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From 1931 to 1989, three Texans — John Nance Garner, Sam Rayburn and Jim Wright — served as speaker of the House about a third of the time. Garner gave up the job to serve as Franklin Roosevelt's first vice president, famously describing the job as "not worth a buck of warm spit" (or some other liquid).

During much of Rayburn's tenure as speaker, Lyndon Johnson was majority leader of the Senate. Of course, he became John F. Kennedy's vice president and succeeded Kennedy following the 1963 assassination.

All of these figures were Democrats. For generations following the Civil War, Texans, like the rest of the South, refused to vote for the Republican Party. When George H.W. Bush started his career in politics as chair of the Harris County GOP, his main job was organizing precincts where the party had no presence.

With LBJ at the top of the ticket in 1964, Bush had no chance in his first Senate race. But Johnson's own Senate seat had been taken over in a special election by John Tower, the first Republican to represent the state in the Senate since Reconstruction.

The state's switch toward the GOP was exemplified by John Connally, who was the state's Democratic governor when he was wounded during the Kennedy assassination. Within a few years he would be considered as a potential vice president or successor by Republican President Richard M. Nixon.

Connolly formally changed parties in 1973. His route was followed by Rep. Phil Gramm, a Democrat who bolted the party in 1983. Gramm was soon returned by his district as a Republican and would go on to succeed Tower in the Senate.

Since George W. Bush's election as governor in 1994, Democrats have failed to compete successfully in state politics. Over the past 20 years, two Texas Republicans have served as House majority leader — Richard K. Armey and Tom DeLay.

At 13, Sophie Nelisse is already making big career decisions. She started training to be a gymnast at the age of 3 and has long had dreams to represent Canada in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.

"If you want to train at a national, international level, you have about [one] week of break per year," Nelisse tells host Arun Rath. "So I was training about six hours per day."

She put that part of her life aside when she was given another opportunity of a lifetime: to play the lead in the film The Book Thief.

"It was acting or gymnastics," she says. "It was a hard choice, but I chose acting."

She stars as Liesel — a young German girl taken in by a couple, played by Geoffrey Rush and Emily Watson, in Nazi Germany. Through the Holocaust and the war, as hatred and death loom around her, her passion for words helps her persevere.

Enlarge image i

The email landed in my inbox at 7:01 Tuesday morning.

The subject line read, "NBC News Poll: Christie Trails Clinton In Hypothetical 2016 Match-Up, Faces Divided GOP."

My reaction when I got this breaking news with my first cup of coffee? A big, non-verbal, heavy sigh.

The headline correctly states that this is a "hypothetical" match-up. Oh, and if you are fan of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — not to worry. A different poll came out this week as well. That one has him leading Hillary Clinton 43-42. Within the margin of error, of course.

But neither is a candidate yet. The first contest — if nothing changes — will be the Iowa caucuses, likely in January. Not January of next year or the year after, but the year after that.

And the 2016 general election is more than 1,000 days away.

As for the accuracy of polls taken at such a very early stage? Just ask President Rudy Giuliani. In 2007 he still had high poll numbers due to his time as the take-charge mayor of New York on 9/11. Except he faded quickly once the GOP primaries got under way.

Or you might ask President Colin Powell, or President Mario Cuomo, both of whom decided in the end not to run. Or go ask President Gary Hart, or President Edmund Muskie, or President — well, I could go on.

Now, don't get me wrong. I cover politics full-time. I'm fascinated by politics. I love elections, talking to voters, examining strategies. At some point, such polls will be meaningful, and we will study them closely. But I'm a very long way from walking into a diner or a community center in Iowa or New Hampshire and asking, "Who do you like for president, Christie or Clinton?" Or Biden, or Cruz, or Warren, or Santorum, or Paul, or Ryan, or Rubio, or — well, you get the picture.

I'm happy to take a breather for a while. I mean, there's no shortage of other issues to talk about, right?

The United Nations on Friday outlined a plan for destroying Syria's chemical weapons, but there's still no word on who will carry out the delicate task of disposing of the deadly agents.

The plan "sets ambitious milestones to be met by the Government of Syria," said Ahmet Umzucu, the director general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, or OPCW. "This next phase will be the most challenging and its timely execution will require the existence of a secure environment for the verification and transport of chemical weapons."

The OPCW says its timetable for destroying "priority chemical weapons" outside Syria was March 31, 2014 and June 30 for "all other declared chemical materials."

But just where they will be disposed of remains a question mark. Last month, Norway turned down a U.S. request to take on the task and in a surprise move on Friday, Albania also said no.

NATO-member Albania is one of only three countries to have declared a chemical weapons stockpile and voluntarily destroyed it under an OPCW regime. Tirana had been widely expected to take on the destruction of Syria's weapons.

But on Friday in a televised address, Prime Minister Edi Rama said that it was "impossible for Albania to take part in this operation."

The Associated Press describes the Balkans nation's refusal as "a major blow":

"It [leaves] the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons without a country to host the destruction of Syria's estimated 1,000-metric ton arsenal, which includes mustard gas and the deadly nerve agent sarin."

HealthCare.gov could barely function on the day the health insurance marketplace debuted, and internal emails show at least some top health officials could see the failure coming.

In emails from July of this year, released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Obama administration officials write of unskilled developers and a series of missed deadlines. One email said the "entire build is in jeopardy." But when the administration's top people in charge of the implementation testified before the committee in the months leading up to the site launch, they said just the opposite — that they were ready.

"Administration officials looked us in the eye and told us everything was 'on track' but when we pull back the curtain now, the mess is disturbing," committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., said in a statement.

You can read the full email exchanges at the committee site. But here are the most dire warnings detailed in the emails between Henry Chao, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services project manager in charge of HealthCare.gov, and other officials:

Three months before launch, only 10 developers from contractor CGI Federal were working on a crucial part of the site — the marketplace for choosing plans — and of those, only one was "at a high enough skill level."

Coordination issues between two main contractors — CGI Federal and QSSI. In all, HealthCare.gov has at least 47 different federal contractors involved, but CGI and QSSI won the big contracts for major chunks of the build. It seems QSSI and CGI couldn't seem to work smoothly together. Today, QSSI is the "lead contractor" in charge of getting everyone on the same page.

The only developer who was working on the payment pages for enrollment quit CGI without programming the 10 key user interface pieces of the transaction part. "Needless to say it is in jeopardy," wrote CMS' Jeffrey Grant.

The part of the system that does monthly payment calculation of insurance plans did not get priority by the contractor, who called it "not an October 1 item." [The health care insurance website launched Oct. 1.]

"Seriously substandard staffing," is how Grant described its contractor's people power. The key contractor, CGI, missed deadlines due to "insufficient" programmer resources. A month from testing certain parts of the system, no development work had even started. CGI Federal got at least $93.7 million to build HealthCare.gov.

All Tech Considered

Health Exchange Tech Problems Point To A Thornier Issue

We told you this morning about changes announced in China to its one-child policy, as well as an announcement that it was ending its re-education camps. But those aren't the only changes announced Friday by the Communist Party.

China also said it would loosen restrictions on foreign investment in e-commerce and other businesses, and allow private competition in state-dominated sectors.

The Associated Press says the changes "could be China's biggest economic overhaul in two decades." Here's more:

"Chinese leaders are under pressure to replace a growth model based on exports and investment that delivered three decades of rapid growth but has run out of steam. Reform advocates say Beijing must curb the privileges and dominant role of state companies they say are inefficient and a drag on growth."

We told you this morning about changes announced in China to its one-child policy, as well as an announcement that it was ending its re-education camps. But those aren't the only changes announced Friday by the Communist Party.

China also said it would loosen restrictions on foreign investment in e-commerce and other businesses, and allow private competition in state-dominated sectors.

The Associated Press says the changes "could be China's biggest economic overhaul in two decades." Here's more:

"Chinese leaders are under pressure to replace a growth model based on exports and investment that delivered three decades of rapid growth but has run out of steam. Reform advocates say Beijing must curb the privileges and dominant role of state companies they say are inefficient and a drag on growth."

Typhoon Haiyan caused widespread destruction in parts of the Philippines when it tore through on Friday. One of the hardest-hit areas was the city of Tacloban and its more than 220,000 residents. "Virtually all of the structures, if they were not made out of concrete or steel, are gone," a top U.S. military commander said.

These satellite images from Google and DigitalGlobe show how Tacloban and the Anibong district looked in February 2012 and then two days after Haiyan made landfall.

This week on-air and online, the tech team is exploring the sharing economy. You'll find the stories on this blog and aggregated at this link, and we would love to hear your questions about the topic. Just email, leave a comment or tweet.

