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How to Convince a Republican: Use a Pie Chart!

by AshlyUGQCibbe Posted on July 8, 2014

Mother Jones

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These days, perhaps the most hotly debated issue in climate change circles has little to do with science. Rather, it is over how to communicate that science to a public that still does not get it.

The leading communication strategy at present is built on a now famous 2013 paper—whose main result was tweeted out by no less than President Obama—finding that 97 percent of scientific papers (those that took a stand on the matter, anyway) supported the scientific consensus that humans are causing climate change. This result is often simplified down to the idea that “97 percent of scientists accept the consensus that humans are causing global warming.” Spreading this simple message, say supporters, is a critical way to get people past the wrongheaded idea that climate science is still subject to “debate.”

The strategy has its critics, including Yale science communication researcher Dan Kahan, who contends that the approach will backfire among conservative ideologues. A new study just out in the journal Climatic Change, however, suggests not only that the “97 percent consensus” message can be effective, but that it will work best when expressed in the form of a simple phrase or (eat your heart out, USA Today) a pie chart. Like this one, which is an actual image designed to spread the “97 percent” message:

SkepticalScience.com

The new paper is the latest collaboration by the George Mason and Yale projects on climate change communication, headed up, respectively, by Ed Maibach and Anthony Leiserowitz. They set out to test not only whether the “97 percent consensus” message works, but whether it works best when conveyed in one of three formats: as a simple statement (“97 % of climate scientists have concluded that human-caused climate change is happening”), as a metaphor (for instance, “If 97 percent of doctors concluded that your child is sick, would you believe them? 97 % of climate scientists have concluded that human-caused climate change is happening”), or as a pie chart. The actual pie chart used in the study is pictured at right.

van der Linden et al, July 2014, Climatic Change.

The study had 1104 participants, who were divided up into 11 separate experimental treatments. One group read the simple statement, one group saw the pie chart, eight groups received a variety of different climate communication metaphors, and there was, of course, a control condition. Before and after encountering one of these messages, participants’ were asked their estimate of the current degree of scientific consensus on climate change.

The upshot was that all of the messages worked, to an extent, to improve people’s perception of scientific consensus. However, the simple phrase fared the best—improving the subjects’ perceptions of scientific consensus by 17.88 percentage points—and the pie chart came in second (14.38 percentage points). The various metaphor-based messages (using the doctor metaphor above, a similar engineering metaphor, and so on) were all roughly equal in their effectiveness, but none were as good as the simple image or phrase.

Notably, however, the pie chart proved most effective among one group—Republicans—that is notorious for being the most difficult audience to sway on climate change. The effect was pretty impressive, as this figure shows:

van der Linden et al, July 2014, Climatic Change.

The authors do not speculate on why Republicans, and Republicans alone, seem to respond more strongly to pie charts. However, their bottom line conclusion is this: “presenting information in a way that is short, simple and easy to comprehend and remember seems to offer the highest probability of success for all audiences examined.”

This study probably won’t end the debate over whether telling people that “97 percent of climate scientists” agree on climate change is the best way to save this rock. But it certainly validates something that writers, bloggers, and media outlets have long known:

You keep it simple, and you show pretty pictures.

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How to Convince a Republican: Use a Pie Chart!

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Our Inability To Deal With Climate Change Is Going to Kill the Penguins

by WallyBuffington Posted on June 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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Move over, polar bears: It’s time for Emperor penguins to become the new poster children of climate change.

Recently, polar biologists at the University of Minnesota used satellite images of poop stains (scientists are nothing if not resourceful) to show that some colonies of Emperor penguins in Antarctica are uprooting historic nesting sites, possibly to escape warming temperatures.

Courtesy Stephanie Jenouvrier

Today, a new study in Nature makes an even more grim prognostication about the future of the species: Thanks to declining concentrations of sea ice, two-thirds of Antarctica’s Emperor penguin colonies could lose more than half their population by 2100. Across the entire species, that translates to a 19 percent drop. Some colonies are larger than others, so a 50 percent decline in one group might be only a few individuals, while the same change in a larger group could be hundreds.

