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GOP Insider Trent Lott Tried to Broker a Kasich-Rubio Ticket to Thwart Donald Trump

Mother Jones

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The other day, I bumped into Trent Lott, the former Republican Senate majority leader who’s now at the law and lobbying firm of Squire Patton Boggs (its clients include Airbus, Goldman Sachs, and Royal Dutch Shell). He’s always polite and chatty—these days he’s promoting a book he wrote with former Democratic Sen. Tom Daschle called Crisis Point that decries the partisan polarization of Washington and offers proposals for de-gridlocking the city—and he asked me what I was up to. I noted that I had just finished listening to a Donald Trump speech. Lott rolled his eyes. So who are you for? I asked, though I had a good guess. Almost all the former Capitol Hill GOPers who are now lobbyists in DC are pulling for Ohio Gov. John Kasich, and, sure enough, Lott declared he’s on Team Kasich. And, Lott added, he had been trying to thwart Trump.

How so? I asked.

Lott said he had actively tried to broker a deal between Kasich and Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), another Washington Republican favorite whose presidential campaign did not last too long once the voting started. This was Lott’s plan: Kasich and Rubio would agree to run as a ticket, with Rubio in the veep slot, and the pair would keep this quiet and not announce the deal until days before the Republican convention. This dramatic, headline-grabbing move, in Lott’s thinking, would dominate the news, as GOPers gathered in Cleveland, and potentially rewrite the narrative of the Republican race. That is, the Kasich-Rubio ticket would be the story, not Trump. This would “shake up the landscape,” Lott said.

Lott told me that he had put some time into this idea but, alas, it was now probably dead. Why? First, he said, Kasich’s alliance with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), which lasted several nanoseconds, had gotten in the way. That ill-fated deal—under which Kasich would not campaign in Indiana and give Cruz a one-on-one shot at Trump—bolstered Trump’s claim that Republican insiders were plotting against him and conniving to undermine the will of GOP voters. Another brokered arrangement, Lott said, would look awful. In essence, the party deal-makers could only get one shot to concoct a stop-Trump deal, and they had blown their chance.

And there was another reason to pull the plug on the Kasich-Rubio plan, Lott said: it now seemed as if Trump would snag the 1,237 delegates needed to obtain the nomination—or get damn close. Lott is one of the growing number of GOP bigwigs saying that if the real estate mogul is close to the magic number, it will be all but impossible to not hand him the presidential nomination. Not even a Kasich-Rubio dream ticket—well, it’s a dream for K Street Republicans, at least—could stop Trump, if he’s within spitting distance of 1,237.

“But I tried,” Lott said.

I later asked a Kasich adviser about Lott’s plan, and he said, “The Kasich-Rubio or Rubio-Kasich team has been hanging around for months as a concept that could potentially be very popular with the delegates. I know of no active pursuit of that concept presently perhaps because what I have heard is that Rubio has been making overtures to Trump.” (Rubio and Trump! How’s that for wonderful political gossip?)

Lott went on to note that he believes Trump could win a general election against Hillary Clinton. “There’s something happening in this country, and Trump has tapped into it,” he explained. Lott pointed out that when he goes back home to Mississippi he comes across plenty of blue-collar workers who are pissed off about trade deals and immigration. They’re for Trump, and some are Democrats. He noted that when he was in Congress he supported every trade deal that came through but now would not. And, he added, did you know this: one out of five households in this country don’t have anyone working in a job. His analysis: it’s a mess out there, and Trump could well ride populist anger into the White House.

But would Lott vote for Trump over Clinton? “Yes, I would,” Lott answered, without any hesitancy. Really? I replied. He said he would have no qualms doing so. But, he added, if Vice President Joe Biden were the Democratic candidate, he would vote for Biden.

“That’s not going to happen,” I said.

“Yeah,” Lott replied. “That’s too bad.”

