Atlantic Monthly Contributors's Blog, page 882

Congressmen Voted Out Over Their Pro-Obamacare Stances Are Angry

Vulnerable House Democrats back in 2009 knew that they were risking their political careers by casting votes for the Affordable Care Act. And more than 60 of them — including some who didn't even vote for the bill — lost their seats the following year.

So there's an extra psychological twinge for those forced to watch the administration blunder the rollout of the very thing that cost them their jobs.

"Am I disappointed that they didn't do a better job? Yeah I am disappointed—very disappointed," says former Rep. Baron Hill of Indiana, who served a total of five terms and was ousted in 2010.

Despite holding out hope that the current mess will subside, no one can be happy with how the Obama administration has rolled out the central components of the Affordable Care Act. And for those who bet their jobs on it, the current struggle to make the law work is particularly frustrating.

"The bottom line is, I feel like, why, I did my job," says former Rep. Earl Pomeroy of North Dakota, who lost his seat after nine terms. "Whoever was to do the job of getting this implemented correctly didn't do their job, and I'm mad about it."

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But Pomeroy retains some sense of hope that the next six months will bring substantial improvements. "All of these start-up problems are going to fade in the face of what has been achieved by the reforms themselves," Pomeroy says.

Democrats everywhere were caught off guard by the failures of HealthCare.gov, the primary Obamacare enrollment website that crashed as soon as it was launched and is still functioning poorly. "I'm a small business owner, and I make sure when I'm rolling out a new program that it works. I test it out," says former Rep. Steve Kagen of Wisconsin, who is a doctor and voted for the ACA. He lost in 2010 to Republican Reid Ribble.

But Obamacare's political problems go deeper than HealthCare.gov. Although the White House announced an administrative "fix" on Thursday, the uproar over cancelled insurance plans has been a major headache for Democrats. They feel they're paying the price for Obama's broken pledge that anyone who liked their health care plans could keep them.

A slew of Democrats with tight races next year have introduced bills they say would follow through on that promise. Sen. Kay Hagan, D-N.C., has also requested an audit of HealthCare.gov's failures.

"Of course it's frustrating for everyone," Kagen says, but he still wholeheartedly supports the law. He also pivots to put the onus on Republicans to do something to fix the current problems, as well.

"I've got confidence [the administration is] going to solve this tech issue, and I'm looking forward to Republicans also helping every one of my patients and constituents," he says.

Pomeroy says he recently spoke with a group about the ACA, and they remarked how they thought he'd be more upset with the rollout. "Oh, I'm apoplectic about it," he recalls telling them. "I'd cast that vote tomorrow. However, that vote was career-ending for many of us. We thought that we did our part; it then shifted to the administration to competently execute the program. They fell short."

Hill also said he knew at the time that his vote might be a career-ending one, but still believes it was worth it. He's frustrated by the rocky implementation, he says, but not bitter.

"Life's too short. I don't even think about those kinds of things. Am I disappointed? Sure, I'm disappointed. But I hold no grievances against the administration or [Health and Human Services] Secretary [Kathleen] Sebelius or anybody else," he said.

At least 13 House Democrats lost their seats as a direct result of their votes in favor of the ACA, according to a 2011 study by researchers at the University of Denver and North Carolina State University. But voting against the ACA wasn't enough to insulate some Democrats from losing their seats.

Take former Rep. Lincoln Davis of Tennessee, who voted against the bill while in Congress after hearing a loud outcry from his constituents against it. Davis says he was taken down in the anti-ACA fervor anyway.

"I voted the way people wanted me, the way they asked me. It still didn't matter," he says. "The result came, and the legislation, and quite frankly the money that came into the campaign from outside groups--we haven't seen that kind of money."

Davis has no regrets about voting against Obamacare, but he still wants the problems with the law to be fixed for the sake of the uninsured.

As he put it, "If we lost that, we've failed more than those who voted for it and lost their races … but also the very people we're trying to help."

       

Winners and Losers of 'The Simpsons' FXX Deal

Big day for The Simpsons: the entirety of the long-running animated show will be available for streaming and on cable for the first time starting next August, via the new spinoff channel FXX. The nine-figure deal has certainly made quite a few people happy, but not everyone is a winner here. Let's see who emerged victorious and who might be disappointed with the outcome. 

