Ezra Klein: Let"s Make Media Vegetables More Appealing

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Ezra Klein: Let"s Make Media Vegetables More Appealing

Let"s Legalize Polygamy

Let"s Legalize Polygamy
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(Newser) – The stars of Sister Wives essentially won decriminalization for polygamy in Utah last week—even as TLC released another reality show, Breaking the Faith, that focused on the dark side of the practice. “Whether or not a white-washed, clean-cut version of plural marriage could in theory legally exist, in practice it does not,” writes Mark Goldfeder at CNN. Studies show that it tends to create abusive relationships. That means states like Utah are saddled with “an unregulated, dangerous, and harmful situation, where the strong prey upon the weak.”

But Goldfeder isn’t advocating banning polygamy, an option the Supreme Court, “perhaps unwittingly” took off the table by striking down the Defense of Marriage Act. No, he thinks we should just legalize it. “Decriminalizing polygamy would only make abuses even harder to catch,” he argues, but “recognition would enable law enforcement to crack down on abuse.” Suddenly a town clerk could block a union that looked coercive or inappropriate. In the light of day, we could build the “clean-cut version of American polygamy” that supporters imagine. Click for the full column.

Lifestyle from Newser

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Teen Kills 4; Judge LITERALLY Lets Him Off Because He is Rich! (109 replies)

Teen Kills 4; Judge LITERALLY Lets Him Off Because He is Rich! (109 replies)
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posted on Dec, 11 2013 @ 04:28 PM

reply to post by TechUnique

I’m not sorry that this happens, it will…..persist the next 1000 years.

If I need something, I just take it. If you know you won’t be caught.. do it.

its between your God and Others’.

whoever is the stronger, benefits..

and for you that are smitten by this…. please get over it.

BTW, thats close to the truth, I don’t do that.
That’s why I make good choices, and I live in a place half the size of
most garages, barely have food, or a job_ to pay salary to a judge with my
taxes that would be better used for the gasoline to burn them at a stake!

edit on 11-12-2013 by AK907ICECOLD because: (no reason given)

Now before i get yelled at:
Its because I have a conscience, some do not. Plain and simple.
without mass amount of fund you and I will never see the kind of justice.

edit on 11-12-2013 by AK907ICECOLD because: I’m ranting pissed

AboveTopSecret.com Hot Topics

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all! lets watch the realtime Ison journey meet the sun..provide by NASA! (432 replies)

all! lets watch the realtime Ison journey meet the sun..provide by NASA! (432 replies)
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posted on Nov, 28 2013 @ 07:29 AM

Oooh, thanks Cheesy!

All things considered so far, I’m going to go with my gut on ISON and think it’s going to survive perihelion. It’s the brightness I’m not sure about, and it doesn’t help that there’s so many varying predictions out there based on this, that & the other. It would be great if everyone could just say “Dunno, but we’ll find out!” instead of tossing out guess after guess.

And forget the popcorn, Nyiah’s cooking up some BBQ chicken for Thanksgiving perihelion watch. The only thing I’m missing out of game day foods is the freakin’ nachos (i forgot)

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Lets Deny Ignorance: The Not So Doom-y Truth About Comet ISON (180 replies)

Lets Deny Ignorance: The Not So Doom-y Truth About Comet ISON (180 replies)
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Let’s talk about comet ISON, shall we? More specifically.. I want to discuss the myths and misinformation that are plaguing the interwebz about Cheesy’s favorite comet. I’ve seen this stuff spewed on Youtube, and the misinformation is bleeding over into the forums right here on ATS.

Let’s deny a little ignorance:

1. NASA is lying about comet ISON and hiding the doom-y, gloomy truth from the public.

There’s a scene from the 1998 movie Deep Impact where the president, played by Morgan Freeman, reveals a terrible truth… the U.S. government has known for over a year that a doomsday comet is headed straight towards Earth, with Hollywood CGI destruction sure to follow.

While dramatic, the scenario is also extremely implausible. On any given evening, amateur astronomers are sweeping the skies using telescopes mounted in backyard observatories that are the envy of many major universities. This effort to discover comets is collaborative and worldwide. If the “Big One” were headed our way, even the likes of Morgan Freeman couldn’t keep it secret.

As soon as an object is discovered, the information is released to the world-wide community of professional, as well as amateur astronomers. There is a rush to confirm, observe, and record data about the object in question and then the data is compiled to calculate the size and orbital path. More observations, means a more accurate picture of the object.

So that public that NASA is ‘hiding the truth’ from… are part of the whole process from discovery, to observations, to calculations. How can it be hidden from the very people doing the legwork?

When a discovery is made — be it by amateur or professional — the first task is to gain enough observations of the object to ascertain its orbit. Once again, we see the international collaborative methods employed by modern science. Already, the cosmic cat’s out of the bag as observatories worldwide make follow up measurements. There are no secrets about Comet ISON that hundreds of astronomers could keep quiet

It isn’t possible to hide this kind of information from the public because of the collaborative and world wide effort in finding and tracking objects. NASA funds the Minor Planet Center, which is where objects are reported, data is collected, and results made public. NASA actually has surprisingly little do with any of it, which is another very common misconception.

2. Comet ISON has other objects in tow.

One currently circulating claim states that Comet ISON has “companions” that have been imaged trailing it. While comets do indeed fragment on occasion, the culprits that can be seen in the .gif animation circulating the internet are easily identified by photography experts as hot pixels in the camera

One youtube user, is a fan of taking images and adjusting the contrast to show ‘hidden’ objects within or around the comet. He is doing nothing more than enhancing these hot pixels and other photographic artifacts/anomalies and lying to the viewers about what he has supposedly ‘exposed’, when in truth…. they are nothing more than common findings in these types of images. You can find anything if you look hard enough… and apparently.. people really want to find that doom to up their views on teh youtubez, even if it means lying to the viewers and propagating ignorance and fear.

If and when ISON fragments… we will certainly know about it with so many dedicated astronomers and other sky-watchers out there keeping tabs on all things ISON.

3. Comet ISON is going to hit us/Comet ISON is Niburu/The debris field will wreak havoc on earth

Scientists have defined this comet’s orbit very precisely, and it won’t hit Earth. So, no Comet ISON is not Nibiru — that ‘tenth planet’ destined to destroy Earth that conspiracy lovers can’t seem to let go of.

The debris — which might create a very nice meteor shower — is made up of extremely tiny grains of dust, no more than a few microns wide. Since they will be hitting Earth’s atmosphere at speeds up to 200,000 km/hr (125,000 miles per hour), the particles will burn up.

