Tag Archives: opinion

Hillary Clinton Is Out of Fucks

by HarveyNowakowsk Posted on May 31, 2017

Mother Jones

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Hillary Clinton appeared at Recode Wednesday in conversation with founders Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher, and to steal a headline from myself, she is out of fucks.

It was fascinating to watch. She didn’t hold back. You can watch the full thing below or continue on for some highlights.

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Here are some good bits, courtesy of the recode live blog:

On emails!!!

“The over riding issue that affected the election that I had any control over — because I had no control over the Russians. Too bad about that — was the use of my emails. The way that it was used was very damaging. The New York times covered it like Pearl harbor.

On Goldman Sachs speeches

“I have to say, Walt I never thought someone would throw out my entire career…because I made a couple of speeches…Men got paid for the speeches they made…I got paid for the speeches I made…I take responsibility for every decision I made, but that’s not why I lost”

On the vast right-wing conspiracy
“What is hard for people to accept, although now after the election there’s greater understanding, is that there are forces in our country…who have been fighting rear guard actions for as long as I’ve been alive…We were on a real roll as a country despite assassinations, despite setbacks, expanding rights to people who never had them in any country was frankly thrilling. I believe then as I believe now that we’re never done with this work. Part of the challenge is to maintain the focus and energy to move forward but you have to understand the other side is never tired either.”

On fake news
“Fake news…lies that’s a good word too…The other side was using content that was just flat out false and delivering it in a very personalized way. Above the radar screen and below.”

On the DNC

“I inherit nothing from the Democratic party. It was bankrupt. It was on the verge of insolvency. I had to inject money into the DNC for it to keep going.”

On the RNC

“They raised…best estimates are close to $100 million…to build this data foundation. They beta tested it. They ran hundreds of thousands of surveys. Trump becomes the nominee and is given this tried and true…platform.”

On Russia collusion
“I think it’s fair to ask how did that actually influence the campaign and how did they know what messages to deliver. Who told them? Who were they coordinating with or colluding with?…The Russians in my opinion could not have known how best to weaponize that information unless they had been guided by Americans.”

“Within one hour of the Access Hollywood tapes being leaked, the Russians or say Wikileaks—same thing—dumped the John Podesta emails. They were run of the mill emails. “Stuff that were so common. Within one hour they dumped them and then began to weaponize them. They had their allies like Infowars say the most outlandish, absurd lies you could imagine. They had to be ready for that.”

On Putin

“It’s important that Americans…understand that Putin wants to bring us down. He was an old KGB agent.”

On Obama

“Barack Obama saved the economy and he doesn’t get the credit he deserves, I have to say that because people don’t know that.” Clinton re: democrats not investing in creating content.

This post is being updated.

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Hillary Clinton Is Out of Fucks

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A Federal Judge Slams Trump: “Even the ‘Good Hombres’ Are Not Safe”

by NickiBaine Posted on May 30, 2017

Mother Jones

Today, a federal appeals court judge in California rebuked the Trump administration for its zealous deportation policy and for “ripping apart a family.” Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals found that he had no power to stop the removal of Andres Magana Ortiz, but nevertheless took the time to write a short opinion blasting his deportation as “inhumane.”

“We are unable to prevent Magana Ortiz’s removal, yet it is contrary to the values of this nation and its legal system,” Reinhardt wrote in a six-page concurring opinion. “Indeed, the government’s decision to remove Magana Ortiz diminishes not only our country but our courts, which are supposedly dedicated to the pursuit of justice…I concur as a judge, but as a citizen I do not.”

As Reinhardt detailed in his opinion, Magana Ortiz came to the United States from Mexico 28 years ago, built a family and a career, and paid his taxes. His wife and three children are American citizens. His only legal transgressions were two DUIs, the last one 14 years ago. “Even the government conceded during the immigration proceedings that there was no question as to Magana Ortiz’s good moral character,” Reinhardt noted. Nonetheless, in March the government decided to deny Magana Ortiz’s application for a stay of removal while he applied for legal residency status, a process that is still underway, and moved to deport him to Mexico.