The Winners

20th Century Fox: By going to FXX, everyone the show is "staying in the family," as Bill Carter of the New York Times reported. The show was created by 20th Century Fox Television, it is broadcast on Fox, and now has a home at the cable network FXX. And FX paid good money for it. "After the television unit announced the sale, analysts estimated a purchase price of between $1 million and $2 million an episode, putting the overall value in the range of $550 million to $1 billion-plus," Carter wrote. According to Nellie Andreeva at Deadline insiders estimated that FXX was paying about $1.250 million per week. 

The Simpsons: You could argue that the show has gone downhill (we would), but this should definitely revive interest in watching the classic episode, which can only allow the show's reputation to thrive. Plus, all that money. 

FXX: Though the fledgling spinoff network of FX has not gotten off to a totally smooth start, The Simpsons should, according to Josef Adalian at Vulture, help FXX out. "While there's no guarantee The Simpsons will be a ratings monster, it seems likely it will give the network a giant buzz lift and do at least solid numbers," Adalian wrote. Carter called the deal a "foundation stone" for FXX. 

The Losers

Netflix and Other Streaming Platforms: The deal also includes VOD and streaming rights, meaning, as Adalian writes, "It's unlikely the show will be popping up in your Netflix or Hulu queue anytime this decade." Meanwhile, FXNOW has more ammo to directly compete with, say, Netflix, something it already had plans to do. As Andrew Wallenstein reported at Variety, the app aims to have "the kind of library aimed at squarely providing multichannel subscribers with the kind of movie selection they might otherwise look to Netflix to provide." 

Other Cable Networks: According to Andreeva, five networks were bidding for the rights. Alas, FXX emerged the winner. The others? Losers.   

Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell: Earlier this week, FXX canceled W. Kamau Bell's talk show, which was moved from FX to FXX, obviously not to its benefit. It doesn't look like FXX is looking back with very much regret.

       

Actually, the Obamacare Rollout Failures Are Exactly Like Katrina

When Hurricane Katrina slammed into New Orleans in 2005, it was a disaster on a scale that hadn't been seen in American history. Until now. The avalanche of Obamacare failures and flubs that began on October 1 mirrors — almost eerily! — literally everything that happened in the wake of that storm.

It's worth pointing this out because, in the wake of The New York Times' front page article drawing an analogy between Katrina and Obamacare, some (mostly liberal) outlets have rejected the comparison. Slate's Matt Yglesias thinks that Katrina's death toll is a distinguishing factor. Esquire's Charlie Pierce rejects it out of hand. Talking Points Memo uncharitably suggests that the former Bush staffers that offered the analogy might have ulterior motives.

But the Times and the Bushies were right. Here's how they comparely overlap, a one-circle Venn diagram of failure, traceable back to the Chief Executive.

Both failures were completely foreseeable and foreseen by experts.

[image error]In the days leading up to Katrina making landfall, government scientists using satellites were able to make predictions about the storm's path, where it was likely to strike, and its strength when that happened.

For years, Republicans played the role of those scientists on Obamacare. Using science, they outlined exactly how Hurricane Obamacare would land and the damage it would do. Last week, Townhall.com reviewed that scientific analysis, presented by Sen. Mike Enzi in 2010. "No, Enzi’s not a psychic," they write. Neither were those weather scientists.

As the storm approached (the Obamacare storm, that is), the warnings multiplied. The administration was warned and warned. Government documents that Reuters acquired indicate that a contractor thought issues with the Healthcare.gov site could "crash the plane at take-off." (Weirdly, Hurricane Katrina also threatened to crash planes, if planes flew through it, which they didn't.)

Healthcare.gov was when the levees broke.

Then, the storm hit. When October 1 rolled around, no one was paying attention to Obamacare's worst effects, being otherwise distracted by the shutdown — itself an attempt to prevent the storm from making landfall (is that the right analogy? I'm losing track). But soon the deluge couldn't be ignored. Just as the government-made levees couldn't handle all of the water in New Orleans, the government-made Healthcare.gov website couldn't handle all the traffic.

Obama behaved exactly like President Bush.

[image error]When the scale of the emergency became clear in New Orleans, George W. Bush was nowhere to be found, out in California playing the guitar and otherwise doing nothing about the problem. For the first few days of the Obamacare storm, Obama didn't do anything either, except work on trying to end the shutdown and the other things that he had to deal with in Washington, D.C.

