@paradox_tlc @MrMediaTraining all the networks need to thoroughly examine their relationship with the military since 9/11. But won't happen.
— @DemFromCT
Michael Gerson:
It has become the Rand Paul pattern: A few weeks paddling vigorously in the mainstream, followed by a lapse into authenticity, followed by transparent damage control, followed by churlishness toward anyone in the media who notices. All the signs of a man trying to get comfortable in someone else’s skin.
The latest example is vaccination. “I have heard of many tragic cases,” said Dr. Paul, “of walking, talking normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.” Following the ensuing firestorm, the Republican senator from Kentucky insisted, “I did not say vaccines caused disorders, just that they were temporally related.”
In effect: I did not sleep with that causation.
Paul blamed his troubles on the “liberal media” — which, after a little digging, reported that, in 2009, he had called mandatory vaccinations a step toward “martial law.”
When Chris Christie commits a gaffe on vaccination and reverses himself, it indicates a man out of his depth. With Paul, it reveals the unexplored depths of a highly ideological and conspiratorial worldview.
Paul and Christie are finished as presidential candidates. It's only a matter of time before they figure it out.
Matthew Herper:
Turning Walt Disney’s Happiest Place on Earth into the measles kingdom flipped a switch in our collective brain. The thought that thousands of people could have been exposed to a virus that was declared eliminated in the U.S. a decade-and-a-half-ago is scary. And it drives home the reality that vaccines only fully protect us if almost everyone uses them.
Liz Szabo has one of the best of the vaccine mythbusters i have seen. A go to piece, file it.
Vaccines: Facts vs. myths
SERIOUS SIDE EFFECTS TO VACCINES ARE VERY RARE, STUDIES SHOW.
WPVI:
In the early months of 1991, the nation was preoccupied with the Persian Gulf War, as the United States chased Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from his dream of annexing Kuwait.
In Philadelphia, health and school officials were locked in battle too - against a major measles outbreak, and the deep religious convictions which fueled the spread of the virus.
Nine children would die, six of them associated with two fundamentalist churches which preach a reliance on prayer, not medical care, to cure disease.
Five of those children would die in 10 days.
None had been vaccinated, and although measles is normally fatal in about 1 of every 300 cases, the fatality rate in Philadelphia was much higher, because only 1 child in the congregations received treatment for pneumonia and encephalitis among the children.
A study says only one child had received medical care.
More politics and policy below the fold.
Megan McArdle:
So say to parents: You have a perfect right not to vaccinate your children, and we will not force you. But unless you have a vaccination certificate, a letter from a doctor explaining that your child falls into a small number of well-recognized medical exemptions, or a testament from your minister that vaccinating violates the tenets of a church of which you are an active member, failing to vaccinate your child also means failing to qualify for any public benefits for those children. No tax deduction. No public school, college or municipal activities. No team sports that practice on public land. No federally subsidized student loans. No airplane rides for anyone under 18 unless the TSA gets an up-to-date vaccination certificate. If you will not help society protect itself, then society will deny its help to you, and it will do its best to keep your child out of crowded spaces where they might infect someone.
Is this coercive? Of course. So is putting some stranger -- often an infant, by the way -- at risk of disease and death.
I've said it before & I'll say it again. Candidates and voters don't decide who stays in and who gets out. Donors do.
http://t.co/...
— @CloutPage
Politico:
Tom Jensen, who directs Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm that has been surveying the 2016 landscape, said he’s been struck by how unpopular the presidential contenders are in their home states. In many cases, he said, voters said outright they don’t think their governor or senator should be running for the White House.
“People don’t want their home state politicians to run for president,” Jensen said. “They don’t seem to think of their governors or senators as presidents.”
James Downie:
Democrats should welcome a Scott Walker-led GOP ticket
Jonathan Bernstein:
So the latest polls tell us almost nothing about voters. Most people aren’t paying attention yet, which is why a bit of positive publicity for a candidate can shift polling quite a bit. Voters aren’t reporting firm decisions; they’re just responding to what’s been in the news lately. If these early polls are important, it is only because of the way the people who pay close attention to Republican Party politics react to them. That’s the real thing to watch, going forward.
Francis Wilkinson:
Several Republicans with 2016 presidential ambitions have been plagued by prosecutors. Former Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, once touted as a potential contender, was sentenced to prison last month. Texas Governor Rick Perry is preparing for a possible trial. Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who local prosecutors accused of engaging in a "criminal scheme," isn't quite out of reach. And, of course, Governor Chris Christie appears to be keeping half the lawyers in New Jersey occupied.
In the second-most-damaging story about Christie yesterday, the Record reported that federal prosecutors had issued a subpoena last month for travel records of former Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Chairman David Samson. It seems Samson's tenure at the authority, which operates Newark Airport, among others, coincided with United Airlines' creation of a highly improbable new flight route.
Some of these Republican candidates do not appear to be nice people.
Paul Waldman:
President Obama appeared at the National Prayer Breakfast yesterday, and as always happens, conservatives were terribly offended and outraged at his remarks. Why? It's because Obama doesn't share their political and religious fundamentalism. Let's look at the passage that had them up in arms this time:
So how do we, as people of faith, reconcile these realities—the profound good, the strength, the tenacity, the compassion and love that can flow from all of our faiths, operating alongside those who seek to hijack religious for their own murderous ends?
Humanity has been grappling with these questions throughout human history. And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ. In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ. Michelle and I returned from India—an incredible, beautiful country, full of magnificent diversity—but a place where, in past years, religious faiths of all types have, on occasion, been targeted by other peoples of faith, simply due to their heritage and their beliefs—acts of intolerance that would have shocked Gandhiji, the person who helped to liberate that nation.
So this is not unique to one group or one religion. There is a tendency in us, a sinful tendency that can pervert and distort our faith. In today’s world, when hate groups have their own Twitter accounts and bigotry can fester in hidden places in cyberspace, it can be even harder to counteract such intolerance. But God compels us to try.
You may read that and say that it's obvious—of course awful things have been done in the name of many religions, and when Obama mentions the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the religious justifications given for slavery, he's talking about old history. You'd have to be nuts to find in that some kind of insult to Christians or to America.
Or you'd have to be a Republican.
James Fallows:
Netanyahu, Roberts, and the Norms on Which Governing Depends
A nation can't possibly come up with rules to outlaw every form of misbehavior. It relies on norms to guide behavior—which is why some current violations of those norms deserve attention.
Norms? Add getting vaccinated.