Less sea ice makes it more difficult to access krill, the tiny shrimp-like crustaceans that are the penguins’ primary food source, said study co-author Julienne Stroeve, a researcher at the National Snow & Ice Data Center. “Then, there are these large mortality rates for the penguins.”

So just how many penguins are we talking about here? A satellite survey in 2012 pegged the total head count at 595,000 across 45 colonies. A 19 percent decline would reduce the population to 481,950, or a loss of 113,050 adorable birds.

Scientists have long known that animals at the poles are especially vulnerable to global warming, which is happening in the Arctic and Antarctica faster than the rest of the world. In the Arctic, disappearing ice and rising temperatures are pushing species of whales, seals, and bears to hybridize, jeopardizing their genetic health. In Antarctica, earlier research has found that ocean warming could reduce the habitat available for krill by 20 percent, compounding the sea ice problem.

Earlier this year we explained the dangers that climate change pose for baby Puffins in the Gulf of Maine.

Today’s study is just the latest reminder of the vital role ice plays in the Antarctic ecosystem. And there’s little doubt that Antarctica’s ice is in serious trouble: Earlier this year a trove of research emerged indicating that one of the continent’s major ice sheets is already in irreversible decline.

The map below, from the study, shows which penguin populations are most at risk. The purple-to-white color gradient shows changes in mean sea ice concentration between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries (it’s a bit counter-intuitive; purple is the least decline and white is the most). Each colored dot is a penguin colony, with the color indicating the colonies’ projected conservation status (see key below) by 2100. You can see that the most-threatened populations (red dots) are those nearest to the white space where sea ice has declined the most.

Courtesy Nature

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Our Inability To Deal With Climate Change Is Going to Kill the Penguins

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Inside the Wild, Shadowy, and Highly Lucrative Bail Industry

by Sue Allen Posted on June 30, 2014

Mother Jones

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The largest annual gathering of bail bondsmen in the country—the convention of the Professional Bail Agents of the United States, or PBUS—was slotted between Dunkin’ Donuts and Elk Camp 2013 at the Mirage Resort and Casino, a tall, shiny structure shaped like an open book and set against replicas of the Colosseum and Eiffel Tower on Las Vegas’ Strip. The sidewalk out front was littered with cards bearing phone numbers and pictures of naked women. In the courtyard, flames licked the late-winter air to the rhythm of a tribal drum every hour, on the hour. A sign at the entrance announced that the casino’s dolphin just had a baby and we would be able to see it soon. As I walked through the smoky slots area I saw a man with a PBUS lanyard doing an extremely forced I’m-having-fun dance with his assistant while a casino employee showed them how to play the one-armed bandit. It was a bit of a letdown from what I’d been anticipating—all-night blackjack sessions with bondsmen and bounty hunters telling tales from the street over stiff drinks. I’d even grown a mustache for the event, thinking it would help me blend in a little—bondsmen have mustaches, don’t they?

Not really, I discovered when I arrived at the welcome reception. “So how do you like the industry?” I asked a clean-shaven man in a shiny gray suit who looked to be about 30. “I like it,” he said buoyantly, taking a sip of his beer. “Sometimes you get real lucky.” He told me about the first bond he ever wrote in the cheerful, blow-by-blow manner of a poker player recounting a winning hand. A college student went out drinking and crashed his car into a fence, he explained. “So him and a girlfriend both get kinda messed up.” He beamed. I was confused—was I to realize that this was a boon? He quickly explained that normally, bail for a DUI was $5,000, but since it involved an injury, the amount automatically jumped to $100,000. When he told the driver’s mom she would have to pay him a $10,000 fee to get her son out of jail, she said, “No problem. Here’s my credit card number.” He smiled and took a sip from his beer, nodding happily. “I couldn’t believe it.”

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Inside the Wild, Shadowy, and Highly Lucrative Bail Industry

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Michael Bay: Hollywood’s Conservative Hero?

by Will7881iwjsf Posted on June 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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Director Michael Bay is one of the most successful—if critically detested—filmmakers of the past 30 years. He is worth $400 million. He lives the life of a consummate playboy. His explosion-heavy action films (The Rock, Armageddon, the Bad Boys movies, the Transformers flicks, etc.) have grossed over $4.5 billion worldwide. His new movie, Transformers: Age of Extinction (released on Friday), is also expected to make all the money.