At no point did President Obama go to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the government agency that runs Healthcare.gov, and look at the overheated servers and code and what-have-you. Just as Bush ignored cries for help from people who'd lost homes after the storm, Obama ignored the error logs from the website, letting them issue their error 404s and error 500s into the blank void of an unseen hard drive.

Then, when he did act, it was too little. As Bush flew over the damage from Katrina, telling the world how concerned he was about the invisible people below, Obama only paid lip service to fixing the real problem: the levees. I mean: the website. Or, I guess: the people trying to sign up for service. All three.

Kathleen Sebelius is FEMA Director Michael Brown.

[image error]The man responsible for crafting a response on behalf of the government in 2005 was Michael Brown, an unknown administrator whose previous employment was with the International Arabian Horse Association. (That's true.) Sebelius' pre-Health and Human Services Department employment was similarly obscure, running a small state called "Kansas."

On October 15, two weeks after the levees broke (reminder: that's the Healthcare.gov rollout), Obama's spokesman indicated that Sebelius still had the "full confidence" of the president, a gaffe no less memorable than Bush's telling Brown(ie) that he was doing a "heckuva job."

It is also possible that Brown is like the poor Healthcare.gov woman, who was the face of the problem that no one had seen or knew much about, and then was bullied for the rest of her life.

Obamacare's Superdome is the fake exchanges.

Remember the Superdome in the aftermath of Katrina? It was a huge, scary stadium where people looking for safety were trapped to be murdered and assaulted and "go to the bathroom" in the dark. Much of that, it turns out, didn't happen, but it's still symbolic.

[image error]And it is exactly like how fraudsters are trying to corral and exploit people looking for health care plans. We reported on the fraudulent Obamacare offerings earlier, attempts to fool people into paying money for plans that don't have all of the features of legit programs. Others have noted that there are websites meant to replicate official state exchanges, where people might turn over their information to scammers. Here, too, there's not much evidence that this has happened, but that is what makes the analogy work.

But imagine someone sitting in their living room and clicking on what they thought was a legitimate Obamacare website on their Macbook, only to discover that it wasn't! Is this any less terrifying than being forced out of your home with no food or water for days on end, never to see your belongings again? No, it is not.

Those Convention Center cries for help? The people who have to upgrade their healthcare policies.

In the wake of Katrina, thousands were shuttled to the New Orleans Convention Center, which quickly became a focal point of organized protest among survivors. It was at the Convention Center that the media encountered hundreds of people demanding that they'd been left behind by the government, insisting that they deserved better treatment and access to food and water.

In the case of Obamacare, those poor, stranded individuals are the people who are losing health insurance that didn't have enough coverage to meet the standards of the Affordable Care Act. Yes, those plans often cost more, as we've noted, but that's part of the plan to bring down costs overall. But tell that to those unfortunates who received letters canceling their plans! Do they feel any more love from the government than those people in New Orleans? Maybe; it's hard to say. Let's say no.

The poor were left to weather the storm by themselves.

[image error]Before Katrina hit, the city issued a mandatory evacuation notice. That didn't do much good for people who didn't have cars. Public transit wasn't much good for getting out of the storm's path, and seats on out-of-town buses filled quickly, even if people had some place to go.

Louisiana, we will note, has chosen not to expand federal Medicaid protection for the poor in its state. And that, my friends, is what is known as an "apt analogy."

The New Orleans law enforcement officials that murdered people are exactly like Obamacare navigators.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans police officers shot and killed evacuees trying to cross a bridge, then covered up the killings by trying to insinuate that they were justified in doing so. Five officers were convicted of crimes and sentenced to prison, though the convictions were recently overturned.

This is analogous to the "navigators" established under the Affordable Care Act, who are trusted by the public to ensure their health safety. But the public can't really trust them, Republicans argue, which is why Florida Sen. Marco Rubio is promoting a bill that would require they get background checks. (He opposed expanding background checks for gun sales, by the way.) Have any of these navigators violated the law, killing people who are just trying to sign up for health insurance? Possibly. It is possible. Maybe indirectly?

Which brings us to Yglesias' point:

Obamacare's death toll may already surpass Katrina's.

