text:
Biografia

Non sappiamo molto su di lui; le uniche fonti dirette che ne attestano l'esistenza sono due documenti del 1189 e del 1201, le altre notizie ci sono state tramandate dal suo illustre discendente in forma indiretta nella descrizione del loro incontro nel Paradiso. Cacciaguida fu il capostipite della casata degli Elisei Alighieri, i quali però presero il nome dalla moglie di lui, una donna della «Val di Pado», che Boccaccio e altri commentatori antichi vogliono di Ferrara. Dante menziona che l'antenato ebbe due fratelli, Moronto ed Eliseo. Investito cavaliere da Corrado III di Svevia, Cacciaguida lo seguì nella seconda crociata (1147-1149), durante la quale trovò la morte. Riguardo alla data di nascita e di morte, sono stati versati fiumi d'inchiostro. Dante fornisce al lettore una perifrasi astronomica assai complessa:

La data di nascita oggi unanimemente riconosciuta da parte della critica letteraria è quella del 1091, determinata sulla base di precisi calcoli scientifici da parte di Guido Horn D'Arturo dopo secoli di dibattito. Per quanto riguarda la data di morte, il perno del dibattito si concentrò sulla figura dell'imperatore Corrado: Pietro Alighieri lo confuse con Corrado II il Salico, mentre altri commentatori pensarono ad una confusione di Dante, in quanto Corrado III non scese mai in Italia come imperatore. Contro quest'ipotesi, però, coloro che sono favorevoli a vedere ne «lo 'mperador Currado» Corrado III, affermano che costui scese in Italia nella sua lotta per l'incoronazione contro Lotario II di Supplimburgo, e che nulla vieta l'ipotesi storica di una partecipazione di Cacciaguida alla seconda crociata, dove trovò la morte, forse, durante la ritirata dell'esercito cristiano. Pertanto, la critica è unanime nel ritenere quel vago Corrado lo zio di Federico Barbarossa.

Cacciaguida nel Paradiso

Il ruolo di Cacciaguida
Dante incontra l'avo durante il suo viaggio nel Paradiso, attraversando il cielo di Marte, che ospita le anime dei combattenti per la fede. La cronaca dell'incontro occupa ben tre canti (dal XV al XVII) della terza cantica della Divina Commedia. I tre canti sono anche importanti dal punto di vista politico
perché ci forniscono numerose informazioni sul nobilissimo e potente casato degli Elisei Alighieri e sulla Firenze del XII secolo, ma lo sono ancor di più per la funzione morale che Cacciaguida riveste. Infatti, il crociato si fa portavoce dello sdegno provato da Dante nei confronti della corruzione in cui è caduta Firenze, rievocando la purezza dei costumi antichi. Ancor di più, però, Cacciaguida è colui che svela a Dante le altre profezie post-eventum rivelategli nel corso del viaggio ultraterreno, chiarendogli il futuro esilio e infine spingendo il trisnipote a rivelare ciò che ha visto nei tre regni, sfidando così gli odi di coloro i quali sono congiunti dei dannati visti da Dante. Insomma, nell'episodio di Cacciaguida:

Il Canto XV
Nel canto XV, Cacciaguida racconta a Dante come era la Firenze dei suoi tempi, ancora compresa nella quarta cinta di mura, risalente all'epoca di Carlo Magno e rinforzata nei secoli successivi. La piccola Firenze di quei tempi viene descritta come una cittadina "sobria e pudica", così diversa da quella dell'epoca di Dante. Allora, racconta Cacciaguida, le donne non andavano a spasso con vestiti costosi e gioielli; la nascita di una figlia non era vista con paura per la futura ricca dote; le case erano modeste e l'aspetto esteriore di Firenze non era ancora fastoso; non erano diffusi comportamenti sessuali censurabili; i nobili vestivano sobriamente e non si vergognavano di esercitare professioni umili; infine, le famiglie non affrontavano odissee migratorie solo per esercitare il commercio.

Il Canto XVI
Nel canto XVI, Cacciaguida risponde ad alcune domande che Dante gli pone sulla Firenze passata: dalle risposte il lettore viene a sapere che allora la città aveva un quinto degli abitanti rispetto all'inizio del XIV secolo, che non aveva ancora visto l'immigrazione di famiglie del contado, spesso portatrici di delinquenza, e che il confine della città era allora al Galluzzo e a Trespiano. Cacciaguida dice che l'immigrazione di gente nuova, favorita dalla Chiesa, è causa delle discordie attuali, che porteranno alla rovina della città e conclude elencando alcune celebri famiglie fiorentine potenti allora ma decadute al tempo del nipote. La critica dantesca verso il degrado materialista in cui è caduta la Firenze degli inizi del XIV secolo è un'accusa, implicita, nei confronti di quelle famiglie di mercanti e parvenu che imbrattarono i valori su cui si fondava l'antica nobiltà, ribadendo implicitamente anche che la nobiltà non è soltanto nel blasone, ma anche nel codice etico e di condotta morale. Il canto termina col racconto del celebre scontro tra Amidei e Buondelmonti del 1215, che diede origine alle lotte tra guelfi e ghibellini.

Il Canto XVII
Nel canto XVII, Cacciaguida predice a Dante gli eventi della sua vita futura, ossia l'esilio da Firenze e la sua vita raminga e solitaria. Inoltre rivela la missione di Dante una volta tornato nel mondo: per bocca di Cacciaguida infatti Dio investe Dante del compito di rivelare la sua volontà all'umanità per salvarla, e lo istituisce nella missione di poeta-profeta.

Note

Bibliografia

 ora in

Altri progetti

Collegamenti esterni

Personaggi citati nella Divina Commedia (Paradiso)
Dante Alighieri

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


When City of Los Angeles controller Mark Galperin came to speak before the Sunland-Tujunga Neighborhood Council (STNC) on February 10, some community members and City Hall watchers were skeptical of the timing of the visit. After all, the host organization, led by its president, Mark Seigel, recently had been kicked out of its longstanding, amply outfitted digs at the city's own venue at North Valley City Hall in Tujunga and forced to find a meeting space for a fee at a private community venue, the Elk's Lodge, also in Tujunga.
But in a community where LA City Hall has long supposed to be overly supportive of a small cadre of locals who often appear to act more in City Hall's interest than in the community's interest, the timing of the visit raised a lot of questions. So what was going on? Was the controller glad to make his own rounds? Was he offering consolation for the eviction? Was the incumbent neighborhood council looking for a boost from the perception of access to an important City Hall representative?
It is true enough that both Galperin and Seigel are facing reelections. Galperin's won't come until 2017. But Seigel's own STNC is having elections on April 2, with Seigel further down the ballot and with a new slate of largely unknown candidates that poses the largest threat to unseat the old guard that the STNC has seen in its 12 year history.
The last neighborhood council election in Sunland-Tujunga, in 2014, provoked some cries of foul play, and a lawsuit. Phil Jennerjahn, a would-be candidate for Seigel's top position, has claimed to a federal court in Los Angeles that he was denied due process when the LA City Clerk first accepted, then suddenly reversed itself and denied Jennerjahn's candidacy for Seigel's office. While Jennerjahn, who has no attorney, has a tough row to hoe in a difficult courtroom to work, the magistrate presiding on the case has expressed sustained interest in Jennerjahn's case, especially as a "void for vagueness" due process challenge, owing to some seemingly discretionary language in the city ordinance governing elections.
At the February 10 STNC meeting, Galperin ultimately demonstrated to the STNC and other onlookers that ControlPanel LA adds some online functionality to checking up on the kind of fiscal matters that has been difficult for ordinary citizens with tight work schedules to access.
Interested parties no longer have the ability to reference, for instance, any entries regarding over $30,000 in cash advances taken by the STNC over a five-year period between 2004 and 2009, expenditures Department of Neighborhood Empowerment general manager Grayce Liu once assured me she would check into but never has. (The controller's office recently told me I could check up with EmpowerLA's Stephen Box regarding any questions I had).
Anecdotal theories abound in the community about the purpose of these sustained cash advances; many of the same persons who served as board members then are still involved with the STNC and community politics today. The expenditures were always withdrawn at the maximum possible increment of $500 per month, never a sum less than that, and sometimes with a hefty cash-advance expense fee assessed for the privilege.
"Those were the days!" Denyse Selesnick, a neighborhood council enthusiast, once gushed in a column at CityWatch regarding the cash advances.
ControlPanel LA does not help either when looking at the city's more recent, and exotic, housing funding arrangements, especially gap financing loans for the type of City Hall–driven affordable-housing developments that often impact the foothills communities. For instance, when the city's housing department made a loan to the $10-million-plus homeless housing complex on Tujunga's Day Street—a complex that cost more to build per unit than some luxury condos do, and for which Seigel cut the ribbon on during its grand opening—there was little debate in the community about whether or not the city was going to get a good return on the money it lent the project. The STNC, in fact, voted to back Day Street unanimously.
The homeless housing complex at Day Street is ironically owned and operated by LA Family Housing (LAFH), one of the para-government agencies that took over the STNC's old space when the STNC was evicted by City Councilman Felipe Fuentes, with City Hall's blessings.
Two years after opening, Day Street, which critics contend has become a lure rather than a cure for local homelessness, is near capacity, yet the problem of homelessness in the community has become even more acute. And Galperin's ControlPanel LA does not help a user examine hard economic data regarding this type of investment, nor show if LAFH has met its gap-funding payments—generously spread out over 55 years, through 2068—in a timely manner.
Whether or not Galperin's office (or Greuel's controller's office before it) has shown any special favor to the present neighborhood council members, or wished to promote long-standing incumbents within the community in any way, a source in the controller's office has indeed confirmed on another matter that a City of Los Angeles contract for $25,000 involving the Sunland-Tujunga Chamber of Commerce was investigated by the controller's office pursuant to a complaint regarding it.
The original city contract with the chamber called for three monument signs to be built at community entrances, and the contract money to be payable on delivery. The signs have yet to be completed even 18 months after the ending date of the most recent contract extension, which had already exceeded the original contract completion date by two years.
While Jennerjahn's federal lawsuit remains pending, and whether or not the controller's office's investigation into the Chamber of Commerce expenditure provokes the city to take any new action on the unfulfilled part of its contract with the chamber, there is no question that the city has shown demonstrable favor to a small cadre of citizens in Sunland-Tujunga since the inception of the community's neighborhood council. The community will now choose again, and is invited to consider the history as weighed against the returns the community has gleaned from the special favor shown to this small cadre.


