" "I'm so scared of this anti-Wall Street effort. I'm frightened to death," said Frank Luntz, a Republican strategist and one of the nation's foremost experts on crafting the perfect political message. "They're having an impact on what the American people think of capitalism."

" Luntz offered tips on how Republicans could discuss the grievances of the Occupiers, and help the governors better handle all these new questions from constituents about "income inequality" and "paying your fair share." "

" Managing expectations is a critical task for CIRM, which will run out of funds in 2017 and which is expected to be asking voters for another multibillion dollar bond measure sometime in the next few years. "

" The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn’t seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late. "

" Zastrow said Amendment 26, also known as the “Personhood Amendment,” defines the word person “as a human being at fertilization.” The amendment will be on the Mississippi ballot this fall. “It doesn’t matter if it’s natural creation or in a lab such as stem cell research,” he said.

" Zastrow and others walked along Highway 15 North beginning near Ward’s, displaying signs with messages such as “Outlaw all abortions” with a graphic photo of an aborted baby. Other signs used Biblical references such as Exodus 20:13, “God Says: ‘Thou Shalt Not Murder.’” "

" The bill’s sponsor, Rep. George Faught, R-Muskogee, said Thursday that life begins at conception and any lawmaker who claims to be pro-life should support the proposal.

" “Don’t let that embryo be relegated to just some material that can be used for experimentation,” Faught said after reading several passages from the Bible.

" Rep. Pam Peterson, R-Tulsa, said she resented the fact that the basic right to life was being substituted for economic development.

" “Now we have this utilitarian ethic of life,” she said. “That life is worth something to somebody else dead or experimented upon, then that now is more valuable to society. That is a very sad state we are in.

" Democratic Rep. Jeannie McDaniel, of Tulsa, opposed the measure and said embryonic stem cell research could help find a cure for cancer and diseases such as multiple sclerosis. She said the restrictions would leave the impression that Oklahoma is not open to taking part in groundbreaking research.

" “Why put roadblocks up? We need to tell scientists we are open for business,” she said. "

commenter, wholly ignorant of where embryonic stem cells come from but illustrating the risk of framing a contested moral issue as "sexy, hot":

" What a doer and a shaker this gent Gordon Carmichael is. Turning cannibalism into jobs and cold hard cash! Way to go…. "

" A fetus has to torn apart in order for it to be “sexy science”? "

" "We have put ourselves on the international map,'' Carmichael told me when I met him at StemCONN 2011, a symposium for the research community where he was introduced as the "Connecticut Poster Boy" for stem cell research. "It leads to more money, more people. We have become a much more appealing place." "

" A bill that would make human cloning a crime in Minnesota is back at the state Legislature. Proponents of stem cell research say the bill could hamper research on the roots of disease and potential therapies. "

" The field of stem cell science has been criticized for the hyperbole the surrounds it, much of which was evident in the 2004 election campaign that created the California stem cell agency. While some license is expected in any campaign, dubious claims can blow back on those who utter them as voters detect the flim-flam. "

" In five to seven years, the extraordinary work of California’s stem cell scientists and physician/scientists will begin to mature, forever changing the future of human suffering and substantially, while enhancing job growth and economic expansion in the Bay Area. "

" Every time we cure or alleviate a disease, we lessen the national debt, because we don't have to pay for those medical costs. "

" Since the beginning of 2008, New York has awarded nearly $223 million to support stem cell research for the purpose of exploring innovative cures and treatment to life threatening and chronic illnesses. In addition to supporting ground-breaking stem cell research projects, the state's investment has been a tool for economic development by creating hundreds of jobs in the first two years of the program, and is attracting world-renowned researchers and scientists to New York. "

" Arnold Kriegstein, PhD, director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCSF, notes that governments of other countries – including China and some European Union nations – have recently made large commitments to support stem cell research. "

" Regenerative medicine may play a significant role in regenerating the economy of Southeast Michigan, according to medical researchers in the region. Having begun collaborating and co-sponsoring the 2010 World Stem Cell Summit, proponents believe that the growing research infrastructure will bring increased revenue for research facilities and staff and the ability to train new graduate students, develop new drug therapies, and spin off clinical businesses throughout the region. "

" Judy Woodruff gets perspectives from Dr. Evan Snyder of the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute and David Prentice of the Family Research Council. "

