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A Journalist Was Just Manhandled and Detained at a Trump Rally

by QWUJacquet Posted on February 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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Videos posted on Twitter earlier this afternoon show a photographer for Time magazine being violently thrown to the ground by a member of Donald Trump’s security team, possibly a US Secret Service agent. Morris, an award-winning photojournalist who has covered war zones, struggles back to his feet and is led away by several other security team members.

It’s not clear what precipitated the incident, which happened at a Trump rally at Virginia’s Radford University, but the confrontation appears to have occurred inside the enclosure usually reserved for members of the press.

A uniformed police offer and other men in suits can be seen leading Morris away from the scene.

Another video shows the journalist being handcuffed by uniformed police offers. Morris says he was briefly detained and then released.

Gabby Morrongiello, a reporter for the Washington Times who was covering the rally, tweeted that the incident occurred when the Time photographer attempted to leave the press corral to take photos of protesters.

A spokesman for the Secret Service did not respond to a request for comment about the episode.

Update: Another perspective on the takedown.

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A Journalist Was Just Manhandled and Detained at a Trump Rally

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Meet the Star of Judd Apatow’s New Netflix Series "Love"

by ThelmaPeyser Posted on February 28, 2016

Mother Jones

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It sounds so familiar. Nice guy meets self-destructive girl. Guy falls for girl, who refuses to be loved. Yet, Love, the new Netflix dark comedy created and co-written by director Judd Apatow, comedian Paul Rust, and Girls writer Lesley Arfin, transcends the usual clichés with complex, smartly written characters.

Rust, 34, stars as Gus, an aspiring TV writer who finds himself suddenly single. Mickey, played by Community star Gillian Jacobs, is a party girl as desperate for love as she is unhinged. Hilarious, tender, and laced with moments of cringe-worthy humiliation, the series is a darkly funny and fairly realistic portrayal of the awkwardness of the human experience—an introspective look at two lost souls as they navigate Los Angeles and bumble through their difficult intimacy in a painfully relatable way.

Rust needed his sense of humor growing up Catholic in Le Mars, Iowa (population 9,826). In his early 20s, after graduating from the University of Iowa, he moved to Los Angeles, where he began acting and performing with the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater and writing on shows from The Very Funny Show to Arrested Development, and the popular podcast Comedy Bang! Bang! He also landed a leading role in the 2009 comedy film I Love You, Beth Cooper.

His other recent escapade—not counting his marriage to co-writer Arfin last October—has been co-writing Pee-wee’s Big Holiday (a.k.a. Paul Reubens’ big comeback), a film due for release March 4. I caught up with Rust to talk Catholicism, how parking affects LA hookups, and why he named his old band—he plays guitar, too—Don’t Stop Or We’ll Die.

Check out the Love trailer, and then we’ll talk.

Mother Jones: Okay, let’s have you describe these characters.

Paul Rust: Mickey is from New Jersey. She works at a satellite radio station, and she’s a cool person. She dresses cool and has great taste. She’s also struggling with addiction and substance abuse problems, but deep down she realizes she’s at a point where she doesn’t want to keep doing that, and she wants to improve her life.

Gus is a guy from South Dakota who’s an on-set tutor for child actors. He’s a people pleaser who’s motivated by his fears and anxieties. The two of them meet, and for Gus there’s this sort of attraction: “Maybe if I date this person who’s dangerous, it’ll get me out of my shell.” Conversely, Mickey is like, “I feel reckless, so maybe if I date this person who seems to be grounded, that would give me something I’m missing.” In the show we’re trying to deconstruct that idea. Mickey, under her rough exterior, there’s actually something very tender about her. And for Gus, somebody who looks sensitive on the outside is maybe angrier on the inside.

MJ: How does Los Angeles itself shape the narrative?

PR: Just the way LA is laid out—30 miles of disparate neighborhoods—adds to the loneliness of the characters. There’s a lot more space to feel isolated in. In Los Angeles, you have to meet the person, then walk out separately to your own cars, and follow the person to their neighborhood, and then pray that street parking isn’t going to mess things up. I think a lot of nights together have been spoiled by somebody not being able to find a parking spot and saying, “Why don’t we just go home?”

MJ: What did comedy mean to you as a kid?

PR: Growing up in a small town, in the Midwest, and Catholic: Those are sort of three layers of repression. My mom was my English teacher in high school. So to be able to bend the rules and be the class clown and get to take on my religion, my mom, and my town all at the same time was glorious. I think the desire to be funny was a mixture of wanting to be liked but also wanting to throw your elbows a bit. If you’re cracking a joke in school, it’s sort of anti-authority, but it’s in the nicest, “Please like me!” way.

MJ: Do you mine your upbringing for comedic fodder?

