Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 1058

Huma Abedin Had an Incredibly Sweet Deal at the State Department

Huma Abedin remained Hillary Clinton's deputy chief of staff when she came back from maternity leave in June 2012, even though she worked part-time from her home in New York and was allowed to start a side gig as a consultant. Abedin was paid $135,000 by the State Department  in 2012 as a "special government employee," Politico reports. As The New York Times' Raymond Hernandez explains, Abedin was not legally obligated to declare her income from consulting because she had become a part-time State Department worker, even though in official documents she continued to be described with her old title.

Abedin's work shows that being a part of the Clinton family circle has its benefits. In 2012, she was a consultant to the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation and worked for Teneo, a consulting firm founded by a former adviser to Bill Clinton which had clients including Coca-Cola and MF Global. Abedin was Hillary Clinton's aide as she moved into her version of private life -- which means a six-person "transition office" in headquartered in Washington. 

Abedin's husband Anthony Weiner is openly considering running for New York mayor in an attempt to comeback from his Twitter sex picture scandal. As part of his maybe-candidacy, Weiner released the couple's 2012 tax returns, which showed they made more than $490,000 in 2012. Weiner worked as a consultant, too. He did not say how much money Abedin made from consulting work. Weiner and Abedin were spotted sitting side by side while shooting what looked like a campaign ad in Brooklyn on Thursday. Curiously, the Clintons are reportedly not at all excited about Weiner's return to campaigning.

       

The Greatest, Drunkest Hits of Toronto's (Alleged) Crack-Smoking Mayor

Some simmering rumors have risen to the surface after reports that Toronto Mayor Rob Ford was allegedly recorded on an iPhone smoking crack cocaine with drug dealers. But this is just the latest dubious achievement for the man who might be North America's most ridiculous mayor.

Last night, Gawker's John Cook announced that a tipster had tried to sell him a video that he says shows Ford smoking from a crack pipe. Cook says he saw the video, but couldn't buy it0 because the person who recorded it was holding out for a six-figure, life-changing. After CNN, which Gawker had approached about turning the video acquisition into a co-venture, inquired with Ford's office about the video, Cook decided to write about it before it could be hushed up. Not wanting to let Gawker hog the scoop, The Toronto Star reported that they had also been approached about buying the video (their description of both the video and their meetings with the source basically sync up with Cook's) and also chose not to pay for it.

So while no one has seen the video outside of three reporters, the two independent stories make it sound like it definitely exists and all three have independently concluded that it is Ford smoking crack. According to their descriptions, Ford appears addled in the short clip and at one point calls opposition leader Justin Trudeau a "fag." The video was apparently shot by the men who sold Ford the drugs, and who are also apparently the connection of choice for other "A-list" Torontonians.

Ford has still not commented on the allegations, although a lawyer for Ford has called the suggestion that Ford is smoking crack "false and defamatory" and Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday suggested the video could have been faked, citing as proof that Canadian college students managed to convince a lot of people that their video of an eagle had snatching a child from a park was real.

Update: As he was leaving his house today, Ford called the allegations "ridiculous," but did not elaborate.

[image error]While this would probably take the cake for the worst scandal of most politicians' careers, the race for that title in Ford's public resume is a lot tighter than you might think. A city council member before being elected mayor in 2010, Ford has a very long history of incidents including public drunkenness, offensive statements about minorities, and general foolishness. So many in fact, that someone had to create a spreadsheet to keep track of them all. (There are currently 61 entries.)

Some of the lowlights of Ford's illustrious nonsense:

He received a DUI in 1999, but denied it during his mayoral campaign a decade later until the proof was presented. In 2006, he was ejected from a Maple Leafs game for being drunk and belligerent. He allegedly asked another fan who complained, "Are you some kind of right wing Commie bastard?" (He tried to deny being at the game.) In 2008, he said, "Those Oriental people work like dogs. They work their hearts out. They are workers non-stop. They sleep beside their machines. That's why they're successful in life. ... I'm telling you, the Oriental people, they're slowly taking over." That same month, he was arrested and charged with domestic assault after his wife called police, but the case was later dropped. In 2010, he offered to help a sick man "score" OxyContin. During the taped phone conversation, he said, "Fuck, you know, I don’t know any drug dealers at all." In 2011, he skipped a Canada Day pride parade in Toronto, on the grounds that his family always goes away for a family vacation on that holiday. Photos later surfaced showing him marching in another Canada Day parade just one year earlier.