Reinhardt took particular aim at the fact, demonstrated repeatedly in the first months of Donald Trump’s presidency, that the administration’s immigration crackdown is not only targeting violent criminals. “President Trump has claimed that his immigration policies would target the ‘bad hombres,'” he wrote. “The government’s decision to remove Magana Ortiz shows that even the ‘good hombres’ are not safe. Magana Ortiz is by all accounts a pillar of his community and a devoted father and husband. It is difficult to see how the government’s decision to expel him is consistent with the President’s promise of an immigration system with ‘a lot of heart.’ I find no such compassion in the government’s choice to deport Magana Ortiz.”

Read the full opinion below.

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A Federal Judge Slams Trump: “Even the ‘Good Hombres’ Are Not Safe”

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Chris Christie Warned Trump Against Hiring Michael Flynn Last Fall

by GenevaBarringer Posted on May 22, 2017

Mother Jones

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie advised Donald Trump against hiring Michael Flynn, both before the November election and afterward, Christie said on Monday. This warnings came when Christie served as chairman of Trump’s transition team and before the team was made aware that Flynn, who served briefly as Trump’s national security adviser, was under federal investigation.

“I didn’t think that he was someone who would bring benefit to the president or to the administration,” Christie said at a news conference. “And I made that very clear to candidate Trump, and I made it very clear to President-elect Trump. That was my opinion, my view.”

Christie made clear that he did not believe Flynn was a suitable choice. “If I were president-elect of the United States, I wouldn’t let General Flynn in the White House, let alone give him a job,” he said.

Shortly after the election, Vice President Mike Pence took over the transition team from Christie. Christie was recently named the head of a White House commission to combat drug addiction, and he has been mentioned as a potential addition to the White House staff. Flynn was forced to resign in February after it became public that he had lied to Pence about his contact with the Russian ambassador.

Christie reportedly clashed with Flynn, who was an adviser to Trump during the campaign last year. According to NBC News, both men were present at Trump’s first intelligence briefing last August.

Meanwhile, four people with knowledge of the matter told NBC News that one of the advisers Trump brought to the briefing, retired general Mike Flynn, repeatedly interrupted the briefing with pointed questions.

Two sources said Christie, the New Jersey governor and Trump adviser, verbally restrained Flynn—one saying Christie told Flynn to shut up, the other reporting he said, “Calm down.” Two other sources said Christie touched Flynn’s arm in an effort get him to calm down and let the officials continue.

Both Christie and Flynn denied this at the time. But if it’s true, it would help explain why Christie on Monday said that Flynn was “not my cup of tea” and that they “didn’t see eye to eye.”

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Chris Christie Warned Trump Against Hiring Michael Flynn Last Fall

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Trump spun his climate denial to the New York Times and lots of people fell for it

by FrankEspino1 Posted on November 23, 2016

When I first saw New York Times reporters tweet the news that Donald Trump claimed in an interview to have an “open mind” about climate change and the Paris climate agreement, I thought, Who cares? He is packing his administration with fossil fuel promoters, so his latest comments just suggest that he’s camouflaging his climate denial with doublespeak and pandering.

Then I read the full transcript published Wednesday and was horrified by how these comments had been wildly misinterpreted by so many media outlets and commentators. A CNN subhead: “A new view on climate change?” An Associated Press lead sentence: “President-elect Donald Trump changed his tune on several topics — among them climate change and prosecuting Hillary Clinton — in statements Tuesday to The New York Times and on Twitter.”

They’re wrong. If you look at what he actually said in context, it’s clear that Trump hasn’t changed his mind on anything. Consider these six comments from his Times interview:

1. After Trump said “I have an open mind” on climate change, he went on to clarify that he’s open to the “other side,” which consists of people who don’t accept the scientific consensus on the issue.

THOMAS FRIEDMAN, columnist: [A]re you going to take America out of the world’s lead of confronting climate change?

TRUMP: I’m looking at it very closely, Tom. I’ll tell you what. I have an open mind to it. We’re going to look very carefully. It’s one issue that’s interesting because there are few things where there’s more division than climate change. You don’t tend to hear this, but there are people on the other side of that issue … [CNBC news anchor] Joe [Kernan] is one of them. But a lot of smart people disagree with you. I have a very open mind. And I’m going to study a lot of the things that happened on it and we’re going to look at it very carefully.