But what about his politics?

When I talked to the 49-year-old director last year, he demurred on the question of whether he leans right or left: “Yes, I am a political person, and I have my views about America,” Bay told me. “I’m very proud of my country; obviously it’s going through a lot of turmoil, and we have a very ineffectual government… It doesn’t matter at all whether I’m liberal or conservative—it’s not a part of what I do. I don’t feel the need to go out and tell people what to believe politically.”

Bay is obviously more private about his politics than, say, mega-producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who worked with Bay on some of his biggest hits and is one of liberal Hollywood’s top conservatives. You won’t find much at all about Bay’s politics online or in his past statements, and a search of a public campaign finance records database turned up nothing.

However, Bay did tell me that, though he doesn’t receive a writing credit, he works closely with his screenwriters and will tweak the scripts as he sees fit. And there just so happen to be many hints of political conservatism in his movies. Out of the 11 movies Bay has directed, the one truly left-wing outlier is The Rock (1996), starring Nicolas Cage and Sean Connery. The action film depicts the blowback from illegal American covert operations overseas, and is critical of gun-toting “patriotism”; it was also co-written by West Wing creator (and diehard liberal) Aaron Sorkin, so there’s that.

But much of Bay’s filmography is loaded with political content and attitudes that your average (stereotypical?) American conservative can totally get behind. In Armageddon (1998), a NASA-recruited team of blue-collar oil-drillers agree to embark on a dangerous mission to blow up an asteroid and save mankind—on the condition that they never have to pay taxes again.

In Bad Boys II (2003), the film’s rowdy-cop heroes illegally invade (and destroy large chunks of) communist Cuba, in the name of fighting the international drug war. The subsequent car chase concludes in front of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, where a conveniently placed mine tears apart the body of the psychotic Cuban drug lord:

And Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009), starring Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox, easily doubles as a critique of the Obama administration’s foreign policy. Seriously. In this fictional Transformers universe, Barack Obama is identified as the president of the United States. (George W. Bush appears briefly in the first Transformers, where he orders some Ding Dongs on Air Force One.) President Obama orders the American armed forces to try to engage in diplomacy with the Decepticons (the bad-guy alien robots) and to suspend cooperation with the Autobots (the good-guy alien robots). The Obama administration also agrees to hand Sam Witwicky (LaBeouf) over to the Decepticons—the kind of act of shameful appeasement that the president’s real-life conservative critics so often accuse him of perpetrating.

Fortunately, brave members of the US military disobey these orders (a mutiny, essentially), and the day is saved! (Bay loves the US military, and also patriotism, very much so.)

“Optimus Prime truly cares about the future of the human race, unlike the Obama administration, which Bay represents as so prissy and antiwar it just wants the alien robots off the planet,” Mary Pols wrote for Time in 2009. “Bay’s Obama would probably drive his Prius over Optimus if he had the chance.” According to Bay, the reason Obama is in the film is because he once bumped into him—back when he was 2008 presidential candidate Obama—in a Las Vegas airport. Upon meeting, Bay said a couple of nice things to the future president, and Obama in turn complimented Bay by calling him a “big-ass director.”

This exchange was apparently enough to make the director want to turn the Democratic politician into a movie character. Here’s video of Bay recalling their encounter:

And in the new Transformers installment, Mark Wahlberg‘s tough-talking character, whose family property is cluttered with bold American flags, warns despotic, anti-Autobot government agents about “messing with people from Texas.” To be fair, the film can also be interpreted as a shallow pro-immigration-reform robot movie.

Regardless of how Michael Bay views Obama, or Bush, or the Democratic Party, or the Republican Party, or the tea party, his patriotic views may have been best captured in a line delivered by Wahlberg in Bay’s 2013 crime film Pain & Gain: “When it started, America was just a handful of scrawny colonies. Now, it’s the most buff, pumped-up country on the planet. That’s pretty rad.”

As for making public political statements, again, don’t hold your breath. If Bay is going to make a stand, he is way more likely to do so out of his love for animals than any political conviction. In late 2010, Bay offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and successful prosecution of a woman who threw puppies into a river. Bay is a dog lover who lives with two gigantic English mastiffs named Grace (after actress Liv Tyler’s Armageddon character) and Bonecrusher (after a Decepticon).

