stuck in an alternate universe. I think I probably would have just disappeared into the abyss we exist in before we’re born.

BD: But the movie makes clear that there are alternate timelines! It’s like the main theory of the film! He draws it on a chalkboard!

HD: Detective, Detective, it’s true that this movie does not follow its own rules okay?! But in order to explore the very serious other points this movie succeeds at making, you have to look past the glaring time travel issues that you just can’t seem to look past.

BD: “Serious points it succeeds at making”??????????? Like WHAT? That bullying hasn’t been totally defeated as a phenomenon?

HD: Like…hoverboards, and the fact that in the future we don’t have waiters, we have robots, and that the 80s are coming back in style, and that if you let one asshole make all the money then the future is going to be all goth and awful.

BD: We still have waiters.

HD: At Chili’s we don’t. We have touch screens.

BD: Chili’s is not the future. Chili’s is an alternate future we need to escape.

HD: I’m not sure I’ve ever been to a Chili’s. But I read that Chili’s has no waiters, and the point of that article was that Back to the Future is coming true.

BD: I was at a sushi restaurant in Canada where you use iPads to order, but there were still waiters to bring you the food, and also the iPads kept screwing up, and to be honest it was terrible.

HD: CVS has you checking out yourself and airports do it too, but right now we’re in a hybrid state of having real people mixed in with robots because the robots are too stupid about HR. But it will get better and then those people will be out on the street.

BD: Okay, okay, I’ll grant you much of that.

HD: AND APPLE STORES JUST LET YOU DO IT WITH AN APP, AND APPLE IS THE FUTURE. ARGUE WITH THAT.

BD: There are Apple Geniuses! The people in the shirts!

HD: Not for long.

BD: We need to talk about a few minor things before we wrap this up. At least one thing that hasn’t come true: Jaws 19.

HD: I told a person yesterday that my dad was in Jaws, which I swear I don’t do very often, and he said, “Is that the one with the shark?” And then I thought the future looks pretty bleak for me if that trump card is going to stop working.

BD: In the Back to the Future Part II version of 2015, no one would have to ask that because they’d still be making more Jaws films.

HD: That sounds like heaven to me.

BD: But, yeah, dear reader, just in case, it is the one with the shark.

HD: And Richard Dreyfuss is the one with the beard who kills the shark and saves the movie.

BD: Jesus Christ, no. Dad doesn’t kill the shark. Roy Schieder kills the shark. I swear to god this whole family hasn’t even seen that movie.

HD: Ben, have you ever considered that you are just the black sheep of the family and that there are good reasons for that? Re: not having love in your heart for Dad and his movies or any movie? He killed the shark.

BD: I hate you.

HD: He. Killed. The. Shark.

BD: Okay, okay, he killed the shark. But let’s get back to Back to the Future Part II. There is no Jaws 19 in the real world. And, like, outside the theater the shark hologram eats Marty McFly, and we don’t really have that sort of thing at theaters now and days either.

HD: I guess in Japan they have whole concerts with just holograms because the cartoon people are so popular that they don’t need performers anymore, and Japan, like Apple, is the future.

BD: “Japan Is the Future Back to the Future 2 Promised”

HD: That resonates with me.

BD: Minus the flying cars and actual hoverboards and Jaws 19 and dehydrated food and shoes that lace themselves and jackets that dry themselves.

HD: Yeah, but they do have gum that makes your sweat smell like roses—I’m considering have some shipped over.

BD: “Japan Is the World of Pure Imagination Willy Wonka Promised”

HD: Hahahaha. I want to move there now.

BD: Okay, this seems like a good place to wrap this up.

HD: I think we settled this. You just hate movies and Back to the Future is the best.

BD: And you’re moving to Japan.

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"Back to the Future Part II" Makes No Sense

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Here’s Barack Obama’s Newest Plan to Fight Climate Change

by LarueM834422536 Posted on October 20, 2015

Mother Jones

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The White House launched a new Twitter handle devoted to climate change Tuesday afternoon. The stream, called @FactsOnClimate, claims to provide “the facts on how is combating climate change in the U.S. and mobilizing the world to .”

The first three tweets highlight the most important pieces of President Barack Obama’s climate legacy: His signature plan to slash greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and his stated commitment to reaching an international agreement on climate action in Paris this winter.

As Obama has made climate action a priority during his second term, his administration has doubled down on slick digital content to get the word out. There’s a nice basic website, an immersive interactive portal to explore the science, Facebook videos, essays on Medium, and now this.

The Paris talks, where the US delegation is expected to support a commitment to reduce America’s greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent by 2025 (compared to 2005 levels), are coming up in just over a month. Heads of state from around the globe are expected to drop in for the first day of the talks; on Monday, White House spokesperson Josh Earnest told reporters they “could certainly count Obama among the leaders who’s considering traveling to Paris.”

Link:  

Here’s Barack Obama’s Newest Plan to Fight Climate Change

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