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GOP Insider Trent Lott Tried to Broker a Kasich-Rubio Ticket to Thwart Donald Trump

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GOP Leaders Are Preparing to Submit to Donald Trump

Mother Jones

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Following Donald Trump’s overwhelming victory last week in his home state of New York and his impressive sweep across five East Coast states on Tuesday, Republican Party leaders may be finally reaching the final stage of Trump grief: acceptance that the real estate mogul is likely to be their presidential nominee. Some GOP insiders are even coming to terms with the distinct possibility that the primary race may not reach an open convention and that Trump may well bag the necessary 1,237 delegates to win the nomination, according to two Republican National Committee members.

This recognition began to sink in last week at the RNC’s spring meeting in Hollywood, Florida, where the committee’s 168 members convened to discuss party business. Trump’s resounding New York victory earlier that week “kind of shocked everyone into reality” and “had an enormous effect at the RNC meeting,” says one longtime RNC member, who asked to remain anonymous. “All of a sudden people started accepting the fact, either happily or regretfully depending on who you are, that there seems to be a clear movement here. So that helped Trump in Hollywood, Florida, at the meeting. People were much more open to him then, in my opinion.”

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GOP Leaders Are Preparing to Submit to Donald Trump

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Watch Donald Trump Blast the GOP’s "Crooked System" in His NY Victory Speech

Mother Jones

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Speaking from Trump Tower in Manhattan on Tuesday, Donald Trump celebrated his resounding victory in New York’s Republican primary. The GOP front-runner took the opportunity to dismiss his challengers, Ted Cruz and John Kasich, and to declare the race essentially over.

“Senator Cruz is just about mathematically eliminated,” Trump told a crowd of supporters. “We’ve won another state. As you know we have won a million more votes than Senator Cruz. Millions and millions of more votes than Governor Kasich.”

“We’re really, really rocking,” he added.

The real estate magnate closed out his victory speech by once again criticizing the Republican party, describing its presidential nomination system as “rigged.” At one point, Trump even referenced the battle that Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are currently waging for the support of Democratic superdelegates.

“Nobody should take delegates and claim victory unless they get those delegates with voters and voting,” he said. “And that’s what’s going to happen, and you watch, because the people aren’t going to stand for it. It’s a crooked system.”

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Watch Donald Trump Blast the GOP’s "Crooked System" in His NY Victory Speech

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This Actress Gets to Play Like a Dozen Clones on "Orphan Black"

Mother Jones

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When I try to tell my friends about Orphan Black, I get excited and things come out garbled: “It’s about clones, but it’s also a mystery. The clones get sick, and there’s this race for a cure, but also a quest to find out where they come from and why—and there are these crazy pop-science researchers who modify their own bodies. The military might be involved.”

More calmly put, the BBC drama, whose fourth season kicks off tonight, is a complex futuristic thriller with themes ranging from self-identity and scientific ethics to religious extremism. But perhaps the show’s greatest strength is the reproductive rights storyline that has won it acclaim as a feminist triumph—even though it was created by a couple of guys. I reached out to one of those guys, Graeme Manson, to talk about entertainment, science, and feminism. For a little catchup, here’s the season 1 trailer.

Mother Jones: How did you and co-creator John Fawcett get to a series about cloned humans?

Graeme Manson: We were looking for a high-concept feature film idea, and that’s where we came to clones. We’d been friends for 20 years. John’s a horror and sci-fi person. I was into sci-fi, drama, and comedy. Our tastes intersected at black comedy. John pitched the opening scene for “Orphan Black,” where a girl gets off a train, looks across the tracks, sees her double, and in that moment the double commits suicide. That was all we had! It was like a four-sentence pitch, and we took it from there. John got juiced by the technical aspects of shooting a single actor playing multiple roles, and I got juiced on looking at clones as a concept and as something that was beginning to happen in the zeitgeist in terms of Dolly the Sheep. I found the psychological implications really rich: What happens if we clone humans? How do you feel about your genetic identicals—after 50 years, do you not even care that you bump into them in the supermarket?

