tv The Cycle MSNBC May 15, 2014 12:00pm-1:01pm PDT
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♪ gave proof through the night ♪ sthothat our flag was still there ♪ ♪ does our star-spangled banner yet wave ♪ ♪ oe'r the land of the free ♪ and the home of the brave >> good afternoon on this solemn day in american history. a new museum opened its doors in new york city this morning. but this one is unlike any other. the 9/11 memorial sits on the former site of the world trade center. beneath the bedrock of the buildings we lost, the lives we
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lost, and a vivid memory that we keep. president obama was among the dignitaries that attended this morning and he called it a sacred place of healing and hope. one journalist had a different take describing it as a punch to the gut. much like how most of us who lived through that terrible day still feel about it. brian williams went inside with the women who carried out the unimaginable task of capturing the worst event in american history. >> it's almost overwhelming. just like that day was. and museum visitors should be prepared for how powerful it all is, all over again. it's a story of remembrance that starts at 8:46 a.m., the first impact, when the world ended for so many people. >> it looks like smoke. >> it's taken over a decade, and while a tall new building now towers over this site, the remembrance takes place below. the twin memorial pools at
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ground level, and the new museum underground, seven stories down. >> we spent a lot of time listening. >> reporter: alice greenwald is the woman in charge of this gargantuan yet delicate project. we come in and we're met with a powerful visual. our guided tour started with the first thing you see. a battered and rusted remnant of the old strauch tur, the parts of the exterior spine of the world trade center, shaped like tuning forks, known as tridents. it's now a towering and striking reminder. >> we were able to put the pieces back together, based on the original construction stands that were still on the steel. >> reporter: preparations for president obama's visit tomorrow are going on alongside what is perhaps the most striking feature of the museum. at the very bottom at bedrock, the wall that was built for the foundation of the world trade center, designed to hold back the hudson river back when this was a construction site in the
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1960s. the wall suffered cracks and leaks after the impact of the attack, but it held. had this wall not held, we'd be talking about something entirely different in lower manhattan. >> a much greater tragedy. >> reporter: this is about ho holding, the country held. all artifacts, big and small, the meg a phone made famous by the president. >> the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon. >> reporter: the window from an airliner, the so-called survivor stairs where so many people ran to escape that day. the massive broadcast antenna from the roof. and a barely recognizable artifact from a fire department that lost 343 of its bravest in one day. >> every one of the firefighters who rode on this truck to the world trade center, who responded that day, perished. >> reporter: some of the items are so personal, from the
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tactile mementos, to the more haunting, the recorded voices of the victims mostly on voicemails leaving behind their last words and donated by the families. among them, brian sweeney onboard flight 175 out of boston, and fearing the worst. calling home with an incredible, almost methodical calm in his voice. >> reporter: his widow is proud to have donated what is now her last memory of her husband. >> this might sound odd to some people, but i'm glad i didn't answer the phone. because i have his voice, and his message, and his calmness, and his thoughts and his love for me and his love for his family forever. >> reporter: how often do you cry? >> that's such a good question. you know, i think we do steel
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ourselves, those of us who work on this day in and day out, and then every once in a while you see something or you listen to some of the audio, and you are back in that place. >> reporter: it's all here, they are all here, the nearly 3,000 people who died in new york, washington, and pennsylvania, a remembrance so bracing and powerful, there are exit doors along the way for those who don't wish to continue. this is a tough experience. >> it is a tough experience. it's a museum about loss, pain, about terror, about history. but it's also about the resilience that we have in ourselves. not just individual human beings, but as a society, to rebuild, to recover, to renew, to go forward, and to always remember as we do so. >> nbc's brian williams, what a moving piece. let's bring in now nbc's ron allen who was in lower manhattan for the ceremony. and has made it back here to tell us what it was like.