Over 6400 observations have been used in calculating ISON’s orbit which leaves a very small margin of error. This data is obtained from professional and amateur astronomers around the world, so it is NOT NASA fudging the numbers, since they aren’t even NASA’s numbers in the first place.

The debris field of dust left in the comet’s wake, will harm no one and will not cause any damage. We pass through debris fields of past comets many times a year and one can enjoy several annual meteor showers as a result.

Source

So, there you have it, folks. ISON is just a comet, it poses no danger to earth, its not niburu, it has nothing in tow, NASA is not lying, and it will pass much like Elenin and the others… without incident.

Please stop propagating ignorance and fear mongering.

edit on 26pmTue, 26 Nov 2013 16:35:04 -060013TuesdayTuesday1311 by daryllyn because: (no reason given)

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Let"s talk about failure (and success)

The most refreshing thing I’ve read recently is someone’s ‘anti-resume’, their account of the bumps in their career

Monica Byrne experienced the kind of success this summer that most writers fantasize about. A publisher bought her first book (The Girl in the Road, it comes out in the US and UK next year) and paid well for it. Her play What Every Girl Should Know was selected for New York’s Fringe Festival and is now showing at theatres around America. As if that’s not enough, she was also awarded a North Carolina Arts Council fellowship.

Yet, in the midst of all these accolades, Monica posted what she calls her “anti-resume” on her blog. It was her way of reminding friends, fans and aspiring writers what her life has really been like in recent years:

Rejection is just part of the landscape for all beginning artists … Some think that there are just some pre-ordained Golden Children who Get Everything, and that’s really not the case – at least, it hasn’t been mine.

She saved the many “thanks but no thanks” letters from literary publications, fellowships and theatres she submitted to over the years. When she looked back through them all, she figured out that her “success rate” was a mere 3%. She was even turned down from three creative writing master’s programs.

I wish more people would make anti-resumes.

It’s refreshing in an era where we mostly see our friends’ and acquaintances’ triumphs: their resumes and promotions via LinkedIn, their television chef worthy dinners on Pintrest and their smiling family and vacation photos on Facebook. We are all PR spin masters about our lives.

Yet anyone who has ever been in the work world and certainly relationships knows that you often learn the most from your mistakes and setbacks.

One aspect of my resume that often gets people’s attention is that I’m a Rhodes Scholar. What they don’t see is that I also applied to two other very prestigious fellowships and didn’t get them. I was a finalist. As Dale Earnhardt liked to say, “second place is just the first loser”.

I didn’t save all my rejection letters, but there were certainly points in my life where my application to success ratio was 20:1 or worse. I went through a phase where I seemed great at getting interviews at financial firms, but couldn’t seem to land an actual job offer. Call it the career equivalent of “forever a bridesmaid never a bride”. I was forever shortlisted.

When I started out in job world, they would still send you rejection letters in the mail or worse, call you on the phone. I once got one of those “we don’t have an offer for you” calls when I was in Heathrow airport, which probably worked out as my red eyes could be interpreted as weary traveler syndrome. The form emails sent out today seem less personal somehow, although they’re also harder to do anything fun with. Some college friends once filled a bulletin board with rejection letters, turning it into a game to point out the ones with the worst wording.

Sometimes failure is also your own doing. There’s a trend in job interviews to ask people about their biggest mistakes.

I think of the story of Marjorie Scardino, the former CEO of Pearson, the world’s largest publishing company. She has been listed on a number of most powerful women in business lists.

When she interviewed for a managing director job at the Economist in 1985, arguably the start of her CEO track, she basically told them to hire her because she had just finished running a weekly newspaper in Savannah, Georgia that folded. That paper won a Pulitzer prize in 1984, but commercially, it wasn’t viable. She and her husband sold it for $ 1. Scardino outlined the lessons she learned from the failure and used all her bravado to tell her interviewers that she never makes the same mistakes twice.

She got the job. Years later, she told the Telegraph, “I learnt then that you can fail and you don’t die.”

Kim Ruyle, a human resources manager for three decades and president of Inventive Talent Consulting, put it this way:

The difference between successful people and less successful people isn’t the number of failures they’ve had, but what they do with them.

At the recent New Yorker festival, New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson was asked about her biggest mistake in her career. I half expected her to give one of those ho-hum answers. When you work in the news industry long enough, you almost always regret a headline or wording in some story.

Instead, she paused for a few seconds and said that it’s definitely been the New York Times’ coverage leading up to the Iraq War and the failure to question the weapons of mass destruction. She was Washington bureau chief at the time. It’s made her – and many others in her newsroom – a lot more skeptical of government.

Some people’s mistakes are more public than others’, and some failures are more damaging to careers or personal lives. But as a society, it’s not ideal to only stress our successes. As the theme song from the 1990s TV show Friends goes, sometimes “it hasn’t been your day, your week, your month, or even your year”. We’ve all been there.

The work world today is about reinventing yourself constantly, whether after a layoff or to stay relevant now that there’s less job security in many fields. There’s also an increasing trend of freelancing or other “self employed” type work. Trial and error is part of the process. There will be failures and rejections.

Perhaps it’s too much to hope that anti-resumes become a trend, but often, they’re a lot more telling than what’s on the real CV.

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Let"s talk about failure (and success)

We’re Running Out of Infectious Diseases, So Let’s Make A Cancer Vaccine

Dave Mihalovic, Prevent Disease
Waking Times

The title is utterly absurd, I know, but not if you’re a vaccine manufacturer looking for another cash cow. Treating cancer with a vaccine has been a wet dream of scientists for decades. It’s not often you have a disease that affects 50 percent of the population at some point in their lives. However, just like every other disease, cancer is not something that can be treated with chemicals and foreign DNA–a concept few vaccine scientists will ever admit to. Vaccines that attempt to thwart cancer cells will always prove better in theory than in practice, and at least some researchers are finally understanding why.

The HPV cervical cancer vaccine is a perfect example of how scientists use a lack of evidence-based medicine through unproven, unjustified and manipulated data to promote pharmaceutical intervention for a disease they fully know is impossible to prevent through this unscientific approach.

That never comes as a big surprise to most advocates in the natural health community, since no vaccine has ever been fully evaluated in humans to assess long-term health risks. HPV vaccines are no exception.