MJ: Where do you stand on the ethics of cloning?

GM: We’re a sci-fi show, and a conspiracy mystery, so we naturally look at the scarier, more conspiratorial aspects of science, and that’s not real science. There is a consistent civilian mistrust of science where 98 percent of the time, scientists have mankind’s best interests in mind. But corporate science, big science, for-profits, military science—they’re not necessarily creating science that’s good for mankind. We like that question of what’s going on beyond the lab door. We think about what’s occurring right now that’s sinister or could be misused or is complex ethically. CRISPR technology, gene editing, germ-line editing: These are sciences that could change the face of mankind. We’re such irrepressible creatures. If you give us a technology; if you put a gun in a human being’s hand, sooner or later they’re gonna squeeze the trigger.

MJ: What kind of science are you guys eyeing for the upcoming seasons.

GM: Everything from genetic patents to “neolution”—self-directed evolution where humans are offered the technological choice of intervention in their bodies, be that biohack DIY experimentation, gene editing, or whatever. We have one really strong science writer, Chris Roberts, and story consultant Cosima Herter is a science historian—we like a historical context. Eugenics runs through all of the science we’re doing. From Victorian times to the early Cold River Institute genealogical studies, all these eugenical movements thought they had a good intention: “If only we had the right kinds of people, we would improve society.” But what are the right kinds of people? You’re talking about immigration, all these hot-button topics. If you’re gay, straight, or bi. What’s right? What’s legal? What’s defined? And then you get in there and start messing with the genome—it’s like, “Ugh!”

That’s a pretty juicy side of the show for us. We always find something there to be mulling and putting forward in the show as an interesting take on science or ethics that we don’t have an answer for, but you put it on the table and because there’s always these two sides to it—cutting-edge science is a good thing, but how could it manifest otherwise?

MJ: The show also has a strong reproductive rights theme: One clone’s eggs are harvested without her consent. Another narrowly escapes having her ovaries forcibly removed. And the clones are monitored—usually by men. What are we to make of all this?

GM: Those are ethical things, and it certainly plays as a very strong feminist statement on our show, which is something lead actress Tatiana Maslany is passionate about. John and I always say that when we started with the concept of clones, we didn’t realize what a feminist statement it would become in terms of body autonomy. These things became very apparent to us as we dug deeper, and the show as a whole is very committed to those kinds of issues portrayed in their complexity.

MJ: Tatiana has formidable task of playing all these different clones. Which one is the most challenging for her?

GM: I think Rachel, because she’s stiff and formal and cold and powerful and corporate and all of that—the opposite of Tatiana. Certainly in the beginning Rachel was very foreign to her. I know that she loves playing Krystal, because it’s not the kind of role she ever gets offered. They’re all a challenge. We work really closely with her on who the characters are when they’re coming. We come up with something we might need for story, and then we’ll take it to Tat to talk character.

MJ: It sounds like you give your actors a lot of input.

GM: We do. Our core actors are real pros and they’re all very good at finding things that we don’t necessarily see in the script. We love to give a little bit of leeway for the actors to play at the end of scenes or to bring their own flair to the scenes. We give our actors and our directors a chance to do some of that. Certainly Tat has a lot of input. When we run into story problems in the writer’s room, sometimes we’ll jog down to set and see what Tat thinks one of her many characters might do in that situation. She’s always very good at coming at it from a character point of view.

MJ: Where did you find Tatiana, anyway?

GM: Due to the vagaries of financing, we had to cast a Canadian lead. We saw everybody in that age range in Canada! The show wasn’t going to happen unless we had buy-in from both Canadian and American networks. Luckily, it was unanimous that Tatiana could handle it. But it was only once we started to see those clone scenes put together that we were like, “Damn, she’s good.”

