Tag Archives: yesterday

Gianforte Issues Stomach-Turning “Apology”

by Frederick Cunningham Posted on May 26, 2017

Mother Jones

Yesterday Greg Gianforte melted down and assaulted a reporter who tried to ask him a question. Today he issued one of the most repugnant apologies I’ve ever heard:

Yesterday, when it might have hurt his election chances, Gianforte went the full Trump: he belligerently denied doing anything wrong and issued a craven statement that basically blamed Ben Jacobs for assaulting Gianforte’s fist with his nose. His supporters all roared their approval. That Jacobs guy had it coming for having the bad manners to ask a question about some breaking news.

Now, when there’s no longer any price for apologizing, he apologizes. That’s squalid enough. But to pretend that he’s manning up is just stomach turning. What a disgusting human being.

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Gianforte Issues Stomach-Turning “Apology”

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Drunk Driving Followup: The Mystery Solved!

by VedaReiter Posted on May 20, 2017

Mother Jones

Yesterday I wrote about the mystery of drunk driving: if stricter laws and harsher punishments really are responsible for a decline in drunk driving, why is it that alcohol-related fatalities have only declined at the same rate as every other kind of road fatality? Is it possible that all those laws have been useless?

I got several good responses, which confirmed that there’s a bit of a mystery here but pointed out that my data only went back to 1994. This misses the significant drop in drunk driving during the 80s and early 90s. Then I got an email from Darren Grant, an economics professor at Sam Houston State University, pointing me to a paper that decomposes exactly what happened and when. Grant’s paper, which relies on a microdata-based model of traffic fatalities, concludes that it’s legitimate to use the percentage of all road fatalities that involve alcohol—which has been flat for many years—as a proxy for the amount of drunk driving. It also breaks down the reason for the decline in drunk driving during the 80s and 90s. Without further ado, here is his chart:

There are several takeaways from this:

During the 80s and early 90s, drunk driving decreased significantly.
By the mid-90s, the level of drunk driving flattened out and has been flat ever since.
The effect of laws on drunk driving has been pretty modest. That’s the red band in the chart. Stricter laws are responsible for only a small fraction of the total decline.

There’s potentially some good news here. Grant concludes that the biggest effect by far has been from social forces, namely the increased stigma associated with drunk driving. If you discount demographics, which we have no control over, social stigma accounts for about half the drop in drunk driving. This suggests that what we need isn’t so much stricter laws, but a revitalized campaign to even further stigmatize drunk driving. I’m on board with that.

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Drunk Driving Followup: The Mystery Solved!

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Donald Trump Lied To Us About His Health

by BeulahKMKdikp Posted on February 2, 2017

Mother Jones

In December 2015, Donald Trump released a letter from his physician stating that he takes “81 mg of aspirin daily and a low dose of a statin.” Yesterday we learned that’s untrue. Here’s the New York Times:

President Trump takes medication for three ailments, including a prostate-related drug to promote hair growth, Mr. Trump’s longtime physician, Dr. Harold N. Bornstein, said in a series of recent interviews. The other drugs are antibiotics to control rosacea, a common skin problem, and a statin for elevated blood cholesterol and lipids.

The hair-growth drug, Propecia, has been associated in some men with “depression, anxiety and mental fogginess.”

This is all good for a few jokes, but there’s something serious here too: Once again, Trump has lied to us. He released a letter saying he takes only one prescription drug. He actually takes three, and obviously he knew this. What else is he lying about?

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Donald Trump Lied To Us About His Health

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Home Buyers Are Paying a $600 Trump Tax on New Mortgages

by Chi7769ygegjc Posted on December 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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Matt Yglesias tweeted yesterday about mortgage interest rates going up after the election, and that got me curious about just how quickly they spiked upward after we all learned that Donald Trump would be our next president. The chart on the right shows the answer: pretty darn quickly.

On November 8, the average 30-year fixed mortgage was available at a rate of 3.53 percent. Within two days it had gone up 21 basis points, and within a week it had gone up 43 basis points. Adjustable mortgages spiked upward too, though not as dramatically, and both rates continued to drift upward until December 14. Then they spiked upward again thanks to the Fed’s decision to increase interest rates.

So what does this mean for your ordinary working-class joe who voted for Trump? Well, for a 30-year fixed mortgage on a $200,000 loan, the monthly payment has increased from about $900 to $950. That’s an extra $600 per year.

Generally speaking, this spike was due to the fact that everyone panicked after Trump won, causing treasury bond yields to jump 35 basis points in a week. More specifically, however, is it due to China selling US treasuries in greater quantities than usual? Maybe! But whatever the cause, if you waited until after the election to buy a house, you’re paying a pretty stiff Trump penalty.