Looking out for puppies. That enjoys bipartisan support, right?

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Michael Bay: Hollywood’s Conservative Hero?

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Joy, Rage, and Love: ’80s-tastic Photos of San Francisco Pride

by Rian Mahon Posted on June 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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I can’t remember exactly how we all ended up going to Gay Pride brunch together at my friend Marta’s house that Sunday morning, in June of 1988. In retrospect, it seems inevitable that I would bring along Saul Bromberger, a photographer at the East Bay newspaper where I was a reporter, and his then girlfriend and now wife, Sandra Hoover.

At the time, Saul and Sandy were already four years into a project that would last until 1990: documenting the San Francisco gay pride parade. It was the height of the AIDS epidemic, and anger at the world’s indifference to the disease was growing, generating radical groups like ACT Up (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power). So Saul and Sandy came to our pride brunch with cameras in hand.

The pair started shooting the parades in 1984 because they believed they were witnessing history. “It was this kind of test I was giving myself: Can we document this movement that is also a parade?” Saul remembers. Unlike other photographers, he didn’t “just see people jumping around and dancing,” he says. He saw people “demanding change.”

Saul and Sandy wanted to capture the celebration, the love, and the rage, and in so doing, to capture the heart of a movement.

They purposely eschewed the long lenses favored by newspaper journalists, who seemed focused only on the spectacle. Instead, they got close to their subjects. They talked to them. They made friends. And the pictures they took were intimate and close.

But when Saul and Sandy asked to shoot the brunch (or maybe—I can’t remember to be honest—I invited them) they were putting me in a place I hated and loved at the same time.

A heads up: Some of these photos contain nudity.

Castro Street, 20th Anniversary of the San Francisco Pride Parade, 1989

Market St., 1984

Dykes on Bikes ride down Market St. during the SF Pride Parade, 1989

This was a time when the gay world often existed separately from the straight one, and before cameras were everywhere. They needed permission to be there. We trusted them.

I also knew they had to be there. I wanted them there. I felt honored. But I also felt scared and exposed. My experience back in 1987 was that if you didn’t purposefully and repeatedly out yourself, you were not out. There was no social media where you could simply declare yourself to be something other than straight and then watch the consequences unfold.

You had to tell people over and over again. You had to make yourself the story.

It seemed easier not to do it. Besides, I was a journalist, an outsider. I covered the stories. I didn’t make them. Like Saul and Sandy, I’m an observer by nature.

It felt strange to thrust myself into the spotlight. I could alienate people. What if my sources stopped talking to me? It wasn’t just an idle concern. It happened. But it was more than that: Like most humans, I didn’t want to put myself in a box. I didn’t want to be other.

Just a few years before, in my early 20s, I had concluded that something inside of me was broken. I had great boyfriends. I just couldn’t fall in love. I had resigned myself to a life without love, when on a balmy night in my senior year of college, my female roommate and I stepped out onto the sidewalk and fell into a passionate kiss. Yes, I kissed a girl and I didn’t just like it. It rocked my world. I got it. And in that moment, I realized I was not broken. I was just different.

Market St., 1986

Civic Center, 1987

Market St., 1987

Market St., 1984

Market St., 1989

Bonnie and Laura, Civic Center, 1985

It was an intensely personal, intensely private discovery. But I quickly understood that if I were to date people of my own gender, I would be taking a political stand, like it or not. I couldn’t remain a detached observer.

So when I went to the pride parade, it wasn’t just to party. I went because, like so many others, I needed it.

I needed to fuel up on all the pride, all the love, all the righteous anger, all the togetherness. It was an infusion on which I could draw during the year. When someone yelled “dyke” at me and my girlfriend in the street, or a friend suddenly shunned me, or a relative told me that they didn’t understand but still loved me even if I was wrong, I could tap into that reserve.

Market St., 1984

Civic Center, 1990

Market St., 1989

Market St., 1987

Recently, I was talking with Saul about those years. He seemed miffed at himself for not putting his work out there: Every year they’d go to the parade, take amazing photos, and develop them. They’d hand out these beautiful prints to their subjects. They’ve always been generous like that. My halls were lined with them.