However, scientists are again being criticized for their persistence in engineering additional vaccines for a variety of cancers they know will never work in a practical sense. The idea is always supported by ongoing trials of so-called therapeutic cancer vaccines, which effectively shrink tumors in cell cultures in the lab, but it takes scientists a few years to figure out that the human body is not a few cell cultures in a lab.

When every single one of these promising vaccine candidates, including ones against melanoma and lymphoma, are tested in patients, they always fail.

Just five years ago, researchers from the University of Missouri and Imperial College London found evidence suggesting why vaccines directed against the virus that causes AIDS and many cancers do not work.

Another researcher, Willem Overwijk, an associate professor in the department of melanoma medical oncology at MD Anderson Cancer Center, and his colleagues found that instead of zeroing in on the tumor, vaccines that were injected in mice started to attack the adjuvant (designed to generate antibodies against bacteria and viruses) inside the vaccines. “While the vaccine successfully activates T cells, those T cells then circle back to the injection site where the mineral oil is still sitting under the skin,” says Overwijk. “Very few T cells make it to the tumor; they prefer to go back to the vaccination site.”

Essentially, he says, the vaccine is competing with the tumor for the attention of the immune cells, and the vaccine, because of its powerful ability to stimulate the defensive cells, tends to be more dominant. “That explains why we find nice levels of T cells in blood after vaccination but no correlation with a response against tumors in patients,” says Overwijk.

Results of another study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncologyalso found that vaccination does not benefit patients with cancer.

Prof. Alexander M.M. Eggermont of the Institut Gustave Roussy, Villejuif, Paris-Sud, and Universite Paris-Sud, Kremlin Bicetre, France and Coordinator of this study says, “These results clearly indicate that we do not fully comprehend the impact, on the whole, of multiple vaccinations. The effects of such vaccinations might well be detrimental as was clear at the time of the interim analysis that stopped this trial…”

But it seems this medical mirage of treating cancer with a vaccine will just not end, as trials have recently begun to use an anti-cancer vaccine implant for melanoma. The experimental implant is claimed to have worked on lab mice in 2009 according the researchers.

“It is rare to get a new technology tested in the laboratory and moved into human clinical trials so quickly,” said Glenn Dranoff, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and part of the research team at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University.

The device releases a protein that attracts immune cells and sends them out armed to hunt down and kill tumor cells. Again the theoretical approach will send scientists back to the drawing board when they realize that antigens will never bind to any tumor being targeted through an implant that bypasses the respiratory tract, which is the only established mechanism to initiate antibodies through a natural immune response via secretory IgA. This antibody plays a critical role in immunity. More IgA is produced in mucosal linings than all other types of antibodies combined and it’s one of the reasons that vaccines don’t work. You will never stimulate an appropriate immune response to any foreign entity through bypassing the mucosal linings of the body. It’s a simple concept, yet vaccine scientists refuse to acknowledge it.

The Province of Nova Scotia in Canada is lending $ 5 million to clinical-stage biotech Immunovaccine, to develop another vaccine for ovarian and brain cancer due out next year. The Halifax based company is also leveraging its platform in the development of anthrax vaccines (just to give you an idea where their heads are at).

Even experimental breast cancer vaccines have been developed by prestigious cancer centers such as John Hopkins. Many patients have died through experimental breast cancer vaccine trials on behalf of John Hopkins. The vaccine didn’t work for Peggy Murphy from Lancaster County, Pa and she often wondered why before she passed away as medical officials gave her false hope as they always do.

In fact, vaccines are being developed for almost every major cancer that exists. Researchers are working on vaccines for lung cancer, colon cancer, and even organ cancers. The madness doesn’t stop there. Scientists are even attempting to target a molecule found in 90 percent of all cancers, so they can create a universal cancer vaccine for any cancer at all.

The truth is that no cancer vaccine will ever defeat cancer. Never! Every research group developing these vaccines has a fundamental lack of understanding of what cancer is. Moreover, they consistently ignore biological mechanisms which underlie the foundation of both specific and non-specific components in immunity which will always govern adaptive immunity. Consequently, 99% of scientific research in the area of vaccines and disease is unfounded and based on long-standing myths that science continues to state as fact.

About the Author

Dave Mihalovic is a Naturopathic Doctor who specializes in vaccine research, cancer prevention and a natural approach to treatment.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of WakingTimes or its staff.

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Waking Times

We’re Running Out of Infectious Diseases, So Let’s Make A Cancer Vaccine

Ladydrawers: Let"s Go Shopping

The Ladydrawers’ year-long look at the global garment and sex trades began in August with an introductory strip called Fast Fashion. Our second strip from Julia Gfrörer and Anne Elizabeth Moore begins where, ideally, the production line should end: at H&M, Zara, Forever 21, and other fast-fashion retail stores. That’s where the wear and tear of sped-up production is clear, if you just talk to the people whose job it is to put the clothes out on the floor every day. 

Of course, the monstrous second-hand industry in the US means first-run retail stores are not the real end of the production line, but Gfrörer and Moore will be back next month to tell you more about labor and economics in the cast-off garment trade. As always, you can catch all the strips from the very beginning right here.

Click here to open comic full-size in new window.

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Ladydrawers: Let"s Go Shopping

AN ESCAPE HATCH FOR OBAMA ON SYRIA? – Obama heads to the Hill – Issa to Cantor: Let"s vote again on Amash amdt. – O"Donnell to Weiner on primary eve: What"s wrong with you? - trivia

By Scott Wong (swong@politico.com or @scottwongDC)

SYRIA ESCAPE HATCH? OBAMA’S ACCIDENTAL DIPLOMACY – POLITICO’s Josh Gerstein has the latest developments on Syria: “President Barack Obama has stumbled into a possible resolution of the Syria showdown, after an act of apparently accidental U.S. diplomacy seemed to deliver a potential way to wriggle out of his political predicament. Secretary of State John Kerry suggested at a London news conference Monday morning that the crisis could be defused if Syrian President Bashar Assad surrendered his chemical weapons to an international force. The Russians jumped on the idea and Monday evening Obama was sounding open to the proposal.

‘This could potentially be a significant breakthrough,’ Obama told NBC. ‘But we have to be skeptical because this is not how we’ve seen them operate over the last couple of years.’