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This Actress Gets to Play Like a Dozen Clones on "Orphan Black"

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9 Facts That Blow Up the Voter-Fraud Myth

Mother Jones

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Among the conservative talking points that refuse to die is the idea that there is widespread voter fraud in America. The most recent warning about the scourge of illegal voting came from Texas Governor Greg Abbott, who recently claimed “The fact is voter fraud is rampant.”

That’s simply not true, as many new outlets reported. (See here, here, and here). According to Politifact, there were just 85 prosecutions for voter fraud in Texas from 2002 to 2015, and not all of them led to convictions. That’s a paltry number considering that more than 42 million ballots were cast in the state’s general elections from 2002 to 2014.

The reality is voter fraud—which includes a range of offenses from impersonating another voter to casting more than one vote—is extraordinarily rare. And the tsunami of voter ID laws, address requirements, and sloppy purges of voter rolls made it much harder for Americans—particularly minorities and poor voters—to cast their ballots.

Here are some selections from our reporting on the voter fraud myth and the impact of anti-voter fraud laws:

The rate of fraud in US elections is close to zero.
UFO sightings are more common that voter fraud.
So is getting struck by lightning.
Florida’s aggressive efforts to root out voter fraud before the 2000 election erroneously spiked more than 4,700 names—44 percent of African Americans’—from the voter rolls. That was more than enough votes to change the outcome of that year’s presidential election.
Native Americans are fighting a slew of high-stakes legal battles over voting rights; many of the lawsuits are linked to rules that were designed to prevent voting fraud.
Voter ID laws are among a host of hurdles that minorities face when they cast a ballot.
A national voter ID card could end the debate on voter fraud, but both parties hate that idea.
GOP presidential contender Ted Cruz’s Iowa chairman spent $250,000 to stop people from voting.
Interestingly, a conservative activist inadvertently demonstrated how hard it is to commit voter fraud.

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9 Facts That Blow Up the Voter-Fraud Myth

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These Right-Wing Groups Are Gearing Up for an Onslaught on Obama’s Supreme Court Nominee

Mother Jones

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On Wednesday, President Barack Obama picked Merrick Garland, a federal court of appeals judge with a stellar and moderate reputation, to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. His strategy was obvious: present obstructionist Republicans with a nominee with little or no baggage. But Senate Republicans immediately signaled that the Garland nomination would not change their calculations—that the fight to block any nominee was on. And prior to Obama’s announcement, conservative groups were already gearing up for this crusade, perhaps the last big battle of the right’s war on Obama.

The political players leading this effort are the usual suspects. The Republican National Committee had already announced plans to oppose Obama’s nominee—whoever it might be—and to run ads in competitive Senate races in Colorado, Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire and elsewhere, in addition to targeting Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The tea party group FreedomWorks is rallying grassroots voters to the cause. On the other side of political spectrum, liberal advocacy groups such as the Alliance for Justice and People for the American Way are girding for a massive fight.

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These Right-Wing Groups Are Gearing Up for an Onslaught on Obama’s Supreme Court Nominee

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Hillary Clinton Was Just Asked if Donald Trump Is a Racist. Here’s Her Answer.

Mother Jones

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At Thursday’s Democratic debate, moderator Karen Tumulty asked Hillary Clinton, “Is Donald Trump a racist?” Here’s how Clinton answered:

Bernie Sanders didn’t answer the question directly, either, but he attacked Trump for cheerleading the birther movement during the 2012 election. “I know a little bit about the immigrant experience,” said Sanders, whose father was an immigrant. “Nobody has ever asked me for my birth certificate. Maybe it has something to do with the color of my skin.”

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Hillary Clinton Was Just Asked if Donald Trump Is a Racist. Here’s Her Answer.

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Donald Trump Says Mitt Romney "Would Have Dropped To His Knees" For Him

Mother Jones

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Donald Trump addressed a frenzied crowd in Portland, Maine, on Thursday afternoon during a campaign press conference.