PR: In the writers’ room, we like this idea that Gus presents himself as a nice person, but is it really nice if it’s coming from a hostile place? I’m sure that had to do with my upbringing in the church. You do feel these kinds of hostile feelings, and it’s like, as long as you put these feelings way down, it means you took care of it. But I gotta say, the Catholic Church has churned out a lot of great artists and directors and actors, so if that’s all they do, that’s fine by me. If they’re good at churning out tortured artists, that’s great! Laughs.

MJ: The show almost seems to debunk the “nice guy” archetype, because Gus seems so nice, and then he’ll do things that really aren’t.

PR: The term we use is, “How do we scuff up Gus?” Because Mickey is presented as this self-destructive person, we were really conscious of not wanting this to be the story of, “Hey, if this girl could just realize to accept the love of this kind man, who could solve all her problems and fix her…” To suggest that that’s not healthy was important to us.

MJ: So, what’s it like co-writing with your wife? I mean, what if you had a fight the night before?

PR: Because I think so highly of Lesley and her writing, I fully trust her take and her opinion. She’s very sharp and intuitive. If there is a disagreement, we can usually work through it because the relationship stuff is the real work. Anything to do with the show is fun and entertainment.

MJ: In a recent interview, you said you didn’t want to call this show “honest,” but maybe “truthful.” What did you mean?

PR: Maybe it’s splitting hairs. I think “honest” sometimes gets used to describe a real depiction of real life. I don’t think that’s necessarily what we’re doing. We created these fake characters and we’re just trying to figure out what they would do in situations they enter into. We don’t want people to necessarily think that Mickey and Gus are related to Lesley and me, because it’s not true and I don’t want people to think that. If I heard there was a new show, and the creators were writing about how they met, I would be like, “Pass! No thanks.” Instead of watching, I’m going to go off and barf.

Netflix

MJ: Well, how much do the characters mirror your own relationship?

PR: It was just sort of a jumping-off point. These characters were more based on the years before we met each other—we didn’t really meet each other as damaged as they are in the show. Judd, correctly thinking, said that more sparks will be able to fly if these people are in more toxic times in their lives. If Lesley and I did a show that was really about us, it would be extremely boring.

MJ: Lesley has been open about her past struggles with addiction. Has it been difficult for her to revisit the subject as a writer?

PR: I think because she considers Mickey an older part of herself that’s far, far back in her history, it’s not particularly challenging for her.

MJ: I know you lost a friend, the comedian Harris Wittels, to heroin last year. Has that rubbed off on your writing?

PR: Really the effect is all life-affirming stuff. You know, Harris was one of the funniest, most creative people I know. The greatest quality Harris had was his ability to—he would tweet stuff that I would never be able to admit to another person, let alone tweet to thousands of people. This is a guy who really held the torch for being honest.

MJ: You and Harris had a band together called Don’t Stop Or We’ll Die. You also had a band with comedian Charlyne Yi, who appears in Love, called Glass Beef. Where did these band names come from?

PR: Glass Beef came from just putting these words together. We had different understandings: Charlyne saw it as a piece of beef with chunks of glass in it, and I saw it as a glass figurine of beef. Laughs. Don’t Stop Or We’ll Die came from a line in Back to the Future that’s often misheard by people. There’s a part where Michael J. Fox tries to flag down a car, and an old couple starts slowing down, and the elderly woman says to her husband, “Don’t stop Orvel. Drive!” A lot of people think she’s saying, ‘Don’t stop or we’ll die,’ which is such a hilarious, bizarre thing to say to somebody. We started performing music with comedy because it makes it a little easier to get a response that doesn’t require a wig and a funny costume and an accent.

MJ: The archetypal “struggling” TV characters are often in their 20s, but Mickey and Gus are in their early 30s. Does that make for richer comic fodder?

PR: A lot of the day-to-day, minute-to-minute struggles are a bit more taken care of, so it allows you to start asking more existential questions like, “What do I want in life? What’s going to make me happy?” In your 20s, you’re checking your bank account to make sure you’re not broke. In your 30s, you’re looking at yourself and realizing you’re broken.

MJ: What was it like working on Pee-wee’s Big Holiday with Judd and Paul?

PR: Awesome. Paul sensibility is silly and fantastical, Judd’s is more grounded in reality and real feelings. So much of what Judd writes about is some sort of stunted adolescence, and there’s no greater poster boy for that than Pee-wee Herman. Judd is just such a fan of comedy that he likes all parts of it. It was a dream getting to work with Paul because even before I started working with him, I considered Pee-wee’s Big Adventure my favorite comedy. I would try to write a script like that, and I couldn’t, and it would be terrible.

By luck and chance, I was able to get paired with Paul. And I basically got a tutorial in how to write a script like that. The thing I learned most from him is that the more simple and straightforward and stripped down something is, the better it can be. If I took 25 words to write something, Paul could write it in five. His gift of simplicity and minimalism is really what I learned, and I consider him a friend now. As a 10-year-old fan, getting to be friends with Pee-wee is a dream come true.