" We can’t afford the loss of intellectual power that this injunction will bring. In 2010 it would be a tragedy to set hESC research back to 1998 in the United States while scientists in other countries (and perhaps many now working and living here who will soon alight to Asia) forge ahead. "

" Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO) President and CEO Jim Greenwood issued the following statement today regarding the injunction issued yesterday by a U.S. District Court prohibiting the use of federal funds to support embryonic stem cell research:

" "The preliminary injunction issued yesterday by the U.S. District Court blocking federal funding of embryonic stem cell (ESC) research casts a dark cloud of uncertainty, for the moment, on promising ESC research. For more than a decade, ESC research consistently has demonstrated that it holds great hope for the development of breakthrough treatments and cures for debilitating diseases such as Alzheimer's, spinal cord injuries, diabetes and more.

" "Each day we wait for the judicial process to play out is a day lost for patients and their families living with such diseases.

" "We already have seen the promising possibility of stem cell research with companies like Geron showing astonishing results in the area of spinal cord injuries. As we have previously said, researchers should pursue all areas of stem cell research in the search for new therapies and cures.

" "We hope the judicial process moves quickly to clear this uncertainty to permit federally funded ESC research to move forward again. Millions of patients are waiting." "

" Ronald Reagan's death from Alzheimer's disease Saturday has triggered an outpouring of support for human embryonic stem cell research. Building on comments made by Nancy Reagan last month, scores of senators on Monday called upon President Bush to loosen his restrictions on the controversial research, which requires the destruction of human embryos. Patient groups have also chimed in, and Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) on Tuesday added his support for a policy review. "

" The quote was from Ronald McKay, a stem cell researcher at the National Institutes of Health, and the topic was human embryonic stem cells. In an interview I did for The Washington Post in 2004, I asked McKay why so many people kept talking about the possibility that injections of stem cells into the brains of people with Alzheimer’s disease might someday cure these people when, in fact, the scientific consensus at the time (and still today) was that such injections were unlikely to benefit such patients. ... “To start with, people need a fairy tale,” McKay told me. “Maybe that’s unfair, but they need a story line that’s relatively simple to understand.” "

DEFEND PUBLIC EDUCATION (picture of an AK-47)
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WORLD-WIDE CLASS WAR

" US researchers on Sunday defended animal testing, telling a small group at one of the biggest science conferences in the United States that not doing animal research would be unethical and cost human lives.

" The researchers, who are or have been involved in animal research, told a symposium at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) that testing on animals has led to 'dramatic developments in research that have improved and affected the quality of human life.'

" 'To not do animal testing would mean that we would not be able to bring treatments and interventions and cures in a timely way. And what that means is people would die,' Stuart Zola of Emory University, which is home to the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, told AFP after the symposium. "

" The trainer, Austin James, was instructing Tea Party members on how to "manipulate the medium". This is what he told them: "Here's what I do. I get on Amazon; I type in 'Liberal books'. I go through and I say 'one star, one star, one star'. The flipside is you go to a conservative/ libertarian whatever, go to their products and give them five stars "

Ray Greek to other animal rights activists: your scientific ignorance makes you look stupid so just refer them to me.

Dear vegans: "Necrovore" is either a death metal band or an insult that makes you sound demented.

" the animals engaged in aggressive behavior that has been widely documented for this species, and that also occurs when they live naturally in the wild ... Furthermore, the laboratory monkeys had been able to do this because they were housed socially, rather than individually. "

"But I’ve always disliked “framing” as a strategy for influencing the global-warming debate. Framing is just spinning, and neuroframing is spinning plus brain scans."

"Once science moves from the laboratory or ice caps into fights over policy and the economy, Mr. Ropeik said, the issues are mainly framed by polarizing figures who tailor their message to people who already strongly support their views."

Draws parallels between anti-abortion beliefs and secular animal rights beliefs.

"Both President-elect Barack Obama and Democratic Congressional leaders have made repealing Bush administration restrictions announced in 2001 a top priority. But they have yet to determine if Mr. Obama should quickly put his stamp on the issue by way of presidential directive, or if Congress should write a permanent policy into statute. ... Democrats also say they hope to reduce the divisiveness of the debate by framing the stem cell policy as more of a health care issue with the potential to provide new treatments, and less of a fight that spills over into the abortion arena."