It all depends on what you consider a "death." Certainly, any number of insurance policies have been cancelled since they don't meet the standards of Obamacare. Some businesses (though not as many as claimed) have cut back employee hours to avoid having to provide them with insurance. Sen. Ted Cruz has repeatedly argued that Obamacare is killing the economy, and he's a senator, so he would know.

Yes, 1,833 people died in the wake of Katrina. But if corporations are people, which they are, aren't insurance policies? Isn't the economy?

Like Katrina, Obamacare ruined something great, a national treasure.

Before the storm hit, New Orleans was a jewel, a city rich with history and culture and stunning architecture that preserved an era of American history in a way no other city could capture. The music. The food. The revelry. All of it was significant and essential. Then, in a matter of a week, it was crippled, sodden, ruptured. It's people had scattered and its status as a great American city lost — at least for a while.

The scariest thing about Obamacare is that it threatens similar damage to something we all love and respect: an ever-more-expensive private health insurance system in which people can be excluded from essential coverage based on existing medical conditions and in which the possibility of complete economic collapse stemming from a serious injury is ever-present. If Obamacare were to damage that, then calling this Obama's Katrina doesn't go far enough. Then, it would become his Watergate.

All pictures from Reuters.

       

60 Minutes' Benghazi 'Witness' Has Gone Into Hiding

Dylan Davies, the disgraced contractor at the center of 60 Minutes' retreat on its story about the terror attack in Benghazi last year, has gone into hiding. That leaves CBS standing alone in the spotlight of continuing critique over the controversial story.

60 Minutes's October 27 report, since withdrawn, centered on Davies' tale of his actions that night: his sneaking into an Al Qaeda-controlled hospital, his striking a terrorist in the head with the butt of his rifle. As The New York Times and The Washington Post reported, Davies told both the FBI and his employer (contracting firm Blue Mountain Security) that he was never able to get to the diplomatic compound on the night of the attack.

That inconsistency prompted CBS to rescind its story and Simon & Schuster, the CBS-owned publisher producing a book by Davies, to take it off the shelves. Shortly before it did so, Davies made it impossible for anyone to question him further about his claims: He vanished. The Daily Beast's Eli Lake reports:

Davies wrote that on Sunday November 3 at 4:00 am, he was hand-delivered a note to his home address in Wales that said, “Stop talking now or your wife and son will disappear.” In the email to [Simon & Schuster vice president Jennifer] Robinson, he went onto say, “Due to this threat I will not discuss the book with anyone under any circumstances for the foreseeable future, I am not prepared to put my family in danger. I stand by my story however I understand that it continues to be rubbished, which I expected.”

This is his defense: having spoken truth to power, power is now fighting back.

Unfortunately for CBS, Davies wasn't the only flawed part of its report. As McClatchy's Nancy Youssef reported on Wednesday, the original 60 Minutes report, from veteran reporter Lara Logan, included a number of errors unrelated to Davies's story.

Logan claimed the attack was launched by Al Qaeda alone. According to Youssef's reporting, the attack included elements of Al Qaeda, Ansar al Shariah, and protestors angry about a video offensive to Islam. "Logan claimed that 'it’s now well established that the Americans were attacked by al Qaida in a well-planned assault.'," Youssef writes. "But al Qaida has never claimed responsibility for the attack, and the FBI, which is leading the U.S. investigation, has never named al Qaida as the sole perpetrator."

The hospital into which Davies claimed he snuck was not under the control of Al Qaeda. According to Youssef, Ansar al Shariah — admittedly an extremist group, though not part of Al Qaeda — was guarding the hospital that night and preventing people from entering. Local residents denied that claim.

Logan named three suspects in the attack, none of whom are known to have participated. Youssef points out that Logan "did not explain the source of that assertion."

Documents that CBS claimed to have found at the compound in October almost certainly weren't. Youssef outlines the evolution of the site's clean-up, which was largely completed earlier this summer.

On Wednesday morning, Youssef reported that CBS was conducting an internal review of how the 60 Minutes segment was developed. Whether or not that review will include an assessment of Logan's impartiality in preparing the report isn't known. Earlier this week, multiple outlets noted a speech Logan presented shortly after the September 11, 2012, Benghazi attack, in which she railed against the administration's response. ("I hope to God that you are sending in your best clandestine warriors to exact revenge and let the world know that the United States will not be attacked on its own soil, its ambassadors will not be murdered..." Logan said.) On Monday, Gawker reported that Logan's husband is a defense contractor who worked for the Department of Defense on public relations at the height of the Iraq War.