2. Another of Trump’s much-cited quotes from the interview — “I think there is some connectivity” between human activity and climate change — is not all it seems at first glance.

JAMES BENNET, editorial page editor: When you say an open mind, you mean you’re just not sure whether human activity causes climate change? Do you think human activity is or isn’t connected?

TRUMP: I think right now … well, I think there is some connectivity. There is some, something. It depends on how much. It also depends on how much it’s going to cost our companies. You have to understand, our companies are noncompetitive right now.

The context suggests that Trump’s acceptance of climate science will depend at least in part on how much climate action might cost American businesses (read: dirty energy companies and fossil fuel–reliant industries). That does not indicate a firm grasp of scientific principles.

3. Trump cited a random local temperature on a random date to suggest that the atmosphere isn’t getting hotter on average:

You know the hottest day ever was in 1890-something, 98. You know, you can make lots of cases for different views. I have a totally open mind.

This betrays a complete lack of understanding of climate change. Global warming means global average temperatures are on the rise. Climate deniers like to cherry-pick specific temperature readings, but those numbers don’t tell us anything about broader averages. The global data tell us that 16 of 17 hottest years on record have been recorded this century.

4. The main authority Trump cited on climate science during the interview was his late uncle, who died more than 30 years ago:

My uncle was for 35 years a professor at M.I.T. He was a great engineer, scientist. He was a great guy. And he was … a long time ago, he had feelings — this was a long time ago — he had feelings on this subject.

Trump did not elaborate on what those feelings were.

5. Trump isn’t too worried about global warming because he believes his golf courses will be OK. Friedman mentioned that Trump owns a handful of “beautiful” golf courses that will be threatened by sea-level rise. Trump, laughing, talked about his Doral course in Miami, which is a few miles away from the coastline:

Some will be even better because actually like Doral is a little bit off … so it’ll be perfect. … Doral will be in great shape.

And after Friedman noted that Trump’s Royal Aberdeen golf course in Scotland could go underwater, Trump responded with an indecipherable, “The North Sea, that could be, that’s a good one, right?”

6. Trump still hates wind energy:

I have a problem with wind … First of all, we don’t make the windmills in the United States. They’re made in Germany and Japan. They’re made out of massive amounts of steel, which goes into the atmosphere, whether it’s in our country or not, it goes into the atmosphere. … I don’t think [windmills] work at all without subsidy, and that bothers me, and they kill all the birds. … With that being said, there’s a place for them. But they do need subsidy. … I wouldn’t want to subsidize it.

And Trump claims his views have absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he’s fighting a wind farm proposed near his Aberdeen golf course.

By taking a few stray quotes out of context, journalists are giving the public a completely inaccurate picture of what Trump is saying and what he’s likely to do once he takes office. If Americans are to understand what’s actually happening during a Trump presidency, the media are going to have to do a lot better.

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Trump spun his climate denial to the New York Times and lots of people fell for it

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Don’t Worry About the Polls. Nothing Much Really Happened Today.

by KatheriKSJL Posted on July 14, 2016

Mother Jones

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Hillary Clinton has had a couple of poor showings in the polls recently, but I mostly shrugged them off. It was inevitable that she’d take a hit from the conclusion of the FBI email probe, but those kinds of things are almost always temporary. And it’s only July, anyway. Polls won’t start to mean too much until the middle of August.

That’s just my two cents, but Greg Sargent reports that it’s pretty much the opinion of the pros too:

I spent some time talking to senior Democrats today, and the basic feeling among them is this: Yes, it’s very possible Clinton did take a real hit from the FBI news. But if so, they see this as more of a temporary dip than anything else. They see the polling right now as mostly useless, since we will know a lot more about the race once both candidates choose their vice presidential running mates and the conventions take place later this month.

