All posts by Jay Pinho

About Jay Pinho

Jay is a data journalist and political junkie. He currently writes about domestic politics, foreign affairs, and journalism and continues to make painstakingly slow progress in amateur photography. He would very much like you to check out SCOTUSMap.com and SCOTUSSearch.com if you have the chance.

From mobile payments to e-gift cards

Technology, , , , , , , , , ,

Mobile payments technology keeps getting better. One of the more prominent startups in this field, Square, now allows users to send digital gift cards to people who don’t even have an account:

If you already have Square Wallet, your gift card will automatically be saved to your Wallet. Square also offers Apple Passbook integration for iOS 6 users. And for everyone else, there’s a QR code option that you can use either by having a merchant scan the code on your smartphone, or by printing it out and taking it with you to the store.

Square COO Keith Rabois tells Fast Company the service is a win-win for both merchants, who get a seamlessly integrated marketing product for no additional cost; and busy customers, who don’t necessarily have the time or means to get meaningful gifts for friends, especially if they live far away.

“You can sit on your sofa and go through your address book for all the people who are important to you and instantly provide them with an amazing experience,” he says. “That’s never really been done before.”

Possible drawback? If using credit cards strips away some of the natural reticence to spend cash like water, one can only imagine how much further down that road a system like Square’s will take us.

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An inglorious ending for Manny Pacquiao

Sports, , , , ,
Courtesy of Deadspin.com.
Courtesy of Deadspin.com.

The “Pac-Man” was knocked out for the first time in 13 years, this time by Juan Manuel Márquez:

Marquez, desperate for victory after being down 0-2-1 in the legendary series, flattened Pacquiao with a flush overhand right hand with one second left in the sixth round of their welterweight fight, sending a jolt of human electricity through the sold-out crowd of 16,348 — in a pro-Marquez house — at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.

Pacquiao went down face-first and was out cold, and the judges, the source of so much controversy through the first three fights, were rendered pointless. Referee Kenny Bayless didn’t bother to — or need to — count as Marquez celebrated on the ring ropes, drinking in the cheers from his Mexican fans, who chanted for him throughout the fight.

“I knew Manny could knock me out at any time,” Marquez said. “I threw the perfect punch.”

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Marriage equality and the Supreme Court

Law, Politics, , , , , , , , ,

David Cole reminds us that the upcoming Supreme Court cases on same-sex marriage are important, but nevertheless remain just a part of a much longer, inevitable march towards full marriage equality:

Whatever the Court does will affect gay marriage only in the short term. The political tide has turned decisively in the direction of marriage equality, and nothing the Court does can stop it. Polls show that two-thirds of Americans today support recognition of gay marriage or civil unions for gay couples, and young people favor marriage equality by especially large margins. In the 2012 elections, marriage equality proponents prevailed in all four states where gay marriage was on the ballot, and President Obama’s announcement in May that he had (finally) decided to support gay marriage appears to have cost him no votes. The statistician Nate Silver has predicted, based on state-by-state demographic poll results, that by 2016, the only states that do not have a solid majority in favor of gay marriage will be in the Deep South, and that by 2024, a majority will support gay marriage even in Mississippi, which he predicts will be the longest hold-out. Gay marriage is an inevitability.

But if the Court’s decisions in the gay marriage cases may not have lasting consequences for gay marriage, they are likely to have historic significance for the legacy of the Roberts Court. If it upholds the laws at issue, its decisions will almost certainly come to be viewed as the Plessy v. Ferguson of the twenty-first century, defending and reinforcing a deeply discriminatory practice without good constitutional reason. If, by contrast, the Court rules, as it should, that marriage equality is constitutionally required, its decisions will be celebrated in the history books alongside Brown v. Board of Education. Which side would you want to be on?

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Egypt, embroiled again

Politics, , , , , ,
Courtesy of JuanCole.com.
Courtesy of JuanCole.com.

President Muhammad Morsi is starting to look a little too similar to his strongman predecessor, Hosni Mubarak. But he may have already crossed the point of no return:

The general unwillingness of many of the police and army to intervene actively in favor of President Morsi appears to have put a fright into him and his administration. After earlier being completely inflexible in the face of the protests, they are now hinting that the referendum on the constitution could be postponed past the December 15 date initially designated by Morsi.

There was also a big demonstration in Alexandria, where crowds chanted, “The people want the execution of the president.”

Muslim Brotherhood supporters of the president attempted to avoid clashes of the sort that broke out Wednesday, demonstrating in their tens of thousands in the old Islamic quarter in front of the al-Azhar Seminary or at the Rabiah al-Adawiya Mosque in Nasr City not so far from the presidential palace.

The liberal political leaders of the National Salvation Front coalition, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Elbaradei and the former secretary-general of the Arab League, Amr Moussa, rejected Morsi’s call for a dialogue meeting on Saturday. They insisted that Morsi first rescind his decree of Nov. 22 in which he put himself above judicial review.

Obama’s data machine

Politics, Technology, , , ,

2008’s “hope and change” morphed into “Big Data” in 2012:

In fact, the tech side was the only part of the Obama operation that could credibly be framed as a throwback to the old Hope and Change: Despite the slash-and-burn quality of the Obama reelection campaign as seen by America’s television viewers, the president’s 33 million Facebook fans “were experiencing a whole different campaign that was largely positive,” Goff explained at Harvard. “What they were experiencing was this uplifting stuff about supporting the middle class, about fighting for education, and that kind of thing.” And when you consider that Obama’s Facebook fans were themselves friends with 98 percent of Facebook users in the U.S.—“That’s more than the number of people who vote,” Goff said—then the Obamanauts can plausibly argue that, for many Obama voters, maybe 2012 wasn’t that different from 2008 after all.