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what an emotional morning it has been, opening up a reminder of so many emotions that we felt that day. we were all watching it on the tv screens. all of us it seemed had a tear in our eye. you were physically there this morning. you can see the tears in your eyes as you're sitting here. help us understand what that was like. >> well, the magnitude of this is just overwhelming. it is overwhelming. we were able to go into the museum and tour a couple of days ago. and i can't remember an experience quite like it. it's a 21st century experience. audio, video, photographs, artifacts, that really take you back to that day, in that time. in those days, i should say, the months that followed the recovery. and of course, the museum itself is located seven stories down, below at bedrock, below the twin towers, below the memorial now. and so you feel like you're there. you feel like you're really part of it. it feels like in some ways a tomb. it feels like a cavern. it feels like a safe protected
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place. and everywhere you turn, there are stories about the people who were there. survivors, the victims, the heroes, the rescuers as well. >> we saw alice greenwald there, the museum director, speaking with brian williams. she had more to say about this sort of purpose of the museum. let's take a listen. >> we remember people for how they lived, not how they died. in this space, the number 2,983 is not an ab traction. this museum isn't only about documenting history, it is about understanding our humanity. in so many ways, the 9/11 museum is as much about 9/12 as it is about 9/11. >> so they're framing it as not just being about that day, but also being about moving forward. >> it's a solemn place, but it's also an inspiring place. that's what i tried to focus on when i was there. you hear stories of heroism that are unbelievable. of people who gave their lives
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to save others. and we hear that, but to go in and really see the stories of people who climbed up dozens of flights of stairs, through burning buildings to rescue others, you know, there's just -- you can't leave without feeling hope, resilience, inspired, in some way, that the human spirit can just triumph in so many extraordinary situations. and that's what i was trying to hang on to, as i was walking in this place, and seeing this place. it's just unbelievable. >> most museums house artifacts, this one is built within an artifact. i think the fact that it's as located on what is a holy site for americans, it gives it an extra sense of power. >> it does. because, again, you are there. and today, in the ceremony, we heard from some of the people, the survivors, relatives of victims who came back, and rescue workers, and their
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stories were moving. i imagine it was very difficult for many of them to be there. it's probably impossible for some people to be there. i don't think that most folks who go there will be there that long, because you just can't -- you just can't be there that long. and dwell on these things. i was struck by the story of a young girl who i saw there today, who is part of the presentation, her name is roberta. she was named after her uncle, a young asian-american girl. she's the next generation, roberta hope is her name. and that to some extent was the embodiment of what this day, and this place is all about. the next generation seeing -- teaching people what this was about, trying to make sure it never happens again. and trying to never forget the 3,000 or so people who were lost. they were ordinary people like any of us just going to work that morning. and my god, what happened, it all changed the world. of course, what followed. war in two different places for
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so many years. but again, what i really wanted to try and hang on to, and i think many people do, is the hope that comes out of that place. and the experience. and the feeling of resilience, the feeling of power. and as president obama said, this shows that nothing is going to change america, and who we are. >> that's right. >> when do you think you might go back? it looks like to me it might be color full yet intense and difficult experience. do you think it's something you would want to experience again? >> i'll wander down there, i'm sure, when friends or family come in from out of town. i wandered by the memorial a couple of weeks ago because i happened to be in that area, experienced it as a person. not as a journalist. which is always very different. you know, i wasn't here when september 11th happened. i was actually living in london and went to pakistan, and then afghanistan, in search of bin laden and all that. and spent several months over there. and i came back to see it years later -- or months later.
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so my experience was a little bit different. but again, i just urge people who are going down there, go with caution. you know? go with your eyes open and your heart braced for what you're about to experience. but again, mostly it's about learning. it's about appreciating the stories of what people did that day. we heard so much of that today during the ceremony. just unbelievable acts of heroism. unbelievable acts of survival. unbelievable acts of endurance. if you take that from there, you'll be much better off. and of course, never forgetting the folks we lost. >> yeah. certainly mixed with sadness, but inspiration at the same time. it's special having you here at the table to talk about this morning. thank you so much. >> yeah. up next, we turn our attention to capitol hill, and the hearing under way today on reported va abuses. but before we leave this conversation, let's listen to the moving performance by an
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veterans affair secretary eric shinseki, a retired four-star general with two purple hearts, said he will get to the bottom of the accusations against several va clinics, which include secret lists, long wait times, and incentives for record manipulations, and preventable deaths of american war veterans.