– “With members of Congress clamoring for a chance to avoid a vote to authorize military action, the idea has a certain undeniable political convenience for the administration because it could avert the possibility of a political loss that could damage Obama’s reputation and to the U.S.’s global standing. The fast-moving developments meant the only thing that seemed certain Monday was that giving the diplomats time to work the issue could forestall an American strike and make it difficult for the White House to demand lawmakers take a tough vote to approve military action against Syria. … But in his round of interviews with network TV anchors Monday, Obama seemed eager to turn the lemons into lemonade, casting the development as a combination of his threat to use force and his own personal engagement with Russian President Vladimir Putin.” http://politi.co/15NYZBB

BREAKING … AP: “Syria says it has accepted Russia’s proposal to place its chemical weapons under international control for subsequent dismantling. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said Tuesday after meeting with Russian parliament speaker that his government quickly agreed to the Russian initiative to ‘derail the U.S. aggression.’ Meanwhile, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Russia is now working with Syria to prepare a detailed plan of action, which will be presented shortly. Lavrov said that Russia will then be ready to finalize the plan together with U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.” http://bit.ly/15MQwZm

WAS A SYRIAN-RUSSIAN DEAL in the works before Kerry’s off-the-cuff remarks? Joshua Keating in Slate: “Obama … suggested that he had discussed such a proposal–or something similar to it–during the two leader’s brief meeting at last week’s G-20 summit. (Remember, plans for a full one-on-one between the two leaders were scuttled following the Edward Snowden affair.) … [A] lot of folks are also giving a second look today to a Haaretz article from Sept. 1 – little noticed at the time – in which journalist veteran Israeli journalist Barak Ravid suggested a potential deal was in the works that sounds very much like the one being discussed today.” http://slate.me/16g1NEI

FRONT-PAGE HEADLINES – NYT 2-col. lead: “OBAMA BACKS IDEA FOR SYRIA TO CEDE CONTROL OF ARMS: Russian Plan on Chemical Weapons – ‘It’s Possible if It’s Real,’ He Says.” WaPo: “Syria Welcomes Russian plan to avert U.S. strike: CALL TO GIVE UP CHEMICAL ARSENAL: Obama cautions but sees potential breakthrough.” L.A. Times: “U.S. weighs Russia’s offer on Syrian arms: A call for chemical weapons to be placed in U.N. control gives Obama an alternative to a military strike.” Boston Globe 5-col. banner hed: “Talk swirls of a peaceful resolution: Russia, Syria pounce on Kerry’s remarks about surrendering arms; Obama cautious.”  USA Today: “Obama steps back on Syria: Russia pushes plan to have Assad give up chemical weapons.” WSJ: “Obama Push to Hit Syria Takes Detour.”

OBAMA HEADS TO THE HILL – POLITICO’s Carrie Budoff Brown explains Obama’s thinking as he lunches with Senate Democrats and Republicans in separate meetings today: “President Barack Obama will attempt Tuesday to reset — again — his Syria strategy after a week of conflicting statements, mixed messages and unanswered questions. The best that Obama can hope for, according to one senior administration official, is that lawmakers and voters give his argument a second chance. The White House will know quickly whether Obama succeeded — or failed — based on what it hears from Capitol Hill. The president, in a rare flash of insecurity, told NBC News Monday that even he wasn’t confident that he could win congressional approval for military strikes. The use-of-force resolution looks dead in the House, increasingly doubtful in the Senate and stubbornly unpopular with the public. Between the prime time address and a trip to Capitol Hill earlier Tuesday to meet separately with Senate Democrats and Republicans, Obama will get a pair of the high-profile opportunities to shift the trend. ‘We’ve got a lot of cards to play still,’ the official said.

– “But it won’t be easy. Democrats and Republicans say they need Obama to make a clear case for why it’s in America’s national security interests to strike Syria and what will be achieved by the attack. They want to know how limited strikes wouldn’t drag the country into another prolonged military action.” http://politi.co/15NYojh

9 TONIGHT: Obama speaks to the nation on Syria in a primetime address from the East Room.

SENATE MAJORITY LEADER HARRY REID has delayed a procedural vote on an increasingly unpopular Syria resolution that had been set for Wednesday, USA Today’s Susan Page reports. “Six senators, including five Republicans and one Democrat, announced Monday they would vote against a resolution authorizing the use of force — a strong indication that the administration’s efforts to build bipartisan support have been ineffective. The Senate was scheduled to vote Wednesday on a procedural motion to begin formal debate on the resolution, but Reid announced late Monday the vote would be delayed in order to buy the president more time to make his case to senators and the public.” http://usat.ly/17LUMMm

– Meanwhile, Syrian protesters welcomed returning lawmakers to Capitol Hill, Roll Call’s Hannah Hess reports: http://bit.ly/18LNs1G

– Members of the Congressional Black Caucus are still undecided about whether to back the Syria strike resolution after meeting with Obama and National Security Adviser Susan Rice at the White House, Ginger Gibson reports: http://politi.co/19DyGuW

** A message from the Reagan Presidential Foundation: Registration has opened for “The Reagan National Defense Forum: Building Peace Through Strength Through 2025.” Speakers include Secretary Chuck Hagel, General Martin Dempsey, Secretary John McHugh, Admiral Jonathan Greenert, SASC Chairman Carl Levin and HASC Chairman “Buck” McKeon.

ISSA TO CANTOR: LET’S VOTE AGAIN ON AMASH AMENDMENT – In a letter going out this morning, House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) urges Majority Leader Eric Cantor to hold another vote on legislation authored by Rep. Justin Amash that would defund an NSA program that collects Americans’ phone records. Issa previously voted against it, but he’s had a change of heart since new revelations that communications of Americans had been gathered in the data-collection programs.  The chairman calls for moving legislation to the floor – including language from the Amash amendment – “that both increases the transparency of the Agency’s programs and reinforces the constitutional protections of our citizens.” Read the letter here:  http://bit.ly/1fUptjw

HUDDLE FIRST LOOK: DCCC VIDEO: GOP LOST AUGUST RECESS – The DCCC is out with a new video this morning highlighting the backlash that House Republicans faced during the August recess. The video, called “Republicans Lost August,” includes local coverage of protests, rallies, and events where Republicans felt the heat on issues ranging from immigration and social security to ethics investigations.

DCCC Chairman Steve Israel will reinforce that message at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast this morning and will discuss how the fiscal debates this fall only reinforce all the problems House Republicans have with voters.  Watch the video here: http://bit.ly/13FE7J2

GOOD TUESDAY MORNING, September 10, 2013, and welcome to The Huddle, your play-by-play preview of the day’s congressional news. Send tips, suggestions, comments, complaints and corrections to swong@politico.com. If you don’t already, please follow me on Twitter @scottwongDC.

My new followers include @mkinzel and @suraechinn.