The GOP front-runner hit all his usual marks—calls for building a border wall and deporting undocumented immigrants, reading polls from pieces of paper he pulls from his inside jacket pocket—but devoted a fair chunk of his time to lashing back against former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who publicly criticized Trump and questioned whether he was fit to be president.

“Mitt is a failed candidate. He failed. He failed horribly,” Trump said. “That was a race—I have to say, folks—that should have been won. That was a race that absolutely should have been won. He disappeared, and I wasn’t happy about it, to be honest, because I am not a fan of Barack Obama.”

Romney had begged for his support, Trump claimed, during Romney’s bid to unseat President Obama in 2012: “You can see how loyal he was, he was begging for my endorsement. I could have said, ‘Drop to your knees!’ and he would have dropped to his knees.”

Trump also claimed he intimidated Romney, who “choked” and “chickened out” of running for president in 2016.

Romney responded to Trump’s comments in a tweet posted on 2:13 p.m. Eastern.

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Donald Trump Says Mitt Romney "Would Have Dropped To His Knees" For Him

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Who Said It: Donald Trump or Mitt Romney?

Mother Jones

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On Thursday, former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney trashed his party’s 2016 front-runner, Donald Trump, as a phony and con artist who is leading the GOP to electoral disaster. And sure, there’s some truth to that. But the two formerly pro-choice Northeast Republican businessmen have more in common than they’d like to acknowledge—from their records on immigration to their favorite sport(s) stars to their choice of profanity. Okay, maybe not the last one.

See if you can tell them apart:

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for (var i = 0; i < self.possible_display_elements.length; i++ )
var display_element = self.possible_display_elementsi.name;
answerdisplay_element = self.pull_answer_value_from_spreadsheet(
row, display_element, row_number, is_correct
);

return answer;
},
make_quiz_data_from_spreadsheet_data: function(tabletop)
var i, j, sheetName, data;
var quiz = [];

// Find a sheet that _isn’t_ named “Results”.
for (sheetName in tabletop)
if (tabletop.hasOwnProperty(sheetName) && sheetName !== ‘Results’)
break;

}

data = tabletopsheetName.elements;

for (i = 0; i < data.length; i++)
var row = datai;
var possible_wrong_answers = self.get_possible_answers(row, false);
var possible_right_answers = self.get_possible_answers(row, true);

var right_answer_placement = [];
for (j = 0; j < possible_right_answers.length; j++)
right_answer_placement.push(
Math.round(Math.random() * possible_wrong_answers.length)
);

// IMPORTANT TO SORT THIS. rather than check if a value is in, we only check the first
right_answer_placement.sort();

var possible_answers= [];
var right_answers_placed = 0;
for (j = 0; j <= possible_wrong_answers.length; j++)
while (j === right_answer_placementright_answers_placed)
//push right answer
possible_answers.push(possible_right_answersright_answers_placed);
right_answers_placed++;

if (j === possible_wrong_answers.length)
continue;

possible_answers.push(possible_wrong_answersj);
}

var question =
question :
,
possible_answers : possible_answers,
rowNumber : row.rowNumber – 1
};
for (j = 0; j < self.possible_display_elements.length; j++)
var display_value = self.possible_display_elementsj.name;
question.questiondisplay_value = row’question’ + display_value;

quiz.push(question);
}
return quiz;
},
make_results_data_from_spreadsheet_data: function(tabletop, quiz_data)
var ret = make_default_how_you_did_htmls(quiz_data.length);

var data = tabletop’Results’ ? tabletop’Results’.elements : [];
for (var i = 0; i < data.length; i++)
var index = datai.numberofrightanswers;
if (index) index = parseInt(index, 10);
if (!isNaN(index))
if (!retindex)
console.log(“Invalid number of correct answers: ” + index);
else
retindex = datai.html;