I didn't know Erin Kelly Myers when I first got into her car outside NPR West in Culver City, Calif.

"I promise I'm a safe driver," she tells me. "Actually, I'm proud to say for 28 years without an accident, so tonight's definitely not the night, good sir. My car, Little Sexy, confirms that."

She's a driver for the ridesharing service Lyft. And yes, she's named her new Honda Accord "Little Sexy."

Lyft is a service that sets up everyday car owners with people who need rides. Users need a smartphone to download the app, a credit or debit card and a Facebook account. The app, which is available in 18 cities, suggests a donation when the ride is done. The passenger can choose to pay the donation or not. It's all done through the app.

The drivers and passengers can also screen each other before accepting the share, and at the end of the ride, they get to rate each other. Both build up a reputation over time.

Myers and I pick up Catalina Lee at her office after work and take her home.

As we drive across town, Lee explains that she's not just taking a rideshare home because she's tired. She does it to meet people with new points of view.

"I only mingle with a certain kind of group, and I don't really get to explore different ways people think. It's just interesting to hear about it," she says.

When you talk to Myers or her passengers, or people participating in food co-ops or other shared economies, their enthusiasm is not about the transactions, necessarily — it's about the community.

"I definitely feel like I'm a part of the fabric and the core of the city now like I never was before," Myers says.

The Sharing Economy Trend

In the past several years, the idea of sharing cars and bikes has begun to take hold in major American cities.

About three years ago was when the movement really took off. The country was coming out of the economic collapse. Smartphones were becoming mainstream. Your grandmother was getting on Facebook.

"There were many more business models emerging, many more entrants, a lot more investment money and a lot more disruption," says Susan Shaheen, who teaches and researches transportation at the University of California, Berkeley.

All Tech Considered

What's Mine Is Yours (For A Price) In The Sharing Economy

Typhoon Haiyan caused widespread destruction in parts of the Philippines when it tore through on Friday. One of the hardest-hit areas was the city of Tacloban and its more than 220,000 residents. "Virtually all of the structures, if they were not made out of concrete or steel, are gone," a top U.S. military commander said.

These satellite images from Google and DigitalGlobe show how Tacloban and the Anibong district looked in February 2012 and then two days after Haiyan made landfall.

The Republicans have dubbed them the "Obamacare Dozen," the 12 Democratic senators up for re-election in 2014, all of whom voted for the president's health care and insurance overhaul law.

In GOP world, each one of those senators managed to provide the "deciding vote" for the Affordable Care Act.

And each one, in the wake of the law's online rollout debacle, is in a "panic" — the GOP buzzword of the week — over its political implications.

That panic narrative is not baseless. It's undoubtedly playing out for already vulnerable red state incumbents like Mark Pryor in Arkansas and Mark Begich in Alaska, who face an even steeper climb as antipathy toward the 2010 health care law grows with each stumble.

But what about Democratic senators like Kay Hagan in North Carolina, who just months ago was looking at a tough, but winnable campaign for a second term?

Or Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire, a former governor whose strong summer poll numbers prompted this local news headline: "Can Anyone Beat Shaheen in 2014?"

New Hampshire Uncertainty

Panic may be too strong a word for Shaheen's state of mind. Indeed, that would probably be one of the last words anyone who knows the methodical, risk-averse politician would use to describe her, or her Obamacare strategy. That doesn't mean Shaheen hasn't moved to mitigate fallout.

"The health care law has never been popular in the state, but in the last month, Shaheen has been able to pivot very well," says political reporter and analyst James Pindell of New Hampshire's WMUR-TV.

Shaheen has said she'll propose legislation to extend the health insurance sign-up period, given the problems with online registration. It's an effort not supported by the White House, and one deemed unworkable by architects of the law.

But, Pindell says, it gives the appearance that there's distance between her, Obama and Senate Democratic leaders.

"Instead of having this thing around her neck," Pindell says, "in a classic Shaheen way, she's saying, 'I'm not changing my position, but I want to be more reasonable about this.' "

Former state Republican Chairman Fergus Cullen allows that Shaheen has "a bit more room to maneuver" than Pryor or Begich. He insists, however, that she is "as vulnerable as any other member who voted for Obamacare in the first place.

"Jeanne Shaheen is someone who has always put complete confidence in the government," Cullen says. "This has to give everyone pause."

But testing that vulnerability requires a viable opposing candidate, which Republicans haven't had since former Rep. Charlie Bass took a pass at running.

The two announced candidates are largely unknown statewide and poorly financed: a social conservative who drew 10 percent in a state GOP gubernatorial primary in 2010, and a former state senator whose pro-choice, pro-gay-marriage, and pro-carbon-tax positions don't line up with the party's base.

That's why national Republicans have been urging former Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown, who in 2012 lost a re-election bid to Democrat Elizabeth Warren, to come north to the Granite State and run.

Brown, who has a New Hampshire vacation home, has been an increasingly familiar figure in the state. But he's been making scattershot appearances — and if he has a strategy for running, no one can figure out what it is, Cullen says.

Strategy or no, he's "the only option" for Republicans, Pindell says. "When Charlie Bass decided he was not going to run, Scott Brown stopped being a sideshow and became the last great hope of New Hampshire Republicans to beat Jeanne Shaheen."

Brown has until June to decide whether to run, so it could be months before Shaheen, who raised and spent more than $8.3 million in her 2008 win over Republican John E. Sununu, can truly test the political fallout from Obamacare.

North Carolina Free Fall?

It looks increasingly like Kay Hagan won't have to wait that long.

A Public Policy Polling survey released this week showed Hagan's lead over a handful of potential Republican challengers disintegrating over the past several weeks.

The survey, which found that 69 percent of North Carolina voters say the Obamacare rollout hasn't been successful, had Hagan essentially in a dead heat with state House Speaker Thom Tillis and Rand Paul-endorsed Greg Brannon, a doctor. She's also running barely ahead of the Rev. Mark Harris and Heather Grant, a nurse.

In his analysis, Tom Jensen at PPP said that "early attack ads on Kay Hagan and the unpopular fallout of Obamacare" have taken a toll on her poll numbers.

Her approval rating among voters has remained consistent, Jensen said, but her disapproval rating has spiked from 39 percent to 49 percent since September — tracking closely with President Obama's numbers.

Hagan and Pryor, Begich and Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana have all endorsed Shaheen's bid to extend the enrollment deadline. And Hagan has taken a page from that playbook. This week she said she's seeking an independent study of what went wrong with the launch of the federal health care website.

"I'm leading a letter calling for a full investigation into the contracting process surrounding HealthCare.gov," she told reporters Tuesday. "Taxpayers are owed a full and a transparent accounting of how the vendors [who were] contracted to build this site failed to launch this site successfully."

Kenneth Fernandez, poll director at North Carolina's Elon University, says that Hagan still enjoys the advantages of incumbency and money — for now.

"This is a purple state, and whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, there is going to be a lot of outside money coming in," says Fernandez, who adds he believes that Tillis will emerge the GOP nominee.

The Obamacare issue will hurt Hagan, Fernandez says, but it's worth noting that her Republican counterpart in the Senate, Richard Burr, has seen his numbers worsen along with hers as the public sours on Congress in general and on Republicans, too.

Fernandez says he'll have new Elon poll results late next week.

North Carolina Democratic strategist Gary Pearce, writing Wednesday on the blog Talking About Politics, repeated a warning that politicians who try to hedge their bets are rarely successful. He offered this advice to Hagan:

"Remain calm. Step away from the ledge. Repeat after me: 'This website mess needs to be fixed. But we'd also better fix our health care mess. If we don't, it will bankrupt our nation and every family in it. What's the Republicans' plan?' "

The hardest thing to do in politics, Pearce says, is to underreact.

Meanwhile, political analyst Charlie Cook has kept Hagan's race rated as "leans Democrat," with Shaheen's as still a "likely Democrat" win.

For now.

Sunlight Jr.

Director: Laurie Collyer

Genre: Drama

Running Time: 90 minutes

Not rated

With: Naomi Watts, Matt Dillon, Norman Reedus

From the start, airline analysts had been predicting that an antitrust lawsuit would not stop the $11 billion deal to combine US Airways and American Airlines.

They saw the suit, filed in August, as a government negotiating tactic, not a deal-breaker.

Turns out, they were right: On Tuesday, the Justice Department said that rather than go to trial, it has settled the case. The two carriers are now free to combine and create the world's largest airline, but they must make room for low-cost competitors at seven airports.

Both the airline executives and many antitrust experts agreed that all's well that ends well.