TODAY IN CONGRESS – The Senate meets at 10 a.m. and recess from 12:30 until 2:15 p.m. for party caucuses lunches with President Barack Obama. The House also meets at 10 with first votes expected between 1:30 and 2:30 p.m. and last votes between 4:15 and 5 p.m. on legislation including the National Association of Registration Agents and Brokers Reform Act and the Science Laureates of the United States Act.

AROUND THE HILL – W.H. Chief of Staff Denis McDonough meets with the House Democratic Caucus at 8:50 a.m. in HVC-215, followed by a media availability with Leader Nancy Pelosi. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse holds a news conference on climate change at 9:30 a.m. in the Senate Swamp. Speaker John Boehner and other GOP leaders hold a post-conference media availability at 10 a.m. in HC-8. Sen. Whitehouse and Reps. Chris Van Hollen, Rosa DeLauro and Jan Schakowsky denounce tea party efforts to sabotage Obamacare at 10:15 a.m. in SVC 200. Sen. Jeff Flake and others speak on the farm bill at 10:45 a.m. in the Senate Swamp. Reps. Michael Grimm, Earl Blumenauer and Jim McGovern speak on transit parity benefits at 11 a.m. at the House Triangle. Also at 11, Reps. Thomas Massie and Jared Polis speak on the conflicts in state and federal laws governing industrial hemp farming in Cannon 122.

Sens. Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee speak at the “Exempt America from ObamaCare” rally from noon to 2 p.m. on the West Lawn of the Capitol. Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer holds a pen and pad briefing at 1 p.m. in H-144. The Property Casualty Insurers Association of American host Reps. Dennis Ross and Bill Pascrell at a closed congressional briefing on how to prepare for natural disasters, at 1 p.m. in Cannon 121. Rep. Ron Desantis and Sen. David  Vitter speak on OPM subsidies within Obamacare at 2 p.m. at the House Triangle. Congressional leaders hold a Gold Medal Ceremony honoring the four girls killed in the 1963 Birmingham church bombing, at 3 p.m. in Statuary Hall.

BEFORE PRIMARY DAY, LAWRENCE O’DONNELL ASKS WEINER: WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU? –   Corinne Lestch writes for the New York Daily News: “Anthony Weiner took a beating on the night before the mayoral primary from MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell, who repeatedly asked the scandal-scarred Democratic candidate, ‘What is wrong with you?’ The TV host turned his show, ‘The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell,’ into a combative, bizarre, not-quite-therapy session Monday night when he barraged Weiner with vague questions, barely letting the mayoral hopeful get a word in edgewise. … After an awkward pause, Weiner replied that he didn’t understand the question. ‘I mean, what is wrong with you that you cannot seem to imagine a life without elective office?’ The two men began arguing, and O’Donnell waffled between showing disgust and tolerance for Weiner’s sexting scandals, which plunged him far behind the other candidates in the polls.” http://nydn.us/1eyGORf Watch here: http://youtu.be/mVSOe-sx2gw

THE ROGERS REPORT: HOUSE GOP MAY RESURRECT LEGISLATIVE GAMBIT ON OBAMACARE – “House Republicans are dusting off an old legislative gambit from April 2011 as one way to move ahead this week with a stopgap spending bill for the first months of the new fiscal year beginning Oct. 1,” David Rogers writes. “The goal is to give conservatives a vote on defunding health care reform without resulting in a government shutdown. It has worked before, but ‘before’ is the operative word. And until Tuesday’s Republican Conference, Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) won’t really know whether this flash from the past can flash again. Most simply, the procedure calls for sending the Senate a stopgap spending bill with a resolution that would alter the text of the bill once it’s enrolled for presentation to President Barack Obama. In this case, the so-called enrollment correction would bar funding to carry out Public Law 111-148, Obama’s signature health care reforms. But the Democratic-controlled Senate retains the right to choose: accepting the spending resolution with or without the so-called correction.” http://politi.co/1ezcTbE

– CLUB FOR GROWTH PRESIDENT CHRIS CHOCOLA RESPONDS: “Are these news reports from The Onion? Or are they real? When members were at home over recess, did they hear their constituents ask for legislative tricks or principled leadership? Trying to fool Republicans into voting to fund Obamacare is even worse than offering a bill that deliberately funds it. I hope this proposal is nothing more than a bad joke and is quickly discarded. Republicans should simply do what they say they are for by passing a Continuing Resolution that doesn’t fund Obamacare.”

SANFORD GOT EXEMPTION TO TAKE FIANCEE TO ISRAEL – Shane Goldmacher writes in National Journal: “Rep. Mark Sanford, whose extramarital dalliance abroad while governor of South Carolina led to scandal, took his mistress-turned-fiancée, María Belén Chapur, to Israel in August, on a trip paid for by the American Israel Education Foundation, congressional records show. Such privately funded trips are typically limited to relatives, but Sanford, a Republican who won a House seat in a special election earlier in the year, asked for and received a special exemption to take Belén Chapur along. Sanford gave a two-word answer on the congressional travel form when asked why he wanted to participate in the Israel trip. ‘Educational purposes,’ he wrote.

– “The American Israel Education Foundation spent more than $ 18,558 to fly Sanford and his fiancée to and from Israel for the weeklong journey. They flew business class, records show, with round-trip flights that cost more than $ 5,000 apiece. They were part of a delegation of roughly two dozen Republicans, including House Majority Leader Eric Cantor and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy. … The couple departed for Israel on Aug. 10 and returned Aug. 18. The website LegiStorm, which tracks congressional travel, first noted the participation of Belén Chapur on the trip, which included stops in Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Tel Aviv, and the Sea of Galilee. Sanford’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.” http://bit.ly/1al4HZR The original Legistorm report: http://bit.ly/1cZ1O1O

MONDAY’S TRIVIA WINNER – Paul Hays was the first to correctly answer that Charles Evans Hughes, Jr. had to resign his solicitor general post when his father became chief justice of the U.S. in 1930.

TODAY’S TRIVIA – Paul Hays has today’s question: Who is the only signer of the Declaration of Independence buried in Washington, D.C.? The first person to correctly answer gets a mention in the next day’s Huddle. Email me at swong@politico.com.