}
}

return ret;
},
append_question : function(question_index)
var question_data = self.quiz_dataquestion_index;
var question_container = $(‘<li class=”question_container row-fluid question_’ +
question_index +
‘”>’
);
question_container.append( self.build_question_element_from_row(question_data) );
question_container.append( self.build_possible_answer_elements_from_row(question_data, question_index) );
container_elem.append(question_container);
,
build_question_element_from_row: function(row)
var question_container = $(”);
for (var i = 0; i < self.possible_display_elements.length; i++)
question_container.append(
self.possible_display_elementsi.create_element(row.question)
);

return question_container;
},
build_possible_answer_elements_from_row : function(question, question_index)
var answers_container = $(”);

function bindClick(question_index, answer_index, possible_answer)
possible_answer.bind(‘click’, function()
// was it the right answer?
var was_correct = self.quiz_dataquestion_index.possible_answersanswer_index.correct;

// Add correct classes to possible answers
answers_container.find(‘.selected’).removeClass(‘selected’);
$(this).addClass(‘selected’);
$(this).removeClass(‘possible_answer’);
answers_container
.find(‘.answer_’ + answer_index)
.addClass(
was_correct ? ‘correct_answer’ : ‘wrong_answer’
);

//track how many you got right the first time
cheater_answer_trackingquestion_index = was_correct;
if ( typeof(answer_trackingquestion_index) === ‘undefined’ )
answer_trackingquestion_index = was_correct;
cover.find(‘.question_’ + question_index).addClass(
‘first_guess_’ +
(was_correct ? ‘right’ : ‘wrong’)
);

self.update_how_you_did_element();

//show new slide
self.display_answer(self.quiz_dataquestion_index, question_index, self.quiz_dataquestion_index.possible_answersanswer_index);

// track that this was selected last
self.quiz_dataquestion_index.previously_selected = self.quiz_dataquestion_index.possible_answersanswer_index;
});
}

for (var i = 0; i < question.possible_answers.length; i++)
var answer_data = question.possible_answersi;
var possible_answer = $(” +
answer_data.answer +
”);
bindClick(question_index, i, possible_answer);
answers_container.append(possible_answer);
this.note_answer_images(answer_data);

return answers_container;
},
answer_images : {},
preload_answer_images: function()
for (var url in this.answer_images)
var img=new Image();
img.src=url;

},
note_answer_images: function(answer_data)
var image_elements = ‘backgroundimage’, ‘topimage’, ‘bottomimage’;
for (var i = 0; i < image_elements.length; i++)
if (!answer_data[image_elementsi]) continue;
this.answer_images[answer_data[image_elementsi]] = true;
}
self.possible_display_elementsi.name;
},
add_display_in_correct_place: function(container, place_in_display_elements, slide)
for ( var i = place_in_display_elements; i > 0; i– )
if (self.possible_display_elementsi – 1.finder(container).length )
self.possible_display_elementsi – 1.finder(container)
.after( self.possible_display_elementsplace_in_display_elements.create_element(slide) );
return;

}
container.prepend(
self.possible_display_elementsplace_in_display_elements.create_element(slide)
);
},
display_answer : function(question, question_index, answer)
var displayed_slide = question.previously_selected ?
question.previously_selected :
question.question;
var slide = container_elem.find(‘.question_’ + question_index + ‘ .question’);
slide.addClass(‘revealed_answer’);
for (var i = 0; i < self.possible_display_elements.length; i++)
var display_value = self.possible_display_elementsi.name;
if ( answerdisplay_value !== displayed_slidedisplay_value )
if ( !answerdisplay_value )
self.possible_display_elementsi.finder(slide).remove();
else if ( !displayed_slidedisplay_value )
self.add_display_in_correct_place(slide, i, answer);
else
self.possible_display_elementsi.finder(slide).replaceWith(
self.possible_display_elementsi.create_element( answer )
);