"We couldn't be happier with the settlement," US Airways CEO Doug Parker said on a conference call with journalists.

"It's a win for consumers," Boston College Associate Law Professor Brian Quinn said. "The government identified a number of markets where the merger would have eliminated all competition" on many routes once American and US Airways combined.

"Freeing up those slots creates an opportunity for competitors," he said.

In a conference call, Assistant Attorney General Bill Baer said forcing carriers to surrender slots can help consumers. He pointed to Southwest Airlines' entry into Newark Liberty International Airport in 2010. Because United and Continental divested themselves of some prime airport real estate when they merged, Southwest was able to acquire 36 divested slots at Newark. Air fares subsequently fell more than 10 percent on nonstop flights alone, he said.

Under the agreement, consumers will find new travel options at Boston Logan International, Chicago O'Hare International, Dallas Love Field, Los Angeles International, Miami International, New York's LaGuardia and Ronald Reagan Washington National.

"This settlement ensures airline passengers will see more competition on nonstop and connecting routes throughout the country," Attorney General Eric Holder said in a statement.

The settlement puts the merger back on track, pending final approval from the bankruptcy court overseeing the financial reorganization of AMR Corp., the parent company of American Airlines.

The Two-Way

Justice Reaches Deal To Allow American, US Airways Merger

Good morning, fellow political junkies.

Well, the Obama administration warned us that the enrollment numbers for the Affordable Care Act would be low and (surprise!) they were.

Still, it's one thing to get an abstract, data-free warning, another to see actual numbers, 27,000 people enrolling for private insurance through the federal portal, 106,185 overall if you throw in the states.

And those numbers are reverberating in the Obamacare debate as congressional Democrats grow increasingly anxious about the political damage they may incur as they head into a re-election year.

So we start the morning with a look at some of the more interesting pieces of news and analysis touching on politics with a straight-ahead examination of what some health care analysts think the HHS data dump portends for Obamacare.

Promising isn't the word that immediately comes to mind, after reading a q&a by Kaiser Health News' Jay Hancock and Phil Galewitz. Experts doubt the administration can meet its Nov. 30 deadline for having the Healthcare.gov website problems largely fixed, they report. Even Jan. 1 looks optimistic, according to one. The worry is that millions of people who analysts thought would be insured won't be, particularly the young and healthy individuals insurers need to make Obamacare viable.

Jonathan Cohn at the New Republic gives context to the HHS numbers. He quotes MIT economist Jonathan Gruber, one of the brains behind Massachusetts' health care law, as saying it's too early to make a judgment. Next March, when the individual mandate is scheduled to go into effect, will be a better gauge.

Meanwhile, it increasingly appears the Obama administration is going to open Pandora's Box, i.e., go to Congress to fix the problem of cancelled insurance policies, reports Bloomberg News' Mike Dorning. The administration has been reluctant to do that because it could open to law to what it views as all kinds of GOP mischief. But it appears it may not have any choice.

Who doesn't like a good peek inside a White House operation? Glenn Thrush, who writes for the new Politico magazine, pulls back the curtain on the relationship between President Obama and much of his cabinet to reveal there really isn't much of one — a relationship, that is. Despite their high status as members of such an exclusive club, it's White House insiders who drive policymaking in Obama's highly centralized operation and find numerous ways to deflate cabinet secretary egos.

In the wake of his disproven "You can keep it" pledge, Obama may have fewer worries on the credibility front than many observers think, writes National Journal's George Condon. How much his fellow citizens believe a president doesn't necessarily equate with how effective they think he is. Condon cites Jimmy Carter ("I will never lie to you.") and Bill Clinton ("I did not have sexual relations...) as contrasting examples to prove his point.

Then again, maybe the sharp drop in the percentage of Americans who say they find Obama less credible means that he is not only officially a lame duck with little hope of getting any substantial part of his second-term agenda passed, but whose legacy will be tarnished, writes Scott Wilson of the Washington Post.

As the young U.S. senator takes the oath to become president, he sets out to fix an economy struggling with rising unemployment, slumping profits and depressed stock prices.

He knows the deep recession could prevent him from advancing his broader domestic and diplomatic agenda. Yes — all true for President Obama.

But that's what John F. Kennedy faced as well. On his frosty Inauguration Day in January 1961, Kennedy had to start fulfilling his campaign pledge to "get America moving again." Like Obama, he would need to win over a deeply skeptical business community.

The similarities mostly end right there.

Since taking office, Obama has struggled with the aftermath of a global financial crisis and a home foreclosure meltdown. Even after nearly five years in office, he presides over an economy stuck with a 7.3 percent unemployment rate and a disappointing growth rate well below 3 percent.

In contrast, Kennedy enjoyed a nearly miraculous economic turnaround. At the time of his death in November 1963, an employment boom was beginning. Stocks were soaring, swept up in the emerging "go-go" era on Wall Street — a time when investors were falling in love with mutual funds and conglomerates.

So, what exactly did Kennedy do? And as the nation marks the half-century anniversary of his assassination, do the experts credit him with having a lasting economic legacy?

Most historians say Kennedy's long-term economic impact was profound but complicated. Virtually all agree that in the short run, his policies did contribute to that golden era of the mid-1960s when the United States was enjoying one of the most robust economic expansions in history.

By 1966 — the year that might have been the fifth of his presidency had he lived — Kennedy would have been presiding over an economy growing at a rate of 6.6 percent and an unemployment rate falling to just 3.8 percent.

Related NPR Stories

Politics

'It Takes A Crisis': How '73 Embargo Fueled Change In U.S.

This week on-air and online, the tech team is exploring the sharing economy. You'll find the stories on this blog and aggregated at this link, and we would love to hear your questions about the topic. Just email, leave a comment or tweet.

I didn't know Erin Kelly Myers when I first got into her car outside of NPR West in Culver City, Calif.

"I promise I'm a safe driver," she tells me. "Actually, I'm proud to say for 28 years without an accident, so tonight's definitely not the night, good sir. My car, Little Sexy, confirms that."

She's a driver for the ridesharing service Lyft. And yes, she's named her new Honda Accord "Little Sexy."

Lyft is a service that sets up everyday car owners with people who need rides. Users need a smartphone to download the app, a credit or debit card and a Facebook account. The app, which is available in 18 cities, suggests a donation when the ride is done. The passenger can choose to pay the donation or not. It's all done through the app.

The drivers and passengers can also screen each other before accepting the share, and at the end of the ride, they get to rate each other. Both build up a reputation over time.

Myers and I pick up Catalina Lee at her office after work and take her home.

As we drive across town, Lee explains that she's not just taking a rideshare home because she's tired. She does it to meet people with new points of view.

"I only mingle with a certain kind of group, and I don't really get to explore different ways people think. It's just interesting to hear about it," she says.

When you talk to Myers or her passengers, or people participating in food co-ops or other shared economies, their enthusiasm is not about the transactions, necessarily — it's about the community.

"I definitely feel like I'm a part of the fabric and the core of the city now like I never was before," Myers says.

The Sharing Economy Trend

In the last several years, the idea of sharing cars and bikes has begun to take hold in major American cities.

About three years ago was when the movement really took off. The country was coming out of the economic collapse. Smartphones were becoming mainstream. Your grandmother was getting on Facebook.

"There were many more business models emerging, many more entrants, a lot more investment money and a lot more disruption," says Susan Shaheen, who teaches and researches transportation at the University of California, Berkeley.

All Tech Considered

What's Mine Is Yours (For A Price) In The Sharing Economy

This week, we've been reporting on the sharing economy — a term that describes the couch-surfing, car-sharing and community-garden-growing world where so many people are using their existing talents, space or tools. You'll find the stories on this blog and aggregated at this link, and we would love to hear your questions about the topic. Just email, leave a comment or tweet.

The sharing economy is powering a rise of new entrepreneurs who need a different kind of office space. Co-working spaces that foster certain communities, like Galvanize, in Denver, cater to that changing culture of work. When you walk into it — the first thing you'll see is a well-stocked bar. The second is a coffee shop.

Enlarge image i

As the young U.S. senator takes the oath to become president, he sets out to fix an economy struggling with rising unemployment, slumping profits and depressed stock prices.

He knows the deep recession could prevent him from advancing his broader domestic and diplomatic agenda. Yes — all true for President Obama.

But that's what John F. Kennedy faced as well. On his frosty Inauguration Day in January 1961, Kennedy had to start fulfilling his campaign pledge to "get America moving again." Like Obama, he would need to win over a deeply skeptical business community.

The similarities mostly end right there.

Since taking office, Obama has struggled with the aftermath of a global financial crisis and a home foreclosure meltdown. Even after nearly five years in office, he presides over an economy stuck with a 7.3 percent unemployment rate and a disappointing growth rate well below 3 percent.

