Adam Weinstein

Adam Weinstein

Engagement Editor

I'm Mother Jones' engagement editor and Tumblrizer, specializing in explanatory journalism and new-media reporting. As a Navy vet and ex-Iraq contractor, I'm also committed to articulating all things martial—good, bad, and weird—to new audiences.

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Adam Weinstein is Mother Jones' engagement editor, having previously served the magazine as its national security reporter and copy editor. Before that, he worked at the Wall Street Journal, the Village Voice, and the Tallahassee Democrat. He's written for the New York Times, New York magazine, GQ, and Newsweek. A Navy veteran, two-day Jeopardy champion and ex-political scientist, he also did a recession-fueled stint as a military contractor in Iraq. For more about Adam and his writing, click here.

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Daily Caller Hawks Racially Tinged Obama-Recession Conspiracy Theory

| Tue Sep. 4, 2012 9:21 AM PDT
Did BHO and his regard for minority mortgagees ruin the economy?

As conspiracy theories go, this one's The Unified Theory of Barack Obama's Disastrous Hand Ruining Everything: Before he entered politics, the president was a crafty trial lawyer whose push to get easy money for black folks in liberal Chicago caused the mortgage meltdown and Great Recession.

That's not exactly how the Daily Caller sums up its new hit piece, but it's close. Led by Neil Munro (yes, that Neil Munro), the conservative tabloid site reports that "President Barack Obama was a pioneering contributor to the national subprime real estate bubble," as the lead attorney in a "landmark 1995 mortgage discrimination lawsuit against Citibank" that sought relief for hundreds of African-American would-be borrowers—many of whom have since defaulted on their loans.

If the Caller's package was all you read, you might conclude that Obama spearheaded a move to force the poor banks to ease its lending standards to put unworthy blacks in homes they couldn't afford, thus causing the financial collapse of 2008. But as Media Matters points out today, it's a craptastic orgy of falsities:

Billionaire Heiress: Poors Should Work Harder

| Thu Aug. 30, 2012 2:19 PM PDT
Gina Rinehart, whose inheritance increases by $618 every second.

Note to American exceptionalists: Other countries have insensitive rich people, too. Australian Gina Rinehart, reportedly the world's wealthiest woman, has a message for you poor people. "In her latest column in Australian Resources and Investment magazine," Yahoo reports, "Rinehart rails against class warfare and says the non-rich should stop attacking the rich and go to work":

"There is no monopoly on becoming a millionaire," she writes. "If you're jealous of those with more money, don't just sit there and complain. Do something to make more money yourself—spend less time drinking, or smoking and socializing and more time working."

Pray, what does Rinehart do for a living? She is a "mining heiress," according to the piece.

But she would like you to know that her grandfathers "started at the bottom and worked their way to the top."

Indeed, Rinehart's wealth is derived from a family trust and an executive position in a mining company she inherited from her father after his death in 1992. Since then, she's kept very busy—pouring her wealth into conservative causes and political front groups she helped set up, not unlike the scions of the oil-enriched Koch family here in the states. She recently tried to import cheap visa workers after unionized Australian miners asked for a competitive wage, and in 2011 she sponsored an Australian tour by Lord Christopher Monckton, a noted climate-change skeptic.

Rinehart's fortune reportedly increases by $52 million Australian dollars a day. In US dollars, that works out to be about $618 every second. And she'd really like you to get off your lazy ass and pull your weight, please.

In recent weeks, Mother Jones has explored the phenomenon of mansplaining, when males patronizingly (and often incorrectly) explain things to ladies as if the latter were ignorant children. I'd like to coin a new term for bloviating lectures of the sort Rinehart gave, wherein a rich person confidently tells the non-rich what's wrong with them. While discussing this with the MoJo staff, my colleague Adam Serwer thought of libertarian hero Ayn Rand, who popularized the notion of the super rich being naturally moral. He hit on a good portmanteau: randsplaining. I rather like that. Internets, go do your thing.

This Single Chart Explains a Lot About the GOP Convention

| Thu Aug. 30, 2012 10:04 AM PDT

Via Dan Amira at New York magazine, who polled 50 RNC delegates—it's not scientific, but when your margins are this big, they mean something:

Wed Dec. 12, 2012 10:19 AM PST
Sun Oct. 7, 2012 7:13 PM PDT
Wed Oct. 3, 2012 8:35 AM PDT
Mon Oct. 1, 2012 9:48 AM PDT
Wed Sep. 19, 2012 8:19 PM PDT
Tue Sep. 11, 2012 10:29 AM PDT
Thu Aug. 30, 2012 2:19 PM PDT
Fri Aug. 24, 2012 1:18 PM PDT
Thu Aug. 2, 2012 3:00 AM PDT
Wed Jul. 18, 2012 3:00 AM PDT
Tue Jul. 10, 2012 11:45 AM PDT
Fri Jul. 6, 2012 3:00 AM PDT
Tue Jun. 12, 2012 3:35 PM PDT
Fri May. 25, 2012 3:45 AM PDT
Fri May. 18, 2012 6:00 AM PDT