In 2011, Ford called 911 after being ambushed by a crew from the comedy show This Hour Has 22 Minutes. During the call, he reportedly berated the operator saying, "You bitches! Don't you fucking know? I'm Rob fucking Ford, the mayor of this city!" On St. Patrick's Day 2012, Ford was escorted out of a restaurant after "storming the dance floor" and acting "like an idiot." Staffers there described him as "incoherent and "hammered" Last summer, pictures surfaced of a "disheleved" Ford posing for pictures with a bachelorette party. [image error]In his spare time, Ford coaches football at Don Bosco Catholic Secondary School, whose players he has often demeaned in interviews. Many of the players come from underpriviliged backgrounds, and Ford claimed many of them would not go to school at all and would be dead or in jail, if it wasn't for football. Ford was nearly removed from office last year after making a questionable donation to the team, and for soliciting donations for the school from city lobbyists. There are also multiple instances of Ford leaving government events and even his own libel trial to coach the team. After one game,two city buses were diverted to pick up his team (that had been involved in a post-game brawl) stranding actual bus passengers in the rain In March of this year, former mayoral candidate Sarah Thomson claims Ford "grabbed my ass" while they were posing for a picture, and after he made a lewd suggestion to her. Thomson says she told a friend. "There's something wrong with him. Rob doesn't do that." Just three months ago, Ford was kicked out of a gala charity ball because organizers believed he was impaired.

And that doesn't even get into his political scandals, which have seen him butt heads with other city officials and take controversial stances on issues like immigration. Ford's reinstatement after last fall's donation scandal has kept his career alive for now, but controversy has dogged his entire term in office. Perhaps being a lovable drunk is just a way to distract people from how terrible you are at your job.

All jokes aside, Ford's actions, particularly in the last year, sound like the behavior of someone with a serious drinking problem. The stories have gone far beyond gossipy rumors to worrisome news in the local papers, and there serious questions about whether he should be in office anymore. Getting caught paling around with drug dealers may finally be what it takes to get him out of the mayor's chair—and get him some much needed help.

       

Acting IRS Head Who Took the Fall This Week Has Few Answers for Congress

Acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller is testifying in front of the House Ways and Means Committee this morning. It's one of the Congress' first opportunities to grill the agency on its use of politically loaded differentiation in assessing applicants' non-profit status. Over the course of the hearing, Miller didn't defend the action, stating that the IRS "provided horrible customer service" and that "foolish mistakes were made."

It's an unenviable position for Miller. On Wednesday, Obama announced that Miller would be dismissed from his position — a position that Miller assumed only after the IRS had already curtailed its questionable practice of isolating Tea Party groups for increased scrutiny. (Miller will be replaced by Daniel Werfel in June.) Not that he's without blame: Miller was asked last July about the then-unconfirmed allegations by Congress — prior to assuming his current role — and didn't indicate that the practice had occurred. For his testimony today, committee chairman Rep. Dave Camp of Michigan swore Miller in, to reinforce the need for accurate testimony.

Camp began the hearing by setting the stakes. The problem, he said, wasn't the IRS' use of terms like "Tea Party" and "Patriot" to filter which groups seeking tax-exempt status should receive additional scrutiny. The problem, instead, is that the IRS is "too large" and "too obstrusive." The tax system, he continued, "is rotten at the core, and it must be ripped out so we can start fresh." The chairman justified that claim by explaining that his goal was to examine five different aspects of the IRS' behavior. The Tea Party scrutiny was foremost, but there were other incidents: a White House official discussing the tax status of a company, harassment of donors to conservative groups, the Huffington Post accessing a donor list to the National Organization for Marriage, and a leak of applications for tax-exempt status to ProPublica.

