var _NTW_file_metadata = {"listing_topic":"Democrats","timespan":"","listing_type":"Most Recent Stories","listing_url":"http://www.newstrust.net/topics/democrats/most_recent","sources_type":"","source_name":null,"hdr_story_type":"","min_reviews":3,"title_prefix":"","local_site":null,"site_base_url":"http://www.newstrust.net/"}
var _NTW_stories = [{"rating":"3.2","num_reviews":"1","title":"57% of Republicans Should Just Be Democrats","url":"http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/9790-57-of-republicans-should-just-be-democrats","date":"2012/02/04","id":8549114,"story_type":"Poll","quote":"'The White House hopeful should really consult with his party's less fortunate members: according to a Pew Research poll, 57% of lower-income Republicans - families that make less than $30,000 annually - think the government does 'too little' for their ranks.' Andrew Belonsky, Death and Taxes","authors":"Andrew Belonsky","source":{"rating":"0.0","name":"readersupportednews.org","framebuster":false,"id":"readersupportednews_org","ownership":"","type":""}},{"rating":"4.9","num_reviews":"1","title":"How Americans really feel about drugs - Media Criticism - Salon.com","url":"http://www.salon.com/2012/01/04/how_americans_really_feel_about_drugs/","date":"2012/01/05","id":8498982,"story_type":"News Analysis","quote":"As dishonest as this kind of agitprop is, it unfortunately \u2014 but predictably \u2014 continues unabated. This is, after all, the golden era of agitprop \u2014 a moment in which wars are no longer wars, corporations are people","authors":"David Sirota","source":{"rating":"3.7","name":"Salon","framebuster":false,"id":"salon","ownership":"ind","type":"online","is_public":true}},{"rating":"3.7","num_reviews":"4","title":"Obama: Recess appointment is his \"obligation\"","url":"http://content.usatoday.com/communities/theoval/post/2012/01/obama-recess-appointment-is-his-obligation/1","date":"2012/01/04","id":8497084,"story_type":"News Report","quote":"In a speech in Shaker Heights, Ohio, Obama made it official that he would install the former Ohio general as the head of the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau through recess appointment and hammered Republicans for blocking Cordray's appointment.","authors":"Aamer Madhani","source":{"rating":"3.4","name":"USA Today","framebuster":false,"id":"usa_today","ownership":"ind","type":"newspaper","is_public":true}},{"rating":"4.0","num_reviews":"1","title":"Wary Hispanic voters favor Obama over GOP rivals","url":"http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/wary-hispanic-voters-favor-obama-over-gop-rivals/2011/12/28/gIQAJa5eMP_story.html?referrer=newstrust","date":"2011/12/28","id":8486951,"story_type":"News Report","quote":"President Obama holds a wide lead among Hispanic voters when matched against potential Republican challengers, even as Hispanics grow wary of his administration\u2019s stepped-up deportation policies and less supportive of his overall job performance, according to a new poll.","authors":"Peter Wallsten","source":{"rating":"3.6","name":"Washington Post","framebuster":false,"id":"washington_post","ownership":"ind","type":"newspaper","is_public":true}},{"rating":"3.3","num_reviews":"2","title":"Fact-checking in the Echo Chamber Nation","url":"http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2011/dec/22/fact-checking-echo-chamber-nation/","date":"2011/12/23","id":8478938,"story_type":"Opinion","quote":"At a Republican campaign rally a few years ago, I asked one of the attendees how he got his news. \"I listen to Rush and read NewsMax,\" he said. \"And to make sure I'm getting a balanced view, I watch Fox.\" My liberal friends get their information from distinctly different sources \u2014 Huffington Post, Daily Kos and Rachel Maddow. To make sure they get a balanced view, they click Facebook links \u2014 from their liberal friends. This is life in our echo chamber nation. We protect ourselves from opinions we don't like and seek reinforcement from like-minded allies. The paradox ...","authors":"Bill Adair","source":{"rating":"3.8","name":"PolitiFact","framebuster":false,"id":"politifact","ownership":"ind","type":"online","is_public":true}},{"rating":"3.9","num_reviews":"3","title":"Professional fact-checking about as broken as professional journalism","url":"http://www.salon.com/2011/12/20/professional_fact_checking_about_as_broken_as_professional_journalism/singleton/","date":"2011/12/21","id":8476365,"story_type":"Opinion","quote":"If I were to, say, swipe your grandfather\u2019s copy of \u201cSee, I Told You So\u201d by Rush Limbaugh from his den, and then mail him a gift card good for a portion of the price of an Amazon Kindle, I think your grandfather would be well within his rights to call me a thief and possibly a communist. Politifact disagrees, apparently, as Democrats have been accused of telling the \u201clie of the year\u201d for arguing that a vote to replace Medicare with a private voucher system does not constitute voting to \u201cend\u201d the program. The government program that would be replaced with a private voucher system. Replacing a thing with something else no longer constitutes getting rid of that thing. FYI.