The first season of Love is now available on Netflix for your binge-watching pleasure.

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Meet the Star of Judd Apatow’s New Netflix Series "Love"

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These Racist Collectibles Will Make Your Skin Crawl

by JosetteMakinson Posted on February 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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DAVID PILGRIM bought his first piece of racist memorabilia in the early 1970s, when he was a youngster in Mobile, Alabama. It was a set of salt and pepper shakers meant to caricature African Americans. “I purchased it and broke it” on purpose, recalls Pilgrim, who is black. Yet over the next few decades, he amassed a sizable collection of what he calls “contemptible collectibles”—once-common household objects and products that mock and stereotype black people.

David Pilgrim Ferris State University

PM Press

In 1996, Pilgrim transformed his 3,200-item collection into the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia at Michigan’s Ferris State University, where he teaches sociology. He presents a selection of these appalling objects and images in his new book, Understanding Jim Crow: Using Racist Memorabilia to Teach Tolerance and Promote Social Justice. As the title implies, the book isn’t merely an exercise in shock value. It lays out the philosophy behind Pilgrim’s work as a scholar and an activist: that only by acknowledging these artifacts and their persistence in American culture can we honestly confront our not-so-distant past.

Mother Jones: What made you decide to turn your collection into a museum?

David Pilgrim: When I got to Michigan, someone mentioned that they knew this elderly black woman who was an antiques dealer. After many months, she agreed to let me see her personal collection. It was just objects floor to ceiling in a barnlike structure. I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume. It shook me! I thought I’d seen everything. What she had was a testimony to—this is going to sound weird—not just the creativity of racism, but the diversity in it. I remember that day thinking that I wanted to do what she’d done, but in a different way.

MJ: How popular were these collectibles?

DP: They were everyday objects in a lot of people’s homes, including African Americans’. The antiques collector had postcards, posters. She had records, 78s. She had ashtrays. She had a racist bell. I think she had the game called Chopped Up Niggers—it’s a puzzle. She told me that she hadn’t paid very much for many of those pieces because at the time people were throwing stuff away. Some people were ashamed.

“Nigger Milk,” a 1916 magazine advertisement that Pilgrim bought in 1988 Courtesy of David Pilgrim/PM Press

MJ: Why own them in the first place?

DP: These toys, games, sheet music about “coons” and “darkies”—all these millions, and I mean literally millions, of objects—were integral to maintaining Jim Crow. Jim Crow could not work without violence, real violence, but also the threat of violence and the depiction of violence. There are a number of games in the museum where you throw things at black people: “hit the nigger” or “hit the Negro” games. If you had such a game, you were actually creating safe spaces to do that.

An early 1900s game that depicted an African American as a target Courtesy of David Pilgrim/PM Press

MJ: Do you also keep track of racist images and memorabilia online?

DP: Absolutely. With the power of the internet and social media, one person can do the damage that in the old days it took many to do. When you have a race-based incident—and I make it my business to look—within one week there are material objects that reflect that incident in a racist way: lunch boxes, posters, puzzles, T-shirts, pillows. President Obama has been an industry for racist objects. He has been portrayed as a witch doctor, a Rastus character from Cream of Wheat, as a Sambo, as an Uncle Tom—and also as gay, as transgender, as communist, as socialist, as a terrorist, as a Muslim. Many of the images that appear online are old. The images from the old “coon” songs from the late 1800s and early 1900s show up in memes, and people don’t realize they’re older images.

A 1940s creamer or pitcher from Pilgrim’s collection Courtesy of David Pilgrim/PM Press

1950s fishing lure Courtesy of David Pilgrim/PM Press

MJ: What sort of people collect this stuff?

DP: There are some who want to educate. I’ve met collectors who collect to destroy the pieces. But by far the biggest segment are speculators who know that a McCoy cookie jar was $3 and you can get several hundred dollars for it now.

MJ: Do you see a role for your collection in today’s movement for racial equality?

DP: One of the questions I get often is why we’re still having these conversations. And my answer is: The objects are still being made, they’re still being sold and distributed. There’s not an image in the museum that’s not being reproduced in some way. Secondly, the reason we still have these discussions is because race still matters. But Americans don’t often talk about it in places where their ideas are challenged. We want our museum to be safe but uncomfortable.

MJ: I found myself hiding your book from my kids. At what age do you think it’s okay to expose children to this stuff?

DP: I believe that young people—8, 9, 10—should have discussions appropriate to their age about race. But no one under 12 can come into the museum by themselves, and we discourage parents from bringing them. Right in the center of the room is a lynching tree. Even though it’s contextualized, it can be a house of horrors.