In contrast, Kennedy enjoyed a nearly miraculous economic turnaround. At the time of his death in November 1963, an employment boom was beginning. Stocks were soaring, swept up in the emerging "go-go" era on Wall Street — a time when investors were falling in love with mutual funds and conglomerates.

So, what exactly did Kennedy do? And as the nation marks the half-century anniversary of his assassination, do the experts credit him with having a lasting economic legacy?

Most historians say Kennedy's long-term economic impact was profound, but complicated. Virtually all agree that in the short run, his policies did contribute to that golden era of the mid-1960s when the United States was enjoying one of the most robust economic expansions in history.

By 1966 — the year that might have been the fifth of his presidency had he lived — Kennedy would have been presiding over an economy growing at a rate of 6.6 percent and an unemployment rate falling to just 3.8 percent.

Related NPR Stories

Politics

'It Takes A Crisis': How '73 Embargo Fueled Change In U.S.

More From This Episode

Ask Me Another

Knock On Woody

More than 106,000 Americans selected health plans in the first reporting period of open enrollment for the new health insurance marketplace, according to data released Wednesday by the Department of Health and Human Services.

That number is only "about 20 percent of the government's October target," as NPR's Scott Horsley reports for our Newscast unit.

Less than 27,000 people used the federal HealthCare.gov site to select a plan. The overall number includes enrollments made via federal and state marketplaces from Oct. 1 to Nov. 2, the agency says.

"To date, 106,185 persons have selected a Marketplace plan — this includes 79,391 in [state-based marketplaces] and 26,794 in [federally facilitated marketplaces]," according to the report. "An additional 975,407 persons who have been determined eligible have not yet selected a plan through the Marketplace."

That means only about a quarter of those who chose plans did so through the federal site. But Health and Human Services officials say they're optimistic about future growth.

A team of surveillance experts on Wednesday delivered preliminary recommendations to the White House on whether and how to amend U.S. spying policies.

President Obama appointed the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology, as it is officially known, as part of his response to global outrage over secret American surveillance programs. The panel's task is to advise the administration on how best to balance security needs against privacy concerns.

The group briefed National Security Adviser Susan Rice, counterterrorism adviser Lisa Monaco and other staff from the National Security Council at the White House, according to NSC spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden. This was an oral presentation, with the final written report due by Dec. 15. Parts of the group's final conclusions will be made public, while the full report will remain classified.

Obama has said he will rely on these recommendations to chart a new path forward for U.S. spying policy. But the president evolved to reach that position, gradually adjusting his response over five months of steady leaks from former defense contractor Edward Snowden.

The spying programs disclosed since June have touched on American people, major companies, world leaders and foreign citizens. The first big story revealed that the National Security Agency was collecting data from Verizon customers in the U.S.

Back then, the White House reaction amounted to: Move along, there's nothing to see here.

"The last thing they'd be doing is taking programs like this to listen to somebody's phone calls," Obama said of the National Security Agency in his first public comments about the leaks.

Obama insisted that cyberspies were not abusing their authority. Rather, he said, they were simply doing everything in their power to stop the next terrorist attack.

"They cherish our Constitution," he insisted.

Turns out, Nov. 13 is National Indian Pudding Day. It snuck up on you again, didn't it?

You can't be blamed.

Indian pudding is virtually unknown outside of New England, and even there it's tricky to find. But this enduring New England dessert may actually deserve a day of its own.

The origins of this food holiday are obscure — "I don't know who the National Indian Pudding Day lobby is," says food historian Kathleen Wall, who works at Plimoth Plantation, the Colonial living-history museum in Plymouth, Mass. The holiday, she notes, has "never been petitioned at the White House."

But the dish itself, says Wall, is unquestionably all-American. The "Indian" in Indian pudding, Wall explains, refers to Native American cornmeal. The original pudding was likely just cornmeal, milk and molasses, steamed or boiled for a very long time. She calls it one of the country's first truly American recipes.

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The third time Karl and I went out I kissed him; I told him I would help him. He said that he needed some help. Then he asked me to marry him.

I shook my head. "That's the whole point," I said. "I'm the only person you're going to find who isn't going to marry you."

And I didn't. For eleven years.

It's only been hours since Kmart announced its Black Friday plan — to remain open for 41 hours in a row beginning early on Thanksgiving Day. But online critics are throwing a red light on the plan, with some calling the company a Grinch for its aggressive approach to the start of the Christmas shopping season.

"Everybody thinks your executives are horrible people," a man named Christopher Sweet wrote on Kmart's Facebook page. Another critic, Ted Talevski, appealed to the workers: "This is a message to all Kmart employees! Do not go to work on Thanksgiving Day!"

Responding to the negative feedback, Kmart says that it will try to staff its stores with seasonal workers to accommodate employees who want to be with friends and relatives.

Amber Camp, who says she works at Kmart, said via Facebook that her bosses "are planning on all the employees to have some time so we can actually spend time with our families on Thanksgiving."

The criticisms began flowing soon after Sears, Kmart's parent company, announced that the stores that long promoted "blue light specials" will be open from 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving morning to 11 p.m. Friday night.

Sears stores will work a less aggressive schedule, opening from 8 p.m. on Thanksgiving night to 10 p.m. Friday.

"Kmart has opened at 6 a.m. on Thanksgiving for the past three years," reports CNN Money, where we spotted the story about the backlash. "Last year, however, stores closed for a few hours at 4 p.m. to let shoppers and employees get to their Thanksgiving dinners."

The company's social media team repeatedly issued responses to the criticisms on Facebook, saying, "We understand many associates want to spend time with their families during the holiday. With this in mind Kmart stores do their very best to staff with seasonal associates and those who are needed to work holidays."

One person offered their own response to a similar statement on Twitter, saying, "yes, that's what the companies I worked for told us too, however we had no choice in the matter and I doubt your associates do either."

But some defended the move, saying that many retail employees would be happy to earn overtime. And others say they aren't bothered by the plan.

"Nobody is physically forcing employees to work at Kmart if they don't like the scheduling," one Facebook comment read.

The amount of land under opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan is at a record high, the United Nations said in a report released Wednesday.

Opium production in 2013, meanwhile, rose 49 percent over 2012, the 2013 Afghanistan Opium Survey said. The country is the world's No. 1 poppy producer.

The report's findings come as Western troops prepare to leave Afghanistan in 2014 more than a decade after they deposed the Taliban and attempted to bring stability to the country.

Here are seven takeaways from the report:

1. Cultivation spikes: It amounted to 209,000 hectares (516,000 acres) – a 36 percent increase over last year. The previous record was 193,000 hectares (476,913 acres) set in 2007.

2. Production up: Opium production rose from 3,700 tons last year to 5,500 tons this year. Average yield rose 11 percent.

3. Prices fell: They were down 12 percent this year – mainly due to the increased production.

4. Reasons for the jump: Last year's high opium prices could have driven production this year, but another reason for the jump may be the planned withdrawal of Western troops in 2014, which the U.N. said, "led farmers to try to hedge against the country's uncertain political future."

5. Afghan efforts: The number of provinces that grew poppy rose from 17 in 2012 to 19 this year. Eradication of the crop fell by 24 percent. The country's seizure rate was less than that of other opium-producing countries, and the U.N. said the relatively low number of arrests, prosecutions and convictions of powerful figures remains a concern.

6. Where poppy is grown: The bulk of the production was confined to the south and the west of the country, including Helmand and Kandahar provinces, which are "dominated by insurgency and organized criminal networks."

7. As percentage of GDP: Opium production was 4 percent of the country's gross domestic product of $21.04 billion.

Not long ago if you wanted to rent a room for the weekend your choices ran from the Four Seasons to Motel 6. Renting a car meant Hertz or Avis and applying for a loan meant going to a bank. But all this is changing.

Increasingly, individuals are reaching out to each other through the Internet. Thousands of Americans have started renting out their underused personal assets online to earn extra cash. They rent their apartments while they are away for the weekend, lend their cars for cash and even sell their spare time.

The sharing, or peer-to-peer, economy is exploding. And all of this is possible in part because of technology, but also because many Americans are coming to terms with scarcity in their lives.

Room To Let

Sharing is not exactly new. Even turning to the Internet to unload unwanted stuff in the midst of a personal economic crisis is a pretty old idea. After all, eBay has been around for a while. And the Craigslist auction of unwanted junk is a staple of modern life.

Still, during the financial crisis something changed.

"When the crisis hit there were people in desperate need of alternative solutions," says Nathan Blecharczyk, a co-founder of Airbnb. "We were one of those solutions."