\n\nPolitifact\u2019s decision, needless to say, frustrated a lot of people. They have been accused of naming this arguably true claim the year\u2019s biggest lie because Rep. Paul Ryan, the man who came up with the Medicare-replacing plan, launched a big letter-writing campaign lobbying for it, complete with a badly lit YouTube video. Paul Krugman and others say that Politifact made this decision in the interest of achieving the illusion of \u201cbalance,\u201d because the past couple \u201clies of the year\u201d have all belonged to Republicans.","authors":"Alex Pareene","source":{"rating":"3.7","name":"Salon","framebuster":false,"id":"salon","ownership":"ind","type":"online","is_public":true}},{"rating":"3.1","num_reviews":"10","title":"The Whoppers of 2011","url":"http://factcheck.org/2011/12/the-whoppers-of-2011/","date":"2011/12/21","id":8474847,"story_type":"Fact Check","quote":"Despite what you may have heard in 2011:\n\nThe new health care law won\u2019t cost many jobs (and they\u2019ll be poorly paying jobs at that).\nRepublicans aren\u2019t proposing to \u201cend\u201d Medicare (and Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden has signed onto a modified version of the GOP plan).\nMost of the \u201cmillionaires\u201d who would pay higher tax rates under a Democratic proposal aren\u2019t job-creating small-business owners.\nPresident Obama\u2019s mother didn\u2019t really fight to get health insurance coverage as she was dying.\nAnd there was plenty more spin and deception in 2011. Obama claimed he pays a lower tax rate than a teacher. Michele Bachmann endorsed a claim that HPV vaccine causes mental retardation. Joe Biden claimed rapes quadrupled in Flint, Mich., after police layoffs. And that\u2019s just some of the nonsense we debunked.","authors":"Brooks Jackson","source":{"rating":"3.9","name":"FactCheck","framebuster":false,"id":"factcheck","ownership":"ind","type":"online","is_public":true}},{"rating":"2.4","num_reviews":"1","title":"Fact checking the AP fact checker","url":"http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2011/12/fact-checking-the-ap-fact-checker.php","date":"2011/12/20","id":8474897,"story_type":"Opinion","quote":"According to Pete Yost last week in a superficial AP fact check story: \u201cRepublican presidential candidates have claimed that the Obama administration is cleansing government files of references to radical Islam, an assertion so juicy that politicians keep repeating it \u2014 even though it\u2019s a wild exaggeration.\u201d\n\nBut I think the GOP candidates have it right, more or less, and Yost has it wrong. At least they are closer to the mark than Yost. See, for example, Cliff May\u2019s NRO column \u201cWhat\u2019s Islam got to do with it?\u201d (May cites a report by the Westminster Institute\u2019s Katharine C. Gorka that notes: \u201cKey national security documents have already excised all terminology that associates terrorism with Islam or Islamic concepts such as jihad.\u201d) See also \u201cObama administration pulls references to Islam from terror training materials, official says.\u201d (The story quotes purposefully ambiguous comments made by Deputy U.S. Attorney General James Cole at the George Washington University law school. My call yesterday to the Department of Justice for clarification went unreturned.)","authors":"Scott Johnson","source":{"rating":"2.6","name":"Power Line","framebuster":false,"id":"power_line","ownership":"ind","type":"blog","is_public":true}},{"rating":"4.1","num_reviews":"5","title":"The Most Important Speech of His Presidency","url":"http://robertreich.org/post/13852130536#.Tt7Z9wIMP00.facebook","date":"2011/12/07","id":8453820,"story_type":"Opinion","quote":"The President\u2019s speech today in Osawatomie, Kansas \u2014 where Teddy Roosevelt gave his \u201cNew Nationalism\u201d speech in 1910 \u2014 is the most important economic speech of his presidency in terms of connecting the dots, laying out the reasons behind our economic and political crises, and asserting a willingness to take on the powerful and the privileged that have gamed the system to their advantage.","authors":"Robert Reich","source":{"rating":"3.9","name":"Robert Reich's Blog","framebuster":false,"id":"robert_reich","ownership":"ind","type":"blog","is_public":true}},{"rating":"3.7","num_reviews":"6","title":"Obama Strikes Populist Chord With Speech on GOP Turf","url":"http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/07/us/politics/obama-strikes-populist-chord-with-speech-in-heartland.html","date":"2011/12/07","id":8453424,"story_type":"News Report","quote":"Laying out a populist argument for his re-election next year, President Obama ventured into the conservative heartland on Tuesday to deliver his most pointed appeal yet for a strong governmental role through tax and regulation to level the economic playing field.","authors":"A. G. Sulzberger","source":{"rating":"3.6","name":"New York Times","framebuster":true,"id":"new_york_times","ownership":"ind","type":"newspaper","is_public":true}}]