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>> any adverse incident like this makes me mad as hell. i could use stronger language here, mr. chairman, but in deference to the committee, i won't. veterans need to have faith in their va. people coming forward saying they think there's an issue here, which i encourage. that's what we're after here. >> based on what you know, are people, quote unquote, cooking the books? >> i'm not aware. just a number of isolated cases where there is evidence of that. but the fact that there is evidence in a couple of pages behooves us to take a look. >> whistleblowers say at least six states are systematically manipulating data on wait time. this is nothing new. the practice was identified in several inspector general reports, and other investigations are happening right now. unlike past abuses, there are now accusations of cover-ups by
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va personnel. the same top brass who received performance awards. this goes to the question of accountability. yes, these problems predate secretary shinseki, but he's now been in his role for nearly six years. the american legion, one of our nation's oldest and most par full veterans associations, wants him out. shinseki said he's not going anywhere. another developing scandal for the white house. let's bring in jonathan allen. a va scheduler told us she was ordered to keep a list on paper in order to keep it secret. let's listen to a little of that. >> that was how they taught us. so i thought that was how it was supposed to be dob. that was it. >> procedure? >> yeah. >> but he said he now believes old school paper pushing was meant to keep washington from knowing how long it really took for patients to see their doctors.
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>> if we don't use the electronic wait list, then it can't be tracked. it didn't make sense to me why they were doing this, hard copy, or this paper, this step of paperwork. versus using the electronic wait list. >> wow. jonathan, this scandal is not looking good. >> it's not looking good at all. it's vial to hear these delays, and wait times and stories about books being cooked, or second set of books being kept. it sounds like a racket earring enterprise, not the united states government, certainly not the veterans administration, something i think people on capitol hill are very angry about. obviously the administration is upset about it as well. i think that general shinseki's going to get a chance to show that he can get control of this situation. but i don't think he's going to get a second chance to show it. i don't think they'll have a lot of -- sort of a lot of patience on capitol hill if he doesn't show some turn-around, some
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investigative power pretty immediately here. >> jonathan, do we have a sense of why some va facilities would have been so backed up they would have felt compelled to cook the books? we have a doubling of spending on veterans health care and hospitals to 2003 to 2011. a lot of things in the federal budget, spending has tapered off. is it just that the system is badly managed? why would they have to do this? >> without being an auditor and inspector general and getting an opportunity to look inside the system, it's hard to know what the drivers are. obviously you've got a lot of veterans coming back from the iraq and afghanistan wars, some of them needing a lot of attention. so i imagine the volume has gone up considerably in the last several years. i think in addition to that, i think there are a lot of needs from the existing veterans population. i think we'll all get a chance to see a lot more of this over the next several weeks, probably couple of months, and get a better sense for why this was going on. certainly there was not an
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immediate effort to stop it, or correct it. it's been going on for a long time. i think that's one of the reasons you're hearing such anger on capitol hill. the other reason, of course, every single member of congress has veterans in their district and it's a very active organized group. some of whom are already calling for shinseki to leave. >> all very necessary questions. jonathon, the va has had issues for a very long time. it seems like the biggest challenges today is simply keeping up with the times. we send our men and women off to war. because of medical advances, many more are coming back because they're able to survive war. if you look at the facts, in the past three years, primary care visits to the va are up 50%, yet full-time primary care doctors only up 9%. obviously there's a big discrepancy there. what are we doing to fix this? >> well, we're minting veterans faster than we're minting doctors. that's what happens when you go to war. and when you go to war a couple of times, you end up with more
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veterans, wounded veterans coming back needing care. i think the american public wanting to take care of them, repay them for what nef's done abroad. i think it's a problem that we're going to see investigated, and hopefully there's a solution where these veterans can get the care that they deserve, and the care that the american public thinks that they are owed. >> yeah. jonathan, i was also wondering about what sort of the partisan flavor of these hearings was today. was there a sort of left/right conversation, or was everyone really on the same page in terms of trying to find accountability and also trying to fix the existing problems that we've known about at the va? because certainly taking care of our veterans doesn't seem like it would be a partisan issue. and the problems that we've had at the va have occurred under both democratic and republican administrations. >> i think there are two impu e impulses that go across both parties in this situation. one is, that bipartisan desire to figure out what exactly is going on, and how to fix this
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for america's veterans. i think you hear that on both sides. some of the rhetoric will be a little more heated on the republican side, with the democratic administration. a former prosecutor and attorney general in his own state, tough on general shinseki today. the other thing is, there's a lot of respect for shinseki on capitol hill. certainly something hearing from inside the white house. i think that he'll have an opportunity to make his case, so many people on capitol hill respect the work he did, as a general. even before he became secretary. they'll see if he's able to live up to that code of honor that the military talks about so much. >> all right. jonathan, always nice to see you. thank you very much. up next, an nfl star indicted for double homicide. we've got the details next in the news cycle.ess ca be on at&t's network for $175 dollars a month? yup. all five of you for $175. our clients need a lot of attention. there's unlimited talk and text. we're working deals all day.