A ceramic figure from the 1950s Courtesy of David Pilgrim/PM Press

Pilgrim writes that historian Henry Louis Gates Jr. found this the most disturbing image in the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia. It is from an unknown book. Courtesy of David Pilgrim/PM Press

Early 1900s postcard Courtesy of David Pilgrim/PM Press

“Be-Bop the Jivin Jigger” toy Courtesy of David Pilgrim/PM Press

1950s bar set Courtesy of David Pilgrim/PM Press

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These Racist Collectibles Will Make Your Skin Crawl

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Let Us Take a Minute to Fully Appreciate the Current State of American Politics

by JeannetteHuddle Posted on February 27, 2016

Mother Jones

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Do you remember this famous video of the South Korean parliament from a few years ago?

How infantile! This is supposed to be a mature democracy. What the hell is going on?

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I give you Marco Rubio on Friday morning, making his case against Donald Trump:

Can you feel the burn? And here is Trump a few hours later making his case against Rubio:

Makes you proud to be an American, doesn’t it? The presidential campaign of one of our great political parties has now degenerated into two guys in suits insulting each other for sweating a lot during a debate.

By the way, Trump’s schtick came during an event where he announced the endorsement of New Jersey governor Chris Christie. Trump now has the following endorsements:

Sarah Palin, crackpot former Republican VP candidate.
Teresa Giudice, star of Real Housewives of New Jersey.
Geert Wilders, Dutch Islamaphobe and leader of the Party for Freedom.
Joe Arpaio, famous Arizona sheriff fond of chain gangs, dressing inmates in pink underwear, feeding them moldy food, and too many other lunatic acts to count.
Paul LePage, wingnut governor of Maine governor who memorably said that Maine’s biggest problem was “guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty….they come up here, they sell their heroin.”
David Duke, noted white supremacist and former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
Alex Jones, insane talk radio conspiracy monger.
Jerry Falwell Jr., evangelical leader of Liberty University, whose endorsement came despite Trump’s well-known string of affairs, remarriages, skinflint charitable giving, and apparent lack of any serious Christian faith.
Ann Coulter, political commentator noted for her Islamaphobia, hatred of illegal immigrants, and general descent into highly-calculated derangement.
Dennis Rodman, famous basketball player and friend to Kim Jung-un
Juanita Brodderick and Paula Jones, who both made sketchy but famous accusations of sexual harrassment against Bill Clinton.
Willie Robertson, homophobic star of Duck Dynasty.
Carl Paladino, racist emailer and secret-daughter-hiding former Republican candidate for New York governor.
Chris Christie, ambitious, tough-guy governor of New Jersey embroiled in a controversy over punishing a political opponent by deliberately shutting down two lanes on the George Washington bridge and tying up traffic for miles.

This man is currently leading the national Republican polls by more than 20 points over his nearest competitor.

More here:

Let Us Take a Minute to Fully Appreciate the Current State of American Politics

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We Are Live-Blogging the GOP Debate in Houston

by ChaunceKozak Posted on February 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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Well, that was bracing. Rubio and Cruz obviously both decided to take on Donald Trump at the same time, and they actually gave Trump some trouble. Aside from simply attacking him more than usual, they adopted the Trumpian tactic of interrupting at every opportunity so he had a hard time responding coherently. The downside is that it made the whole debate look a bit like kindergarten play time. The upside is that they finally got under Trump’s skin.

Trump ran into a couple of land mines tonight. Asked about his tax returns, he made up a feeble excuse about how he’s always being audited and that’s why he can’t release his returns. He could release them anyway, of course, and he can certainly release returns from a few years ago, since presumably those audits are done. He’s going to have to address that, though he can probably bluster his way past it long enough to get through Super Tuesday. In any case, Trump tried to make it look like he’s being persecuted by the IRS with all these audits, but Rubio and Cruz now have a really good attack line: If Trump is being audited, maybe there’s something fishy going on. Shouldn’t the public know about that?

The other land mine was on health care. Dana Bash joined Cruz and Rubio in pressing Trump on whether there was anything more to his health care plan than simply allowing insurance companies to compete across the entire country (in debatespeak, this was “getting rid of the lines”). Oddly enough, Trump allowed himself to get pressured into saying that this was literally his entire plan, which even for Trump strains the boundaries of idiocy. “Getting rid of the lines” might or might not be a good idea (it’s probably a good idea if it’s properly regulated), but its effect on health care costs would be quite modest. Beyond that, suggesting that insurance companies would all be happy to insure people with pre-existing conditions if the lines were eliminated—well, I’m not sure what to say about that. It’s fantasy land.

Trump had a minor hiccup when he claimed that the US has the highest taxes in the world. He probably meant to say that we have the highest corporate rates—which is close to true if you look at statutory rates—but instead he insisted that this applied to everything: “We pay more business tax, we pay more personal tax. We have the highest taxes in the world.” That’s basically the opposite of the truth. But I suppose this is the kind of flub that never seems to hurt him.