“ In the same way when a taxi illuminates when they are on and off duty, we have this ability to illuminate waste. ... That pent up waste with new eyes becomes value.

Even taken together, the charges didn't seem to amount to that big a deal — just a matter of quoting a few factual statements and a Wikipedia passage without attributing them. But as Rand Paul discovered, the word "plagiarism" can still rouse people to steaming indignation. Samuel Johnson called plagiarism the most reproachful of literary crimes, and the word itself began as the name of a real crime. In Roman law, a plagiarius was someone who abducted a child or a slave — it's from "plaga," the Latin word for a net or a snare. That connection was first drawn by the first-century poet Martial, who accused a rival he called Fidentius of stealing his works to garner undeserved praise. Martial compared Fidentius to a man who wears a toupee, and others have depicted the plagiarist as somebody who "shines in stolen plumes."

The Two-Way

Book News: Rand Paul To Plagiarism Accusers: 'If Dueling Were Legal In Kentucky ...'

The Virginia attorney general's race, which cut a relatively low profile heading into Election Day, now has a chance to end up as part of history.

With more than 2.2 million ballots cast and Democratic state Sen. Mark Herring leading Republican state Sen. Mark Obenshain by a mere 117 votes, the election is shaping up as one of the closest statewide contests in decades.

With a recount looming, the winner isn't expected to be officially declared until December. But in the meantime, here's a look back at some of the closest statewide elections of the past five decades:

1960: Presidential Election In Hawaii

John F. Kennedy, then a U.S. senator from Massachusetts, defeated Vice President Richard Nixon by 115 votes in Hawaii the year after it officially joined the U.S. The state's three electoral votes didn't matter much in the grand scheme of the election, as Kennedy won the Electoral College 303 to 219. But he won the nationwide popular vote by fewer than 113,000 votes.

1962: Minnesota Governor

It took the state more than four months to determine the victor, but Lt. Gov. Karl Rolvaag of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party won the 1962 Minnesota gubernatorial election by just 91 votes over sitting GOP Gov. Elmer Andersen. More than 1.2 million voters cast ballots in the election.

1964: Nevada U.S. Senate

Democrat Howard Cannon, who served in the Senate for 24 years, experienced his closest race in 1964, when he beat then-Lt. Gov. Paul Laxalt by 48 votes out of nearly 135,000 cast. The results didn't stunt Laxalt's political career: He went on to win election as governor, ended up serving with Cannon as Nevada's junior senator and served as chairman of the Republican National Committee.

1974: New Hampshire U.S. Senate

More than 233,000 ballots were cast, but New Hampshire's 1974 U.S. Senate election was ultimately decided by just two votes. Republican Rep. Louis Wyman defeated Democrat John Durkin, the state's insurance commissioner, by the slimmest of margins after two recounts. But the results remained disputed, and the Senate ultimately called for a new election, which took place in September 1975. Durkin won that contest by 27,000 votes.

1998: Nevada U.S. Senate

Harry Reid, the current Senate majority leader, barely won his third term in November 1998. Just 428 votes separated Reid and his Republican challenger, then-Rep. John Ensign, out of nearly 436,000 cast. Despite the narrow margin, Ensign chose not to contest the results. Ensign went on to win the state's other Senate seat two years later but was forced to resign in 2011 after he had an affair with a staffer.

2000: Presidential Election In Florida

George W. Bush defeated Al Gore by 537 votes out of nearly 6 million in cast in Florida, delivering not only the state's 25 electoral votes but the presidency in one of the most infamous election outcomes in history. The Supreme Court halted the state's second recount effort in a controversial decision about a month after the election, giving Bush the victory.

2000: Presidential Election In New Mexico

While it didn't garner anywhere near the attention that Florida did, the 2000 presidential election results were actually closer in New Mexico from a raw vote standpoint. Gore carried the state over Bush by just 366 votes out of nearly 600,000 cast. It took 10 days to officially declare Gore the winner, but since the state was only worth five electoral votes, it did not make a difference in the overall outcome.

2004: Washington Governor

Following two recounts — one machine, one manual — then-Attorney General Christine Gregoire, a Democrat, defeated GOP state Sen. Dino Rossi by 133 votes out of more than 2.8 million cast. Gregoire was officially sworn into office on Jan. 12, 2005, but Rossi did not actually concede for five more months as the Republican Party challenged the results unsuccessfully in court. Rossi ran against Gregoire again in 2008, losing by 6 percentage points.

2005: Virginia Attorney General

Virginia is no stranger to tight attorney general races: The 2005 election was also decided by just a few hundred votes. Current Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell, who was a member of the state's House of Delegates at the time, beat out then-Democratic state Sen. Creigh Deeds by 323 votes out of more than 1.9 million cast. The two would meet again four years later in the gubernatorial election, where McDonnell came out on top by 17 percentage points.

2008: Minnesota U.S. Senate

In one of the longest-lasting Senate battles ever, Democrat Al Franken edged incumbent Republican Norm Coleman by 312 votes out of nearly 2.9 million cast. After an eight-month legal fight, Coleman officially conceded at the end of June 2009 once the Minnesota Supreme Court declared Franken the winner. Franken was sworn in on July 7, giving the Democrats a 60-seat Senate majority.

My parents moved away from Lincoln, Ill., two decades ago, when I was in college. I hardly ever get back there. But my mom still works in Lincoln, and it was to Lincoln I headed to meet her this fall, after returning to the U.S. from the Middle East.

I got off the train from Chicago and immediately saw that the old depot building — where we used to go for fancy dinners before prom — was boarded shut. A little monument commemorating the day Abraham Lincoln named the town in 1853 was faded and peeling. There was a man asleep on a bench at the train stop. He looked like he'd been there for days.

Driving around with my mom, I could not help but be struck by the question: What happened to Lincoln? I know this is a pretty common thought when people go back to their hometowns. But really, what happened?

I decided to find out for myself, to spend a week reporting in Lincoln.

It turns out that what's happening in Lincoln is happening in so many towns and communities across the country: As we recover from the Great Recession, jobs are coming back. But they are not middle-wage jobs — they are either high-wage jobs or low-wage jobs. The middle class is in serious decline. And that has all kinds of repercussions.

Fewer Jobs, More Crime

I started with Troy Brown, who went to grade school with my brother and is now a probation officer. He summed it up pretty well.

"The drug use has skyrocketed. The unemployment rate has skyrocketed. And just the general attitude — just no hope," he said. "I don't know really when it changed, but it seemed to be overnight."

Brown has seen that change up close. While the crime rate in Lincoln is steady, it's drug-related offenses that are going up. And the drug of choice these days?

Heroin.

So much heroin, Brown says, there's an overdose every week. And that's in a town of just 14,000 people. A handful of people have even died.

State authorities say in towns like Lincoln, people get addicted to prescription drugs then turn to heroin when they can no longer afford the pills. They say the supply of heroin from Mexico has increased, and that's why it's cheap and available.

Brown says, sadly, heroin is keeping him in business.

"Lincoln has really plummeted to the point where I would love for our office to have cuts because there's no more crime," he said. "But we're so swamped, it's just the exact opposite. I mean, I hate to say it, but I have total job security here."

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The teacher glances back and forth from her black tablet to the students in front of her as she runs through an English lesson.

"Very good," she announces as reads the directions from the tablet. "Give them a super cheer," she continues and the students shout in unison, "Super!"

The e-reader not only delivers the lesson script to the teachers, but it also acts as an electronic time sheet, grade book and supervisor. The tablet tracks what time the teacher arrives, what time she leaves, and how long she spends on every lesson.

The administrative side of the entire school can be run off a smartphone, says David Mwangi, the manager of a Bridge school in Nairobi. He can admit new students, submit test scores and send payroll time sheets back to Bridge's central office in Nairobi, all from his cheap Chinese smartphone.

Tuition collection is also automated. Parents pay their monthly school fees through Kenya's mobile money system, M-Pesa, which allows people to transfer cash via text message.

'The Magic' Of Replication

The exact same lesson being taught in this classroom is being taught in every other sixth-grade class at Bridge schools across the country, says Bridge co-founder Shannon May.

"If you were at one of the other 200 locations right now, you'd be seeing the exact same thing," she says. "In some ways, it is kind of the magic of it."

That "magic" of standardized lesson plans changes the role of the teacher. It allows Bridge to hold down costs because it can hire teachers who don't have college degrees.

It also allows Bridge to rapidly expand and bring in more "customers."

That's Bridge's goal. Its target customers are the hundreds of millions of parents around the world who live on $2 day and yearn for better schools for their children.