Even more important, the nerd narrative gives the Obamanauts hope for the future. After their historic victory in 2008, they predicted that their candidate was so amazing that he could single-handedly transform Washington by sheer force of will. That obviously didn’t come to pass. But now they are making similar predictions—not because of their man but because of their machine. “Luckily for us, I don’t see anyone on the Republican side who understands what we did,” Bird told me in Cambridge before going on to explain not only his grand designs of electing another Democrat president in 2016, but also for turning Texas blue.

The real Chris Christie

Humor, Politics, , , , ,

He’s just as funny as you might expect. But aside from the comedy, the New Jersey governor’s conversation Thursday with Jon Stewart on the Daily Show is possibly one of the best about the role of government that’s aired on American television in quite some time:

The interview kicked off with some fellow New Jerseyan and Bruce Springsteen bonding, but quickly moved into the governor’s need for federal assistance in the wake of the hurricane and whether or not that contradicts with the overall philosophical view of conservatives. To make the point, Stewart brought up Christie’s recent rejection of the bill to set up healthcare exchanges in his state, likening an individual’s healthcare crisis to a statewide catastrophe. “If you have cancer and you don’t have insurance, that’s Hurricane Sandy,” Stewart explained.

Stewart went on to assert that Republicans seem to have empathy over only those issues that affect them directly, deferring to the “free market” on everything else, but Christie disagreed. “Republicans like to have the free market, or capitalism, run things except when they believe that government is the only way to solve the problem.”

I’m unable to embed these particular videos here, so just follow the link and watch the whole thing.

Our useless, do-nothing Congress

Politics, , , , , , , , ,

Mitch McConnellWondering what your favorite elected representatives are up to these days? Ask no more:

For public consumption, Democrats and Republicans are engaging in an increasingly elaborate show of political theater. Mr. Obama on Thursday went to the home of a middle-income family in the Virginia suburbs of Washington to press for an extension of expiring tax cuts for the middle class — and for the expiration of Bush-era tax cuts on incomes over $250,000.

“Just to be clear, I’m not going to sign any package that somehow prevents the top rate from going up for folks at the top 2 percent,” Mr. Obama said. “But I do remain optimistic that we can get something done.”

On Capitol Hill, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, moved Thursday to vote on Mr. Obama’s proposal, in his broader deficit package, to permanently diminish Congress’s control over the federal government’s statutory borrowing limit, assuming that Democrats would break ranks and embarrass the president. Instead, Democratic leaders did a count, found they had 51 solid votes, and took Mr. McConnell up on what Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate majority leader, called “a positive development.”

Mr. McConnell then filibustered his own bill, objecting to a simple-majority vote and saying a change of such magnitude requires the assent of 60 senators.

“I do believe we made history on the Senate floor today,” Mr. Durbin said.

Yes, Mr. Durbin, you did make history. But not just today: your current session of Congress conducted the most useless, unproductive, and inefficient use of time in our national legislature since at least 1947.

And no, I’m not just picking on Durbin. Most of the ongoing stalemate in both the House and Senate since 2009 has been the result of Republican obstinacy and intransigence — in other words, their complete denial of the reality that continues to hit them in the face regularly at four-year intervals. (In fact, of the last six presidential elections, Republicans have lost the popular vote five times.) So this is hardly a balanced phenomenon.

But there’s just something about being a senator or representative — from either party — that turns otherwise competent, reasonably intelligent human beings into overgrown children in suits and ties. No, Mr. Durbin, nothing you did today amounts to anything more than a slow, inexorable advancement of the news cycle. Your sole accomplishment in this regard is to fill the airtime on the cable news networks so they don’t have to spend those few hours discussing something even more frivolous than a predestined-to-fail bill proposed in the Senate. (And you probably didn’t even realize that was possible.)

As for Mr. McConnell, there are almost no words to describe his ongoing disastrous behavior. The resident senatorial turkey was too clever for his own good, bluffing that he’d like to go ahead with a vote on ending Congress’ power over the debt ceiling, then filibustering his own bill when it turned out the Democrats had a solid majority.

“Political theater” is right. But it’s a damn ugly performance, and one all Americans are paying for, whether or not we even realized we were attending the show.

A chemical nightmare in Syria?

Politics, , , , , , ,

Wired reports that the Syrian government is weaponizing “deadly nerve agents” and, as if that weren’t terrifying enough, the worse danger has not yet arrived:

Assad’s chemical corps have spent years buying up and experimenting with the chemicals needed to make the nerve agent sarin; not even an increasingly bloody civil war has kept the labs from running. Today, Syria-watchers in the U.S. government believe, these chemical engineers may be skilled enough in handling sarin that the nerve agent might remain deadly for up to a year. (“This is not a ‘move it or lose it’ situation,” one American official tells Danger Room.) And during that time, the sarin could be acquired by one of the Islamic extremists working in the loosely led rebel movement to topple the Assad regime. In other words: There’s the prospect of chemically armed terrorists emerging from the Syrian civil war.

“Uncertainties regarding this crisis are pervasive, yet at least one outcome is highly probable: terrorist acquisition of chemical weapons if the regime falls,” writes Federation of American Scientists analyst Charles Blair.

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