"But it looks like "personhood" is going to be a central part of ALL's mission going forward, starting with their upcoming conference:"

" If it's acceptable to frame science in such a way that will convince granting agencies to fund that science, why is it not acceptable to frame science for a different audience, the public? Or are both not OK? And if both are not OK, then how does a scientist convince his fellow scientists and lay people controlling the purse strings at private foundations that his work is worthy of funding otherwise? "

" How is this any different from "framing" an argument for a mass audience or for the lay public? It's not, really, other than in degree and in how many constraints are placed on us by the media as opposed to scientific venues. "

" One thing I've noticed in all the arguments about "framing" is that the discussions virtually always center around two topics: evolution or global climate change. ...I now ask the pro-"framing" contingent a question: How would you deal with antivaccinationism? What "frames" would you use to combat the likes of Jenny McCarthy? "

" "Framing" may be useful for short term persuasion, but in the long term it's bound to fail. A far more effective way to combat denialism is to teach people what good science is and what it is not, what constitutes sound arguments and what constitutes logical fallacies and bad arguments. Then they'll be more able to recognize for themselves when someone is trying to snooker them with ideologically-motivated pseudoscience. "

BREED FOR THE FACTORY (Would you like to know more?)

"Downey does not move in the ways of the late atheist spokesperson Madalyn Murray O'Hair, who was known for her caustic mockery of religion and its followers. And despite Downey's friendship with the outspoken atheist author Richard Dawkins, of The God Delusion fame (who likens the religious indoctrination of kids to child abuse), Downey is more interested in building bridges than walls."

"There is one person who will get up every morning for the rest of her life knowing that she decided either to go ahead and have a child, or knowing that she decided to abort it: and that is the woman. That is why I very strongly believe she should be the person who personally bears the awesome responsibility for taking that moral decision."

"In essence, Catholic neocons are attempting to subvert the Roman Catholic tradition of social justice in order to further a greater (and ultimately) nonreligious neoconservative agenda. As we shall see, their take on Catholicism, social justice, and economics is not only inaccurate, but engages in a quietly ruthless form of historical revisionism. "

N.B.: phrased as "Do you support or oppose stem cell research that clones human embryos so the stem cells can be removed?" / "Do you support or oppose stem cell research that kills the human embryo so the stem cells can be removed?"

N.B. the crisis framing in this ostensibly objective article: "a variety of ticking time bombs set to explode soon after the 2008 presidential election, including the AMT, Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare."

A 2004 book put out by Richard L. Wendt's American Institute for Full Employment (of which For Our Grandchildren is a subsidiary), advocating the personal accounts proposal. Favorable blurbs from FreedomWorks, NCPA, and ICPR.

This is the initial version of the "7.65% solution" article on Wikipedia, dated 2005 October 18. The anonymous contributor (IP 70.103.236.194) is clearly a dedicated believer in the proposal, and clearly in dire need of writing help.

"Check out this new web site, America is Listening,... Many of the folks in the video are FreedomWorks members– great work!"

"FreedomWorks Florida State Director John Hallman spoke to the Delray Beach Womens Republican Club... John distributed the 7.65 solution brochure to the audience and urged everybody to read how we can fix both Social Security and Medicare."

Joint project of the American Institute for Full Employment and FreedomWorks, and perhaps others. Advocates a private accounts "7.65% solution" for Social Security policy. The site does not identify its owners or backers in any way, disturbingly.

A variant of generational crisis framing, arguing that boomer retirees are scheduled to receive "surprisingly generous" benefits and so consequently are not as vulnerable a population / not as deserving of protection as is currently paradigmatic.

The Concord Coalition is also part of the "Fiscal Wake-Up Tour", which evidently is "a nationwide series of town hall forums on the nation's long-term fiscal challenge".

Brookings, Heritage, and the American Enterprise Institute take fiscal constraint arguments to the public on a "fiscal wake-up tour". How, exactly, this article doesn't really say; this article gives the impression of itself being a vehicle of the tour.

Note the article's identification of Social Security among "other entitlement programs", and the use of 2017 (when expenditures will begin to deplete the trust fund as planned) rather than 2040 as the benchmark date.

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) comes out against private accounts.

Take this with a large grain of salt. Alternate hypothesis: candidates in the closest races this article refers to are simply trying to avoid taking as many potentially polarizing positions as possible in order to maximize their appeal.