But then they’d go in a box under the bed.

“There were a lot of pictures I took back then that I never submitted to the paper because I thought they were personal,” Saul says.

Surely they could have gotten them out before. Surely, they would have gained notoriety for capturing a movement in advance of everybody else. I’ve been thinking about that: Why didn’t they bring these pictures out?

I think I know. I think in a way they kept them in a box for us. To protect the community from a world that could be hostile and cruel.

Dykes on Bikes awaits the start of the parade on Market St., 1990

Civic Center, 1987

Dykes on Bikes before the start of the parade, 1989

Market St., 1988

Market St., 1988

Market St., 1988

These pictures show something soft and vulnerable. They show humanity. But they also show nudity. It would be easy to take them out of context.

And to bring them out into the glare of society where they could be ridiculed—maybe they didn’t belong there. Not yet.

When we recount history, inevitably we reshape it, sharpening memories with new revelations and forgetting other parts altogether.

But these pictures capture unflinching, static moments of a different time. There’s a picture of a bare-breasted woman carrying a whip. There’s a picture of a couple on a roof with their trusty dog. There’s a picture of five men in a window, three of whom I know for sure died of AIDS.

The past lives and breathes in these photos. And it’s important to remember history. It’s important to see ourselves from a distance, especially when the closet walls have fallen and here we are.

Market St., 1985

Market St., 1987

San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos and his family, Market St., 1988

Civic Center, 1989

The parade’s Grand Marshals, James Broughton and Holly Near, on Market St., 1988

Civic Center, 1985

Civic Center, 1987

Civic Center, 1988

Mia and Friends, Civic Center, 1987

Pierre, Market St., 1989

Civic Center, 1984

From left to right: Sandra Hoover, Janet Kornblum, Saul Bromberger, 1988

For more of Saul and Sandy’s SF pride pictures go to their site: PRIDE – The San Francisco Gay & Lesbian Freedom Day Parade: 1984 – 1990.

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Joy, Rage, and Love: ’80s-tastic Photos of San Francisco Pride

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Rand Paul: Republicans Are "Too Eager for War"

by CharlieGKR Posted on June 27, 2014

Mother Jones

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On the Sunday morning television shows this past weekend—against the backdrop of an Iraq in flames—former Vice President Dick Cheney and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) continued their ongoing feud and the battle for the (national security) soul of the Republican Party. In recent months, as Mother Jones has reported that Paul in 2009 accused Cheney of using 9/11 as an excuse to launch the Iraq invasion to benefit Halliburton (the corporation Cheney once led) and called on the GOP to disassociate itself with the former vice president, Cheney’s allies have slammed the senator for expressing reckless positions. During a private speech in March, without mentioning Paul by name, Cheney contended that Paul’s skepticism about US intervention abroad would endanger the United States. On ABC News’ This Week on Sunday, Cheney explicitly assailed Paul as “basically an isolationist”—a term of profound derision in the neocon wing of the GOP. Meanwhile, on Meet the Press, Paul was asked if Cheney could be considered a credible critic of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, and Paul, without saying Cheney’s name, replied, “The same questions could be asked of those who supported the Iraq war. You know, were they right in their predictions? Were there weapons of mass destruction there? That’s what the war was sold on. Was democracy easily achievable?…They didn’t really, I think, understand the civil war that would break out.” This was obviously a jab at the former vice president.

But though Paul, who is mulling a 2016 presidential bid, has not hesitated to challenge the hawks of the GOP, he has softened his language. He no longer accuses Cheney of pushing the Iraq war to reap corporate profits. (He even recently claimed that was not what he had meant to say.) And in these latest rounds, Paul has not voiced his previously stated view that the GOP is the party of war-mongers at odds with true Christian beliefs.

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Is Your Cereal Giving You a Vitamin Overdose?

by EzekielMontoya Posted on June 24, 2014

Mother Jones

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Those bran flakes with “original antioxidants” or “extra vitamin A”? You might be better off without the added nutrients. A report released on Tuesday by the Environmental Working Group (EWG) found that cereals and snack bars that have been fortified with extra vitamins and minerals to appear healthy may actually be harmful—particularly for kids.