GET HUDDLE emailed to your Blackberry, iPhone or other mobile device each morning. Just enter your email address where it says “Sign Up.” http://www.politico.com/huddle/

** A message from the Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library: The Reagan National Defense Forum on November 16, 2013 is bringing together leaders and key stakeholders in the defense community – including members of Congress, civilian officials and military leaders from the Defense Department and industry – to address the health of our national defense and to stimulate a discussion that promotes policies that strengthen the United States military into the future.  Registrations is $ 499 per person. For more information and tickets, please visit www.ReaganFoundation.org/Defense.  

The program includes a keynote address by General Dempsey, remarks by Secretary Hagel, and multiple panels including “Counterterrorism in 2025,” “Congress, Industry and the Pentagon” and “The Industrial Base After a Decade of War.”

“My husband would be so pleased to know that his ‘Peace Through Strength’ policies are being discussed again with a focus on today’s new technology and tomorrow’s needs.” – Former First Lady Nancy Reagan

POLITICO – Top 10 – Huddle

AN ESCAPE HATCH FOR OBAMA ON SYRIA? – Obama heads to the Hill – Issa to Cantor: Let"s vote again on Amash amdt. – O"Donnell to Weiner on primary eve: What"s wrong with you? - trivia

Dr. Phil: Let’s talk about drunk sex

The initial reaction of many people upon reading Dr. Phil’s now-deleted tweet about drunk sex was outrage. I had a different first thought: This is a conversation we really need to have.

In case you’ve missed this Twitter tempest, a recap: Yesterday afternoon, Dr. Phil McGraw’s account sent out the following message: “If a girl is drunk, is it OK to have sex with her? Reply yes or no to @drphil #teensaccused.” The tweet promptly garnered enraged responses and a Change.org petition, and it was deleted shortly thereafter. A spokesperson for McGraw came out this morning to defend the 140-word bombshell, by explaining that it “was intended to evoke discussion leading into a very serious show topic.” It remains to be seen what that show will cover, but I happen to agree that this is a “very serious” topic and one worthy of discussion.

Continue Reading…

Salon.com

Dr. Phil: Let’s talk about drunk sex

Let"s Stop Calling Lee Daniels" The Butler the New Forrest Gump

The Weinstein Company

In the last week or so, Lee Daniels’ The Butler — based on the true story of an African-American White House butler who waits on eight different presidents during his 34-year tenure — has received a flurry of mixed-to-positive reviews. In them, there’s a particular comparison that keeps cropping up between The Butler and another mega-famous film. Daniels’s movie, No. 1 in the box office this past weekend, has been called “a White House Forrest Gump,” “Lee Daniels’ Forrest Gump,” and “a more serious-minded Forrest Gump” (
among others), and even the director himself has said he envisions the Forest Whitaker vehicle as “his black Forrest Gump.”

Given its vast, multi-decade narrative and its one-man-sees-American-history-happen-up-close structure, it’s understandable that so many critics would be quick to see the similarities. But to label The Butler a version of Forrest Gump isn’t quite fair, and ignores one of the most important virtues of Lee Daniels’s film. Lee Daniels’ The Butler paints an imperfect but far more multi-dimensional portrait of the black Civil Rights movement, presenting it as a necessary struggle for justice that both united and drove apart families, friends, and lovers, even when they were on the same side. Forrest Gump cast the Civil Rights movement as a prop, at best, and a threat, at worst.

In 2000, Jennifer Hyland Wang, then a doctoral candidate at the University of Wisconsin, wrote for Cinema Journal about how Forrest Gump earned its reputation as a “conservative” film: In the past, writers like Modern Fiction Studies‘ Thomas Byers had called it “aggressively conservative,” and it had appeared in National Review’s 1995 list of the 100 best conservative movies. In the process, she compiled an inventory of the ways in which Forrest Gump‘s plot reflects negative attitudes toward social change and seems to re-imagine the turbulence of the 1960s as mostly progressives’ fault.

Blaming the Radicals
In Forrest Gump, proponents of social change are often punished or portrayed in a negative light. Forrest’s childhood sweetheart Jenny, for instance, protests the war, joins in with the sexual revolution, and becomes linked to the Black Panther Party in her young adulthood. She then gets beat up onscreen by her boyfriend, a fellow radical, at the Black Panther headquarters in Washington; the Panthers simply stand by and watch until Forrest interrupts them and saves Jenny. Jenny later dies of a mysterious virus often assumed to be AIDS. As Wang puts it,

By evoking the threat of bodily harm to those women who did participate in political movements, the film limits the attractiveness of political change and vilifies the activism of the period. Progressive political movements, Forrest Gump asserts, did not help women make their mark but left their marks on America’s women. … The racial and sexual threat a ‘political’ African-American man embodies is grounded in the Black Panther’s stance against the traditional American values that Forrest Gump eventually champions. By visualizing the danger of black autonomy to a white woman and by giving voice to the threats of Black Nationalism, Forrest Gump emphasizes the need to keep these bodies under white America’s control.

In other words: Forrest Gump makes the Black Panthers look pretty bad.

The Butler, on the other hand, offers a more nuanced portrayal of the Black Panthers and their evolution. The Panther headquarters in The Butler is depicted as having rules written on the walls that encourage justice and respect (“always pay full price for goods”). White House butler Cecil Gaines’s son Louis and his girlfriend Carol join the Panthers, and explain to Cecil and his wife over dinner that, yes, the movement does have radical political motives, but it also seeks to improve the community by providing childcare for low-income black families and free lunches to black children. (Cecil responds by promptly throwing them both out of the house.)

Later, however, the Panthers are asked to pledge that they’ll kill in the name of their cause. Carol says she will; Louis, morally conflicted, says he won’t. They break up.

The Virtue of Progress
In Forrest Gump, Forrest’s loyalty, obedience, and innocence make him the undisputed hero and moral compass of the film. According to Wang, “Gump argues that eventually these conservative values,” — the ones often coded as “white,” she points out — “not the alternative ‘liberal’ ones explored in the 1960s, will survive the test of time.” Thus, “Forrest Gump reestablishes the role of the white patriarch as the source of political and cultural renewal.”

Lee Daniels’s new film takes the opposite stance by crediting change-minded thinkers with America’s political and cultural renewal. The last time any president is shown to be at odds over whether to pursue progress for black people in America is during the Eisenhower administration; in 1961, an emotional John F. Kennedy admits to Cecil that “these kids,” the Freedom Riders, have changed his brother Bobby’s heart and “they’ve changed mine, too.” From then on, the presidents are mostly shown to be in favor of creating racial equality and improving the lot of African-Americans in the United States. And at the end of the film, Nancy Reagan praises Cecil for his dogged and ultimately successful campaign to ensure that the White House’s “black help” earn salaries equal to their white colleagues’.