}
}
},

create_cover : function()
cover = $(‘#’ + self.container);
container_elem = $(”);
cover.append(container_elem);
container_elem.addClass(‘quiz_container’);
container_elem.css(‘padding’, ‘0px’);
,
update_how_you_did_element: function()
var right_answers = 0;
var user_answers = self.cheating ? cheater_answer_tracking : answer_tracking;
var unfinished = false;
for (var i = 0; i < self.quiz_data.length; i++)
if (typeof(answer_trackingi) === ‘undefined’)
unfinished = true;

if (user_answersi)
right_answers++;

}
var html;
if (unfinished && typeof(this.not_finished_html) !== ‘undefined’)
html = this.not_finished_html;
else
html = this.results_dataright_answers;

how_you_did_element.html(html);
}
};
return quiz.init(quiz_data, results_data, options);
};

$.fn.quiz = function(quiz_data, results_data, options)
if (!options) options = results_data; results_data = null;
if (!options) options = ; }
options.container = this.attr(‘id’);
this.quiz = $.quiz(quiz_data, results_data, options);
return this;
};
})(jQuery);

var quiz = jQuery(‘#quiz_container’).quiz(‘1EeGW-Yb3WO_LIv1Qw-jMXQbuiZGTag6XHzohSNlCGN4’);
Photo credits: Trump: Allen Eyestone/Zuma; Romney: Eric Draper/Zuma

Original article:

Who Said It: Donald Trump or Mitt Romney?

Posted in GE, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Who Said It: Donald Trump or Mitt Romney?

How Hillary Clinton Found Religion in South Carolina

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Hillary Clinton couldn’t beat Barack Obama in South Carolina, so she did the next best thing. She worked for him.

The networks declared Clinton the winner of Saturday’s South Carolina primary as soon as the polls closed on Saturday night, handing the former secretary of state a crushing victory in a state that her opponent, Bernie Sanders, had tried hard to win over but then mostly ignored in the final week of the race. Eight years after her 29-point loss to Obama here signaled the beginning of the end of her campaign (even if she didn’t know it at the time), her victory over the Vermont senator was meant to make a broader statement about her opponent’s viability in states that aren’t solidly white.

Just days away from Super Tuesday, Clinton poured her resources into the South’s first primary state, dispatching her husband, Bill, back to the campaign trail. But her most powerful surrogates were the mothers of five African Americans who died in police custody or as a result of gun violence; they spoke to small groups at black churches in counties where Obama had run up some of his biggest margins. Clinton’s strategy was obvious: She won by doing everything she didn’t do the last time. Clinton wrapped herself in the legacy of the man who defeated her. She talked relentlessly about gun control and systemic racism. And she tried to ease voters’ lingering distrust by couching her message in deeply spiritual overtones here in the heart of the religious left. Hillary Clinton found religion in South Carolina, in the most literal sense.

Introducing the former first lady at a crowded black church in Florence on Thursday, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker mentioned “faith” 16 times in the final 90 seconds of his speech. Clinton picked up right where he left off. “I couldn’t help but think about the many, many hours of my life that I have spent in a church like this one,” she said.

“Somebody once asked me a long time ago when my husband was president if I was a praying person,” she added, drawing a murmur from the crowd. “I said, ‘Well, I am, but if you’ve ever lived in the White House you know you have to be—there’s just no alternative to it.'” That got some laughs.

“And I think our country right now needs faithfulness, doesn’t it?” said Clinton.

“Yes it does!” shouted an audience member.

The mothers’ stops at churches in Holly Hill and Sumter began with prayer and delved into biblical understandings of trial and grief. Lucia McBath, the mother of the slain Florida teen Jordan Davis, told one audience that “we’ve turned away from God, and that is the reason why we’re seeing what’s happening in this country.”

It was part of a pattern. A Clinton campaign ad airing in the state in the final week of the primary began with a lingering close-up shot of a church, as Morgan Freeman explains, “Her church taught her to do all the good you can for all the people you can, for as long as you can.” A radio ad featured a black pastor who recalled reading his Bible at a bakery when Clinton walked in. “She gently asked me what was I studying,” he said. “I said ‘1 Corinthians 13.’ And what happened next, I’ll never forget. She said, ‘Love is patient, love is kind,’ and went on to recite the rest of the verses by heart.”

