Midday open thread. Doctor: Carter 'in best possible place'; Utah vote-by-mail tests boost turnout
Today’s comics by Tom Tomorrow is Here we are again:
- We are more afraid than ever of gun violence. The truth is the murder rate is at a fifty-year low, by Ian Reifowitz
- How to talk to progressives about climate change, by DarkSyde
- The test of progress: Sanders and Clinton and the plight of those who have too little, by Armando
- America is sitting on a powder keg, a cocktail of hate by design, by Egberto Willies
- Ted Cruz, the perfect candidate for the coming Christian caliphate, by Susan Grigsby
- The Democratic legislative comeback may require a wave—the harsh math of legislative gerrymandering, by Steve Singiser
- Donald John Trump is exactly the candidate the GOP deserves, by Frank Vyan Walton
- Talking about our abortions is a part of our fight for reproductive justice, by Denise Oliver Velez
Jimmy Carter announced Sunday that his cancer is gone: The 91-year-old Carter, who had been undergoing treatment for melanoma, announced the good news in a Sunday school class he teaches at the Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, the southwest Georgia town where he was born and raised. Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer for the Atlanta-based American Cancer Society, who is not involved in treating Carter, warned that the diagnosis does not mean the former president has been cured. But he was nonetheless optimistic:
“The President has done exceptionally well. There are still many patients with melanoma who don’t have this outcome,” said Lichtenfeld. “He’s in the best possible place.”
And yet, only a few years ago, Stage IV melanoma was tantamount to a death sentence, and it still is a very difficult disease for many.
Bernie Sanders wins Time's online poll for Person of the Year:
In the poll that closed Sunday at midnight, the self-described democratic socialist finished in first place with 10.2 percent of the vote, among a list that included Malala Yousafzai, co-recipient of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize, who earned 5.2 percent, Pope Francis at 3.7 percent and President Barack Obama at 3.5 percent.
Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton picked up just 1.4 percent, while Republican poll leader Donald Trump took 1.8 percent.
Class-based conflicts boosts voter turnout, according to analysis of voting from 1840 to 1996.
Utah greatly increases voter turnout in experiment with vote-by-mail: The state has one of the worst turnout records in the country, with only 29.6 percent of eligible voters casting ballots in 2014. Several cities have since experimented with vote by mail. On average, they’ve gone from 21 percent turnout in 2011 to 38 percent in 2015. Salt Lake City saw its turnout rate rise from 13 percent in 2013 to 55 percent in 2015.
Federal will investigate whether “clock boy” Ahmed Mohamed’s arrest violated his civil rights.
Ship sunk more than 300 years ago off Colombia could have $17 billion in treasure: That shipment was produced with forced labor of the indigenous people of Latin America:
Get your plundering gear together, because the colonial galleon San Jose, known to many as “the holy grail of shipwrecks,” has been discovered off Colombia’s Baru peninsula at a depth of 1,000 feet.
As part of the Spanish treasure fleet, the galleon was packed to the gills with gold, silver, and gems when British warships sank it on June 8, 1708. By some estimates, the treasure-laden vessel may be worth as much as $17 billion today.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, Greg Dworkin brings the poli. sci. update, with polls and the latest thinking on partisanship. Obama speaks from the Oval. Then, it’s time to crack the books on the ISIS crisis. What’s really going on here? And is there really any way to not make it worse?
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