Best line of the night: After Trump reminded everyone about Rubio’s repeat-o-matic meltdown a couple of weeks ago, Rubio produced the night’s best zinger: “I see him repeat himself every night, he says five things: everyone’s dumb, he’s gonna make America great again, we’re going to win, win win, he’s winning in the polls, and the lines around the state. Every night.” It’s funny because it’s true! And I’m not even sure if it was rehearsed.

Scorecard: I think Trump took some real hits tonight. He could start to lose a few points in the polls, especially if he spends the next week fending off questions about his tax returns and his $1 million fine and his health care plan. Rubio and Cruz both did well, but I give Rubio the edge. His attacks were a little sharper and the rest of his debate performance was a little better. Carson and Kasich were, of course, nonentities. Never has it been so obvious that no one cares about them anymore.

Debate transcript here.

10:53 – And that’s a wrap.

10:52 – Trump: Politicians are all talk, no action. Vote Trump!

10:51 – Cruz: Blah blah blah. He’ll do everything.

10:50 – Rubio: The time for games is over. We need to bring an end to “the silliness, the looniness.”

10:50 – Kasich says he has loads of experience. He wants people to “think about” giving him their vote.

10:49 – Closing statements! Carson says his hands have saved lots of lives.

10:44 – When are we going to get a question about general relativity?

10:39 – Kasich thinks President Obama should have brokered an agreement with Apple. You bet. That would have worked great.

10:36 – Rubio says the government isn’t asking Apple to create a backdoor for the iPhone. In fact, that’s exactly what they’re asking for. Rubio clearly has no idea what a backdoor is.

10:34 – Wolf has completely lost control of this debate. In fairness, I’m not sure anyone could do any better.

10:32 – Cruz does an extended riff on Trump being a liar. Trump responds with an attack on Cruz for his Iowa shenanigans.

10:30 – Trump, Cruz, and Rubio are now in a three-way fight. Trump: “He’s a joke artist Rubio and he’s a liar Cruz.”

10:25 – Donald Trump is not just criticizing the Libya war, he’s literally praising Qaddafi.

10:21 – Carson whines about not getting called on. This is true, but it’s because no one cares about him anymore. Now that he finally gets some time, he complains that the IRS suddenly started auditing him after he began criticizing President Obama. The IRS is corrupt and it should be eliminated.

10:17 – Wolf asks about North Korea. Trump wanders off on the $21 trillion deficit. “We can’t afford to defend everyone.” Japan, Korea, Europe, they should all be paying us to defend them.

10:15 – The Rubio-Cruz-Trump fights have been great! The gloves are finally off, I guess. I wonder if it’s doing Trump any damage?

10:10 – Trump says he doesn’t want to take sides between Israel and the Palestinians. “But I’m totally pro-Israel.” Okey doke.

10:07 – Cruz asks again why Trump won’t release past tax returns. Trump: I’m being audited. Cruz: How many years? Trump: Four or five. (It was two or three ten minutes ago.) Unfortunately, Wolf goes to a commercial just as it gets good. Trump really has no excuse for not releasing returns from before the years he’s being audited. He blew it big time on this. He should never have used the audits as an excuse.

10:05 – Marian is distracted. She says the debate background looks like a hot dog.

10:03 – Cruz: The only reason Trump isn’t releasing past returns is because there’s something bad in them.

10:01 – Cruz says Trump needs to release his taxes because he’s being audited. Public needs to know if there’s some kind of fraud the government is investigating.

9:57 – Trump says you don’t learn anything from tax returns. Now he says he’ll release his tax returns when the audit is done. Uh huh. Hugh Hewitt says Trump promised to release his tax returns on his radio program. Trump says no one heard that because no one listens to Hewitt’s program.

9:53 – Now Wolf pushes Trump on what he’s going to cut to make up for his $10 trillion tax cut. Trump: “Waste fraud and abuse.” That’s it!

9:52 – Trump says we have the highest taxes in the world. Naturally Wolf doesn’t question this. Even for Trump, this is wildly removed from reality.

9:50 – Now Cruz going after Trump on health care too. Wolf wants to move on, but none will let him.

9:43 – Hmmm. Rubio must have been practicing holding his ground against a loudmouth. He’s dishing pretty well against Trump.

9:41 – Bash asks Trump to talk more about his health care plan. He drones on some more about the lines. Bash: “Is there anything you’d like to add to that?” Trump: “No! There’s nothing to add. What’s to add?”

9:39 – Trump: I watched Rubio melt down two weeks ago. Rubio: Trump only knows five things: Everyone’s dumb, we’re going to make America great again, win win win, we’re leading in the polls, and lines around the states. Bash breaks up the fight.

9:38 – Trump: Rubio doesn’t know about the lines. Rubio, sarcastically: That’s it? What’s your plan? Trump: You’ll have so many different plans. It’ll be beautiful.

9:36 – Bash: “Getting rid of state lines will solve all our health insurance problems?” Trump: You betcha.

9:35 – Trump says insurance companies are wrong when they say they need a mandate if they’re required to cover people with pre-existing conditions. Just another insurance company hustle.