The report, How Much is Too Much?, explains that there are some nutrients that most Americans don’t get enough of, like calcium, vitamin D, and vitamin E. But it turns out that kids are eating too much of other nutrients, and overconsuming certain vitamins and minerals for a long period of time can have negative health implications in the long run.

EWG focused on three nutrients that are regularly consumed in excess: vitamin A, zinc, and niacin. Only six percent of 2- to 8- year olds are deficient in vitamin A, and less than one percent are deficient in zinc and niacin. But, according to the report, an estimated 28 million children between the ages of two and eight are overexposed to these nutrients from food and supplements.

Studies have shown a host of illnesses associated with excessive intake of these nutrients. Here are the effects of overconsumption, according to the EWG:

Vitamin A: Liver damage, brittle nails, hair loss, skeletal abnormalities, osteoporosis and hip fracture (in older adults), and developmental abnormalities (of the fetus)
Zinc: Impaired copper absorption, anemia, changes in red and white blood cells, impaired immune function
Niacin: Skin reactions (flushing, rash), nausea, liver toxicity

Renée Sharp, the EWG’s director of toxics research, explained that the associated health risks are “more chronic than acute”: If a child eats too much of a given nutrient over a long period of time, he or she might experience the associated illnesses down the line. The tricky part is that it’s nearly impossible to link a specific case of an illness to overconsumption of fortified food, so there isn’t a hard and fast set of rules on what to eat and what to avoid. But, according to the report, several studies have shown that “cumulative exposures from fortified food and supplements could put children at risk for potential adverse effects.” Put more simply by Sharp: “if your kid is eating highly fortified cereal, and that kid is also eating snack bars and other fortified foods and you’re giving your kid a vitamin pill, that adds up. And there’s no reason to put your kid at that risk.”

Part of the reason for childrens’ overconsumption of certain nutrients is marketing: If products are marketed as healthy, people are more likely to buy them. According to NYU nutrition professor Marion Nestle, “Plenty of research demonstrates that nutrients sell food products. Any health or health-like claim on a food product—vitamins added, no trans fats, organic—makes people believe that the product has fewer calories and is a health food…Added vitamins are about marketing, not health.”

Adding to the confusion among shoppers is nutrition labels. Young kids have significantly lower recommended daily intakes of nutrients than adults, but nutrition labels, even on brands marketed towards kids, almost always show the recommended values for adults. Furthermore, the EWG contends that the intake recommendations, which were calculated by the FDA in 1968, are themselves out of date: “Those values were set at a time when people were worried about nutrient deficiencies,” explained Sharp. “Scientists just hadn’t done as much research on the potential pitfalls of over-consuming nutrients. Things have changed.”

Zinc perfectly exemplifies this double whammy. The FDA currently recommends that adults consume 15 milligrams of zinc per day, and that children less than five years old consume 8 milligrams per day. But food packaging, which shows recommended intake levels calculated in ’60s, still says that adults should consume 20 milligrams per day. “If you think about it, every single food sitting in the grocery store has a nutrition fact panel right now that is largely irrelevant for young children,” says Valerie Tarasuk, a University of Toronto nutritional scientist.

In the years since the FDA calculated its recommended Daily Values, the Institute of Medicine (IOM), a branch of the National Academy of Sciences, have developed “Tolerable Upper Intake Levels” for these three nutrients (referenced in the graph above). Often, they’re considerably lower than the FDA’s recommended daily allowances. An FDA proposal to revise nutrition labels is currently open for public comment. Though the FDA proposed similar changes in 2003, the Daily Values for nutrients have remained consistent since the 1960s. An FDA spokesperson declined to comment for this article.

In EWG’s review of fortified foods, the top source of excessive intake of the three studied nutrients was cereal. Cereals made up 43 percent of all sources of preformed vitamin A, 52 percent of added niacin, and 97 percent of added zinc.