Civil Rights as a Sideshow vs. Civil Rights as a Backdrop
Wang points out that Forrest Gump only engages with the real-life race-related events of the 1960s through two striking images: the 1963 desegregation of the University of Alabama and the activities of the Black Panther party. Other images of racism, specifically of white supremacy, are just fuzzy, muted background:

Although the figure of George Wallace is visually apparent in the archival footage, his vocal defiance of the court’s integration order is almost completely deleted. Instead of focusing on Wallace’s speech, the camera concentrates on Forrest’s inability to comprehend what the controversy is all about. The racial hatred of white supremacy is thus muted by our hero’s inability to understand racism and the politics of desegregation. In contrast, the audience is allowed to hear much of the unidentified Black Panther’s threat of racial war. In the context of 1990s America, with the fiery images of the L.A. uprising still vivid in our social memory, the film’s emphasis on the threat of black violence and the birth of these politics in the 1960s reiterates Gump‘s conservative racial politics. …

Erasing both the tenacity of white racism and the courage of black resistance, the film deletes from the official history of the nation the Freedom Summers, the voting registration drives, the Birmingham bus boycotts, the March on Washington, the Watts riots, and the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.

The Butler takes a similar (and, yes, at times heavy-handed) highlights-reel approach to the events of the 1960s. But it looks at the timeline of the Civil Rights movement from both a broader perspective — with scenes devoted to the sit-ins near Fisk University, the Freedom Riders, violence at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan, and the life and the assassination of MLK — and a more deeply embedded one.

‘The Butler’ takes a similar (and, yes, at times heavy-handed) highlights-reel approach to the events of the 1960s. But it looks at the timeline of the Civil Rights movement from both a broader perspective and a more deeply embedded one.

Fisk University students are shown hurling insults and physically harming one another to prepare for the treatment they will receive (and do receive) from whites when they stage lunch-counter sit-ins. Activist James Lawson coaches them through the process; some of them cry, others lash out. And issues that splintered the progressive black community — such as participation in the Vietnam War — are given some harrowing screen time, too: A personal conversation with Martin Luther King, Jr., about the special capability of the “house Negro” to quietly build up African-American credibility in the eyes of whites, finally convinces Louis that his father’s role as a butler for a series of white presidents is activism in its own way. Later, upon hearing the news that his beloved younger brother Charlie plans to fight in the Vietnam War, Louis objects, begs him not to go, then grimly warns Charlie that he won’t attend his funeral for ideological reasons.

Racism Isn’t Over
Wang goes on to explain that Forrest Gump also portrays racism as simply a weird, inconvenient quirk of the 1960s:

The dynamics of Gump‘s racial representations are clearly delineated in a comparison between an archival clip of George Wallace’s defense of segregation and a scene depicting Black Nationalism. A parallel is thus drawn between Wallace and an unidentified Black Panther — both angry men preaching the inevitability of racial conflict. In juxtaposing these historical moments, Forrest Gump situates racial conflict in the sixties as a result of extremist political groups. Racism then can be safely articulated as neither a product of nor a concern of contemporary mainstream America. Like Forrest, white mainstream America is encouraged to “not see” race and racism except as a product of a specific historical moment.

As the film moves into the 1970s and 1980s, race virtually, as she puts it, “disappear[s] from the hero’s — and thus the film’s — view.”

Again, The Butler does Forrest Gump one better: It makes a point to show that the struggle to end racism is a battle yet to be won. The final half-hour of The Butler shows Louis Gaines running for public office in the 1980s; he speaks in a televised interview about how to improve the lot of African-Americans. Later, Louis and Cecil protest South African apartheid together.

And just before Cecil leaves the White House for the last time, there’s a subtly ominous moment: Ronald Reagan — who’s just stated that should Congress pass a bill to impose sanctions against South Africa, he’ll veto it — admits to Cecil privately that he’s worried he’ll end up on the wrong side of history.

So let’s be careful with the comparison between Forrest Gump and The Butler. Both have their flaws, but the former is an admirable, compassionate film that includes depictions of the Civil Rights movement, while the latter is a film that includes admirable, compassionate depictions of the Civil Rights movement.

Master Feed : The Atlantic

Let"s Stop Calling Lee Daniels" The Butler the New Forrest Gump

Meet Donors Trust: The Little-Known Group That Lets the Wealthy Secretively Fund Right-Wing Causes

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Editor"s note: The following is a transcript of a Democracy Now! segment on Donors Trust, a little known group funding the Right"s agenda. 

When it comes to the wealthy funders of right-wing causes, the big names are well known: billionaires like the industrialist Koch Brothers and the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, super PACs like Americans for Prosperity and Karl Rove’s Crossroads GPS. Now, through them, hundreds of millions of dollars have poured into right-wing causes and candidates. But now it turns out this web of dark-money donations is even more secretive than we previously thought. That’s because the operations of a largely unknown group have now come to light. They’re called Donors Trust, a nonprofit charity based in Virginia.

Since 1999, Donors Trust has handed out nearly $ 400 million in private donations to more than 1,000 right-wing and libertarian groups. The fact Donors Trust has been able to quietly do so appears to explain why it exists: Wealthy donors can back the right-wing causes they want without attracting public scrutiny. Donors Trust is classified as a “donor-advised” fund under U.S. tax law, meaning its funders don’t have direct say in where their money goes. That in turn allows them to remain largely anonymous.

AMY GOODMAN: But the most detailed accounting to date shows Donors Trust funds a wish list of right-wing causes, prompting Mother Jones magazine to label it, quote, “the dark-money ATM of the right.” Donors Trust recipients include the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a mechanism for corporate interests to help write state laws; the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, a media outlet that unabashedly promotes right-wing causes; and the State Policy Network, a number of right-wing think tanks that push so-called “free-market” policies.

But the major focus of Donors Trust appears to be funding the denial of global warming. More than a third of Donors Trust donations—at least $ 146 million—has gone to think tanks and other groups that challenge the science of climate change. Later in the broadcast, we’ll take a closer look at that funding of climate change denial, but first we turn to an overview of Donors Trust and look at why it’s been able to evade public scrutiny until now.

Joining us from Washington, D.C., is John Dunbar, politics editor at the Center for Public Integrity, worked on the group’s months-long investigation into Donor’s Trust. We did ask Donors Trust to join us, but they declined our request.

John Dunbar, lay out just what Donors Trust is.