9:33 – Zzzzz. Rubio reciting his index card on health care.

9:29 – Rubio says Trump was pro-life until recently. He wouldn’t trust him to appoint judges who defend religious freedom.

9:27 – Trump now hares off on a spiel about Cruz attacking his sister. He wants an apology. Cruz isn’t buying.

9:25 – Trump goes off on a tangent about Ted Cruz supporting the appointment of John Roberts, who allowed Obamacare to stand. Cruz throws Roberts under a bus, saying he only supported him because he was the nominee of the party.

9:22 – Cruz refuses to say whether he’d trust Donald Trump to appoint conservative justices.

9:20 – Trump: Hispanics love him, Univision loves him. He’ll be the greatest president for Hispanics ever.

9:09 – Trump accuses Rubio of lying. Rubio accuses Trump of lying. Trump says it was 30 years ago. Rubio: “I guess there’s a statute of limitation on lies.”

9:06 – Rubio now asking people to google “Trump Polish workers.” I think they were Romanian workers, but whatever. Then some stuff about Trump going bankrupt and Trump University getting sued. Then Trump goes after Rubio for his mortgage. Then they just start shouting at each other.

9:03 – How is Trump going to get Mexico to pay for the wall? Trump doesn’t answer, of course. He starts ranting about the president of Mexico using a bad word on television.

8:56 – Trump is now just randomly insulting Cruz for not having any friends.

8:54 – Rubio doing his best to take on Trump over immigration: he hired illegal immigrants and paid a fine, he hired foreigners at Mar-a-Lago, etc. Seems to have drawn a little blood.

8:45 – Kasich, Rubio, and Cruz are having none of Carson-geddon. America is great, anyone can become president, etc.

8:42 – Ben Carson starts off apocalyptic: “America is heading off the abyss of destruction.” Um….

8:40 – Hey! The debate is starting already? I guess I screwed up. I thought 8:30 was for the pregame chitchat. But it looks like we’ll be starting up any second.

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We Are Live-Blogging the GOP Debate in Houston

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"30 Rock" Actress’ Effort to Lure Young Voters to Clinton Falls Flat

by RosalynHague Posted on February 19, 2016

Mother Jones

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Millennials haven’t been kind to Hillary Clinton so far in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. In Iowa, Sen. Bernie Sanders won the support of 84 percent of voters under age 30, to just 14 percent for Clinton. In New Hampshire, the margin was nearly identical, with Sanders beating Clinton 83 percent to 16 percent.

In an effort to change that trend in Nevada, which holds its Democratic caucuses on Saturday, Clinton tapped some celebrity power. On Thursday afternoon, 19-year-old actress Chloë Grace Moretz—known for roles in Kick-Ass, If I Stay, and 30 Rock—came to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, to get the college students excited for a Clinton presidency.

“It’s time, first of all, for a woman to be president,” she told the students. “And it’s about time that young boys and girls grow up in a time when there is no adversity about that, no ‘Can a woman be a leader of our country?'”

The group had to gather at a coffee shop across the street from campus, because the university had banned political events at the school, a Clinton organizer explained. Perhaps the students were afraid to cross the street, since only around 20 showed up for the lunch-hour event. And in a sign of Clinton’s struggle to win over young voters, not everyone present was planning to caucus for her.

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"30 Rock" Actress’ Effort to Lure Young Voters to Clinton Falls Flat

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Here’s a List of People Obama Won’t Be Appointing to the Supreme Court

by BennettPnb Posted on February 18, 2016

Mother Jones

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In the few days since Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia unexpectedly died, the media have been awash in speculation about whom President Barack Obama will choose to replace him. Most of the guessing isn’t based on anything the White House has done or said. One administration insider says the White House hasn’t even started leaking names as trial balloons. Still, as always happens, names start to emerge within media and political circles, and some floating about now are wildly unrealistic.

Here are some of the more fanciful ideas that, rest assured, Obama will not be adopting:

Anita Hill: Currently the focus of a Change.org petition demanding her nomination, Hill is famous for her role in the contentious 1991 nomination hearings for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. She accused Thomas of sexually harassing her when they worked together at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. A Yale law graduate, like Thomas, Hill is now a law professor at Brandeis University—credentials that supporters say make her well qualified for the Supreme Court. As the late New York Times reporter David Carr used to observe, journalists have to “root for the story,” and a Hill nomination would be some story. It would, no doubt, cause a complete meltdown on the right. But this is more of a West Wing scenario than an Obama White House possibility.