To keep tuition costs low, Bridge depends on large class sizes. Their ideal class size is 40 to 50 kids, but the classes can get upward of 70 students.

Over the past four years, Bridge has grown to be the largest chain of private schools on the continent. And some advocates for universal education find this troubling.

There are other private schools across Africa seeking to teach the so-called poorest of the poor, but their models and size are quite different from those of Bridge.

Criticism Of Method

"If somebody suggested that kind of an educational model, in this country they would be laughed out of the educational community," says Ed Gragert, the U.S. director of the Global Campaign for Education, which advocates for increased access to education in the developing world.

"That's not how kids learn best," he says. "Kids learn by interacting with each other. It seems like we are going back for the sake of somebody making a profit to where a robot could teach that class."

He says, however, he does admire the rigor of the Bridge model. School is in session from 7:30 a.m. until 5 p.m., five days a week. On Saturday, classes run from 9 until 4.

Not long ago if you wanted to rent a room for the weekend your choices ran from the Four Seasons to Motel 6. Renting a car meant Hertz or Avis and applying for a loan meant going to a bank. But all this is changing.

Increasingly, individuals are reaching out to each other through the Internet. Thousands of Americans have started renting out their underused personal assets online to earn extra cash. They rent their apartments while they are away for the weekend, lend their cars for cash and even sell their spare time.

The sharing, or peer-to-peer, economy is exploding. And all of this is possible in part because of technology, but also because many Americans are coming to terms with scarcity in their lives.

Room To Let

Sharing is not exactly new. Even turning to the Internet to unload unwanted stuff in the midst of a personal economic crisis is a pretty old idea. After all, eBay has been around for a while. And the Craigslist auction of unwanted junk is a staple of modern life.

Still, during the financial crisis something changed.

"When the crisis hit there were people in desperate need of alternative solutions," says Nathan Blecharczyk, a co-founder of Airbnb. "We were one of those solutions."

“ In the same way when a taxi illuminates when they are on and off duty, we have this ability to illuminate waste. ... That pent up waste with new eyes becomes value.

Not long ago if you wanted to rent a room for the weekend your choices ran from the Four Seasons to Motel 6. Renting a car meant Hertz or Avis and applying for a loan meant going to a bank. But all this is changing.

Increasingly, individuals are reaching out to each other through the Internet. Thousands of Americans have started renting out their underused personal assets online to earn extra cash. They rent their apartments while they are away for the weekend, lend their cars for cash and even sell their spare time.

The sharing, or peer-to-peer, economy is exploding. And all of this is possible in part because of technology, but also because many Americans are coming to terms with scarcity in their lives.

Room To Let

Sharing is not exactly new. Even turning to the Internet to unload unwanted stuff in the midst of a personal economic crisis is a pretty old idea. After all, eBay has been around for a while. And the Craigslist auction of unwanted junk is a staple of modern life.

Still, during the financial crisis something changed.

"When the crisis hit there were people in desperate need of alternative solutions," says Nathan Blecharczyk, a co-founder of Airbnb. "We were one of those solutions."

“ In the same way when a taxi illuminates when they are on and off duty, we have this ability to illuminate waste. ... That pent up waste with new eyes becomes value.

Yotam Ottolenghi and Sami Tamimi own four wildly popular London restaurants and have authored runaway best-selling cookbooks for omnivores and vegetarians alike.

The two hail from the West and East sides of Jerusalem, respectively, and first crossed paths in London in the 1990s. In 2002 they opened Ottolenghi, a small deli that Tamimi says resembles a flower shop, bursting with the color of freshly made salads and desserts, rooted in and inspired by their native Middle East.

And unlike many other international chefs who have found fame in America — where their book Jerusalem was a surprise best-seller — Ottolenghi and Tamimi made it here without having appeared on a TV cooking show or otherwise succumbing to the personality-driven culture of today's celebrity chefs.

Instead, their success grew out of recipes that look like you or I could make them in our own kitchens. That's attracted a devoted fan base of both home cooks and professional chefs — some of whom have told us here at The Salt that they cook out of the duo's books in their own restaurants.

We here at NPR have been following these two chefs for some time, so when Ottolenghi and Tamimi passed through Washington, D.C., in October, we invited them to stop by for breakfast and a chat.

Here are some of the highlights from our conversation.

On their success in the U.S.:

The Salt

Jerusalem: A Love Letter To Food And Memories Of Home

Allie Brosh's humorous, autobiographical blog, Hyperbole and a Half, has a huge following. In 2011, an editor of PC World included it in a list of the 10 funniest sites on the Internet, and this year, Advertising Age included Brosh in its annual list of the year's most influential and creative thinkers and doers.

That's pretty amazing considering that, as Brosh describes it, she lives like a recluse in her Bend, Ore., bedroom, where she writes stories about her life and illustrates them with brightly colored, intentionally crude drawings.

Even taken together, the charges didn't seem to amount to that big a deal — just a matter of quoting a few factual statements and a Wikipedia passage without attributing them. But as Rand Paul discovered, the word "plagiarism" can still rouse people to steaming indignation. Samuel Johnson called plagiarism the most reproachful of literary crimes, and the word itself began as the name of a real crime. In Roman law, a plagiarius was someone who abducted a child or a slave — it's from "plaga," the Latin word for a net or a snare. That connection was first drawn by the first-century poet Martial, who accused a rival he called Fidentius of stealing his works to garner undeserved praise. Martial compared Fidentius to a man who wears a toupee, and others have depicted the plagiarist as somebody who "shines in stolen plumes."

The Two-Way

Book News: Rand Paul To Plagiarism Accusers: 'If Dueling Were Legal In Kentucky ...'

It's taken for granted that lobbyists influence legislation. But perhaps less obvious is that they often write the actual bills — even word for word.

In an example a week and a half ago, the House passed a measure that would roll back a portion of the 2010 financial reforms known as Dodd-Frank. And reports from The New York Times and Mother Jones revealed that language in the final legislation was nearly identical to language suggested by lobbyists.

It's been a long-accepted truth in Washington that lobbyists write the actual laws, but that raises two questions: Why does it happen so much, and is it a bad thing?

The House bill passed on Oct. 30 essentially sought to wipe out a financial overhaul known as the "push-out rule." The rule prevents banks from using your deposits to trade in derivatives — risky securities that many believe contributed to the 2008 financial crisis.

Marcus Stanley of Americans for Financial Reform says the regulation was a way to protect taxpayer money.

"The purpose of this part of Dodd-Frank was to basically say that Wall Street derivatives activities should be funded by private money and shouldn't get a public subsidy, and this bill kind of reversed that," Stanley says.

What the bill would do is exempt broad categories of trades from this rule.

And here's what really ticked off consumer advocates like Stanley. The New York Times and Mother Jones obtained draft language that lobbyists for Citigroup — one of the largest banks in country — offered to lawmakers. And it turns out that 70 of the 85 lines in the final House bill reflected Citigroup's recommendations. In fact, as The Times reports, two paragraphs were copied almost word for word — except lawmakers had changed two words to make them plural.

The House bill has slim hopes of passing the Senate.

'A Closer Look'

"It shouldn't be as a result of an investigative report by a newspaper that members of Congress find out that a bill put before them was actually written by one of the interests affected by it," says Democratic Rep. Daniel Kildee of Michigan.

Kildee says no one ever told him before he first voted for the bill as a member of the House Financial Services Committee that Citigroup had drafted so much of the language.

So later on the House floor, he voted against the bill.

"It should have been made clear to all committee members as to where this was coming from," says Kildee, "and folks may have taken a different look, or a closer look, at the language if we had known it had been written by and for a particular interest."

Citigroup declined to comment on its lobbying efforts, but in a May 2013 blog post it said that what it advocated was good for the whole financial system.

Privatizing Policy?

"To me," says Lee Drutman of the Sunlight Foundation, a government watchdog group, "this is just another tick-tock on a story that's been developing for a long time — that Congress has basically outsourced its policy expertise to the private sector."

As outrageous as this story seems, Drutman says, it's now unfortunately business as usual on Capitol Hill.

"People on the Hill don't stay as long," he says. "You don't get as good people on the Hill. The expertise on policymaking more and more has moved to the private sector, and it's moved to represent those organizations and companies who can afford to pay for it, which generally isn't you and me. It's big banks and Big Oil and big companies."

Drutman worked as a banking policy staffer in 2009 and 2010 handling financial overhaul issues. And what he saw around the Capitol was that congressional staff members were stretched incredibly thin.

Lobbyists know this, says Drutman, so what they offer lawmakers is an all-in-one package — they'll help a lawmaker round up co-sponsors for the bill, even write talking points, as well as the specific bill language.