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Home Buyers Are Paying a $600 Trump Tax on New Mortgages

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Larry King Dupes Donald Trump Into Interview on Russian TV

by AbbieBenes Posted on September 9, 2016

Mother Jones

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Today we learn just how easy it is to trick Donald Trump. Yesterday he was interviewed by Larry King on RT, a TV network funded by the Russian government. That’s probably not a good look, especially for a candidate already viewed as alarmingly cozy with Vladimir Putin. So what happened?

Poor Donald. He used to be so sharp. Probably suffering from dysphasia or something.

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Larry King Dupes Donald Trump Into Interview on Russian TV

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Here Is What Blogging Has Done To Me

by WinfredBSB Posted on January 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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Yesterday I wrote a post that listed a bunch of things people have said about Ted Cruz, along with a bunch of things I made up. But which were real and which were invented? Here was the answer:

All statements whose ordinal number takes the integer form 2n+1 or 2n-1 have been invented. The rest are real.

I got some pushback about this, mostly asking what the hell kind of crap was this, anyway? So here goes. Here’s where it came from:

  1. At first I was just going to toss in a few fake statements and put the answer key below the fold. But then I realized that anyone who got here via a direct link would see the answers right away.
  2. So then I figured I’d add eight fakes in all the odd slots. But if your eye drifted down to the answer, you’d see “odd” right away.
  3. So I put it in small type. But even that was readable.
  4. So then I figured that instead of “odd,” I’d say that all the fakes were of the form 2n+1. My geeky readers would appreciate it.
  5. Then I looked for a link that defined “odd,” so that my non-geeky readers had a fighting chance of figuring things out. The only simple one I found defined odd as 2n+1 or 2n-1. So I changed the text to match.

This was pretty obviously a pointless waste of time. Welcome to my world. This is what blogging has done to me.

Anyway, in case you didn’t figure it out, all the odd numbered statement are fakes. The rest are real. The scary thing is that I didn’t have any trouble coming up with eight plausible fakes.

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Here Is What Blogging Has Done To Me

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Eat What You Want, But Eat Fresh

by AlvaroHutchings Posted on February 25, 2015

Mother Jones

This is interesting. Yesterday I wrote a post suggesting that we should all try to eat more fresh food and less processed food, but that otherwise it didn’t matter much what kind of diet you followed. (Within reason, of course.) This was based solely on my intermittent reading of food research over the years, not on a specific rigorous study. Today, however, fellow MoJoer Tom Philpott tells me that there is indeed a rigorous study that backs this up:

Over the past decade, there has been a bounty of research on the ill effects of highly processed food. And when Yale medical researchers David Katz and Samuel Meller surveyed the scientific dietary literature for a paper in 2013, they found that a “diet of minimally processed foods close to nature, predominantly plants, is decisively associated with health promotion and disease prevention.”

Interestingly, Katz and Meller found that as long as you stick to the “minimally processed” bit, it doesn’t much matter which diet you follow: low-fat, vegetarian, and Mediterranean have all shown good results. Even the meat-centered “paleo” approach does okay. The authors conclude the “aggregation of evidence” supports meat eating, as long as the “animal foods are themselves the products, directly or ultimately, of pure plant foods—the composition of animal flesh and milk is as much influenced by diet as we are.” That’s likely because cows fed on grass deliver meat and milk with a healthier fat profile than their industrially raised peers.

Now, Tom is optimistic that processed food is losing its allure as Americans migrate more and more to fresh foods. I can’t say that I share this optimism, but I hope he’s right. There’s nothing wrong with a potato chip or a can of soup here and there (everything in moderation!), but a steady diet of processed food really is something worth avoiding.

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Eat What You Want, But Eat Fresh

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Friday Cat Blogging – 4 April 2014

by EileenRubinstei Posted on April 4, 2014

Mother Jones

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Well, I managed to make it through the morning. In case you’re curious about what’s going on with me, I’m having difficulty breathing. It came on rather suddenly a couple of weeks ago, and since then I’ve undergone loads of tests. The results are simple: my heart is fine, my lungs are fine, my O2 saturation is fine, and my ribs aren’t cracked. A CT scan showed no inflammation or other problems. A pulmonary specialist prescribed an inhaler just to see if it would work—I’m guessing it’s an extract of pure unobtanium considering how much it cost—and it might be helping a little bit. But probably not. Sometimes I’m OK, other times I feel like I just ran a marathon. Yesterday I laid on the couch and watched movies all day. Today I’m better, but hardly breathing easily.

It’s frustrating as hell. Can I blame Obamacare? In any case, the only catblogging pictures I have are a few I took earlier this week when I was feeling better. So here you go, Domino sunning herself in the front yard on Tuesday. Enjoy.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 4 April 2014

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