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Here’s a List of People Obama Won’t Be Appointing to the Supreme Court

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Schools Are Doing a Terrible Job Teaching Your Kids About Global Warming

by TVFDwightx Posted on February 11, 2016

Mother Jones

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Kids are a vital part of the climate change conversation; they’re the ones, after all, who have to live in the world the rest of us are screwing up. But if they go to a public school, they could be getting a very confusing education on the subject,

On Thursday, researchers published the first peer-reviewed national survey of science teachers on whether and how they teach about climate change, in the journal Science. The survey, which covered a representative sample of 1,500 middle and high school science teachers from all 50 states, found that classrooms often suffer from a problem also common in the media: the false “balance” of giving equal weight to mainstream climate science and climate change denial.

Science teachers, the study found, have a better grasp of the most basic climate science than the general public: 67 percent agreed that “global warming is caused mostly by human activities,” compared with about 50 percent of all US adults. And most do include some mention of climate change in their lesson plans: 70 percent of middle school teachers and 87 percent of high school teachers spend at least an hour on global warming each year.

But the quality of those lesson plans is inconsistent. One-third of the teachers said they emphasize that global warming “is likely due to natural causes,” and 12 percent specifically downplay the role of human causes. One-third also “report sending explicitly contradictory messages,” simultaneously presenting opposing explanations for humans’ role in recent temperature increases. The chart below, from the study, shows that while most teachers’ lessons align with mainstream climate science, many offer their students conflicting or incorrect messages:

Plutzer et al, Science 2016

Perhaps most distressingly, most teachers are unaware of how many scientists agree that climate change is mostly caused by humans. Only 30 percent of middle school teachers and 45 percent of high school teachers agreed that the consensus was in the range of 81 to 100 percent. (It’s about 97 percent.)

“What’s surprising is that many teachers personally think humans are the culprit for climate change, but they are unaware that scientists share their views,” said Eric Plutzer, a political scientist at Pennsylvania State University who was the study’s lead author.

There are a few possible reasons for this, Plutzer explained. One is that climate science is usually not a part of teacher training curricula at colleges and universities. But teachers are also caught between competing sources of pressure. Because many standardized tests don’t feature questions about climate change, there’s little incentive to spend time on the subject. And teachers’ access to quality materials can be limited: Science advocates in Texas, for example, lost a battle in 2014 to keep climate change denial out of textbooks (although the study didn’t find a meaningful difference between liberal- and conservative-majority states). Teachers also bring their own preconceived prejudices that can align with the general political polarization about climate.

“Those teachers who are more on the small government, free markets, less regulation side of the political scale were the least likely to be aware of or accept the scientific consensus,” Plutzer said. “And they were the most likely to introduce mixed messages.”

It’s too early to say whether teachers’ climate lessons are improving or not; this is the first study of its kind. Minda Berbeco, programs and policy director at the National Center for Science Education and a co-author of the study, said the survey’s aim wasn’t to single out teachers.

“I think in some ways the survey is disappointing,” she said. “But this is really a professional development opportunity. It’s clear teachers aren’t getting the access they need. Let’s start trying to correct that.”

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Schools Are Doing a Terrible Job Teaching Your Kids About Global Warming

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Two Prominent Black Intellectuals Just Delivered More Bad News for Clinton

by GabrielaN24 Posted on February 10, 2016

Mother Jones

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After a crushing loss in New Hampshire on Tuesday night, Hillary Clinton may be having an even worse morning. As her campaign turns to South Carolina, where she hopes to win the primary with the support of African American voters on February 27, two prominent black intellectuals issued forceful statements Wednesday morning that could boost her rival, Bernie Sanders.

“I will be voting for Sen. Sanders,” Ta-Nehisi Coates, a correspondent for The Atlantic and the author of the 2015 National Book Award winner Between the World and Me, said Wednesday in an interview on Democracy Now! Coates has written critically of Sanders recently for not embracing reparations for African Americans as part of his economic and social justice platform.

A much stronger rebuke of Clinton came from Michelle Alexander, the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, who blasted the former secretary of state in an essay published Wednesday on the website of The Nation titled “Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote.” In it, Alexander argued that the economic and criminal justice policies of the Bill Clinton administration, from the 1994 crime bill to welfare reform in 1996, were devastating to African Americans—and that Hillary Clinton was a force in that administration whose role should be scrutinized and whose current positions on criminal justice and racial equality are not strong enough.

Ironically, perhaps, Alexander cites Coates at the end of the essay in also critiquing Sanders.

This is not an endorsement for Bernie Sanders, who after all voted for the 1994 crime bill. I also tend to agree with Ta-Nehisi Coates that the way the Sanders campaign handled the question of reparations is one of many signs that Bernie doesn’t quite get what’s at stake in serious dialogues about racial justice. He was wrong to dismiss reparations as “divisive,” as though centuries of slavery, segregation, discrimination, ghettoization, and stigmatization aren’t worthy of any specific acknowledgement or remedy.

But recognizing that Bernie, like Hillary, has blurred vision when it comes to race is not the same thing as saying their views are equally problematic. Sanders opposed the 1996 welfare-reform law. He also opposed bank deregulation and the Iraq War, both of which Hillary supported, and both of which have proved disastrous. In short, there is such a thing as a lesser evil, and Hillary is not it.