text:
Preview: Clevedon Town v Exeter City
Clevedon Town v Exeter City
Monday 15th July, 7.30pm
Hand Stadium
Pre-season friendly
The Grecians' second pre-season friendly is admittedly at the other end of the spectrum from the first. QPR were visitors last week, with their array of superstars and stellar names – Clevedon Town now provide the opposition.
The Seasiders are managed by former Bristol City defender Michael Bell, and play in the Southern League Division One South & West, four tiers below the Grecians.
Two years ago, Exeter sent a representative XI to the Hand Stadium to face Clevedon and triumphed 4-1 on that occasion. Jake Gosling and Tom Nichols were on the scoresheet on that occasion.
However the Seasiders are no strangers to causing upsets – in 2012, despite avoiding relegation to Step 5 by one league position, they won the Southern League Cup by defeating Southern League Premier side Banbury over two legs in the final.
They also opened their pre-season ahead of 2013/14 with a 2-1 win at the Hand Stadium against a Bristol City side, and will be hosting Bristol Rovers and Plymouth ahead of the new campaign too.
So while the result won't count for anything when the Grecians travel to Somerset (as match fitness is the order of the day), there'll still be a keenness from both teams to give a fair account of themselves.
The Grecians triumphed 4-1 the last time they sent a squad to the Hand Stadium two years ago in pre-season. Chris Sheppard, Jake Gosling, Tom Nichols (pen) and Callum McNish were the scorers for the visitors.
Entry to the Hand Stadium for this pre-season game is priced as follows:
Adult: £7.50
Seniors: £5
Under-16: £3
Under-14: FREE

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


text:
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        description: "Regular expressions may also be used, and can be useful if you have very specific restraints",
        required: true
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


This fabulous quilted bag has double handles with a long strap included. Inside there is a zipper pocket and an open pocket. This bag is 11.5" deep and 15" wide with a removable tassel with gold hardware. The tassel is 6.5" long.


text:
Летището в Дубай () е документална телевизионна поредица, излъчвана по международните версии на канал Нешънъл Джиографик в повече от 170 страни, преведена на 45 езика. Поредицата е поръчана от Нешънъл Джиографик Ченълс и е продуцирана от Ароу Медия.

Летището в Дубай проследява ежедневните дейности, извършвани на Международното летище Дубай, като следва служинелите, наети на летището, поддръжката на съоръженията, диспечерите на въздушното движение, митническите служители, наземния и обслужващия персонал. Преговорите с летищните оператори относно разрешението да се заснема поредицата започват през януари 2012 г.

Снимките на първия сезон започват през септември 2012 г. и завършват през февруари 2013 г. и се състои от 10 епизода. Премиерата му е на 5 септември 2013 г. в избрани региони. Поредицата е подновена след високия рейтинг, който получава в световен мащаб и на местно ниво, съдържа 10 епизода, а премиерата му е на 11 декември 2014 г. Премиерата на третия сезон, състоящ се от 10 епизода, е на 12 юни 2015 г.

Епизоди

Излъчвания
Премиерата на поредицата е по Нешънъл Джиографик Абу Даби и избрани международни версии на Нешънъл Джиографик Ченълс на 5 септември 2013 г. Вторият сезон е представен премиерно на избрани пазари в световен мащаб, включително Великобритания на 29 октомври 2014 г. с двоен епизод.

В Австралия първи сезон е представен премиерно на 17 септември 2013 г. по Нешънъл Джиографик Австралия, втори сезон е представен на 7 декември 2014 г.

Третият сезон е премиерно представен в Италия на 5 октомври 2015 г., в Австралия - на 7 октомври 2015 г., в Азия - на 8 октомври 2015 г., в Южна Африка е представен на 15 октомври 2015 г., а във Великобритания - на 28 октомври 2015 г.

Премиерата на Летището в Дубай в България е през 2020 г., като епизодите са дублирани на български език.

Външни препратки
 Официален сайт на Нешънъл Джиографик
 Официален сайт на Нешънъл Джиографик Абу Даби

Източници

Документални филми
Телевизионни предавания в САЩ
Американски сериали
Предавания на Нешънъл Джиографик Ченъл
Основани в САЩ през 2013 година


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Vacations are about the memories you make, and it starts with the anticipation—from finding just the right destination and pinning down your itinerary, to nabbing a value that gets you even more excited to get away. With a lineup of more than 260 destinations, newly modernized ships and a new, $250 million private island destination, Royal Caribbean is dialing up the adventure like never before. Whether you've cruised before or are considering it for the first time, you'll want to start off your planning with a few basics on timing.
Curious to know the best time to book a cruise and your flight, or if there are surefire ways to score upgrades. Read on for our tips to help you plan like a pro.
How Early Should You Book a Cruise?
12 to 18 months: As a general rule of thumb—the farther you are traveling, the further out you will want to consider booking. Cruise lines open their new itineraries around the world earlier than airlines do. If you're planning a bucket-list trip around Australia or the Baltics, or headed to a locale best explored by sea (like the Mediterranean or Alaska), it's wise to book early. Having plenty of lead time will give you the greatest choice when it comes to choosing your preferred style of accommodations and airfare.
6 to 12 months: This is typically the sweet spot for travelers. At six months or so from your travel dates, you'll usually find top deals on airfare, even for international destinations. It also strikes a great balance between that exciting moment when you book and the anticipation of waiting for the vacation to arrive.
Closer in: Arranging your cruise three or four months before your vacation time is possible—and occasionally there are amazing deals to be found—but it's not the option we would recommend. In general, when you are this close to a cruise's departure date, many itineraries and staterooms have been booked (especially on sailings that are seven nights or longer).
Are There Incentives or Upgrades I Should Know About?
There is no guaranteed, secret formula for scoring a beverage package or balcony upgrade, but savvy planners should consider booking an adventure with Royal Caribbean during Wave Season. Running from January to March, we offer booking incentives that can include onboard credits (or spending money), discounts and added-value offers. Booking early is a good way to score perks, and don't forget to ask about special programs that might be inclusive of your profession, like a police officer, firefighter or member of the military. You might also want to consider trying out RoyalUp—our new bid-based stateroom upgrade program.
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The centre for asylum seekers of Yvoir is part of the Red Cross network of reception centres in Belgium. Residents come from Palestine, Afghanistan, Irak, Syria, … They already asked for asylum to the Belgian authorities and they are hosted in this centre for the duration of the procedure. They had to leave their country for diverse reasons such as forced marriage, war, persecution for religious reasons, for their sexual orientation or their political opinions. A lot of them are separated from their family and devoid of any place to live or resources. The Red Cross is mandated by the Belgian authorities to host asylum seekers in respect of its humanitarian principles, its independence and its neutrality. This kind of centre provides: • Housing and food • Basic hygiene package • Support during the asylum procedure and social monitoring • Medical assistance • Mandatory education for minors • Cultural and sport activities The centre "Le Bocq", which takes its name from the nearby river, can house up to 300 persons with all kinds of family situation: couples, isolated persons, families and unaccompanied foreign minors.
Accomodation and food: Volunteers will sleep in a big room which will be turned into a mixed dormitory. Please bring a sleeping bag. Volunteers, as residents, will get points on a badge which will give them access and allow them to buy groceries at the centre's minimarket. They will then cook their meals themselves in one of the common kitchen.
Location and Leisure: Yvoir is a small village located in the province of Namur in Wallonia, the southern French-speaking region of Belgium. It is 20 km away from Namur, capital city of Wallonia. The centre is bordered by a river (le Bocq) and greeny hills. Be aware that it is a remote area with poor public transports connections. The nearest train station is 3.5 km away.
Requirements: It is asked to the volunteers to have a specific interest in migration and working with asylum seekers. Knowledge and/or will to facilitate activities with the residents are very much welcome. A motivation letter related to this project is required. Volunteers will have to respect the internal regulations of the Red Cross such as the strict alcohol-free policy inside the centre.