Rep. Sander Levin, the ranking Democrat, echoed Camp's concerns — with a caveat. The IRS "completely failed the American people," he agreed, but "if this hearing becomes essentially a bootstrap to continue the campaign of 2012 and to prepare for 2014, we will be making a very serious mistake and not meeting our obligation to the American people." After Levin, Treasury's Inspector General for Tax Adminstration J. Russell George (left, above) quickly walked through his office's findings on the scrutiny of Tea Party (and other group) applicants.

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Then it was Miller's turn. He began his brief comments (lamenting he'd only had two days to prepare) with an apology. "Partisanship or even the perception of partisanship has no place at the IRS," he said. But: "I do not believe that partisanship motivated" the filtering. "Foolish mistakes were made by people looking to be more efficient."

Camp began questioning Miller. He walked through the five incidents outlined in his opening statement. Miller had a few "I don't recalls," and explained that learned about several — the White House official, the Huffington Post and ProPublica leaks — through articles in the news. The last two, he said, were "inadvertent and there have been disciplines." Camp: "But you didn't inform Congress?" Miller: "They were in the press, sir." When Camp pressed him to explain his failure to be forthcoming during his prior testimony, Miller stated flatly, "I always answer questions truthfully, Mr. Camp."

Other committee member than asked questions. Rep. Sam Johnson of Texas pressed Miller on his previous testimony, unsuccessfully. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin did so as well, reading Miller his previous testimony, indicating that his previous answers were "incomplete." Miller indicated that he took issue with the insinuation that the targeting of Tea Party groups was "harassment," which implied political motivation.

Rep. Kevin Brady, also of Texas, described a resident of his district who, he says, was investigated by the FBI and asked numerous questions after filing for tax-exempt status. Brady then asked, "The broader question here: Is this still America? Is this Administration so drunk with power" that it would harass citizens in this way? Miller's response: I can't talk about a specific case. Brady followed up. Can you assure the committee that none of the IRS' information was shared with other agencies? It would be a violation of the law, Miller replied, and he would be "shocked ... shocked" if it had.

Rep. Charles Rangel of New York offered a different sort of critique. The use of 501(c)(4) tax-exempt status by organizations focused heavily on political work — which was what the IRS was investigating — is, according to Rangel, a much broader problem. Miller: "I think this is an area that is ripe for redefinition and reform, yes."

Miller did clarify one question when asked: The apology by the IRS' Lois Lerner last Friday was not spontaneous, but instead planned in advance. He and Lerner spoke by phone prior to her comment, agreeing that it "may be a good idea to talk to the public." Asked by Rep. Peter Roskam of Illinois why the apology wasn't concurrent with telling Congress about the investigation, Miller said he'd "called to try to get on the calendar" to inform the committee. Roskam didn't appear to be satisfied with that answer.

There was another context to the hearing today, pointed out by Rep. Jim McDermott of Washington. McDermott asked if the IRS could access medical records, which it can't. That's because, as we've noted before, critique of the IRS behavior has been expanded to include attacks on the agency's role in administering Obamacare. (During the House's 37th effort to curtail the Affordable Care Act last night, the link between the IRS' behavior and the healthcare policy was used as an argument to support the vote.) One small piece of news won't help sever that link: the person who was in charge of the tax-exempt organizations section of the IRS during the time of the questionable screening, Sarah Hall Ingram, is now leading the section that administers Obamacare.

When it was his turn to question the witness, Rep. Devin Nunes of California pointed out that Miller wasn't taking much responsibility for the mistakes, asking why, then, he resigned. Miller responded:

I resigned because, as the acting commissioner, what happens in the IRS — whether I was personally involved or not — stops at my desk. So I should be held accountable.

       

The Mystery of the Immaculately Conceived Baby Anteater

A Dan Brown-worthy mystery (forget about Dante, what about the zoo?) is as follows: Staffers at a zoological conservation center in Greenwich, Conn., are very confused — as are the rest of us — because their female giant anteater, Armani, has managed to conceive a baby, apparently without the presence of a male anteater. What?

