Vox Sentences: Our interview with Obama

1. We talked to Obama

(Zackary Canepari / Vox)

• Vox's Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias interviewed President Obama a couple weeks ago. You can see the videos here.

  [Vox / Ezra Klein and Matthew Yglesias]

• In it, Obama called for an end to the "routine use" of the filibuster, a marked contrast to his position as a US senator.

  [Vox / Ezra Klein]

• Obama also reiterated his call for a Constitutional amendment enabling stricter regulation of campaign spending and fundraising.

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

• He came very close to endorsing "all-payer rate-setting," a sweeping health care reform that is "nearly identical" to single-payer.

  [Vox / Sarah Kliff]

• He claimed that his first two years — with the passage of the stimulus, Obamacare, and Dodd-Frank — were the most productive policymaking period since LBJ.

  [The Guardian / Tom McCarthy]

• His take on the politics of race, post-Ferguson: "over the long term, I'm pretty optimistic, and the reason is because this country just becomes more and more of a hodgepodge of folks."

  [Vox / Ezra Klein]

• One of his more striking lines on foreign policy, in response to accusations he doesn't understand the world's threats: "I get a thick book full of death, destruction, strife, and chaos. That's what I take with my morning tea."

  [Vox / Matthew Yglesias]

• Generally, his comments on foreign affairs were defined more by what he wanted to avoid (war, endless occupation, economic disruption) than what he wants to achieve. And that may not be a bad thing.

  [Vox / Matthew Yglesias]

• He also emphasized that the media tends to hype terrorism into a bigger threat than it actually is.

  [The Hill / Justin Sink]

2. Not-so-massive resistance

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore testifies in front of Congress in 2004. (Matthew Cavanaugh / Getty Images News)

• Same-sex marriage is now legal in Alabama.

  [NYT / Alan Blinder and Richard Pérez-Peña]

• But up to 50 of its 67 counties are refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

  [Human Rights Campaign / Maureen McCarty]

• That said, marriage licenses are being issued in the counties where Birmingham and Montgomery, the state's two biggest cities, are located.

  [BuzzFeed / Chris Geidner and Tasneem Nashrulla]

• The issue is that Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore has ordered probate judges to ignore a federal court ruling enacting marriage equality.

  [BuzzFeed / Chris Geidner]

• But Moore has no authority to do that; this is a federal matter, and neither the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals nor the Supreme Court have opted to intervene.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• You may remember Moore from his previous stint as Chief Justice, which ended in 2003 when he refused to obey a court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state Supreme Court building and was removed from office.

  [CNN]

• Moore's tactics are earning comparisons to former Alabama Gov. George Wallace's attempts to defy federal court rulings on desegregating schools in the 1960s.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

3. Bonkers anti-vaccine theory confirmed to be bonkers

Smiling during your HPV shot is optional. (Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

• A big new study suggests that the HPV vaccine doesn't spur teenage girls to have more sex (or at least unsafe sex).

  [USA Today / Kim Painter]

• More specifically: "HPV vaccination was not associated with increases in STIs in a large cohort of females, suggesting that vaccination is unlikely to promote unsafe sexual activity."

  [Journal of the American Medical Association / Anupam Jena, Dana Goldman, Seth Seabury]

• Upon its introduction nearly a decade ago, the vaccine was widely attacked for allegedly encouraging promiscuity.

  [Slate / Meghan O'Rourke]

• The vaccine was a point of contention in the 2012 Republican presidential primary, with Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) attacking Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX) for requiring it of Texas' sixth-grade girls; she claimed the vaccine could cause mental retardation.

  [NYT / Trip Gabriel and Denise Grady]

• There's absolutely no evidence that's true and never has been; the vaccine has an excellent safety record and the American Academy of Pediatrics and the CDC recommend all girls receive it.

  [PolitiFact / Angie Drobnic Holan and Louis Jacobson]

• Perry's mandate was overturned by the state legislature; currently only Virginia and DC require HPV vaccination for girls entering sixth grade.

  [Kaiser Family Foundation]

• Only 33.4 percent of girls and 13.9 percent of boys ages 13 to 17 had received the recommended three doses in 2013.

  [CDC ]

• Contrary to popular belief that it's meant for girls, the CDC recommends 11-to-12-year-old boys get the vaccine, too.

  [CDC ]

4. Misc.

• Here's an intriguing argument that the huge growth in the US prison population wasn't due to the drug war, but instead due to overzealous prosecutors in all areas of crime.

  [Slate / Leon Neyfakh]

• Jack White's rider includes remarkably specific instructions for how to make his guacamole (he's a leave-the-pit-in kind of guy).

  [Vocativ / Shane Dixon Kavanaugh]

• There's a town in Brazil called Americana that was settled by ex-Confederates after the US Civil War; slavery was still legal in Brazil.

  [Vice / Mimi Dwyer]

• Here's some psychological research suggesting that rational argumentation is futile, the Enlightment was a lie, we are merely apes desperately grasping after something that could be even possibly called "truth," etc.

  [BBC / Tom Stafford]

• King v. Burwell could wipe out health coverage for millions — which one of its plaintiffs says she didn't realize, and doesn't want to happen.

  [Mother Jones / Stephanie Mencimer]

5. Verbatim

• "We keep creating saviors whom we expect to single-handedly restore lost values. Then we lash out at them when they inevitably fall short."

  [New Republic / Eve Fairbanks]

• "All that is solid in physical attraction often melts into an air of complacency, to paraphrase Karl Marx."

  [The Kernel / Miles Klee]

• "I can say that most people who say 'I'm ready to die' really mean I'm ready to kill."

  [Abram de Swaan to New York / Claire McCartney]

• "I am always skeptical of arguments that claim that the solution is to do what we would enjoy more anyway."

  [Fredrik deBoer]

• "Insofar as there’s no such thing as innate aptitude, just hard work and grit — then by not being gritty enough, I’m a monster who’s complicit in the death of a population greater than that of Canada."

  [Slate Star Codex / Scott Alexander]

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