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food striking today. workers accusing some of the biggest names in the fast food industry of trying to pull a fast one when it comes to their quality of life. they're demanding a $15 an hour wage. right now the federal minimum wage is about half that. former new england patriots tight end is facing new charges today. prosecutors allege he's behind a 2012 double murder in boston. they say he pulled up in an suv and executed two guys after they exchanged words at a club earlier that evening. hernandez is already facing another murder charge for a man shooting death last year. let's give you a live look from san marcos, california, where new evacuation orders are continuing this afternoon. what's happening is highly unusual for this time of year. 100-degree temperatures, 0% humidity and high winds. the weather is not expected to cooperate with fire fighting efforts into the weekend. general motors is recalling
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another 2.7 million cars. that ups the total to 11 million recalled by the company in just this year. this time it's to fix problems with brake lights, head lamps and power brakes. gm is on pace to break the all-time record of 30 million recalled vehicles in one year. turning now to a silent epidemic at america's colleges. rape on campus. the week's "time" magazine takes an in-depth look focusing on the university of montana in missoula. the college town saw at least 80 reported rapes over three years, earning the ugly nickname of america's rape capital. to call out one school is to ignore the scope of the problem was pointed out. one in five women is the victim of attempted or completed sexual assault during college. this month the white house released a list of 55 colleges under federal scrutiny for how they handle assault. with big names ranging from ohio state to harvard and princeton. joining us now is eliza gray who
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wrote the cover story for "time" which hits newsstands tomorrow. a story that definitely deserves more attention. so many of us, including myself, know women that went through this in college. it's horrible and it changes their life forever. yet there doesn't seem to be the will power at the university level to change this. why is there a lack of attention, and how much of that has to do with the fact that oftentimes drug and alcohol is part of this? >> well, i think for the universities, it's been a tough problem, and women -- only 12% of women in college actually tend to report sexual assault. and i think for a lot of universities, it's been easier to go for the path of least resistance. you know, if they're not going to report it, just look the other way. because most of these assaults are happening at the hands of fellow students, who are at the university. and the universities are not criminal justice organizations. they're just not equipped to deal with the severity of these crimes. >> one of the things that i
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really appreciated about your article, which was really fabulously done, and i appreciate very much you writing it, was you debunked this misconception that, quote, date rape, it's a situation where things just got out of control, and the guy went too far. you actually report that most offenders are repeat offenders, and account for nearly six rapes individually themselves. so this is a relatively small number of men who are committing a disproportionate number of the crime. and it's not a situation where they just happen to cross the line, they're strategizing, they're planning for how they can incapacitate a woman there, and take advantage of her. >> yeah. and i think that's really important. obviously, this is -- there are, of course, some cases where there's some miscommunication, but what i really wanted to point out in my piece is there is evidence to suggest that most -- many of the rapes are being perpetrated by a very small number of students. the point to drive home there is
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most guys are good guys. but that doesn't mean that all sexual predators come out of the bush. some of them -- with a knife. many can be your fellow students. and yes, drinking is a huge part of this. of course. i mean, in my research, 75%, two-thirds of the women who had reported rape in this study that came out recently from the national institute of justice, showed that women were incapacitated, or were drunk. and i think -- but i think the problem with that statistic is it makes a lot of people think, oh, maybe -- >> they brought it on themselves. >> -- they brought it on themselves. i think there are a lot of men who in that situation don't take advantage and don't cross the line. most men don't. the ones that do, do it over and over again. it's important that they be held accountable for those crimes. because they're serious crimes. >> interviews with men who admit to these -- to strategizing, right, how they're going to take
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a girl and incapacitate her and take advantage of her. >> i thought what was interesting in the piece was steps that the university of montana at missoula has been taking to try to erase its position as the rape capital. one thing is because rape is highly concentrated among a number of repeat offenders. the message you're sending to the 90% of men not committing sexual assaults is no means no. they're trying to get men and women who notice that something is going awry, who think a sexual assault might be about to happen intervene. how is that going? >> it's the cutting edge in sexual assault prevention strategies across the country. they've done a lot of studies at the university of new hampshire, who designed the program, that montana is using, that has shown that it's been really successful. for montana, it's new, so how much prevention it's causing we don't yet know. but one of the things i love about that program is that it's not just -- it's also being