….One senior Democrat with access to a lot of private polling tells me that some surveys in states and districts where Clinton should be leading are showing her tied or slightly behind. But this senior Dem thinks the data probably reflects a momentary dip due to bad coverage of the FBI mess….Top Dem pollster Mark Mellman, for instance, conceded that Clinton may have taken a real hit. But he noted that the current polls, if anything, still show her up after a very tough stretch, leading into a period that could prove more favorable to her.

The fact that a man like Donald Trump is even within shouting distance of becoming president is reason enough to be nervous. But small blips in the polls don’t really add anything to that. If you’re the jittery type, stay away from the poll madness until next month.

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Don’t Worry About the Polls. Nothing Much Really Happened Today.

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Here Is the Worst Answer From Tonight’s Debate

by KaiGerowspeox Posted on December 16, 2015

Mother Jones

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Here is Hugh Hewitt asking Donald Trump about America’s nuclear triad—missiles, subs, and bombers:

HEWITT: What’s your priority among our nuclear triad?

TRUMP: Well, first of all, I think we need somebody absolutely that we can trust, who is totally responsible; who really knows what he or she is doing. That is so powerful and so important. And one of the things that I’m frankly most proud of is that in 2003, 2004, I was totally against going into Iraq because you’re going to destabilize the Middle East. I called it. I called it very strongly. And it was very important.

But we have to be extremely vigilant and extremely careful when it comes to nuclear. Nuclear changes the whole ball game. Frankly, I would have said get out of Syria; get out — if we didn’t have the power of weaponry today. The power is so massive that we can’t just leave areas that 50 years ago or 75 years ago we wouldn’t care. It was hand-to-hand combat.

The biggest problem this world has today is not President Obama with global warming, which is inconceivable, this is what he’s saying. The biggest problem we have is nuclear — nuclear proliferation and having some maniac, having some madman go out and get a nuclear weapon. That’s in my opinion, that is the single biggest problem that our country faces right now.

HEWITT: Of the three legs of the triad, though, do you have a priority? I want to go to Senator Rubio after that and ask him.

TRUMP: I think — I think, for me, nuclear is just the power, the devastation is very important to me.

I seriously want to hear anyone on the right side of the aisle defend Trump as a potential commander-in-chief after hearing this. Any conservative who still wants this guy as president has forfeited their last smidgen of credibility as anything more than a crude partisan hack.

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Here Is the Worst Answer From Tonight’s Debate

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The Head of a Major Law Enforcement Group Described Nonviolent Drug Offenders As "Peddlers of Death"

by PiperThornton Posted on August 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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Last month, President Barack Obama commuted the sentences of 46 nonviolent drug offenders detained in federal prisons. Given that 35,000 nonviolent inmates had applied for reduced sentences, some activists said the clemency grant did not go far enough. Apparently, not everyone agrees.

In an opinion piece Thursday, Jon Adler, the president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association (FLEOA), blasted Obama’s decision by describing these nonviolent offenders as “peddlers of death.” Arguing that Obama ignored the risks of drug traffickers and instead chose to “perpetuate a narrative that these felons are harmless hippies,” Adler went so far as to compare the offenders to lions in an overcrowded zoo:

With limited space, rising labor, and lodging costs, which animals would the president let go? Using the president’s methodology, the lions would likely be set free. Why? They eat the most food and therefore cost the most to maintain. During the 10 years of their captivity, they haven’t eaten anyone or attacked their handlers. They have no known affiliation to any violent lion groups. They are totally safe to release into the public. The president’s rationale for release of these federal prisoners does not benefit the American public, nor keep it safe.

Adler’s FLEOA provides testimony at congressional hearings and represents more than 25,000 federal law enforcement officers from some 65 agencies. But his description of nonviolent drug offenders seems unfair for people like Antonio Bascaro, an octogenarian grandfather in a wheelchair who has been incarcerated for 35 years because he worked on a fishing boat used by Cubans to smuggle cannabis to Florida. Or what about John Knock, a first-time offender serving life in prison for conspiracy to traffic large quantities of weed that the government never even seized? (Neither man was granted clemency.)