Among those that CBS won't be able to talk to about the development of the report, of course, is Dylan Davies. At least not until he emerges from hiding.

       

Why Did Whitey Bulger Get 5 Years In Prison on Top of 2 Life Sentences?

Notorious Boston gangster James "Whitey" Bulger was sentenced to two life terms, plus five years, in prison on Thursday for his conviction on 31 counts of weapons charges, money laundering, and racketeering. Adding those five years probably seems a bit pointless for someone who will die in prison, but there is a logic behind it. So where did that number come from, and why tack it on to an already unneeded second life sentence?

[image error]The source of that half-decade addition comes from his conviction for Possession of Firearms in Furtherance of Violent Crime, which has a mandatory five-year minimum. In fact, five of the 31 criminal counts that Bulger was charged with were based on illegal use of guns, including possession and transfer of unregistered, serial number-less weapons. Some of those machine gun charges resulted in one of the two life sentences, while the second life sentence was based on two racketeering charges.

But why bother to add them on separately? Obviously, Bulger cannot spend more than his own one life in prison, which at 84-years along, may not last too much longer. On its face, it might appear like a judge showing off or flexing power, but the reason is a thoroughly sensible one. Each charge is considered independent of another during the trial (as Slate explained back in 2005), and so each must be considered separately during sentencing.

More importantly, multiple sentences matter a great deal during the appeals process. Should Bulger choose to appeal his conviction — he has a 14-day period to do so — a reversal on just one charge would not wipe out his whole punishment. By adding two life sentences, plus another five years, he would need many more successful appeals to avoid prison. As Lehigh Valley Judge Robert Steinberg explained the idea to The Morning Call back in 2011, "The judge isn't doing it as a joke or to be facetious … The judge wants to make sure the person never gets out." And at Bulger's advanced age, five years alone might be enough to accomplish that.

       

A Generational Guide to Viewer Interest in the 'Flowers in the Attic' Remake

Lifetime is taking a crack at adapting the notorious V.C. Andrews novel of child abuse, incest, and melodrama, and they certainly seem to be covering their bases when it comes to offering something for audiences of any age to latch onto. We can help you find your entry point. 

The Flowers in the Attic trailer -- and quite an extended one at that -- debuted today, offering a look at a rather dark, certainly over-the-top rendering of the page-turner.

["Trailer is no longer available due to a copyright claim by A&E." We'll try to get a new clip up when it is available.]

So why should you care about this decidedly middle-brow paperback classic? Depends on where you're coming from.

For Baby Boomers: You're into that TV program Mad Men, aren't you? Reminds you of the early-1960s social structure you couldn't wait to tear down? Lifetime's Flowers remake stars Mad Men's Kiernan Shipka -- little Sally Draper -- as Cathy, one of four children forced to live locked away in their grandmother's attic, so that their mother may inherit the family fortune from her awful and abusive parents. The novel's main source of notoriety, of course, was that close quarters and the onset of pubescent hormones lead to an incestuous relationship between Cathy and her brother, Chris (Mason Dye), so get ready to be scandalized.

Also for the Boomers: Ellen Burstyn plays the overbearing monster of a grandmother. Remember how great she was back in the '70s? How many times did you see The Exorcist in the theater?

For Generation X: You guys are definitely the sweet spot for Flowers in the Attic interest. You either had a friend in high school who carried the book around -- in their hands, not in their knapsacks, so everybody could see they were reading that book -- or else you were that friend. Then the movie came out in 1987, and even though it starred Kristy Swanson, you watched it anyway. You're either ready to cackle with your pals about what lurid awfulness you were into at age 14, or you are aghast that Lifetime would mine your own personal nostalgia for cheap monetary gain. Either way, you'll probably give this a look. 

Also of interest to Gen X: Kiernan Shipka (come on -- Mad Men crosses generational lines); the Lifetime cachet, borne from years of campy '80s and '90s TV movies about women in bad marriages; the fact that the trailer employs a haunting cover of Guns 'n' Roses' "Sweet Child O' Mine." 