It all started in August, writes Lisa Chamoff for Greenwich Time. Armani, an anteater at the LEO Zoological Conservation Center, had given birth to anteater baby girl Alice. Alice's father, Alf, was kept away from Armani and Alice because male anteaters have a bad history of committing infanticide. And then one April morning, a zoo staffer entered Armani's abode and found ... another baby. Chamoff explains, "The sudden appearance of little Archie was a surprise, to say the least. The gestation period for anteaters is six months. Armani and Alf had not been back together long enough to do what they needed to do to put the cycle of life into gear a second time."

Hypotheses began to fly about the conservation center and beyond. Some people thought it was "immaculate anteater conception" (though probably no one really thought that). Or that "Alf had somehow gotten the keys to Armani's pen one night in October." Another explanation has been posited by the founder and director of the center, Marcella Leone, who believes that Archie "might have been a case of delayed implantation, when fertilized eggs remain dormant in the uterus for a period of time." Anteater-similar mammals like sloths and armadillos have demonstrated delayed implantation — and yet, still, there is mystery: "some experts say they've never seen a second embryo implant after a mammal has just given birth," and that such a thing would be unlikely in giant anteaters. 

The anteater experts themselves are at a loss. "Dr. Margarita Woc-Colburn, an associate veterinarian at the Nashville Zoo, which has one of the largest collections of giant anteaters in the country, said some scientific papers have mentioned the scenario in which an animal's body pauses a pregnancy until environmental conditions are right," writes Chamoff. Stacey Belhumeur, a Tucson, Arizona, zookeeper and species survival plan coordinator for the North American population of giant anteaters, suspects that the baby's origins are far simpler, though. "My guess is they thought they had him separated ... We've had animals breed through fences." Leone says her anteater charges should not have been sharing a fence line at the time that this pregnancy would have occurred — but were they? Was this a case of delayed implantation? Or is it something far more miraculous?

Unfortunately, unless the anteaters themselves 'fess up, there appears to be no way to prove what actually happened. It's an anteater mystery for the ages. 

*The photo above is of the Smithsonian National Zoo's giant anteater,     

Republicans Want to Slow Down the Scandals

Now that everyone is paying attention to the scandal stories Republicans have been pushing for months against President Obama, they have a bit of stage fright. They're trying really, really hard to be cool and not let the trio of scandals slip away like they did during Bill Clinton's second term, when a congressman shot a melon to prove the death of a White House lawyer was murder, not suicide. "I’m being very cautious not to overplay my hand," Louisiana Rep. Charles Boustany Jr. told The New York Times' Jonathan Weisman. "It's not like we’re trying to hurry or trying to slow it down. We're just trying to proceed at the speed that gets to the truth," Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan said. "Top GOP leaders are privately warning members to put a sock in it when it comes to silly calls for impeachment or over-the-top comparisons to Watergate," Politico's Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei report. Spiking the talk of Watergate now is a tacit admission that so many controversies that have come earlier in the Obama years were not such a big deal after all, but just a way to excite Republican voters while most of the public wasn't paying attention. With general public scrutiny, apparently, comes general responsibility.

An example of the delicacy required is the case of John Boehner. The House Speaker, who has struggled to maintain the loyalty of the most conservative Republicans, has kept Benghazi at arm's length for months. Then a report from ABC News on Friday seemed to quote Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes interfering with the talking points to play down the role of terrorism in the Benghazi attack. The Benghazi story had suddenly gotten much more substantial. On Monday, Boehner had "become obsessed with Benghazi," Politico reported. "This is all Boehner," a Republican aide said. But then the real email was released, and they showed Rhodes' email had been misquoted, and it was the CIA which took terrorism out of the talking points. Now Boehner is back to officially being the cool-headed voice of reason. "Our job is to legislate, and we’re trying to legislate things that will help create jobs in our country," Boehner said Thursday. "But we also have a responsibility, under the Constitution, to provide oversight of the executive branch of government."