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realistic. it's saying, if you're a guy and you're in a fra tesht and one of your fraternity brothers looks like he's going to take a girl who's way too drunk upstairs, you don't necessarily have to say, hey, man, stop. that's not realistic. maybe say, hey, i think your car is getting towed, or spill a drink on them. >> seems like one of the biggest challenges is getting women to speak. to talk about what actually happened. thank you for writing this piece. and thank you for being with us. it's such an important issue. it needs more attention. thank you for being with us. the challenges women face in politics. a person well equipped to talk about rove's comments on hillary, before she's officially in. that's next. we asked people a question,
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the recent comments by karl rove suggesting that former secretary of state hillary clinton has brain damage, has remind us it's that women still face an uphill battle when running for office. women account for just 20% of the senate and less than 18% of the house. if you think these slowly improving numbers would encourage more young women to seek office, you would be wrong. women aged 18 to 25 are 20% more likely to have never considered running for office than their male counterparts. that's according to a new study by the american university school of public affairs. this is actually a larger gender gap than the same researchers found among older pools of potential candidates suggesting that progress on gender equality in politics is far from inevitable. our next guest is looking to buck the trend and knows a thing or two about having accusations thrown her way. sandra flick is running for california state senate in the newly created 26th district and she joins us now in the guest spot. sandra, so glad to have you
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here. >> thank you. >> women are less likely to think of themselves as candidates to decide to run for office than men. how much of that hesitation is because of fears of attacks like what hillary is seeing from karl rove and the sorts of unfair media treatments that women are still subjected to as candidates? >> i think that is part of it. and that's why when i was thinking about how i wanted to respond to the circumstances that i was in, it was really important to me that i not come away as a cautionary tale. that you shouldn't step forward, that you shouldn't be in the public spotlight, even for young girls, that you shouldn't raise your hand in class. i wanted them to understand that if you face this kind of criticism, there was a way to respond in which a lot of people would stand with you and say this is inappropriate. so that was really important to me. but i think it's important to keep calling out the sexism, the unfair treatment, and to keep moving past it. and showing that this doesn't have to get in your way as a
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candidate. and people do see this for what it is. and they don't base their vote on it in many cases. >> i think the common reaction to the fact that many women aren't running today, that's okay, because younger women are going to be more inclyde to run because they don't face the same overt barriers than the women before them faced. crystal mentioned a poll earlier that shows young women of a college age wanting to run, versus women years older than them, and the gap actually widens. which is very surprising. why aren't we seeing more progress here? >> i think we need to do more investment in programs like running start that begin with young girls and help them think about themselves as being leaders. imagine yourself being in elected office is one of the keys for young people. part of the problem is, we still haven't made progress on some of the barriers that keep women out. things like affordable access to child care, because we are still
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disproportionately caretakers in our families. that matters for a lot of employment areas, but it matters for elected office as well. and we're still not where we need to be on campaign finance reform. and so women are still at a disadvantage, because folks often don't donate as much to female candidates either. and that is a big barrier. >> crystal faced this as well, i remember. >> yeah. you have to push through it, though. >> you have become a potent symbol for the left and the right. one thing that was interesting you said to the "washington post," everybody gets defined by other people. the trick is to define yourself. really interesting idea. so define yourself for us. how do you see sandra fluke in terms of the national political conversation? >> i think i'm an example of a new generation of progressive leadership. i would include some folks around this table in that conversation as well. we're stepping beyond some of the old fights and looking for
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real solutions that are practical and feasible. but we're really taking on things that have been entremplged problems. things like access to affordable education, that's getting worse rather than better, as well as figuring out ways to move forward on reproductive rights, not just be on defense. showing lgbtq rights as well. there's a whole generation really stepping forward and you certainly can't leave the dreamers out of that. because they've been incredible leadership in that way. >> there are a lot of competitive women candidates in elections on the west side of l.a. next month. not just in your race, but also for congress, for state assembly, for the powerful board of supervisors. >> that's right. >> are people excited about that? the possibility that a lot of women candidates might get elected this time? >> they are, absolutely. there was a piece done on it locally. we're very excited to see so many women running, because we've had a real problem in los angeles. we actually only have one woman on the los angeles city council, and in all of los angeles elected government.