But not all cereals are fortified equally. The EWG’s analysis of the nutrition labels for 1,556 cereal brands found that 114 cereals were fortified with 30 percent or more of the FDA’s daily intake values (for adults) of Vitamin A, zinc, or niacin. The full list of those cereals is here, but here are a few brands you might recognize:

Cap’n Crunch’s Chocolatey Crunch
Food Lion Whole Grain 100 Cereal
General Mills Fiber One, Honey Clusters
General Mills Wheaties
General Mills Total Raisin Bran
Kashi U 7 Whole Grain Flakes & Granola with Black Currants & Walnuts
Kellogg’s Crispix Cereal
Kellogg’s Smart Start, Original Antioxidants
Kellogg’s Special K
Kroger Frosted Flakes of Corn
Malt-O-Meal Corn Bursts
Safeway Kitchens Bran Flakes
Stop & Shop/Giant Source 100 Crispy Whole Grain Wheat & Brown Rice Flakes
Trader Joe’s Bran Flakes

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Is Your Cereal Giving You a Vitamin Overdose?

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GOP Front-Runner Compares Gay Marriage to Polygamy

by qdyedut Posted on June 23, 2014

Mother Jones

Last week, a top GOP House candidate in Washington state compared gay marriage to polygamy.

“Marriage is something more for religion to decide,” Republican front-runner Pedro Celis said Thursday when asked about his stance on same-sex marriage at a GOP candidate forum, the Seattle Times reported. “Is this marriage or not? Polygamy—is it fine or not? It’s a religion thing.”

The National Republican Congressional Committee has backed Celis, a former Microsoft engineer, to run against Democratic Rep. Suzan DelBene in Washington’s first congressional district. DelBene is expected to hold onto her seat in November, but national Republicans are trying extra hard to change that. The NRCC recently bumped Celis into the highest tier of its candidate recruitment and training program. Celis is now a “Young Gun,” meaning that the committee considers him to be on a “clear path to victory.”

In 2012, Celis voted against Washington’s initiative to legalize gay marriage. He says same-sex marriage issues are best left to the states.

Celis wasn’t the only one to express interesting views on same-sex marriage at Thursday’s event. Another GOP contender, former county council staffer Ed Moats, said “homosexual marriage” is “anthropologically regressive.” The Republican primary will be held on August 5.

Before this event, Celis had said his campaign was focused on Obamacare and jobs.

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GOP Front-Runner Compares Gay Marriage to Polygamy

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WATCH: MoJo’s Dan Schulman Talking Koch Brothers, ‘Sons of Wichita’ on The Daily Show

by CalvinCherry Posted on June 19, 2014

Mother Jones

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Mother Jones’ own Daniel Schulman appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Tuesday to talk about Sons of Wichita, his new book on the Koch brothers. If you’d like to buy the book, click here.

Watch:

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WATCH: MoJo’s Dan Schulman Talking Koch Brothers, ‘Sons of Wichita’ on The Daily Show

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The RNC’s Newest Anti-Hillary Weapon Is a Giant Orange Squirrel

by BlytheGorsuch Posted on June 13, 2014

Mother Jones

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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is speaking in DC Friday night on the campus of George Washington University. The visit was to promote her new book, Hard Choices, but had the air of a campaign event: The line to get in snaked around the block, with attendees sporting “Ready for Hillary” stickers on their shirts. Network TV cameras lined the back of the lower mezzanine. Secret Service agents trolled through the aisles.

And the Republican National Committee was there to respond. Rival political factions turning up at events isn’t a rare occurrence, but the RNC unveiled a new strategy with an…interesting bent. It was the debut of the HRC Squirrel: A person walking around in a bright orange squirrel suit. Tailed by four RNC staffers, the squirrel wandered around giving high-fives to the folks in line, who generally seemed to get a kick out of the odd scene. The squirrel has a Twitter handle and a donation page where anti-Clintonites can get bumper stickers that say “Another Clinton in the White House is Nuts.”

That nutty joke was the gist of the attack, making it a little unclear that the furry was there to rebuke the attendees’ favorite Democrat.

High Five! Patrick Caldwell/Mother Jones

The plainclothes staffers followed the squirrel around, handing out an information sheet with bullet points attacking Clinton. Bold statements include “Benghazi is Still the Defining Moment of Clinton’s Tenure,” and “Clinton’s Russia Reset Has Failed.” One of the staffers, an RNC deputy press secretary, said that the squirrel would be making appearances at subsequent Clinton book signings.

Welcome to 2016!

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The RNC’s Newest Anti-Hillary Weapon Is a Giant Orange Squirrel

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