text:
Q: Delete/hide HBox and children widgets using Button inside HBox I am trying to make an input widget for a module i have made (see this SO question).
The input widget should have a title bar and a variable number of input lines below. I had in mind to have an delete button at the end of each input line.
The delete button should ideally delete the container widget and all the children widgets, but hiding the container widget and children would also be acceptable.
I have not been able to find a useful recipe to this problem.
Currently i got this code, but i have no clue less as how to solve the problem.
import ipywidgets as w

def add_btn_clicked(b):
    input_box.children = (input_box.children[0], line()) + input_box.children[1:]

def delete_btn_clicked(b):
    # ???
    with output:
        print(b.keys)
    return None

add = w.Button(icon="plus-circle")
add.on_click(add_btn_clicked)

title = w.HBox([w.Label(value=str(i)) for i in range(3)]+[add])

def line():
    delete = w.Button(icon="trash")
    delete.on_click(delete_btn_clicked)
    return w.HBox([w.FloatText(value=i) for i in range(3)]+[delete])

input_box = w.VBox([title,line()])
output = w.Output()

display(input_box)
display(output)

Is there a way to tell what the parent element is from the button click or another way to achieve what I am attempting?

A: You can create the widgets and container separately, then define the .parent attribute on the children as the container, before assembling together. That way you can effectively hide the container when the button is clicked (with .parent.layout.display = 'none').
import ipywidgets as w

def add_btn_clicked(b):
    input_box.children = (input_box.children[0], line()) + input_box.children[1:]

def delete_btn_clicked(b):
    b.parent.layout.display = 'none'

add = w.Button(icon="plus-circle")
add.on_click(add_btn_clicked)

title = w.HBox([w.Label(value=str(i)) for i in range(3)]+[add])

def line():
    delete = w.Button(icon="trash")
    delete.on_click(delete_btn_clicked)
    val_widgets = [w.FloatText(value=i) for i in range(3)]
    container = w.HBox()
    delete.parent = container
    for widg in val_widgets:
        widg.parent = container
    children = val_widgets + [delete]
    container.children = children
    return container

input_box = w.VBox([title,line()])
output = w.Output()

display(input_box)
display(output)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaStackExchange


text:
Cynthia Nixon Weds Girlfriend Christine Marinoni
Gay Matrimony-dom: Cynthia "Miranda" Nixon Weds Her Ginger Boo Christine Marinoni
Here come the brides… "Sex And The City" star Cynthia Nixon wed her longtime same-sex partner Christine Marinoni this weekend.
Three years after getting engaged at a rally to support same-sex marriage in New York – which was not legal at the time – Cynthia Nixon and Christine Marinoni were married Sunday.
"On May 27, 2012, Cynthia Nixon and her girlfriend, Christine Marinoni, were legally married in the state of New York," her rep tells PEOPLE in a statement. "Nixon wore a custom dress by Carolina Herrera."
No other details were immediately available.
The Sex and the City actress, 46, and the education activist, 45, have been together since 2004. Marinoni gave birth to their son, Max Ellington Nixon-Marinoni, in February 2011.
Nixon also has two children from her previous relationship with photographer Danny Mozes.
The couple waited to marry until it was legal in New York state, which happened last summer. "I'm enjoying being engaged very much," Nixon said in 2010. "I don't mind a long engagement, which this one is surely turning out to be."
Congratulations "Miranda"… your ginger boo is no Blair Underwood but go for whatever makes you happy!
SourceWENN
Categories: Gay, Hollyweird, In White Folks News