"Sometimes it's two words. ... Sometimes you want to insert a 'not' or something," says Nick Allard, a longtime lobbyist at the firm Patton Boggs.

Allard says before you think lobbyists are running Washington, consider this: Word choices in a bill have to be vetted and approved by lots of eyeballs in a long lawmaking process. So it's the members of Congress who voted for the bill — not the lobbyists — who have to take ownership over the final language.

"So where it comes from — whether they see it on the back of a cereal box or on the Today show or on NPR or out of a lawyer who's acting as a lobbyist's word processor — doesn't matter, because if the member is proposing it, they are responsible for it and they have to make the case for why it's advisable," Allard says.

Several of the House bill's sponsors didn't respond to a request for comment.

And as for Kildee's concerns about transparency? Lobbyists aren't under disclosure requirements, so consumer advocates like Stanley say the public can't see what lobbyists have drafted for lawmakers — unless someone leaks it.

"It's a little different when the American Cancer Society gives you some technical assistance on a cancer funding bill versus when one of the largest banks in the world, which was just recently bailed out by the public, writes you a bill that will give it access to public deposit insurance to fund its exotic financial activities," he says.

And Stanley says the public has a right to know where policy expertise is coming from.

There's still one election yet to be decided from last Tuesday: the Virginia attorney general's race.

The latest figures released Sunday night show it's about as close as it gets: Republican state Sen. Mark Obenshain leads Democratic state Sen. Mark Herring by just 17 votes out of more than 2.2 million cast.

The results have been constantly fluctuating since the polls closed the night of Nov. 5, as canvassers continue to count provisional ballots and identify errors in areas around the state. At one point last week, Obenshain led by as many as 1,200 votes. Local election boards must submit their final vote tallies by midnight Tuesday.

With the race this close, a recount appears inevitable. If the difference between the two candidates is 1 percent of the vote or less after the Virginia State Board of Elections officially certifies the results on Nov. 25, the second-place candidate may request a recount, meaning the winner most likely wouldn't be determined until well into December.

Whoever comes out on top in what could go down as one of the closest statewide elections ever will replace outgoing Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who lost a tight race of his own last week to Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the state's gubernatorial election. McAuliffe won 48 percent to 45 percent.

The Democrats also won the lieutenant governor's race in Virginia, as state Sen. Ralph Northam, a neurologist, defeated minister E.W. Jackson by more than 10 percentage points.

Even taken together, the charges didn't seem to amount to that big a deal — just a matter of quoting a few factual statements and a Wikipedia passage without attributing them. But as Rand Paul discovered, the word "plagiarism" can still rouse people to steaming indignation. Samuel Johnson called plagiarism the most atrocious of literary crimes, and the word itself began as the name of a real crime. In Roman law, a plagiarius was someone who abducted a child or a slave — it's from "plaga," the Latin word for a net or a snare. That connection was first drawn by the first-century poet Martial, who accused a rival he called Fidentius of stealing his works in order to garner undeserved praise. Martial compared Fidentius to a man who wears a toupee, and others have depicted the plagiarist as somebody who "shines in stolen plumes."

The Two-Way

Book News: Rand Paul To Plagiarism Accusers: 'If Dueling Were Legal In Kentucky ...'

For the third year in a row, the Philippines has been hit by a major storm claiming more than 1,000 lives, and the death toll from Haiyan, one of the worst on record, could climb to 10,000.

With thousands of islands in the warm waters of the Pacific, the Philippines is destined to face the wrath of angry tropical storms year after year.

So what can a poor, densely populated country can do to mitigate the huge loss of life and the massive destruction?

Here are some of the challenges and potential solutions for this recurring nightmare facing the Philippines.

The Curse Of Beautiful Islands: Stunning islands lined with palm trees and set in a sapphire sea are great for a tropical vacation and a monstrous logistical headache if you are trying to prepare for or respond to a typhoon.

It's much faster and cheaper to move large numbers of people and supplies in cars and trucks. But with everyone living on islands, mass evacuations are extremely difficult to pull off. To make things more difficult, many Filipinos are impoverished and live in badly constructed homes on land that is vulnerable to severe weather.

Given the geography, the Philippines needs planes and helicopters, boats and ferries to move people out and send assistance in.

Dr. Hilarie Cranmer, a disaster medical relief specialist at Massachusetts General Hospital, told NPR that the Philippines' National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council is doing some things very well, such as providing extremely detailed situation reports.

Still, the Philippines has limited resources. After Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005 and Superstorm Sandy hit the Northeast last year, the U.S. government pumped in billions of dollars for relief and recovery.

The Philippines government has so far proposed a $50 million effort, Steven Rood, who represents the Asia Foundation in the Philippines, told NPR. He estimated the government has perhaps $1 billion a year in its budget to handle such emergencies.

Calling On The U.S. Military: The Philippines has turned to the U.S. military for help on multiple occasions. The Americans used to have to major bases and thousands of sailors and airmen based in the Philippines, but the bases were closed in 1992 in large part because the Philippines wanted them out.

Now it takes the U.S. forces longer to get to the scene of a disaster. The U.S. has so far sent several hundreds Marines from Japan. An aircraft carrier is on the way, but it's not expected for another couple days, or nearly a week after the typhoon hit.

Marine Brig. Gen. Paul Kennedy, who's leading the U.S. effort, has flown over the devastated city of Tacloban and he described the challenges he faces on NPR's Morning Edition:

"A first priority is a place where we can land even 30 airplanes. You take for granted all the infrastructure that goes into running an air field. You need a tower. You need lights. You need electricity. You need gas. You need space to offload your aircraft. You need people with forklifts. You need all of that, none of which is present. It has been destroyed or washed out to sea or washed into the interior of the city."

For food producers who sell directly to consumers, credit cards are both a blessing and a curse.

They're a way to do business with cashless customers, but 3 percent of every credit card sale is usually charged to the farmer as a transaction fee. That adds up in a high-volume, low-profit business like agriculture.

The extra fee has farmers looking for a solution to save money. A few are finding one in bitcoin.

Bitcoin is a type of cryptocurrency: digital money that doesn't exist in the physical world. There are almost 12 million bitcoins worldwide — worth about $4 billion — that can be sent to or received from anyone with a bitcoin wallet.

A bitcoin wallet, just like a home, has a unique address. For a farmer accepting bitcoin, customers with the currency would type in the amount to send (yes, the wallet is accessible through smartphones) to the farmer's wallet address and hit send.

One farm open to the idea is La Nay Ferme in Provo, Utah.

Owner Clinton Felsted says he began using bitcoin when a crew for the documentary Life on Bitcoin approached him about accepting the currency. Now he's working on a more user-friendly bitcoin payment method that should be up and running by February for consumers buying his fruits and vegetables.

It's the invisible nature of the currency, he says, that interested him.

"Taking money with you is a real risk and it's a real security problem," he tells The Salt. "With bitcoin you can take it anywhere with no risk. If I ever need my money I don't need to find an ATM machine."

But with few other businesses accepting bitcoin, Felsted converts it back into U.S. currency for a lower fee than he'd be charged accepting credit cards.

Bitcoin is most popular in the U.S., but farmers outside the U.S. are warming to it as well. One of the first to sell greens in exchange for virtual currency lives in Argentina.

Two years ago, organic farmer Santiago Zaz started the Tierra Buena Network to deliver produce to customers from his and his neighbors' farms. That got him interested in creating a website for online purchases.

With the help of his friend and software developer Nubis Bruno, they created one of the first produce-for-bitcoin websites, Tierra Buena. Bruno says to date a steady one in 10 sales comes in the form of bitcoin.

Just like Felstad converting his bitcoins in the U.S. dollars, Bruno says the farmers using the Tierra Buena site are converting it into Argentinean pesos.

Garrick Hileman with the London School of Economics, agrees that bitcoin makes sense for farmers reliant on credit card transactions for sales. Using bitcoins over credit, he says, equals to keeping that 3 percent revenue per sale otherwise lost.

And it could actually be more than that. Last week, one bitcoin was worth almost $240. Today it's worth $345.

A few big tech companies, like OkCupid and Foodler, accept bitcoin. But good luck paying utility bills or go mall shopping with it. The currency's volatility tends to scare big companies with more to lose than small companies, Hileman says.

"Small businesses can take the risk with an emerging alternative currency," he says.

The upcoming documentary Life On Bitcoin shows farmers at a Salt Lake City market willing to take a risk with bitcoin. In this YouTube video clip, many agree to accept it as payment right away. (A farmers market in San Diego accepts it, too.)