JOHN DUNBAR: Well, they’re essentially a pass through. What they do is, is they act as a kind of a middleman between what are very large, well-known private foundations created by—mostly by corporate executives, like the Kochs, for example, and they direct the money of those contributions to a very large network of right-leaning, free-market think tanks across the country, including those that you’ve named. By doing—by running it through the middleman, it essentially obscures the identity of the original donors, of the folks who have provided the funds themselves. And the organization itself actually makes that clear on its own website, essentially saying people who give money to the organization can avoid being identified or being connected with potentially controversial issues.

AARON MATÉ: And John Dunbar, so the figure is $ 400 million since 1999. Why is it that all this is just coming to light now?

JOHN DUNBAR: Well, we kind of stumbled onto it, to be honest with you. We’ve been, at the Center for Public Integrity—that’s publicintegrity.org if you’d like to read our full report on it—we were looking at activities at the state level, and we were noticing a certain continuity. There was a certain sameness to what was going on in various states on these issues. And we have been looking at the American Legislative Exchange Council for quite some time, and we were looking for how these organizations were funded. And this Donors Trust organization kept popping up, and it seemed to be such an amorphously named organization. We couldn’t really figure out where it was. So we got to wondering, “Well, who’s funding Donors Trust?” And then we backed it up a step, and then we started looking at some of the more better-known right-wing, free-market foundations, particularly those run by the Koch brothers—the Searle Freedom Trust, for example, is another one; the Bradley Foundation—these are all very well-known right-leaning foundations—and found that an enormous amount of the funds that came into Donors Trust came from those—from those organizations.

AMY GOODMAN: John Dunbar, in your report, you speak with the Donors Trust president and CEO, Whitney Ball. She says much of the group’s focus is on the state level because of, quote, “gridlock” at the federal level of government means donors see, quote, “a better opportunity to make a difference in the states.” Ball also sits on the board of the State Policy Network. Can you talk about this focus on activity at the state level?

JOHN DUNBAR: Yeah, I think that—I don’t think anybody would argue with her point that it’s hard to get anything done in Washington these days. They have been a lot more successful at the state level. And I think that in Washington we have a tendency to sort of get tunnel vision: We don’t think that anything that happens outside of Washington really matters, when in fact the laws that are passed in the states are extremely important. Some of the focus of the Donors Trust recipients have been on specific state issues that, you know, affect all of us. You know, some of their favorite issues are right-to-work laws in the states; climate issues; renewable energy, as you’ll hear from Suzanne and The Guardian, which has done such great work on that; and as well as, you know, tax issues, etc. People tend to look at states and what’s happening in a particular state in isolation; they don’t look around and see that the same thing seems to be happening in other states. And it’s—this is clearly a coordinated effort to create state-based think tanks. There’s 51 of them that they’ve funded all across the country to push legislative issues. And then they created their own media empire to support—they even support the ideas behind those issues.

AARON MATÉ: Well, John Dunbar, if you could follow up on that, this media group, the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity. They receive 95 percent of their funding from the Donors Trust?

JOHN DUNBAR: Right, and that was kind of shocking, actually. You know, we—that is a foundation-financed reporting organization. I have to say that the Center for Public Integrity is also a foundation-financed reporting organization, so—however, we do not get 95 percent of our funding from any individual donor. Franklin does. The difficulty with that is that, first of all, you have to wonder what—whether the reporting is going to be influenced by that single donor. Secondly, they are a (c)3, which is—which means donations to them are tax deductible, and they don’t pay taxes themselves. That’s a public trust, by the way. That’s—the Donors Trust is in the same position. If they were not a publicly financed nonprofit, they would lose their nonprofit status. By getting all of their money or most of their money through Donors Trust, they’re able to maintain their (c)3 status as a, quote, you know, “publicly financed charity,” unquote. And if all that money came from one person, for example, they would lose that exemption, or they would be part of—they would have to be absorbed by whatever foundation it was that was funding them.

AMY GOODMAN: John, in 2009, Republicans, bloggers, conservative think tanks began to cite a report that the Obama administration had pumped billions of stimulus funds into phantom congressional districts, suggesting money intended to create jobs and shore up the economy had been misused or lost. One of the key websites to report this was newmexicowatchdog.org, which is almost entirely funded by Donors Trust. The story was picked up by Fox News, like in this report from Stuart Varney.

STUART VARNEY: Take a look at this map, please. The government is claiming jobs created in nine Oklahoma congressional districts; problem: There’s only five. Jobs in eight districts of Iowa; big problem: There’s only five. Jobs in eight districts in Connecticut; again, there’s only five. Jobs in three congressional districts in the Virgin Islands; there is only one. And as you point out, Bill, Puerto Rico, the government claims 17,544 jobs created or saved in six congressional districts; there is only one congressional district in Puerto Rico.

BILL HEMMER: I don’t know if we should be laughing or crying over this.

STUART VARNEY: No.

BILL HEMMER: I mean, Puerto Rico alone, 99th Congressional District, 98th Congressional District, a no-number congressional district.

STUART VARNEY: Yes.

BILL HEMMER: I mean, good lord!

STUART VARNEY: Yes, yes, yes. Raise your eyebrows, please. Look, it’s very bad, very unreliable statistics, and it really undermines all of these claims, these gross claims of job creation from stimulus.

AMY GOODMAN: That Fox News report was based on a report by newmexicowatchdog.org, one of the many so-called watchdog websites that are almost entirely funded by the Donors Trust. John Dunbar, your response?

JOHN DUNBAR: Well, I think that the implication of that report was that there were millions and millions of dollars that were being misspent, when the reality was it was data errors. I don’t think anyone would defend the government’s ability to create accurate databases. They clearly didn’t do a very good job on that front, at least on the Recovery Act. However, the implication that all of this money was going into a black hole was actually nonsense. It was kind of a phantom issue about phantom districts, as the Associated Press had reported. A lot of the reporting by these different watchdog organizations that are funded by Franklin has been called into question, including by the Nieman Center at Harvard that’s called it a lack in context and in some cases actually distortions of facts.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break, John Dunbar, politics editor at the Center for Public Integrity, works on this months-long investigation into the Donors Trust called “Donors Use Charity to Push Free-Market Policies in States.” When we come back, Suzanne Goldenberg will also join us, of The Guardian, who’s been investigating the funding of climate denial groups. This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a minute.

Tue, 02/19/2013 – 09:35  
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Meet Donors Trust: The Little-Known Group That Lets the Wealthy Secretively Fund Right-Wing Causes