This caution is a new thing for House Republicans, particularly House Oversight Committee Chair Darrell Issa, who will oversee lots of investigating. In January 2011, Issa said Obama was "one of the most corrupt presidents in modern times." Issa said Fast and Furious was "like Watergate"; when the Department of Homeland Security researched who was making Freedom of Information Act requests, Issa said it "reeks of a Nixonian enemies list." In 2010, Issa said if a special prosecutor wasn't appointed to investigate whether Rep. Joe Sestack got an appointment in exchange for dropping out of a Senate primary, "the White House will be falling back on a concerted scheme and cover-up strategy not seen in Washington since the days of Watergate." Now that there are scandals of substance to talk about, Issa is being more chill. He promised to work with Obama on Wednesday to investigate the IRS's targeting of conservative groups.

Even those who endorse Boehner's call to be cool are having trouble sticking by it. "More and more, I’m appreciating the wisdom of Boehner," Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, one of the Republicans most interested in Benghazi, told Politico Monday. But on Thursday, when asked about possibly impeaching Obama, Chaffetz said, "Look, it's not something I'm seeking. It's not the endgame. It's not what we're playing for. I was simply asked, is that within the realm of possibilities? And I would say, yes. I'm not willing to take that off the table."

       

What the Scientific Debate Over Climate Change Looks Like: 97.1% Agreement

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It is true that there is not unanimity in the scientific community over the role of humans in climate change. But with over 97 percent of scientists agreeing that warming is linked to human behavior, science is as close to unanimity as it's likely to get.

Researchers from a number of universities and institutes — including, we'll note, some that do advocacy work — looked at nearly 12,000 peer-reviewed studies released between 1991 and 2011 that contained references to global warming in their abstracts. The team was looking for whether or not the papers addressed the cause of warming; in other words, if people are to blame.

Of those 11,944 papers, the majority didn't take a position on causation. (AGW below is shorthand for scientific term: "anthropogenic global warming.")

But considering only those papers that did suggest a cause, the consensus was overwhelming. Of those, 97.1 percent indicated support for the idea that mankind is responsible for atmospheric warming, primarily through the emission of greenhouse gas.

As time has passed — and as indicators of warming have become more apparent — the number of papers addressing the topic have increased, as have the number of papers suggesting that humans are to blame.

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John Cook, lead author of the study, created a video walking through the findings. You can watch it below. But it can be summarized in less than the three-and-a-half minutes Cook spends by simply saying this: There is no debate over climate change. There's only a debate about what, if anything, to do about it.

       

The New 'Pacific Rim' Trailer Has Even More Giant Robots and Giant Monsters

Today we are pleased to show you in great big detail the latest glimpse at Guillermo Del Toro's entry into the summer movie fanfare, Pacific Rim. Do you know what it has? It has robots. It has robots fighting monsters. A voice over explains that the monster from the deep—the Kaiju—has attacked places like San Francisco. That was before the humans decided to create the Jaeger program. (Not to be confused with the Jägerbomb. Fighting gigantic monsters would be hard with one of those.) 

As said voiceover explains: "two pilots, our minds, our memories connected and man and machine become one." That translates to giant robots. Giant robots in front of tiny people: 

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Giant robots in water. 

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Giant robots running at giant monsters.

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Giant robots with blade arms.

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You see, it's simple: Giant robots are the answer. Watch the full trailer here. 

       

'American Idol': One Last Song Before I Go

Well I guess we get what we paid for, huh? You put dull in, you get dull out. And dull is indeed what we got last night, when our two Idol finalists on this dullest of seasons performed their final songs. A dreary evening that Fox blessedly kept to an hour, the penultimate episode of this, our 109th season of American Idol, did, I suppose, do its required job of summing up the season.

And you gotta respect Fox for only giving us an hour of this thing. I know that tonight will be a nine-hour extravaganza, with a billion performances and William from the Black Eyed Peas reading us the entirety of The Great Gatsby, but at least they respected our time once this week. (Ha. "Respected our time." As if we are required to watch American Idol and thus are owed some form of "respect" by the producers.) That was a classy move on their part, so I say well done to you, sirs and madams. So, in the spirit of keeping things short, let's dive right into the performances.