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text:
Guests: Ezra Klein, David Corn, Michael Isikoff, Robert Frank
Aug. 5, 2011, 1:00 AM UTC
RACHEL MADDOW, HOST: Lawrence, I got to tell you, your standing ovation for Chris Christie`s comments in your "Rewrite" tonight itself earned a standing ovation. That was so perfectly done. O`DONNELL: Hey, the guy deserves it. I`m not expecting him to get another one any time soon, but this was the night. MADDOW: I could not agree more. It was just perfectly done. Well done, my friend. Thank you. O`DONNELL: Thanks, Rachel. MADDOW: And thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. Today was one of those days when even people who do not pay attention to business news and economics news were forced to pay attention to those things. Today was a day that every TV network became a business news network. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS) UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Take a look now, down 407 -- 407. Massive plunge. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Red across the board. The Dow Jones Industrial Average down more than 400 points. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The Dow Jones Industrial Average down more than 450 points. The NASDAQ composite down right now 117 points. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Down nine of 10 days for the Dow. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We have the S&P 500 down more than 4 percent, our biggest loss since 2009. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We`re hearing words like alarming, panic, devastating. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Rather panic-stricken selloff continues. Look at that, 476.54 down, and going further down. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Now, the Dow is down more than 500 points on this session alone. The S&P 500 and the NASDAQ down similar percentage points. Wow. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We`re down now more than 500. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The market is now down 503. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What a day. And you will see the headlines tomorrow. There is no positive way of spinning this. The Dow Jones Industrial is down 512 points. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stocks dropping 4 percent on the day, concluding their worst nine-day decline in two years` time. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Since December 1st of 2008 was the last time we were down more than 400 points. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Blue chip suffering the 10th biggest drop on record today, down 513 points at 11,384. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You can`t say you can`t be worried. That`s a big number, 4.3 percent, to lose in a day, more than 10 percent in the last 10 days or so. That`s worrisome. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And it is 4:00 on Wall Street. Do you know where your money is? (END VIDEO CLIPS) MADDOW: The Dow fell nearly 513 points today -- 155 of those points in the final very dramatic hour of trading, some of which you saw there. That`s a drop of 4.3 percent in one day, the market`s worst day since December 2008. And yes, December 2008 is when we were still in end of the world territory. The NASDAQ and the S&P 500 did even worse than the Dow did today. Why is this happening? Why is the stock market doing this again? It`s not because of one policy fight or some vote in Washington. This is not even mostly a United States story. The markets here are global. Italy now said to be in danger of defaulting on its debt and taking out the Euro with it. In the Spanish capital of Madrid, people are protesting austerity measures by the government there, much like they have been doing in Greece, which is still in trouble and still at risk of default. Look what happened to the European stock market today, all of them hitting their lowest levels in over a year, down an average of 3.4 percent. Even in an environment of global markets, why couldn`t the United States be more insulated from this if this was not primarily an American problem? After all, we decided not to default on our debt on purpose this week. Even if Greece or Italy might be forced to. It`s starting to look like there are two American messages here. One of them is just that our economy is bad. The United States may be about to head into a double dip recession. Our economy, which has been coming back from the horrible Wall Street disaster since early 2009, may be now starting to crater again. Ek! The other message here, the other warning sign that this Dow disaster may have been for us today is not just that the United States isn`t an exception to bad economic news around the world, that we`re in bad shape, too. It`s that we`re not likely to get out of our bad shape anytime soon - - at least not if action in Washington is part of what we need to do to get out of our bad shape. In a global economy, when all of the industrialized economies are really linked, the world frankly needs a leader. The world needs a big economy to have a big strong recovery to help buoy markets in other countries right now. And that apparently is not going to be us. At least that is the judgment of us right now. And part of the reason why is that if there were any big policy solutions need to turn the American economy around, to bring down unemployment, nobody can really imagine Washington today as capable of enacting those needed policies. Joining us now is MSNBC policy analyst Ezra Klein, columnist for "The Washington Post" and also for Bloomberg. Hello, Ezra, of many new titles. Congratulations on all of that. EZRA KLEIN, MSNBC POLICY ANALYST: Good evening. MADDOW: How strong of a connection is there between the American economy, American economic policy, and what we saw in the market today? Is this mostly international news that is driving this sort of thing? KLEIN: This is everything. And this is really the problem with it. I mean, you heard in your intro there that we didn`t just lose 5 percent or 4 percent today. We have lost about 10 percent over the last 10 days. And the reason is that the market cannot find anything to tell a story of hope, of recovery. It isn`t going to be Europe. Europe is in worse shape than we are. It isn`t necessarily going to be China and the emerging markets, which there had been some hope for, because it looks like China is slowing down. And now, there`s a question of how well the Chinese government can actually manage a slowdown in growth, which they now have to deal with in sometime. And as we`ve seen in the last couple of weeks here, it isn`t going to be us either, because not only is our economy in much worse shape than we realized it was even three or four weeks ago when we got the new Commerce Department numbers showing that our cratering in GDP over the last couple of years have been massively understated, even as bad as we thought it was. But our political system is deeply, deeply, deeply broken. And even though that we in Washington all patting ourselves on the back because we decided not to put a gun to our head and pull the trigger, the markets are sort of wondering how we`re going to get out of this hole after we finish playing our games. MADDOW: Is there anything that Washington could do, if Washington was a more functional place, that might be reassuring to the markets, that might offer the kind of hope that would make America seem like a way out of this mess and not just somebody else who was in the mire? KLEIN: I think there are things we can do that would be reassuring. I don`t know that there`s a lot we can do that would show we are the way out. For instance, reassuring would be that we don`t continue having unnecessary arguments about whether or not we will pay back our bills. That would be a good thing to do. Reassuring would be to show that we understand the severity of the global crisis and that we`re going to do the clear things we need to do as a country to begin recovering. So, on the one hand, we do have a deficit problem that. That is true. We need a long-term deficit reduction. It`s good that we are getting started on that. Although it`s bad that one side of the argument refuses to admit that revenues might be part of the solution. On the other hand, though, we have a huge short-term growth problem. We have no growth, very, very high unemployment. And we have all of these things we can do. There was a "Bloomberg" story, one of my employers, who said -- and this was fascinating. Our yields on the Treasury, which is how much the market charges us to borrow, are lower than they have been at any point since Eisenhower`s administration. And what that means is that the market cannot borrow from us quickly enough. That we are still the safest thing to do out there, and they want more of our debt. And so, as they beg us to give them more of our debt, beg us to borrow, and we could use that money to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, to pass a large payroll tax cut, to pass a hiring tax credit, we are saying no. We are saying that no matter how good of a deal you give us, we refuse to take the money you`re offering and try to speed a recovery in this country. And no matter whether or not that would make us the hope for the world, it would certainly make our economy better off. MADDOW: Ezra, you know as well as anybody, that Washington is not a unilateral thing. It`s not a monolithic thing. And when people look at there being stasis in Washington right now, really, what`s happening is that nothing can get through Congress. We see also a White House, seemingly, at least saying that they are reinvigorated in terms of focusing on unemployment, focusing on jobs. Are there things that the White House can do, without having to go through Congress, that would have a meaningful effect in terms of the kind of reassurance that you`re talking about and a meaningful effect on jobs? KLEIN: There isn`t an enormous amount they can do. They have some money in the funds they were using to do a housing recovery. They could do more with that. They could obviously push harder on jobs. It is obviously not the case they have a ton of control over this Congress. The actual actor who could do something in Washington who is necessarily part of this gridlock is the Federal Reserve. There are a number of extraordinary measures they can take up from price level targeting in which the basically forces to move into a type of a catch up growth on inflation, to a much larger version of the quantitative easing, maybe a quantitative easing that goes further into real assets as opposed to simply buying treasuries. And many respected economic conservatives began pushing for this type of thing, like Christina Roamer, the former chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. But they appeared to be pulling back somewhat. They appear to be trying to exit the building. The Federal Reserve has been under a lot of criticism particularly in the Republican Party lately, and it has clearly shocked them a little bit. And they don`t want to necessarily lose their political independence. So, they are not doing nearly as much as they could be or frankly should be doing. And that`s a problem because when Congress gridlocks, they become our only hope. MADDOW: Ezra Klein, columnist for "The Washington Post" and for "Bloomberg," and MSNBC policy analyst -- and tomorrow, the host of "THE MARTIN BASHIR SHOW" here at MSNBC at 3:00 Eastern -- Ezra, thanks very much for helping us with this. I appreciate it. KLEIN: Thank you. MADDOW: For a second perspective, we turn now to Robert Frank, professor of economics at Cornell University`s Johnson School of Management. Professor Frank, thanks for coming in. I really appreciate it. ROBERT FRANK, CORNELL UNIVERSITY: My pleasure, Rachel. MADDOW: Let me ask you if you agree with Ezra`s assessment there that while this may not be an American problem that the markets were responding to in total, there are things that the U.S. government could do to make America more reassuring place right now in the markets. FRANK: Absolutely we could. I think Ezra is right that the political prospects for that happening are dim, but I think it`s very important to keep explaining to people that the problem we face is not really a very complicated one. We don`t have enough demand to put people to work. Businesses aren`t spending. Why should they spend? They have already got enough capacity to produce more than consumers want to buy. Consumers are worried they are about to lose their jobs, if they haven`t already. They are worried too that the price of goods and services may rise at some point, although there`s no evidence of that. They are holding back. They have got debt to service. Consumers won`t lead the way. Businesses won`t. That leaves government. And we`ve known for over 60 years that in a situation that we`re in now, where there`s persistent shortfall of demand, government can invest in public works projects and other things that will get the economy back on its feet. It could be done. It`s quite easy to do. The workers are there who know how to do the jobs. The market`s happy to lend us the money, as Ezra said. They are eager to loan us more money at very low interest rates. The cost of debt compared to the cost of unemployment is incredibly low. A $1 trillion deficit costs us $25 billion a year to pay the interest on that. If we have an extra 10 million unemployed, that`s $250 million lost forever each year. And so, it`s a 10-1 tradeoff. We`re focusing on deficit reduction when we really ought to be focused on job creation. And we know how to do it. MADDOW: Even if we all we care about is the deficit, still the solution is to focus on jobs creation. FRANK: Focusing on the deficit, cutting spending, that`s going to make the deficit bigger. What we`re doing now is just unimaginably stupid. MADDOW: Right now, it seems to me like -- well, I`ll just say it this way. We are not a show that very often leads with, what happened on the stock market today? That is not generally the way I at least look at the landscape of American news and think that. I very rarely think that`s the most important thing. I also spend a lot of time talking about what`s politically realistic in America. So, now, we`ve got this combination where I`ve got a 500-point drop of the Dow at the top of the show, and we`re talking about the things that America needs to do to deal with our economy not being politically realistic. At what point does the economy become shocking enough, a 500-point drop on the Dow, becomes shocking enough that it changes what`s politically realistic? How do we understand the magnitude of a day like today on the Dow? FRANK: Yes. Maybe there`s a ray of hope there. If it were going to lose 500 points, better to lose them in an afternoon than over the course of two months. People I think are jolted into recognizing that there is a problem. It`s time to discuss these issues, because, again, there really are simple solutions. A payroll tax holiday -- that would put extra money into workers` pockets. The problem is not enough demand. They`ll have more money, they`ll spend more. Give the employers a break for the next year on the payroll tax for newly hired workers. That would make it cheaper to hire new people. There are thousands of projects, bridges that are collapsing that need to be fixed. People available to fix them. People are happy to lend us money to finance the jobs. Materials cheapen world markets. Machines sitting idle in the yards. This is all quite doable, and politically, that`s the road block, as you point out. But people shouldn`t get a free pass just by being the road block. People should continue to point out that we could be doing something about this, and the road blocks had better get out of the way. MADDOW: And a sharp shock like we saw today may be the sort of thing that gets those road blocks out of the way. FRANK: We can hope. MADDOW: Robert Frank, professor of Economics at Cornell University`s Johnson School of Management, we called you on short notice today, and I know you cancelled other plans to be here. I`m really grateful. Thank you. FRANK: Always a pleasure. MADDOW: Thanks. For his 50th birthday, I`m sure that President Obama did not ask for the stock market to fall like Wile E. Coyote going off a cliff. That said, when President Obama turned 47, I bet he didn`t ask for conservatives to spend three solid years demanding to see other random forms of his birth certificate. Please stay with us. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MADDOW: The biggest story in the presidential politics of the day, Mitt Romney and the magical million-dollar donation to him that nobody is owning up to. That story is coming up. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MADDOW: OK. It was February 1961. An 18-year-old girl from Kansas named Ann Dunham got married against her parent`s wishes. She got married to a Kenyan man five years older than she was. Their marriage took place on the island of Maui in Hawaii, and was three months pregnant at the time of the wedding. Sometime between the wedding and when her child was actually born, in that six-month window, Anne Dunham, while quite pregnant and only 18 years old, decided to fly halfway around the world to Kenya to give birth to the couple`s son there. The plan this young couple was hatching at the time was that their baby, this terror baby, if you will, would become the president of the United States in about 50 years. Why give birth to him then in Kenya instead of just staying in Hawaii? I don`t know. And you don`t either. But they had to know in advance that he was going to run for president 50 years later, because within days of giving birth to him in Kenya, the 18-year-old Ann Dunham, or perhaps one of her co-conspirators, paid a newspaper in Hawaii, "The Honolulu Advertiser," to run this false birth announcement saying that Dunham`s son was not born in Kenya, which, of course, he was, but rather that he was bon in Honolulu. Now, you don`t have to be born in the United States to be a governor or a senator or any other thing, it`s just president. So, Ann Dunham, 18 years old, or her co-conspirators, they knew in 1961 that this baby would specifically be president one day, which is why they had to pay for the fraudulent birth announcement in 1961. Knowing he would be president is also presumably why they named him Barack Hussein Obama, so as to arouse no suspicion whatsoever of his maybe foreign-born nature. So, now, we have a foreign-born, innocuously-named president-to-be terror baby, presumably indoctrinated for his eventual covert ascendance to secret, illegitimate leader of the world -- leading to one of the few unanswered questions in this very clear story, which is over and above the fake birth announcement in the newspaper, who arranged for the fake birth certificate? The fake birth certificate? The fake birth certificate to be put on file in the Department of Health in Hawaii? Was it Barack Obama`s 18-year-old mother? His 23-year-old father? Was it some of their unnamed co-conspirators? Could it have been the terror baby himself? The governor of Hawaii at the time was this man, William Francis Quinn. I`m just saying. Where was he at the time? As part of their plan to make young Barack look like he was American, which, of course, he was not, they brought him from Kenya to Hawaii, where they made sure he gained a little weight, sort of becomes a husky boy for a little while. That looks more American. And then he gets put through American-seeming education at places like Occidental College, although that still sounds a little foreign -- also, Columbia University and Harvard Law School. And with only the fake birth announcement and the forged birth certificate to go by, the American public eventually stumbles into allowing a secret foreign-born Kenyan terror baby to run for president of the United States. And now, 50 years later exactly, maybe, the plan has worked. I think there are a few different varieties of that story. But broadly speaking, that is the story. That is the theory to which 13 members of Congress, 13 elected members of Congress have signed onto, the co-signors of the birther bill to demand birth certificates and not like that probably forged one from anyone running for president, like, say, a certain someone who will have to run for re-election next year, so we as a country don`t get duped again. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS) RADIO HOST: So, you believe the president is a U.S. citizen? REP. RANDY NEUGEBAUER (R), TEXAS: You know, I don`t know. I have never seen him produce documents that would say one way or the other. RADIO HOST: You think he is an American citizen and a Christian? You know what I`m saying. REP. PAUL BROUN (R), GEORGIA: I`m not going to get involved in that. What -- I`m talking about -- RADIO HOST: You can`t say that he`s an American citizen? BROUN: Well -- RADIO HOST: You can`t say the president is an American citizen? BROUN: I don`t know. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What is your position on Barack Obama if he is in fact a Kenyan born, Indonesian Muslim? REP. STEVE PEARCE (R), NEW MEXICO: He himself raises the greatest questions. I think that those questions need to be answered. CALLER: My question is, do you believe that this president was born in America? Because I have not seen enough evidence to say that he is an American citizen. And do you believe he is a Muslim? REP. TIM WALBERG (R), MICHIGAN: You know, I don`t know. I really don`t know. (END VIDEO CLIPS) MADDOW: Is he a citizen? I don`t know. There`s this other theory which seems so plausible. It`s that theory, the whole like flying to Kenya to give birth to the baby and the fake announcement -- yes. It`s that theory that led Republican lawmakers in at least 10 states across the country to introduce birther bills, requiring more birth certificate proof before anybody allows another terror baby on the ballot in any of those great states. Republicans in Arizona went so far as to actually pass their bill. It was later vote owed by Arizona`s governor, Jan Brewer. You know, come to think of it, where was Jan Brewer in 1961? Even Republicans laying the groundwork for presidential election run for 2012 ran with the birther certificate conspiracy theory right from the get-go. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. MICHELE BACHMANN (R-MN), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Look, this is the easiest problem to solve. All the president has to do is show it. And all I`m saying is there`s only one person who can attest to the authenticity, and that`s the clerk of court in the country where he was born. (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: Let`s all line up to go to talk to the clerk of court. One presidential run this year actually seemed to be based entirely on the Kenya conspiracy theory as its whole platform. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS) DONALD TRUMP, BUSINESSMAN: Why doesn`t he show his birth certificate? And you know what? I wish he would, because I think it`s a terrible pall that`s hanging over him. He should show his birth certificate. If you are going to be the president of the United States, you have to be born in this country. And there is a doubt as to whether or not he was born. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Come on. TRUMP: Why doesn`t he show his birth certificate? Why has he spent over $2 million in legal fees to keep this quiet and to keep this silent? (END VIDEO CLIPS) MADDOW: As that TV celebrity/real estate developer fake presidential run based on the presidential birth certificate conspiracy theory occluded all other news in America earlier this year, the White House decided to just end all of that by producing further duplicative documentation that he wasn`t secretly moved from Kenya as an infant to obscure the true, inexplicable conspiracy of his birth. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No one is happier, no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than the Donald. And that`s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter, like did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac? Michele Bachmann is here, though, I understand, and she is thinking about running for president, which is weird because I hear she was born in Canada. Yes, Michele, this is how it starts. (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: That was the White House correspondence dinner earlier this year. And while those jokes at Michele Bachmann and Donald Trump`s expense were sort of devastating, what was really the most devastating thing about that whole time in American politics was the fact that while the president was taking the hide off of Donald Trump at the White House correspondence dinner, at that very moment, at that moment in time, what was he also doing? He was also killing Osama bin Laden. So, yes, this whole thing is over. It`s really -- it`s just the dead enders now. The Web site World Net Daily, you might remember their where`s the birth certificate merchandise page, they made a ton of money off of the conspiracy theory, marketing it to gullible conservatives. They have now had to revise all of their merchandise, so it now says where`s the real birth certificate? They are still trying to eke a few bucks out of this thing. You may also remember Orly Taitz, the queen birther, Orly Taitz still trying to make a go of it as well. Dave Weigel reporting at Slate.com today that Ms. Taitz is now asking her followers for, quote, "information about Hawaiians or leftists who, in theory, could have aided the Obama parents in a massive conspiracy." So, yes, in other words, it`s over. I will say -- I thought at the time when President Obama released the second form of the birth certificate that that would not put this thing to rest, that it wasn`t fact-based, and giving more facts wouldn`t help, but it did put it to rest. I was wrong. It put it to rest. On the president`s 50th birthday today, it is now just the dead-enders and the profiteers at this point who is plugging this thing. There is nobody who has any pull at all in conservative politics or Republican politics at all who has -- seriously? Are you sure? Are you sure this is not from last -- this is this week? This is from yesterday? OK. Play it. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) RUSH LIMBAUGH, RADIO TALK SHOW HOST: Tomorrow is Obama`s birthday. Not that we`ve seen any proof of that. We haven`t seen any proof of that. They tell us August 4th is the birthday. But we haven`t seen any proof of it. Sorry. (END VIDEO CLIP) MADDOW: Sorry. Apparently, it`s not over. Joining us now is David corn, Washington bureau chief for "Mother Jones" and an MSNBC political analyst. David, it`s good to see you. Thank you for being here. DAVID CORN, MSNBC POLITICAL ANALYST: Good to be with you, Rachel. And happy birthday, Mr. President. MADDOW: Happy birthday, Mr. President! Rush Limbaugh is still a birther? I mean, isn`t birtherism over now? CORN: Well, you know, you do think that birtherism is over. I think you put it well a few moments ago when you said it was really relegated to this realm of dead-enders and people who just are, you know, one step away from Area 51 Roswell conspiracy theorists. Or even maybe one step beyond. But, you know, the interesting to me is while birtherism is dead, otherism isn`t dead. And you see in the Republican presidential field, you see the conservatives, they are still out there trying to promote the notion that Obama is really not quite American, which is a more subtle version of birtherism. And I think in some ways more insidious. And if you want examples, I can give you some. MADDOW: Tell me some examples, otherism. Go. CORN: Mitt Romney when he was talking about health care a couple of months ago, actually after the long form birth certificate came out and he said that he didn`t question Obama`s citizenship, what did he say? He said -- I`m going to read this here -- "The Obama administration fundamentally doesn`t believe in the American experiment." Hmm. He doesn`t believe in the American experiment. Sarah Palin, just this week, said that American ideals are foreign to Barack Obama. They are foreign. He doesn`t believe in America either. And today, you played Rush yesterday, but today what did he do? He compared Barack Obama to Robert Mugabe, the dictator, leader, thug, corrupt leader of Zimbabwe. And he said Mugabe is his new role model. And why? Because Mugabe took away white people`s farms. Now, that`s like racism, otherism, birtherism, you know, the Kenya, Africa connection all rolled into one sound bite. I don`t know how he does it. MADDOW: Do you foresee a 2012 campaign in which we get more of the "Obama is a Muslim" stuff, in which we get more of the completely unveiled racist attacks on the president, like some of the stuff that we saw late- breaking in the 2008 campaign? Or do you think that the death of birtherism actually take some of that away, since so much of that stuff was channeled into birtherism? Do you think the stuff is going to be just as bad? CORN: I think you`re going to see it in the Republican primary. Because the general public, independents, moderates, people they`re going to be playing to in the general election don`t care about this and really don`t, you know, aren`t susceptible I think to these types of arguments. But in the Republican field, you have voters in the electorate, the GOP electorate, who still want to bash Obama as some sort of foreign subversive element who is trying to turn America into a Muslim socialist country. It`s kind of confusing to me too. But -- and so candidates who want to get those votes, Republican candidates, are going to have to play to those fears and paranoid sentiments. And that`s what I think you have seen with Mitt Romney, Michele Bachmann, and others. And they are going to find other ways of doing that in the months ahead to get that nomination. MADDOW: David Corn, MSNBC political analyst and Washington bureau chief for "Mother Jones" -- David, thank you for dipping into the madness with me. I appreciate it. CORN: Thank you, Rachel. MADDOW: As Michele Bachmann gets mainstreamed from the really far wing nut edge of Republican politics into a supposedly credible presidential candidate, I think it will be fascinating to see whether or not her past embrace of birtherism will actually be held against her being taken seriously. It`s going to be a potpourri of things to choose from. All right. Biggest political scoop in American news today was thanks to some dogged following the money reporting by NBC`s Michael Isikoff. Mr. Isikoff joins us next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MADDOW: Another day, another deal -- another day, another deal, over something that was not a crisis until congressional Republicans made it one. Congratulations, America, we once again have a Federal Aviation Administration. Hurray! The FAA has been partially shut down for almost two weeks ago, 4,000 workers furloughed, hundreds of construction projects on hold, tens of thousands of construction workers out of work, safety inspectors working without pay and travelling on their own dime -- all because House Republicans held up reauthorization of the FAA to try to force Democrats into letting them strip union rights from people who work for airlines and railroads. The Democrats did not cave on that. The deal reached today provides for no change in union rights. But it`s only a very, very short-term deal. The Senate will approve it tomorrow. President Obama says he`ll sign it immediately. But then we get to have this fight all over again when this short-term authorization runs out in just over a month. Meanwhile, though, those 4,000 furloughed FAA workers will be back at work as of the stroke of pen tomorrow. As for the construction projects and those tens of thousands of construction workers, they will take a bit longer to fire up again. A lot of those workers took other jobs if they could find them, while the agency shut down, so it`s now a matter of waiting to get all of those crews back together again. Before the shutdown, they were working on improvement projects at more than 250 American airports, things like upgrading air-traffic control towers to make them more earthquake resistant, working on runway lighting systems and airport surface radar systems to prevent collisions at airports. Restarting those projects after they were stopped by Congress will cost a ton of money, a ton of money that would not otherwise have had to be spent. The partial shutdown itself has been costing the government $30 million a day in lost tax revenue we`d otherwise be getting. Had it remain unresolved until Congress returned from recess, the total cost would have been well over $1 billion. Local communities, too, have been trying to calculate what the FAA shutdown means for them and their local economies. Local press reports on this show -- local press reports on this issue show worries over 1,200 jobs on the line in Minnesota and millions of dollars worth of projects at the Wilmington, North Carolina airport; $1 million of grant money in Maryland; $16 million worth of projects at the Memphis airport; an aviation school in Fort Wayne, Indiana; $8 million to extend a runway at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport; two projects at the Peoria, Illinois airport put in jeopardy. Those will, theoretically at least, all restart now. After about $400 million was lost directly, plus the cost of restarting all those projects that were stopped, plus the cost to the economy of all of those furloughed workers and construction workers being idled and therefore not getting paid and therefore not spending money on things they`d otherwise spend on and thereby having -- thereby having a magnified effect on the economies around them. That is the cost incurred, already in this particular hostage standoff over Republican efforts to strip union rights. After the debt ceiling deal was agreed to, finally, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told "The Washington Post," "I think some of our members may have thought the default issue was a hostage you might take a chance at shooting. Most of us didn`t think that. What we did learn is this -- it`s a hostage that`s worth ransoming. And it focuses the Congress on something that must be done." So, it`s the full faith and credit of the United States of America that makes for a hostage worth ransoming or it`s the Federal Aviation Administration. That apparently makes for a hostage worth ransoming. This is how Republicans plan to work apparently from here on out -- hostages. They`re not saying don`t call us hostage takers. They are saying, yes, we`re taking hostages, causing real harm to the country, particularly to the economy, to try to get by force what they do not have the votes for. That is how Republicans say they are going to handle the responsibility of governing from here on out. Flotation devices are beneath your seat. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MADDOW: "The Best New Thing in the World Today," I`m very happy to say, is a piece of really good news for American soldiers and for their families. Tomorrow, we`re hearing there`s also due to be some very good news for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. Today`s soldiers and today`s veteran are groups about whom frankly we do not often get to say, hey, there`s a bunch of good news to report. But tonight, good news for them -- big good news for them. I swear. That`s coming up right at the end of the show tonight. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MADDOW: One of the stranger half secret little twists this year`s presidential politics is that the presumed Republican front-runner, the candidate who says he is the one to beat, whomever everyone seems willing to agree is the one to beat, actually has a lot of people on his own side who do not like him. In South Carolina, one group of Republicans responded to news of Mitt Romney the front-runner by trying to draft New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to run against him. The Tea Party FreedomWorks says it will fund an effort to block Mr. Romney from becoming the nominee. Another Tea Party group, the Western Representation PAC, has a stop Romney campaign. Also, the Club for Growth, a heavyweight these days in Republican fiscal policy, calls Mr. Romney a flip flopper. And those are just the folks on the right, his own side, who do not like Mitt Romney for his politics or the way he combs his hair or wears his khakis or whatever. This guy, Fred Karger, is actually completing against Mitt Romney for the Republican nomination. Mr. Karger is a little known candidate, which is a polite way of saying he doesn`t really have a chance. But Mr. Karger has made what seems to be a substantive legal complaint about Mitt Romney. In June, he wrote to state officials in Massachusetts saying he thinks Mr. Romney may have violated Massachusetts voting laws in 2009 and 2010 when he voted in the special election for Ted Kennedy`s old Senate seat won by Republican Senator Scott Brown. Mr. Romney voted once in the primary and once in the general election in Massachusetts. At the time that he cast those ballots, he claimed he was living in his son`s basement in Belmont, Massachusetts, having sold his own multimillion dollar estate there in April 2009. His son`s basement at the time was an unfinished space -- meaning that Mitt Romney, a multimillionaire, was claiming himself to be the legal resident of his son`s unfinished basement. He is claiming under Massachusetts law that his son`s unfinished basement was the center of his domestic, social, and civic life. Massachusetts officials told us when we asked there would be no investigation into these claims against Romney made by Mr. Karger. But despite having a number of people on his own side who really ostentatiously do not like him and are willing to say so out loud, Mitt Romney, of course, also has his fans -- people who do like him and write rather large checks to further his political career. He has powerful and wealthy people who really like him, want him to run and want him to win. We`re just not necessarily allowed to know who those people are. In March of this year, "The Wall Street Journal" reported that the Romney campaign had begun a 15-city tour to shake the trees for big donations, as in $50,000 big donations. The campaign set a goal of $50 million to be raised by early summer, saying they thought that would be enough to scare off anybody thinking of wondering into Mitt Romney`s race. We know now from campaign records that some of Mitt Romney`s very rich friends got out their fancy checkbooks and their Montblanc pens and started inking zeros, even though they didn`t make their $50 million goal. One of the big donations he got was from W Spann LLC. Now, W Spann LLC is a little mysterious. It is listed -- its headquarters are listed as being on Madison Avenue in New York City. But this group, this Spann Company, was only created when it was registered with the state of Delaware, land of mysterious corporations, back in March. The incorporation papers were filed by this young Boston lawyer. We don`t know who her client was or what this new corporation planned to do as a business. We do know that this particular lawyer specializes in something called wealth transfer strategies. And the very next month, after she filed the incorporation papers for W Spann LLC, W Spann LLC did, in fact, transfer a whole bunch of wealth. In April, W Spann transferred $1 million -- not to Mr. Romney`s campaign directly, but to a PAC that`s being run for his benefit. Despite seemingly to exist as a single page with three stock photos and a giant "contribute" button and some boilerplate talked about candidates, plural, that PAC Restore Our Future, is really all about Mitt Romney. Restore Our Future is run by Mitt Romney`s backers. They say they are raising money for Mitt Romney. They have had Mitt Romney solicit donations for their pro-Mitt Romney PAC at the PAC`s events. It`s a Mitt Romney gig. They raised more than 12 million bucks in the first half of the year. And 1/3 of what they raised came in million dollar chunks from four sources, including the aforementioned mysterious W Spann LLC, a company that seems to have done pretty much nothing besides give $1 million on April 28th for the betterment of Mitt Romney`s political career. On July 11th, two weeks before this Mitt Romney PAC had to file its report with federal elections officials, two weeks before that PAC was to reveal its donors, this company, W Spann LLC, shut down. Its wealth transfer specialist lawyer filed this certificate of cancellation with the state of Delaware. So, whatever this company was supposed to be, whatever it was, after founding itself, submitting a single $1 million check on Mitt Romney`s behalf, the mysterious W Spann LLC was then officially dissolved. That`s all it did as a company. That`s what the company was for, apparently -- to deliver 1 million bucks for Mitt Romney`s political benefit via a source that soon disappeared, a source that could not be traced. So, where did that million dollars come from? Who gave that money? Mr. Romney`s old investment firm, Bain Capital, says W Spann was not affiliated with them or anybody that works for them. Next guess, anyone? Was it a Girl Scout troop maybe? You know, cookie sales this year, I hear, were great. Could it have been the government of China maybe? How about a Mexican drug cartel? How about Mitt Romney himself? We do not know. We just do not know. Joining us now is the investigative reporter who got everybody asking these questions today by putting these dots together -- Michael Isikoff, NBC News national investigative correspondent. Michael, congratulations on breaking this story. Appreciate having you here. MICHAEL ISIKOFF, NBC NEWS NATIONAL INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT: Well, thank you, Rachel. Good to be with you. MADDOW: Do we know whose money this is? Is there any way to find out? Could it be foreign money? Could it be Romney`s own money? Is there any way to know? ISIKOFF: It certainly could be anything. It`s actually a rather intriguing Washington mystery. You know, you certainly laid out a -- one scenario that people have speculated about, the Bain Capital connection. Ropes & Gray, the law firm that Cameron Casey works for, has long represented Bain Capital, the firm that Mitt Romney once headed. Bain Capital does have an office in that 590 Madison Avenue skyscraper that W Spann listed its address as. But Bain Capital`s spokesman in a rather emphatic denial to me said nobody at the firm is part of this entity. Now, that does raise the question, could it be clients of the firm or could it be somebody else in 590 Madison Avenue? There`s UBS. There`s Bank of America. There`s CEMEX. There`s a lot of other blue chip firms that have this address. What we do know is I spoke to the management company at 590 Madison Avenue. They say they never heard of W Spann and have no such tenant. MADDOW: Why did you figure this out? Why did you start chasing the W Spann connection in the first place? What about it stood out to you? ISIKOFF: Well, first of all, the million dollars. You don`t see that every day. And when you see a huge check like that, it does kind of raise your eyebrows. And I saw caught -- this was filed in the Restore Our Future filings with the FEC late on Friday. There were a couple stories over the weekend that said people couldn`t explain where this was. And that got my juices going. We did a full LexisNexis search, database search on Monday, and found the Delaware court papers. I called the Delaware secretary of state`s office. I ordered the court incorporation and dissolution papers, saw the dates, saw the name Cameron Casey, and was able to sort of piece what we`ve gotten so far together. MADDOW: Is there any evidence that this company ever did anything other than form, give a million dollars to Mitt Romney, and disband? Is there any evidence they did anything else? ISIKOFF: Not in the public record. And that`s precisely the question. And that`s why there`s going to be calls tomorrow from some campaign finance reform groups for a Justice Department and Federal Election Commission investigation into this. Look, it is a federal crime to give money in the name of another. That`s called a straw donation. The Justice Department has made vigorous prosecutions of this over the years. This is sort of can be a form of this. If W Spann had no other purpose but was only set up for -- to funnel money to restore our future, the PAC, then it is arguably a straw donation. Somebody is trying to conceal their identity by using this arguably sham company to make this donation. MADDOW: Michael Isikoff, NBC news national investigative correspondent -- Michael, I love the way you think. I love this work. And the way you do it on this. Thank you for following this trailing and thanks for joining us. ISIKOFF: Thanks, Rachel. MADDOW: The big recall election day in Wisconsin is Tuesday. I have big news about that. Ed Schultz is going to be doing his show in Madison starting on Monday. Tonight, all the latest in the big money fight over Governor Scott Walker`s union-busting play in Wisconsin. That`s coming up on "THE ED SHOW." And here, "The Best New Thing in the World Today" is great news for American soldiers. And American soldiers have had a best new thing coming to them for a really, really long time, frankly. News I`m really happy to report, coming up. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) MADDOW: In the decade since 9/11, about 2 million Americans have fought in our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- 2 million Americans is a lot of people. It is also, however, less than 1 percent of the U.S. population. Our Iraq and Afghanistan veterans have borne a hugely disproportionate burden as the 1 percent that`s them have done deployment after deployment after deployment in the name of the 99 percent of the rest of us who have not done these things. In 2007, having that tiny proportion of our population fighting two of the longest wars in our history simultaneously meant that combat deployments were lengthened to 15 months -- 15 months at a stretch in the war zone. And the Bush administration shortened the troops` minimum guarantee of how much time they would have at home before being deployed at home. Today, NBC News has learned that, finally, that is about to change in the United States Army. Tomorrow, the Army is expected to announce that most combat deployments will decrease to nine months total time on the ground in the war zone. The announcement is also expected to include an increase in dwell time, which is the time troops have at home between their deployments. MADDOW: To have been a soldier this decade for the United States of America has meant two, three, six, eight deployments to war. We have never before as a country asked this much of our men and women in uniform for this long -- shortening these deployments, increasing their guaranteed time at home, frankly, it is "The Best New Thing in the World Today." It`s due to be announced tomorrow. It`s not everything, but it is a very, very welcome start. That does it for us tonight. Now, it`s time for "THE ED SHOW." Have a good night. THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. END