Coates and Alexander are by no means the first black intellectuals to express skepticism of Clinton and endorse Sanders. Princeton University professor Cornel West, for example, has campaigned with Sanders. On Wednesday morning, Sanders traveled to Harlem to have breakfast with the Rev. Al Sharpton.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the Washington Post reported that Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.), the most prominent black politician in South Carolina, is considering endorsing Clinton. She still has plenty of backing in the black political establishment. But the comments from Coates and Alexander Wednesday are a sign that the degree of support Clinton is counting on from the black community might be slipping away, and that she may not be able to sew up the black vote in South Carolina, as her supporters have long predicted.

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Two Prominent Black Intellectuals Just Delivered More Bad News for Clinton

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Here’s Why Chris Christie’s Zika Quarantines Would Be Pointless

by HelenaDiederich Posted on February 8, 2016

Mother Jones

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During Saturday night’s Republican primary debate, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said he would use quarantines to prevent the Zika virus outbreak from spreading in the United States. From a Washington Post transcript:

MARTHA RADDATZ (ABC MODERATOR): Governor Christie, at the peak of the Ebola outbreak in west Africa, you ordered an American nurse who landed at Newark Airport be detained and quarantined. As fear spreads now of the Zika virus and with the Rio Olympics just months away, is there a scenario where you would quarantine people traveling back from Brazil to prevent the spread in the United States?

CHRISTIE: You bet I would. And the fact is that because I took strong action to make sure that anyone who was showing symptoms—remember what happened with that nurse. She was showing symptoms and coming back from a place that had the Ebola virus active and she had been treating patients. This was not just some—like, we picked up her just for the heck of it, alright?

We did it because she was showing symptoms, and the fact is that’s the way we should make these decision. You make these decisions based upon the symptoms, the medicine, and the law. We quarantined her, she turned out to test negative ultimately after 48 hours, and we released her back to the State of Maine.

That position might make for a tough-sounding talking point during a debate. But it’s totally pointless as a matter of public health, experts said.

“Zika is rarely, if ever, spread from person to person, so quarantining infected people will do nothing to stem a Zika outbreak,” said Laurie Garret, a global health expert at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Zika, a mosquito-borne virus, has spread to more than 1 million people throughout Latin America. The symptoms of the virus itself are usually mild or nonexistent. But it could be dangerous for pregnant women: Zika has been tentatively linked to a spike in cases of microcephaly, a birth defect in which infants are born with small heads and can have incomplete brain development.

Dean Blumberg, chief of pediatric infectious diseases at the University of California-Davis Children’s Hospital, agreed that a quarantine wouldn’t be much help in controlling an outbreak. “The vast majority of transmissions are from mosquito bites, and most of the country doesn’t have the Zika-carrying Aedes aegypti mosquito in high concentrations,” he said. “So I don’t think a quarantine is necessary or would be beneficial in any way.”

Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, gave a somewhat more measured response when asked a similar question about Zika during Saturday’s debate:

CARSON: Do we quarantine people? If we have evidence that they are infected, and that there is evidence that that infection can spread by something that they’re doing, yes. But, just willy-nilly going out and quarantining a bunch of people because they’ve been to Brazil, I don’t believe that that’s going to work. What we really need to be thinking about is how do we get this disease under control?

Christie received substantial criticism for his response to 2014’s Ebola outbreak. He ordered the quarantine of a nurse, Kaci Hickox, after she returned from fighting Ebola in Sierra Leone. Last October, Hickox filed a lawsuit against Christie for false imprisonment and other claims, arguing that she had not, in fact, exhibited any symptoms indicative of Ebola when she landed at New Jersey’s Newark airport. Ultimately, she did not end up having the virus. That legal case is ongoing.

“The merits of Christie’s actions in the Hickox case will no doubt be decided in court, probably long after he has withdrawn from the presidential race,” Garret said. “But his Zika comments can be addressed immediately.”

Garret added that Christie didn’t quarantine a woman who was New Jersey’s first confirmed Zika case, identified in late January while visiting the state from Colombia.

Elizabeth Talbot, an epidemiologist at Dartmouth College’s School of Medicine, said a more effective solution is to focus on controlling and eradicating the mosquitoes that can carry Zika.

“Our public health energies are best invested in providing education about preventing bites and prioritizing the protection of pregnant women by advising them to postpone travel to affected regions whenever possible,” she said in an email. “The CDC is also recommending that meticulous attention be given to protect persons from mosquito bites if they are identified with Zika in the US following travel. This is so that our Aedes aegypti mosquitoes in the southernmost US do not become infected with Zika and transmit Zika disease in the US. Preventing mosquito bites for ill patients is not the same thing as quarantine, which can be an inflammatory or even scary word.”

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Here’s Why Chris Christie’s Zika Quarantines Would Be Pointless

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