For the Millennials: You kids are into Mad Men, too (right?!), so we all get to watch through our fingers as Sally Draper goes through her grand Gothic coming-of-age. You also get the triumphant (?) return of Heather Graham from obscurity. She was so promising back in Boogie Nights, and if we're being honest, she was probably the best babe to star opposite Mike Myers in the Austin Powers franchise (sorry, Beyonce). Now you can watch her try to claw her way back to relevance playing Corrine, troubled and troubling mother to four locked-away children.

Also of interest to Millennials: This fun new trend of Lifetime producing campy trash that screams to be live-Tweeted by the masses. This was essentially the mission statement for Lindsay Lohan in Liz & Dick. Gaze at the pretty people -- they think they're making a movie!

       

Rand Paul Says Chris Christie Has a Voracious Appetite for Tax Dollars

Not content with fat jokes, Sen. Rand Paul has pivoted in his attacks on New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and reprimanded the governor for a "gimme, gimme, gimme all my money" when it came federal money for Hurricane Sandy relief. "The problem is… unlimited spending is sort of – you could call it moderate, or even liberal, to think that there’s an unlimited amount of money, even for good causes," Paul told Don Giordano, a CBS Philly correspondent.  The "good causes" Paul is glossing over are things like flood insurance claims for homeowners, some of whom were still sleeping in rented rooms some three months later.

Paul explained that the governor was asking for too much money for Sandy aide and was not doing so in a fiscally responsible way : 

If you’re a conservative Republican, the federal government will be involved in certain things, but when you spend money, particularly when you’re at trillion dollars in the hole, it shouldn’t be just this, ‘gimme, gimme, gimme all my money’ without any considerations or strings ... It should be, ‘Yes, this is why it’s necessary, but this is also why I’ll cut spending somewhere else.

[image error]And Paul was one of the 36 Republican Senators who opposed Sandy Relief earlier this year. Yet, Paul is no stranger when it comes to asking for federal money: he personally wrote to President Obama in 2012 asking for disaster relief for "families and communities" affected by a rash of storms in late February-early March of that year. 

Paul criticizing Christie for asking for federal funding seems unfair is the senator himself did the same thing and asked for similar disaster aid under similar circumstances. But then again, presidential races make people do funny things, even if they are three years away. Chris Christie is considered a Republican frontrunner in that race, and has a target on his back.

Paul's remarks are more signs that the Kentucky senator continues to believe Christie is a legit threat. Recently, Paul has been resorting to remarks about Christie's weight, trying to insinuate that Christie's rotund belly symbolized a lack of control and will power that would translate into him ruining the country.  "The party is big enough for both of us. It’s big enough for a lot of different Republicans," Paul said this summer, after calling Christie the "King of Bacon."  

Earlier this week though, Paul changed his tune on fat people. He told a group of South Carolina supporters that he would fight for their right to donuts and the American freedom to eat trans fats until they die. That offer probably doesn't extend to Christie. 

       

Elephants In India Keep Getting Killed by Trains

A passenger train in the West Bengal region of India mowed down a herd of elephants, killing five adult and two baby pachyderm, in an all-too-common collision between the animals and machines. That number could rise as a total of ten elephants were injured in the crash, and some are still being treated.

As if the story wasn't sad enough for elephant lovers, the ones who weren't hurt in the crash actually came back for their friends. "The herd scattered, but returned to the railway tracks and stood there for quite some time before they were driven away by forest guards and railroad workers who rushed to the spot after the accident," Hiten Burman, forestry minister in West Bengal, told The Associated Press.

While the idea of a passenger trains smashing into elephants isn't fathomable in many parts of the world, this scene has actually become quite common in India, even though the animal has a special protected status within the country. This year's death toll stands at 18, the Times of India reported. "It is an irony that elephants are being killed by speeding trains in north Bengal on regular intervals, even though it has been declared as the heritage animal in India and an elephant calf is the mascot of Indian Railways," Animesh Basu, a wildlife activist and coordinator of the Himalayan Nature and Adventure Foundation, told the AP.

The "heritage animal" classification Basu is talking about is a special status the country bestowed on the great beasts in 2010, a status which is supposed to grant them protection and make their lives a conservation priority. In that same year, there were at least three terrible train accidents where elephants died. In January of 2010, a freight train mowed down four. That March, a speeding train killed one and injure another, and in September, seven pachyderms saw their lives end at the hands of a train. According to the Wildlife Trust of India's report in 2008, more than 118 elephants had been killed by India's trains since 1987. The elephant picture above was just one of several struck and killed last year.