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text:
REPORT ALLEGES COVER-UP OF INFANT DEATHS POST VACCINATION
The Crazz Files September 6, 2017
Two doctors in New Delhi have exposed an attempt by a multinational drug manufacturer to conceal sudden deaths in infants following the administration of its vaccine.
Jacob Puliyel, a pediatrician at the St. Stephen's hospital and C. Sathyamala, an epidemiologist, have reported their finding in the peer-reviewed Indian Journal of Medical Ethics.
The vaccine in question, "Infanrix hexa," — that combines diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, hepatitis B, polio and influenza type B vaccines — is manufactured by GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and was introduced in Europe in October 2000.
Puliyel and Sathyamala discovered the cover-up by analyzing data in the Periodic Safety Update Reports (PSUR) about the vaccine that its manufacturer GSK is required to regularly provide to the European Medicines Agency (EMA).
These confidential safety reports on this vaccine were received by Puliyel from Italian Dr. Loretta Bolgan who obtained them from EMA under the Freedom of Information Act – the Italian version of the Right to Information Act in India.
On analysis, the doctors found that the latest 19th safety report on 'Infanrix hexa' vaccine submitted by GSK (2015) has deleted deaths that were reported previously by the manufacturer in its 16th report (2012). They, however, note that it is not clear from the report how these deaths were deleted.
The authors Puliyel and Sathyamala note that ten years after the publication of a Center for Disease Control paper examining a relationship between MMR and autism, one of the authors William Thompson admitted that he and his co-authors had omitted statistically significant information – that African American males given the MMR vaccine before the age of 36 months, were at increased risk of autism. After the Thompson and his colleagues found evidence of this increased risk, they deleted data of children without Georgia birth certificates (and so disqualified a disproportionate number of black children) and they presented their data saying there was no increased risk of autism. It is not clear whether the authors of the PSUR 19 performed some similar retroactive disqualification of children documented to have died in the PSUR 16.
"If these deaths had not been deleted, the deaths after vaccination would have been significantly higher than what was expected by chance. The manufacturer would have had to admit to the EMA that their vaccine was the cause of these excess deaths," the authors report.
Puliyel and Sathyamala argue that the manufacturer "needs to explain the apparently faulty figures that it submitted to the regulatory authorities.
Until now the manufacturer has been claiming that the deaths reported after the vaccine are "coincidental" and that they would have taken place in these children even if they had not been vaccinated.
However, in their commentary in the journal, Puliyel and Sathyamala point out that their analysis has shown that 83 % of the reported deaths have taken place soon after vaccination in the first 10 days and only 17% happened in the next 10 days.
"If this were simply coincidental deaths then it would not all cluster immediately after vaccination but would have been distributed uniformly over the 20 day period."
Puliyel and Sathyamala write that any argument that the sudden deaths after vaccination is offset against the lives saved by the vaccine is not acceptable in the same way it would be considered unethical to kill one person to use his or her organs for saving five other persons.
"Glossing over of the deaths after vaccination can prevent or delay evaluation of the vaccine's safety profile and this has potential to result in more, unnecessary deaths which are difficult to justify ethically," they say.
They point out that Hexavac – a similar vaccine manufactured by Sanofi Pasteur and introduced in the market also in 2000 was removed from the European market in 2005. It was found to have increased deaths of children within two days of vaccinating with it.
In the Indian context, the authors note that the Drug Controller General of India ( DCGI) should reconsider the current policy of automatically approving any drug licensed in the USA and Europe. "This reliance on due diligence by the EMA may be misplaced and needs to be re-evaluated."
"Pentavac", manufactured by Serum Institute of India and marketed in India, is similar to the now banned Hexavac and the Infanrix hexa reported here, except that the whole-cell whooping cough vaccine is replaced by an acellular vaccine and it has a sixth component, the injectable polio vaccine."
In the light of their finding, Puliyel and Sathyamala suggest that "it is crucial for the DCGI to be aware of the PSUR reports provided to the EMA and the concerns raised through this commentary." (End)
[This press release has been written with help from an experienced science reporter]
The article can be accessed here.
http://www.issuesinmedicalethics.org/articles/infanrix-hexa-and-sudden-death-a-review-of-the-periodic-safety-update-reports-submitted-to-the-european-medicines-agency/
For any queries contact
Jacob Puliyel MD MRCP M Phil
puliyel@gmail.com
Phone 0091 9868035091
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One thought on "REPORT ALLEGES COVER-UP OF INFANT DEATHS POST VACCINATION"
R Davis says:
* The Guardian – Why many women are unable to have a second child. 7 May 2010.
* Huffington Post – Infertility, Women without children – have nothing. 23 April 2012.
These are but two article of thousands over the years.
We have known for several decades that infertility in both men & women is rising.
Today every nation on planet earth is below replacement level – fertility.
The children of the world are vanishing.
At the rate they are killing off the babies of the world – GlaxoSmithKline – have less & less customers every day.
When there are so few children born in the world.
What in Gods name will they do ?
Where will their profits come from ?
There will be no choice but to shut down.