You find the voters where they are, and you speak to them in the language they speak, and in South Carolina, it means you go to a lot of churches. It helped, though, that Clinton is a Methodist who can recite 1 Corinthians 13 from memory, while Bernie Sanders is Jewish and doesn’t like to talk about it. It wasn’t pernicious, but it was real. On Sunday, Sanders made an unannounced visit, accompanied by former NAACP president Ben Jealous, to the historic Brookland Baptist Church in West Columbia. He delivered a version of his stump speech and was greeted politely but unenthusiastically. Three days later, Clinton received a series of ovations at the same church while speaking to a luncheon of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority sisters. She wanted to talk about second chances.

“At a CNN town hall, the poet laureate of South Carolina asked me about forgiveness,” Clinton said. “I don’t know if any of you were able to see it, but it may have been one of the more important questions I’ve been asked over the course of this campaign. What, she asked, could we do to try to promote the idea of forgiveness in our country? I told her I couldn’t have been standing there without having been forgiven and learning how to forgive over the course of my life.”

Clinton got some amens for that, but her biggest ovation, there and elsewhere, came when she talked about her good friend, President Barack Obama. Eight years ago, after Obama had won the overwhelming majority of African American voters in the state that she’d been counting on as a firewall, she shifted gears, making a protracted but doomed argument that her black opponent couldn’t win white working-class voters like she could.

This time around, Clinton is intimating that her opponent’s coalition is too white to win. She’s casting herself as the natural follow-up to the Obama administration, pledging to back him up 100 percent on whomever he nominates for the Supreme Court and to protect the Affordable Care Act against Republican attacks. “We all worked hard to elect President Barack Obama eight years ago,” an African American woman said in a radio ad paid for by Clinton’s super-PAC. “We need a president who will build on all that President Obama has done. President Obama trusted Hillary Clinton to be America’s secretary of state.” Voters seemed to buy that argument; the most common explanation I heard from Obama backers as to why they’d moved to Clinton was the fact that she’d worked with him.

Sanders’ campaign had worked for months to chip away at Clinton’s lead in the state by exploiting a generational divide, as he had done with great success in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. He courted young, activist-minded African American voters at the state’s historically black colleges, and in the final weeks he criticized his opponent’s past support for welfare reform and the 1994 crime bill. But he seemed to recognize the long odds.

At Sanders’ only South Carolina campaign rally of the week, a team of surrogates, including the rapper Killer Mike, told students at Claflin University, a historically black college, that Clinton had enabled a “genocide” of black youths and had told Black Lives Matter activists to “shut up.” Killer Mike reminded them about an incident on Wednesday at a Clinton fundraiser in Charleston, where Clinton backers chided a young African American woman who had asked the candidate about her past use of the racially charged term “super-predators.” When it was Sanders’ turn, he told them that the Clinton administration’s welfare reform efforts in the 1990s had doubled the number of Americans living in extreme poverty.

The voters Sanders was seeking were out there. Several I spoke with at Claflin brought up Sanders’ embrace of Black Lives Matter and his civil rights activism in the 1960s. Another was leaning toward Sanders because the black academic Cornel West had come to Orangeburg to campaign on his behalf. Everyone wanted to hear more about Sanders’ plan to make public universities free. There just weren’t enough of those voters. As Sanders and his surrogates talked down the Clinton record and railed against money in politics and mass incarceration, the floor at Claflin was half empty, and the handful of students in the bleachers looked like they were killing time before dinner.

One reason for the poor showing? There was another rally happening across campus, at neighboring South Carolina State University—for Hillary Clinton.

Visit source:  

How Hillary Clinton Found Religion in South Carolina

Posted in alo, ALPHA, Anchor, Everyone, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How Hillary Clinton Found Religion in South Carolina