The problem is that more of India's railways and human development coincide with where elephants live and travel. Some of those railways stretch into the country's national parks and forests, resulting in dozens of elephant deaths in recent years, The Guardian reported. Killing elephants, is obviously the most immediate consequence, but the development into elephant habitats also restricts the space where they can live, stifling population in the long term.

The World Wildlife Fund explains: 

In south Asia, it is the quest for land by an ever increasing human population that causes many illegal encroachments in elephant habitat, thus causing habitat loss and fragmentation. In some cases, it is development activities, such as roads, railway tracks, in crucial corridor areas that fragment the habitat.

India's estimated wild elephant population is about 26,000. 

       

Russell Crowe Faces a Flood in 'Noah' Trailer

After talk of a troubled production, Paramount has released the first trailer for Darren Aronofsky's Noah, the auteur's special-effects-heavy take on the biblical tale. And while the scope of the thing remains a bit too massive to nail down, the trailer comes off as a little silly. 

A distinct departure from Aronofksy's last two films—Black Swan and The Wrestler, which took on the effects of pushing a body to the limit—the Noah trailer is giving off some vibes reminiscent of The Fountain, Aronofsky's critically-maligned time-hopping Tree of Life saga. 

The Noah trailer seems to announce loudly that this is an epic film, with a swirling soundtrack, vast amounts of CGI, and dialogue like, "It begins." Of course, Russell Crowe's line readings aren't the only cause for concern: a report emerged last month that Aronofsky and Paramount were battling over final cut following "troubling reactions" after the movie was screened for religious audiences. 

It's obviously too early to tell with merely a trailer, though between this and Winter's Tale we're wondering if Jennifer Connelly can revive her career via a strict regimen of ridiculous-looking bombast. 

       

JPMorgan Is Not Too Big to Troll

JPMorgan was supposed to host a Twitter chat with vice chair Jimmy Lee on Thursday, but the bank's social media minds made the fatal error of releasing the #AskJPM hashtag too soon. Twitter users flooded the hashtag with serious and joking questions about the JPMorgan's shady history and ongoing negotiations with the Justice Department. JPMorgan is not too big to troll. 

So the social media team decided to quit while they were behind. 

Tomorrow's Q&A is cancelled. Bad Idea. Back to the drawing board.

— J.P. Morgan (@jpmorgan) November 14, 2013

They didn't even answer these important questions, like how JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon would like to challenge Attorney General Eric Holder.

Would you rather negotiate with 1 horse-sized Eric Holder, or 100 duck-sized Eric Holders? #AskJPM

— Kevin Roose (@kevinroose) November 13, 2013

Or these simple math problems.

Did you have a specific number of people's lives you needed to ruin before you considered your business model a success? #AskJPM

— Amy Hunter (@amy10506) November 13, 2013

How many homeless people did you create in '08? #AskJPM

— Mathew Kagis (@OccupyMedic) November 13, 2013

Some financial journalists had legitimate questions about the bank's activities.

Are you involved in a massive corruption scandal in China? #AskJPM http://t.co/iUKLVZNagr

— Matt Yglesias (@mattyglesias) November 14, 2013

And motivations.

Is it the ability to throw anyone out of their home that drives you, or just the satisfaction that you know you COULD do it? #AskJPM

— David Dayen (@ddayen) November 13, 2013

And of course, some had specific inquiries for Lee. 

#AskJPM Does Jimmy Lee really cheat at golf? http://t.co/W4Hee0B4pl (asking for a friend @dan_freed)

— Lauren Tara LaCapra (@LaurenLaCapra) November 13, 2013

Some were just feeling curious.

What's your favorite type of whale? #AskJPM

— Matt O'Brien (@ObsoleteDogma) November 13, 2013

JPMorgan has been under intense scrutiny since the Justice Department began investigating its mortgage-backed securities business that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis. We now know that the DOJ is investigating even more aspects of the bank's business. If the deal goes through, Dimon will turn over $13 billion to Holder and the DOJ. 

Salon's Alex Pareene, who's challenged the bank's practices before, asked the obvious question.

#AskJPM why did u think this would be a good idea

— alex pareene (@pareene) November 13, 2013