For a group that came together in the midwest, the Nashville transplants MODOC sure have a handle on southern rock. Instead of resting on laurels and genre constraints though, the quartet takes the swagger of southern rock and adds pulsing keys and vocal harmonies to create a frenetic, high-energy sound unlike any other. With placements of sultry jam "Devil On My Shoulder" on shows like ABC's 666 Park Avenue, appearances on the festival circuit last summer, two albums in 18 months and an aggressive touring schedule this year. With a feature in American Songwriter and both recording and touring in the near future, they show no signs of slowing down in 2014.


will always be a discussion about whether or not we actually stole the chairs in my parents garage from the church which we are now hauling to wherever it is we're having Thanksgiving this year. There will always be the "Thanksgiving beans" sitting on each plate before dinner starts so everyone can go around the table and name something they're thankful for. Mom will always cry and say she's thankful for dad when it gets to her turn, which is always very sweet. There will always be screaming children terrorizing everyone else the entire day (in the eighties these were my cousins. Now they are nieces and nephews). And there will always be an incredibly long prayer to bless the food, which is always disrupted by an incredibly awkward moment; two years ago it was Uncle Rick praying that a couple members in the family would just find spouses already, and as if that wasn't awkward enough, he got one of the people mixed up and prayed for my already married sister. This year it was my two year old niece, like a broken record, saying over and over again "I need go potty. I need go potty. I need go potty," confirming once again that I am simply too immature to maintain composure when bodily humor is placed in front of me, even in the most serious situations.
A couple of days after Thanksgiving, Krishelle and I decided to help our parents put up some Christmas decorations which made my mother overly excited. After fanning out the branches of the various wreaths and trees strategically placed around the house, I felt something come over my head and then realized that it was a Santa hat, disturbingly decorated with reindeer antlers. I walked into the next room and found that Krishelle had been assaulted with antlers of her own. Mom was running around the house singing every Christmas tune she's ever heard of (including a few that I'm positive she made up) while dad fiddled with the lights stating no less than fifty times that he hated those "stupid things."
As always, the decorations miraculously turned, from what always looks like a severe case of hoarding while still in the storage room, into an immaculate display of festive cheer. It's a talent that mom has always had.
I'm looking forward to Christmas now, so much so that I secretly longed for snow the other day for about twelve seconds. But don't tell anyone.
Oh Eli, i love the hat! It truly fits you!!
Love the holidays with our family...and am sad to say that I too am very "mature" when it comes to bodily functions...even in the most serious of times! We are so lucky to have the family we do!


