Lou Dobbs will be talking about AEI after the break 5:51p

[Robbien]

Talking about the influence of think tanks.

[newsguyatl]

1. he should have

aei's own bill schneider on as a guest :eyes:

[swag]

2. Oh, goodie. I hope he mentions shill Kevin "Dow 36000!" Hassett

[Robbien]

3. What a crock

The lady said one third of think tanks are conservative, twenty two percent are liberal and half have no political leanings. Lou questioned that last part, but the lady kept saying the institutes wouldn't claim a political bent.

Lou said that was unbelievable in this day and age.

The rest of the week he will continue the series on Think Tanks.

[PATRICK]

4. probably inaccurate

and probably depends on what you mean by think tanks and political definitions. Brookings for example is actually small c conservative and pragmatic, professional. Dems also mainly relied on universities as a natural brain trust that still roils the GOP because something about truth and science seems incompatible with their persuasion in general, especially in higher learning. The think tank thing, outside of the older Washington wonk advisory institutes, has come to mean the proliferation of corporate funded and controlled Conservative policy pushers, not performing a service but waging ideological war, professionalism in research and truth be damned. The can be helpfully identified at Conservative web sites and their purpose is nearly pure propaganda even if there might be an idea or an expert with some genuine credentials tucked away there. They were specifically raised up in the past two decades(or older institutes bought up) to counter the Dem predominance on the campuses, in the intellectual field.

I bet most of the so-called "liberal" tanks identified by reporters cast in the same propaganda mold are merely non-partisan and unbiased and in fact are to the right of the mainstream when it comes to pragmatic, often glumly anti-democratic methodologies and philosophies. We were already in an unprogressive and old-fashioned good ole boys with brains system. Now that dry garden has been proliferated with vigorous weeds who always get more attention. Far far from getting rationality much less necessary and humane new ideas into our nation and its leadership(which is likely why we are having such a tough time deprogramming our own leaders who source them).