"It looks to me like another backhanded way to build support for cutting Social Security and Medicare by people who refuse to address the real source of the problem -- the projected explosion in U.S. health care costs."

Refreshingly, asks several hard and necessary questions about societal priorities, what would happen to people who invest poorly, how much brokering fees would cost, where the money would come from, etc.

"What the Democrats actually support, however, is the AARP's approach to addressing Social Security's enormous deficit by making "modest adjustments in _future_ benefits" and getting "additional contributions from higher-income workers." "

Scary scary debt alarmism. Interestingly, mentions Social Security first among a list of federal expenditures (with Medicare, Medicaid, and debt interest), as if it were part of a unified budget, and omits military expenditures.

The Free Enterprise Fund is running ads against Lamont (but not Lieberman) in Connecticut.

Spin #2: "Social Security checks for nearly 49 million Americans are going up by 3.3 percent next year, which will mean an extra $33 per month in the average check, the government announced Wednesday."

Spin #1: "The nation's nearly 49 million Social Security recipients are in line to get a smaller average increase in their monthly benefit checks in 2007 than they did this year, though less of the gain will be eaten up by rising Medicare premiums."

"the president is on the right side of history here. ... the more your empower American people, the more you give them the opportunity to invest on their own and being in control of their own destiny and their own retirement, the better off we'll be."

Free market / libertarian op-ed clearinghouse and discussion board. Commentators have argued Social Security crisis frames, promoted "ownership society" variants, and promoted private accounts proposals.

Generational crisis framing: "Personal accounts are by far the most powerful way to equalize the decline in the number of workers with the increase in retirees." A Scripps newspaper.

Lieberman framed Social Security as crisis in 2005 March ("Every year we wait to come up with a solution to the Social Security problem costs our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren $600 billion more.").

Same Brendan Lynch, Young Republican, on personal accounts: "I am very much in favor of it, but the elderly are such a large portion of those who actually vote in the United States, and they get scared any time you talk about changing Social Security,"

Note the generational crisis framing from private accounts supporter Brendan Lynch. Note also that the article's source about young people's Social Security attitudes is a survey from an investment firm.

"Under the law, the trust fund must be held in US government bonds. Government bonds are not very mysterious - ... The Social Security privatizers try to make this process sound strange or confusing."

Cleary / NAM frames Social Security as a looming crisis and again promotes the For Our Grandchildren / AIFE expand-the-policy-agenda pledge.

Quotes Noam Chomsky: "If working people depend on the stock market for their pensions, health care, and other means of survival, they have a stake in undermining their own interests... in a manner reminiscent of feudalism...''

”Social Security can pay all scheduled benefits for the next 40 years... What makes Social Security a major issue, except the fact that some people (perhaps including our NYT commentator) want to privatize and/or cut it?"

Libertarian appeal to the religious: "By reducing the tax burden on families, we make it easier for Christian households to tithe or for young mothers to stay home to raise their children. The same is true for retirement security based on ownership."

Op-ed from Malcolm Moore of the pro-private accounts think-tank and media outlet National Center for Public Policy Research. Previously published by DogonVillage (*last year*, 2005 July 22), the Chicago Defender (Sep 21), and NCPPR.

Severe misinterpretation of the trust fund's operation, leading to: "I introduced legislation to end this terrible practice. Under my bill, HR 219, your Social Security contributions are set aside in an interest-bearing account and cannot be spent."

"Moderates looking for a way to confront the long-term problem of the retirement benefit should be especially interested. ... intergenerational tradeoffs,... can be mitigated in two related ways - increasing savings and reducing the deficit."

Claims that fear is widespread among Boomers over the stability of Social Security (sources?) and casually notes worries "about government promises being broken" (which might happen how?). A Scripps newspaper.

Mussenden's career at Media General mid-2005 to present, with the blurb "He concentrates on issues that affect the elderly and the young." There aren't many issues about which anyone claims that, are there? Links to various op-ed pieces for Media General.

Mussenden, framing similarly to 18 to 35 / Third Millennium during Bush's 2005 private accounts push: "No one my age expects the federal government to finance their retirement, at least no one I’ve met."

Lauding the Pension Protection Act of 2006, Mussenden again sounds the 18 to 35 / Third Millennium frame: "Unlike previous generations, we can't base our retirement income on the guaranteed monthly payout traditional pensions offer."