Candice

Candice beat Kree last night. That is a duhhh no-brainer. I mean, Candice beat Kree all season obviously. At no point during this competish has Kree ever lorded over Candice. So it's kind of unnecessary to say that Candice was better than Kree last night, because that should be implied by the larger totality of her betterness. But yeah, Candice won the night, for sure. Which isn't to say she was amazing. Because she actually wasn't amazing. She suffered from bad song choices, I think. Her first song was "Chasing Pavements," which was a mistake. Don't sing Adele songs, guys. It's somehow both too soon and too late for that. Adele is still very much Adele so to sing her jams is just inviting unnecessary, and unflattering, comparison. But also, kids on this show have been burbling out Adele tunes for a couple years now and it's old, crazy old. Too many Adele songs have been sung and been played in this country over the past couple years, here and on Glee and elsewhere. Ban Adele from American Idol. That's my new political cause. Haha just kidding I'm done with this show after tomorrow. Byeeeee, show!

Next Candice sang the WINNER'S SONG, which holy hell, guys. Holy hell. You cannot engineer a season that is singularly focused on having a lady win and then give both lady finalists the two ham-salad songs they gave them last night. It's downright offensive, is what it is. We long thought that the winner's song was a big dumb joke, always something about climbing mountains with your heart full of dreams, but then last year happened. Last year they gave Phillip "Phil" Phillips the song "Home," and it was a twingly-twangly success, sounding a bit like Mumford & Sons just woke up from a nap. There was a strain of artistry there, but more importantly it felt contemporary and relevant. And it was a hit! A big Olympics-backed hit. So there was some interest going into this year's pre-finale, people wondering if they could duplicate the magic. Well, nope, they can't. They just plum can't. I've never seen a group of people more completely flabbergasted by women than the producers of this show. It is just astounding. What did they give Candice and Kree? Two of the dopiest ballads you'll ever hear. Candice was given a song called "I Am Beautiful" all about how a man made her feel beautiful. She sang it perfectly fine, but good grief was the thing a snoozer. What are you doing, guys? Is it so hard to give a girl something interesting to do? Why did both Candice and Kree get these moany ballads about how they are beautiful or all cried out? Offensive! I'm choosing to take offense here. Badly done.

Candie's last song was her choice and she chose "I (Who Have Nothing)" and of course, with that song, with that voice, she blew the front of the Nokia Theater off, debris raining down on Figueroa, everyone bloodied but thrilled. She did a great job. I mean, it wasn't exactly inspiring, but for this season? It were good. Keith Urban's wig almost flew off his head! And Nicole stapled that thing on pretty thoroughly.

Kree

Poor Kree. The judges were pretty dismissive of her last night, always praising Candice and saying "Who?" when asked how Kree had done. That must be hard to deal with, but she always manages to keep a tight, worried, unpleasant smile on her face. Good for her! Kree's first jam of the evening was Sarah MacLachlan's "Angel," a hardcore acid-thrash phunk-metal song that really brought the house down. All the kids were doing their best horrorcore screams and throwing Faygo around the place like crazy. Kree did do a nice job on this song, though it was a bit sleepy and a bit dated to lead the show with. It wasn't her choice, so it wasn't her fault, but it certainly didn't do her any favors.

Also not doing her any favors was her winner's song, a country-ish moaner called "All Cried Out." So we've got Candice reaffirming that she's beautiful because a man told her so and then we've got Kree saying she's stopped crying. I know Phil is essentially singing about protecting a woman in "Home," but these two songs seem worse. They're weaker. I don't know. Their chief sin really is that they're boring. "All Cried Out" is slightly better than "I Am Beautiful" but they both stink worse than Jimmy Iovine's weird worm bed. (Worm-stink is a real problem with real consequences.) I'm sorry that they brought you all this way just to do you dirty at the end, girls. It's not right. It's just not right.