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i'm proud to have her endorsement. i wish she weren't quite so lonely, being the only woman there. we're excited to have so many women in the race. but that also brings out a certain hesitancy from folks sometimes that there are lots of women. i shouldn't commit. and that's another barrier that we have to get past, is that it's great that there are lots of women, and pro-choice progressive women to choose from. now let's get behind them as well. >> absolutely. sandra fluke, so great to have you here. >> thank you. >> good luck. we're cheering for you. >> thank you very much. up next, the tastiest advice you have ever heard. eat more butter, meat and cheese if you want to stay healthier. >> yes! >> is it too slisdelicious to b josh? aflac.
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weeds killed. lawn restored. justice served. weed b gon max with the one-touch wand. get order. get ortho®. memorial day is just over a week away, and you know what that means. the start of barbecue season. before you throw the turkey burgers on the grill, there's a news flash for health junkies. the big fat surprise, why butter, meat and cheese belong in a healthy diet. that sounds good. research about how saturated fats became the enemy. the author, nina, joins us now. so, what's interesting to me, you talk about for the last 50 years americans have been told not to eat saturated fat. our intake has gone down about 15%. you say that's what's made us fatter over all these years. >> it's actually 11% over the last 30 years. we've increased our
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carbohydrates over the last 30 years by 25%. we really shifted the way that we eat. we've also increased our fruits and vegetables by 17%. so we're all together shifting toward more fruits and vegetables, but basically more carbohydrates. that has made us -- a high carbohydrate diet puts you at higher risk for heart disease, obesity and diabetes. that's what all the science shows. >> let's get into the meat of it, nina. tell us why big steaks are actually healthy for us. >> well, the basic point is that meat was condemned because it contained saturated fat. saturated fat, the science shows, the science that condemned it, has dissolved. really, there's no evidence that saturated fats are bad for health. so that's the main point. meat is also a really good source of nutrients. it has folate, iron. it's a really great nutrient
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dense food. >> i know it is. >> i'm saying it's okay to eat it. >> i love you. let's have her back tomorrow. you're the best. >> this inspires a lot of emotion, like my father, when he found out a while back, he read research that butter is actually better than margarine. he was deeply upset because he was sacrificing butter all these years to go to what he thought was the healthier alternative of margarine. but is the problem so much that we aren't eating enough meat, or is it that we've replaced meat with the wrong things? >> well, that's a great question. there are only so many things to eat. so if you get rid of meat, cheese, dairy, eggs, what else are you going to put on your plate, right? we all eat chicken and fish. we've fished out the oceans. chicken is a really monotonous diet to have all the time. i'm saying the human diet used to be much more complex and much
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richer and more varied. and it's fine to eat those foods. replacing animal foods with carbohydrates is not as healthy, all the science shows. >> when you talk about we used to have more complex diet, is that we also used to naturally work out more, in terms of, you know, running from animals, or working in fields, or working in factories, and now a lot of us are more sedentary? >> i think that that explains -- we've come to believe that because we haven't solved the obesity epidemic. we're looking for solutions, and certainly we are more said enary. but if you go back to our grandparents. there were no gyms. they were more sedentary population. maybe you ate your grandmother's beef stew. but they didn't restrict themselves as much as we do today. and obesity and diabetes were not as, you know, big problems as they are now. >> there's so much misinformation out there. it's almost like you're damned
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if you and damned if you don't. don't eat the fat stuff or you'll get obese. i'm all about moderation in all things. but i think a mistake mistake that is very common is reading the nutrition label on different items and assuming that one equates the other, right? a cup of lentils has 20 carbohydrate and lollipop has 20 carbohydrates. >> there are different carbohydrates. refined carbohydrates, sugar and high fructose corn syrup and white flour. those have a worse effect on health than complex carbohydrates. even if you have complex -- too much complex carbohydrates, like brown rice, whole grains, all of that stuff, quina, too much has the same effect. it's not as healthy a die. what are you going to have for dinner?