In an investigation of weed lifers, my colleague Bryan Schatz writes:

Every year, more people are arrested for pot possession than violent crimes. Around 40,000 people are currently serving time for offenses involving a drug that has been decriminalized or legalized in 27 states and Washington, DC. Even as Americans’ attitudes toward pot have mellowed, the law has yet to catch up, leaving pot offenders subject to draconian sentences born out of the war on drugs. As David Holland, a criminal-defense attorney in New York City who filed a presidential clemency petition for marijuana lifers in 2012, puts it: “The world has changed, but these poor bastards are still sitting in jail.”

It’s important to note that the war on drugs has disproportionately affected black and Latino men. And Obama’s clemency last month went to a group of nonviolent inmates who had served more than 10 years in prison with good behavior, and who would not have received such severe sentences under today’s sentencing rules. “These men and women were not hardened criminals,” the president said, adding that 14 of the 46 nonviolent offenders had been given life sentences. “So their punishments didn’t fit the crime.”

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The Head of a Major Law Enforcement Group Described Nonviolent Drug Offenders As "Peddlers of Death"

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Fox’s Poll Cutoff for the Republican Debate Works Better Than Rachel Maddow Suggested Last Night

by Laura Brown Posted on July 28, 2015

Mother Jones

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Last night Rachel Maddow invited Lee Miringoff, polling director for the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, to discuss the way Fox News is using polls to cut the Republican debate field down to ten candidates. Basically, both Maddow and Miringoff agreed that the whole thing was ridiculous because so many of the candidates on the right-hand tail were so close to each other. Is it really fair for a guy who polls at 3.2 percent to be on stage while a guy with 2.7 percent is kicked to the corner? After all, the margin of error is 3 percentage points. There might not really be any difference between the two.

For some reason, Miringoff didn’t push back on this. But he should have. There are two key bits of arithmetic they left out:

A typical poll has a 3 percent margin of error. But Fox News is averaging five polls. I don’t know precisely what the margin of error is in this case, but it’s probably somewhere around 1.5 percent.
The margin of error goes down as you go farther out on the tails. If you have two candidates polling 51-49, you can use the standard margin of error. But for candidates polling at 2 or 3 percent? It’s roughly half the midpoint margin of error.

Put these two together, and the true margin of error for all the also-rans is something like 0.7 percentage points. This doesn’t entirely negate Maddow’s point, since the difference between 10th and 11th place might still be less than that. But it does mean the results are a lot less random than she suggested. Assuming Fox does its poll averaging correctly, there’s actually a pretty good chance that the top ten really are the top ten.

That said, I wouldn’t do the debate this way either. I’d rank all the candidates using the polling average, and then have one debate with all the even-numbered candidates and a second debate with all the odd-numbered candidates. Make it a 3-hour show with 90 minutes given to each group. What’s so hard about that?

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Fox’s Poll Cutoff for the Republican Debate Works Better Than Rachel Maddow Suggested Last Night

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Why Justice Kennedy’s Gay Marriage Opinion Is a Bigger Liberal Victory Than You Think

by DieterBainton Posted on June 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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The LGBT community and its allies won big on Friday. In legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s soaring majority opinion ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution gives gay and lesbian couples the same right to marry that opposite-sex couples have. But that wasn’t all Kennedy did.

The justice issued a ringing endorsement of a “living Constitution,” the idea, championed by liberals today, that the Constitution evolves over time along with technology and society. On the other side of the spectrum are “originalists.” To proponents of originalism, notably Justice Antonin Scalia, constitutional interpretation should be based on the intent of the framers of the document.

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Why Justice Kennedy’s Gay Marriage Opinion Is a Bigger Liberal Victory Than You Think

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Here Are the Instant Reactions From Every Diva Every Gay Has Ever Loved

by AbrahamHartz Posted on June 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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Gay icons—those public figures embraced by the LGBT community for their ridiculousness, heroism, mastery of transformation, advocacy, or pop genius—have been posting their reactions to the Supreme Court’s landmark decision to clear the way for marriage equality across the country. Here are some of our favorites. We’ll add more as our divas share their thoughts. (No word yet from Cher, Madonna, Elton… Martha Stewart… Anna Wintour…)

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Here Are the Instant Reactions From Every Diva Every Gay Has Ever Loved

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