Kree's third song was some older country thing that she chose, because she is always choosing an older country song that nobody knows. I mean, it was a Patty Griffin song. But still. Kree is almost annoyingly committed to singing what she wants to sing. Normally that would be a terrible, dumb thing to say, but this isn't normally, this is American Idol. And American Idol is a game, one that Kree regularly refuses to play, which is annoying. But, hey, it's worked for her, hasn't it? Look where she is. Almost to the top. The defeater of Angie Mills and other assorted also-ran contenders. So maybe she is playing the game, just in an understated to the point of undetectability way. Maybe she's shrewder than anyone's given her credit for.

Who Wins

This might sound crazy but I have this weeeeird feeling it's going to be Kree. I know that Candice has long been the favorite and everyone is pretty sure it's going to be her tonight, but I just have this sense that Kree's fanbase should not be underestimated. I mean it got her all the way here even though a lot of people, myself included, feel she never really connected with the show. (Kree herself said that at one point.) I think those are some loyal country fans and they will vote in droves for their girl. I'm probably completely wrong, as I can be pretty bad at calling these things, but I dunno. I can't shake the feeling. I say it's going to be Kreedom. Let Kreedom ring.

OK, that's it for now. Tune in tomorrow for my final recap, which will include the grand resolution to the lonely tale of Ryan and Tim. Til then!

       

What the First 36 Votes to 'Repeal' Obamacare Look Like, Combined

Later today, the House of Representatives will hold its 37th vote on curtailing the Affordable Care Act. A little clarification about what that means is in order.

The Washington Post compiled the focus and results of each of these votes. If you're interested in the details of what each of those votes has targeted, go take a look. If you're wondering about data behind the votes, please allow us.

When the votes happened

As soon as a Republican majority took control of the House in early 2011, the votes to stem the implementation of the ACA began. On February 19 of that year, a vote on a funding resolution included ten different attempts to restrict funding to components of Obamacare.

What the votes targeted

Few of the votes were actually votes to repeal Obamacare, as has been suggested. The vast majority were instead attempting to use Congress' preferred tool for blocking legislation: keeping it from being funded. The votes to block funding were rarely to cut all funding; most targeted specific implementations. One vote targeted the staffing needed to implement the policy, a slight variation on an attempt to cut funding.

How the House voted

By our estimate, the total of votes on impeding the legislation were 5,838 for, 4,888 against (excluding several of the Feb 19, 2011 votes). That's an average of 216 to 181 over the course of the votes.

How each vote turned out

As indicated above, most of the votes were fairly close. The vast majority of votes to end aspects of the Affordable Care Act came from Republicans, though the colors below reflect result, not party.

Again, for more details on each vote, head to The Washington Post. Once the 37th vote has happened, we will provide an update on the results below. The following chart, however, will not need to be updated.

       

A Bucket of KFC Chicken Smuggled into Gaza City Costs $27

KFC, founded in 1930 in southeast Kentucky, is one of those distinctly American exports that enjoy enormous popularity overseas. It's a Christmas delicacy in Japan, and franchises for the fast food restaurant are rapidly proliferating throughout the Middle East. The brand's selection of chicken and hearty sides is so popular, in fact, that Palestinians living on the Gaza Strip, where imported goods and travel remain restricted by its neighbors Egypt and Israel, are willing to pay a team of smugglers to run KFC orders through underground tunnels, usually waiting four or more hours to see their orders fulfilled. The premium for the illicit chicken runs high: according to The New York Times, a 12 piece bucket of chicken bought for $11.50 in Egypt currently goes for $27 in Gaza City. (In the U.S., the same item costs between $16.49 and $20.49, depending on location.)

The Times explains the complicated logistics of delivering cross-border KFC food:

For fast-food delivery, it is anything but fast: it took more than four hours for the KFC meals to arrive here on a recent afternoon from the franchise where they were cooked in El Arish, Egypt, a journey that involved two taxis, an international border, a smuggling tunnel and a young entrepreneur coordinating it all from a small shop here called Yamama — Arabic for pigeon.

Prices may soon fall, though. A West Bank businessman told the Times that "he had been authorized to open a [KFC] restaurant in Gaza and was working out the details" with KFC's franchising division. In the meantime, you may fulfill your sudden craving for Popcorn Chicken here. Savor it.