Vox Sentences: This is an Obama gaffe you should actually care about

Monday recap: Obama is cozying up to Ethiopia in a really absurd way, Hillary Clinton is starting to lay out her plan for preventing catastrophic climate change, and Turkey and the US are teaming up against ISIS.

TOP NEWS

"Democratically elected"

President Obama and Ethiopian despot Hailemariam Desalegn. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

• President Obama, in a visit to Ethiopia, referred to its government as "democratically elected," which is funny, because it wasn't.

  [NYT / Peter Baker and Jacey Fortin]

• The country's May elections — which followed a major crackdown on critical media outlets and journalists, involved the death of three opposition figures, and resulted in an 100 percent vote share for the ruling party — were widely considered a sham.

  [NYT / Jacey Fortin]

• The pro-democracy advocacy group Freedom House ranks Ethiopia as "not free," with scores of 6 on civil liberties and political rights (1 is the best score, 7 is the worst).

  [Freedom House]

• Other members of the Obama administration have acknowledged this. In a press briefing, National Security Adviser Susan Rice noted, "the Prime Minister of Ethiopia was just elected with 100 percent of the vote, which I think suggests … some concern for the integrity of the electoral process."

  [White House / Susan Rice]

• When asked by Politico's Edward-Isaac Dovere if Obama thought the election was democratic, Rice just repeated, "Isaac — 100 percent."

  [Politico / Edward-Isaac Dovere]

• But the US also relies on Ethiopia in the war on terror, giving it about $800 million a year in military assistance for helping fight the Somali Islamist group Al-Shabaab.

  [LA Times / Robyn Dixon]

The 700% Club

Clinton at a house party on July 26, 2015 in Carroll, Iowa. (Scott Olson/Getty Images)

• Hillary Clinton has released the first in a series of climate proposals, focusing on increasing renewable energy production.

  [Hillary Clinton]

• She wants renewable energy to produce 33 percent of the US's electricity in 2027 — up from the 25 percent Obama's climate plan would get. She wants to increase solar capacity by 700 percent.

  [Vox / Brad Plumer]

• However, electricity accounts for only 38 percent of the US's carbon dioxide emissions, and are an even smaller part of the picture when you throw in methane and other non-carbon greenhouse gasses. A comprehensive global warming plan needs more.

  [Vox / Brad Plumer]

• Some parts of her climate agenda are still unclear; she hasn't said if she supports the Keystone XL pipeline, or lifting the ban on exporting crude oil, or allowing offshore drilling in the arctic.

  [Politico / Elana Schor]

• For more, see Brad Plumer's piece on the plan here.

  [Vox / Brad Plumer]

The next battle against ISIS

Turkish riot police after a suicide bombing, suspected to have been carried out by ISIS, on July 20. (Gokhan Sahin/Getty Images)

• Turkey and the US are developing a plan to provide air support to Syrian rebels as they attempt to retake a strip of Syrian land on the Turkish border from ISIS.

  [Reuters / Nick Tattersall and Phil Stewart]

• The goal is to create a "safe zone" for Syrian refugees that could be controlled by "relatively moderate" Syrian rebels. Turkey is currently dealing with nearly 2 million Syrian refugees, many of whom could return to Syria if this plan works.

  [NYT / Anne Barnard, Michael Gordon, and Eric Schmitt]

• After months of resistance to playing a more active role in the fight against ISIS, Turkey abruptly reversed course last week, sending troops and giving US bombers access to air bases, among other measures.

  [NYT / Ceylan Yeginsu and Helene Cooper]

• Turkey's role is complicated by the fact that Kurdish separatists, who've fought Turkey for years, have been key in combatting ISIS.

  [Washington Post / Ishaan Tharoor]

• Turkey combined strikes against ISIS with strikes against the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) last week, demonstrating that its opposition to ISIS doesn't amount to a tacit alliance with the Kurds, and disrupting a fragile peace with the PKK.

  [NYT / Ceylan Yeginsu]

MISCELLANEOUS

You've got to read Matthew Yglesias's definitive debunking of the idea that robots are about to take all of our jobs. [Vox / Matthew Yglesias]

• Meet Victoria Coates, the art historian who is also Ted Cruz's top foreign policy adviser.

  [National Journal / Nora Caplan-Bricker]

• In schools abroad, the American Revolution is mainly taught as a mildly interesting prelude to the French Revolution.

  [Quartz / Adam Epstein]

• This argument that Joaquin Phoenix's character in The Master is a dog — like, a literal canine animal — is way more persuasive than it has any right to be.

  [Senses of Cinema / Daniel Fairfax]

• Operation Underground Railroad aims to rescue underage victims of sex trafficking. But are they doing more harm than good?

  [Foreign Policy / Thomas Stackpole]

VERBATIM

"Cats act as if they've read every Internet comment in the world, treating humans with the appropriate mix of fear and disgust." [SB Nation / Grant Bisbee]

• "NO. He is a LIVE JACK RUSSELL TERRIER. His eyes are fathomless pools of knowledge reflecting all the pathos of great literature."

  [The Toast / Abbey Fenbert]

• "This April, as undergraduates strolled along the street outside his modest office on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles, the mathematician Terence Tao mused about the possibility that water could spontaneously explode."

  [NYT Mag / Gareth Cook]

• "I try to avoid any book that praises instantaneous electronic communication, although I might make an exception for something pornographic."

  [NYT / William Vollman]

• "Cervantes also expressed his support for Ohio Gov. John Kasich. But later that evening, the Trump campaign forwarded POLITICO an all-caps email from Cervantes that said, 'I, RAUL CERVANTES, DO SUPPORT MR DONALD TRUMP FOR PRESIDENT. RAUL CERVANTES.'"

  [Politico / Cate Martel]

WATCH THIS

• Why babies in medieval paintings look like ugly old men

  [Vox / Estelle Caswell and Phil Edwards]

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