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>> let me put it this way, i'm not afraid of having steak. >> yes! >> i don't think i'm going to get sick or fat. >> i love you. >> i feel like we're on a pendulum, low carb diets are in, out, they're in. >> josh is all over the fads. >> people are searching for ways to eat less. people overeat and gain weight. if you imposed almost any arbitrary restriction on your diet and said i'm going to only eat foods that start with vowels, i'll eat less. >> write a book about that. >> you run out of things to eat. is it about the nature of fat itself or eat foods with saturated fat it makes you feel full and one more way to eat less? >> if you eat high fat foods in are or satiating and fill you up. and that means not that necessarily you eat less but it's harder to overeat on a high
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fat diet. there were fascinating overeating experiments in the 1980s where they would put stacks of pork chops in front of study subjects and said we cannot eat more of this where it's easy to overeat on tons of chips and -- >> popcorn. >> and like that's easy to overeat on because your body's not getting fat and protein it really needs. i think that although there's a lot of flip-flopping headlines and my book tries to explain why that happens, what is the nutrition science that leads to that, it also really lays out the last decade of clinical trials, the best kinds of studies that you can do, show that a high fat diet is better than low-fat die the for heart disease, diabetes, obesity. >> i think i'm going to outlive all of you. >> i don't know about that. >> nina, thank you so much. abby makes the connection between big news events of the day and what they should remind us about america's veterans.
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skin graft surgeries mostly on my face to save my eyes, so my face was changing. i would have days that i just, like my god, i'm a monster. >> bobby henline one of 2.4 million members of the u.s. armed forces who returned back to civilian life over the past 13 years. and in the next five years another million will make the same transition. bobby's wounds might be more physically obvious than others but the conversion from duty to everyday life affects every one of the veterans who committed
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their life to service. here's reality. nearly 30% of our vets who served in iraq or afghanistan suffer from ptsd. 22 commit suicide every single day. that's almost one an hour. for young veterans the suicide rate is high somewhere continues to soar. on top of that the unemployment rate which remains higher for our vets than the national average. as the war in afghanistan winds down, joblessness is only set to worsen. as you saw earlier in the show, this transition back to normal life is not just a change in job. if they're lucky enough to even get one. it's a change in virtually every aspect of their life. this reality is staring all of us in right in the face. the new battlefront is not in iraq or afghanistan, not the middle east, it's here on our home turf. my two brothers are just embarking on their own journey, joined the united states navy and i'm scared every day about the realities they will face overseas but also when they return home. will they need help? will they get it?
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today's v.a. hearing should be horrifying to military families and all of us, multiple states, soldiers delayed care put on waiting list for so long as many as 40 reportedly died before getting the right treatment. how could this happen? for years we've misses warning signs and let people suffer with this being just the latest example. this is on us. starting with the man at the top, v.a. secretary shinseki, who stood before congress to answer very tough and necessary questions about how something so horrible could have happened. >> would you explain to me, after knowing all of this information, you should not resign. >> well, i'll tell you, senator, that i came here to make things better for veterans. >> he may have to resign, but for that to be the answer, it's too simple, too clean. the entire system needs changing and one man stepping down is not action, it's simply saving face. why don't we have a system with full and automatic counseling for every veteran upon returning home from combat, someone to
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help them transition back into civilian life, whether finding a job, dealing with emotional stresses of life post combat or rehabilitation? this would be a single point of accountability rather than a messy, screwed up bureaucracy. this would allow someone like shinseki to hole people accountable. support private/public partnerships focused on giving vets meaningful options when they return home. we're remained of the event that sent millions of the men and women off to war and the way we're feeling them back at home. allocating resources to vets is something we can and should all agree on. we can do better. we must do better. this is an american responsibility. that does it for "the cycle," "now" with alex starts now. >> questionable activities at v.a., are they criminal? it's thursday, may 15th and this is "now."
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>> washington hot seat. >> do you believe that you're ultimately responsible for all of this. >> i am. >> eric shinseki testifying in front of the senate veterans affairs committee. >> answer questions about allegations. >> administrators gamed the stomach make it look like patients were seen by doctors in just days. >> v.a. just didn't give a damn. >> any adverse incident like this make me mad as hell. >> high time that the v.a. take this dead seriously. >> i've also -- it saddens me. >> a political problem for the administration. >> president obama took some action. >> asking deputy chief of staff to oversee this crisis. >> the v.a. went to computers in 2013. the irs did it in 1990. >> the system is a world war ii system. >> simply trying to take on too much. >> the v.a. is more bureaucratic than the pentagon. >> let's get this right. let's make s
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