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text:
Should Israel Annex the West Bank?
Commentary (pdf)
http://www.danielpipes.org/20064/should-israel-annex-the-west-bank
[Commentary title: "Middle East Options"]
To The Editor of Commentary:
In "Can the Palestinians Make Peace?" [April], Daniel Pipes comes to the unavoidable conclusion that there can be only one state between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. In fact, he goes even farther, by stating that to think otherwise is "either naive or duplicitous."
I certainly agree with Mr. Pipes's cogent and well-reasoned arguments, but if one follows his logic, all present and putative negotiations that could lead to a binational solution are naive or duplicitous. What is more, any argument for territorial withdrawal by Israel falls into these categories. Mr. Pipes, however, like many of Israel's most articulate and realistic supporters, stops short of using the "A" word—annexation of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza.
The objection most often cited to the annexation of these territories is the so-called "demographic time bomb"—the argument that the Arab population is growing so fast that by the end of the century, Arabs will no longer be a minority in Israel. From this argument, the naive and the duplicitous conjure visions ranging from Israel's loss of its Jewish character, to the specter of "apartheid and fascism."
Fortunately, two facts easily dispose of this argument. First, the census of Arabs in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza demonstrates that the population has not grown rapidly, and, in fact, has leveled off and even dropped in recent years. Although relatives living abroad are listed as members of their respective households, since 1967, the Arab population of the territories has grown by 200,000 persons—hardly the "explosion" that was feared. Second, the anticipated influx of Russian Jews which, by some estimates, will reach one million by the end of the decade, would clearly offset even a sudden spurt in the growth of the Arab population.
Why not argue the case for annexation, since all other solutions are impossible? Annexation could include limited autonomy for the Arabs, a solution that even human-rights groupies would agree could bring Israel's Arabs a degree of freedom and a standard of living not available in any other Middle Eastern nation. It also seems to be the only solution which is compatible with Israel's survival.
Daniel Pipes writes:
Ruth King admonishes me to the effect that the logic of my argument implies Israeli annexation of the West Bank. Well, maybe my argument leads her to that conclusion, but it doesn't take me there. There are two principal reasons.
First: Mrs. King correctly raises demographics as a central issue—but then proceeds to give incorrect figures. In fact, the Arab population in the occupied territories has increased from almost exactly a million in 1967 to over a million and a half today. A 56-percent increase in one generation sounds like a population "explosion" to me.
Further, the increase in Arab residents would have been much greater except that so many people emigrated to take advantage of the opportunities created by the oil boom. But the economic downturn in the Middle East means that emigration has declined precipitously, and there is no reason to expect it to resume. As for the influx of Soviet Jews, like Arab emigration, it provides a one-time-only boost to the Jewish population.
In the long term, what counts are underlying birth rates, and these are overwhelmingly in the Arabs' favor. According to a 1981 estimate, Muslim women living under Israeli control average 6.6 children per woman. If there is to be a flat-out demographic contest between Arabs and Jews west of the Jordan River, Mrs. King, surely you would join me in putting your money on the former.
But demographics is not all; politics also count. Most of the two million Arabs living under Israeli control execrate the Jewish state. Therefore, I ask of Mrs. King and those who think like her: of what benefit is it to them or to Israel that they become citizens of Israel? Put differently, is not Israel's first priority to be a Jewish state, with the exact nature of its territory to be determined by the exigencies of this goal? Or is the point to skip over two thousand years and control the lands of an ancient kingdom?
The Lebanese example should caution expansion-minded Israelis: the Maronites had a choice seventy years ago between a small but overwhelmingly Maronite state or a large, diluted one. Foolishly, they pushed for the latter. For fifty-five years, they could delude themselves into thinking they had made the right decision, but in 1975 the Muslims finally sought control of Lebanon. Fifteen years of civil war have exposed the futility of the Maronite choice; and there is no reason to think that an analogous Jewish choice would fare better.
As an American analyst I am always cautious about advising foreign states what to do. That said, here are some of my own thoughts about the situation. I reject three options—an independent Palestinian state (at least until all the Arab states make peace with Israel); Israeli annexation of the West Bank; and Israel's expulsion of Arabs living under its control. What does this leave? Not much. The ideal would be a voluntary exchange of populations, but that is exceedingly unlikely, if only because most Jews have already left their homes in Arab countries.
The only realistic solutions are old-fashioned and unsatisfactory: a West Bank under Jordanian control; a West Bank confederated with Jordan; a Jordanian-Israeli condominium in the West Bank. I propose these not out of enthusiasm but faute de mieux. The past century's experience suggests that virulent nationalism cannot be suppressed, except through the most brutal means. Ruling those out, I see nothing better than patched-together efforts that can be adjusted as need demands.
Annexing the West Bank Would Hurt Israel
Can the Palestinians Make Peace?


The 7th and 8th grade softball banquet is this Saturday at the Middle School. We plan on having a mother/daughter softball game followed by a cookout (Dave Burt will be the Master Griller). We plan on starting the game at 10:00am followed by the cookout. The even will end at 2:00pm.
Everyone is welcome! Please let me know if you plan on attending.