[This piece contains some plot details about About Time, but nothing major that isn't revealed in the film's marketing.]

Movies are the closest thing we have to time travel, so it's no wonder — or rather, it's a rich and enduring wonder — that so many memorable films have made it their subject. Actually, let's strike that. Few if any of those films are actually about time travel. Most films that involve it use it as a means of discussing something else.

About Time, a weird British romantic comedy bearing the tearduct-tickling, hug-generating brand of Richard Curtis is, despite the protestations of its glib title, one of those. (Curtis wrote Four Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill and Love Actually, which he also directed.)

Time travel stories appeal to us, I think, because regrets, everyone has a few. That notion is present in most time travel movies as subtext. In this movie? It's the text. And About Time is one of the most lazily-conceived and manipulative pictures that that I have ever... loved. Actually.

About Time's hero is called Tim. He is played by Domhnall Gleeson; fussy, likeable, and so English, even though he's Irish. He is Lisa Simpson's pubescent fantasy made manifest in the five-fingered, anatomically correct, live-action world. Tim has — like all the men in his enviably close, communicative family — the uncanny ability to revisit any point in his own past at will.

The movie doesn't think very hard about this, or want us to, but when Tim goes for one of his temporal walkabouts, he shows up in his body as it was then, apparently displacing the then-version of himself. So's he's not some conspicuous timeline-tourist who can have highly amusing conversations with his younger model, like Bruce Willis in Looper or Leonard Nimoy in the 21st century Star Treks. He blends.

But like all movie time-travelers, he still knows he's from the future, and retains his memory, or "memory," or foreknowledge of it. Which gives him an uncontemplated, unremarked, and deeply unfair advantage over everyone he meets. After all, they're doing improv, while he's seen the day's script. This would be okay if his mission in the movie were, say, to avert the Rise of the Machines, or to make sure his parents hooked up at the Enchantment Under the Sea dance. Or almost anything other than to con someone into falling in love with him.

Consider: In the most romantic time travel movie ever made, Kyle Reese didn't make it his job to woo Sarah Connor. She fell for him as a natural consequence of the good work he was doing protecting her from The Terminator. Their time-conquering love happened "organically," in the language of movie-people. In a budget motel room.

Curtis seems to think of Tim as an honorable bloke who tries to do the right thing, so long as it doesn't involve unmasking himself to his wife. There's something almost Shakespearean in the way he asks us to root for a dude who woos by such underhanded means.

Tim's dad, played by the never-not-great Bill Nighy, encourages him to use his gift well. For profit? Heaven forfend! "I never met a truly happy rich person," Nighy cautions. (In his ubiquitous voice-over, Tim informs us his dad retired from teaching at 50, and their family lives in a beautiful seaside house straight out of a wine ad. So "rich" is probably a very relative term.) Nighy claims he's used his life-extending powers to get more reading done. I inferred that he's also spent off-the-books eons whoring around Bangkok or wherever, because: Bill Nighy. But his son declares, in that very first conversation with pop, to use his temporal mobility for Love.

Stop that! Stop saying "Awwwww." Tim's game is cruel. Tim's game may actually be psychotic.

And that game is: To give himself an endless supply of repeat/forgive course credits on his quest to win the Right Woman. Her name is Mary, like the blessed virgin. (Rachel McAdams, obviously. Though the panel is telling me they would also have accepted Carey Mulligan.)

It starts out innocently enough. I'll leave the details of Tim and Mary's initial meet-cute for you to discover; it's one of the best scenes in the movie. But then Tim deviates from the course of self-interest and goes back in time to do a solid for a friend of his. When next he encounters Mary, she doesn't remember him, and sure enough, her number has vanished from his phone like Marty McFly disappearing from a Polaroid picture.

Desperate to recapture what he's lost, Tim embarks upon an ambitious campaign of harassment/stalking/courtship. Mary, of course, has no inkling the the weirdly ageless, stammering ginger following her around is actually a time lord whose temporal reconnaissance missions have given him a dossier of her likes and quirks, and who even engages in sexual espionage to prevent her from hooking up with other guys. And yet once he's used his metaphysical Rohypnol to win her, he remains curiously faithful. He is adorable, this psycho.

It's difficult for me to sustain my condemnation. As played by Dohmnall Gleeson — scion of the famous actor Brendan Gleeson — Tim is, like the movie surrounding him, warm and smart-ish, even when they're both being cruel and dumb.

I submit to you, dear reader, that for Tim to engage in an occasional daytrip back to his pre-committed past to enjoy the company of other ladies would be, if not 100 percent above board, still far less of a betrayal to poor Mary than it is for him to keep secret how it was that he already knew so much about her when they first met. We and he know that the answer to that riddle is that Mary and Tim — like the lovers in the great Frank Sinatra song "Where or When" — have met, and talked at length, and looooooooooved, before. Only she doesn't remember because he has chosen to engage with the version of her that hasn't had those conversations.

Q: Sorry for interrupting, but didn't Bill Murray do all this in Groundhog Day 20 (!) years ago? Why does Bill Murray in Groundhog Day get a pass?

A: Thank you for asking. Two reasons:

1) That movie clearly establishes that Bill Murray is a jerk.

2) Bill Murray's game-elevating time-reconnaissance was involuntary.

Bill Murray doesn't know how he ended up reliving the same day over and over. Because Groundhog Day is an Ivan Reitman joint, Murray's character ultimately escapes once he learns to be a better guy. (A Jason Reitman-directed remake would almost certainly be darker — and I would definitely see that movie.) Or maybe it was a Beauty and the Beast-type deal, wherein Bill Murray's curse is lifted because Andie MacDowell falls in love with him. To the movie's credit, we never find out. It's tidy.

About Time is nothing but messy. Curtis makes a half-hearted pass at establishing the rules about how his version of time travel works, but it's really just an excuse to have Nighy lament that "You can't kill Hitler or shag Helen of Troy, unfortunately." Then there's something later on about how having a baby cramps your time traveling style, which, obviously. But Curtis abandons the rules whenever they threaten to get in the way of the Stop and Smell the Roses, And Go Back and Re-Smell Them If You Possibly Can homily he's preaching. Which is a good homily!

The end of the movie finds Curtis trying to hopscotch out of the corner he's painted himself into. He set out to make a heartwarming movie that reminds us to appreciate the present. And he's so good at heartwarming that you almost don't notice he's given us a story about a crazy man — a fickle god, actually — living in his personally curated version of the past.

Maybe Curtis figures we're ready for this kind of romance. After all, to meet a stranger who knows all about you is no longer unusual. Tim could've made Mary at lot less suspicious by telling her, "I follow you on Twitter."

Midterm elections are still a year off, but the scramble to gain a political edge at the polls is already well underway on Capitol Hill.

Bills are brought up and votes taken not so much in hopes they will prevail, but rather to send a political message. In the Senate, both parties are at it.

When the Senate reconvenes Tuesday, it will be voting to break a GOP filibuster of the nomination of Georgetown University law professor Nina Pillard — one of three people President Obama named to fill vacancies on the powerful U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

Senate Republicans recently filibustered another woman nominated to that court, Patricia Millett, and they promise to do the same with Pillard.

Democrats say there's a simple explanation: Republicans are blocking highly qualified women from serving on that court.

"Do we have to get women elected to the United States Senate to get women on the Judiciary Committee to get women on the courts?" asked Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington state. "Because our colleagues aren't going to help us do that?"

Last week, Senate Democrats, with support from 10 Republicans, voted to ban workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. Thirty-two Republicans voted no, including Indiana Sen. Dan Coats.

The measure, he said, had a clear political objective.

"Same point that's made with a lot of bills that come up: Put the other party on the defensive," he said.

Majority Leader Harry Reid seemed to confirm that. He lamented to reporters that House Speaker John Boehner had no plans to take up the nondiscrimination bill, despite polls that show more than 4 out of 5 Americans support it.

"I'm flabbergasted as [to] why they're stopping everything the American people want," Reid said.

Another thing more than 80 percent of Americans say they want is to increase the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

Dick Durbin, the Senate's No. 2 Democrat, says his party last Thursday discussed raising the minimum wage to around $10 an hour and then indexing it to inflation.

Durbin says it's about sending working families a message: Democrats can help them.

"It's more than a message vote. It appears that there are so many nonstarters for Speaker Boehner, you just wonder, where are the starters?" Durbin said. "If you can't help working families who are struggling paycheck to paycheck to get by in America, then where are your priorities? What is important?"

Durbin admits he knows of no Senate Republicans who would vote to raise the minimum wage.

Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey said it's clear why Democrats are raising the issue.

"It's a populist measure," he said. "They think they can probably score some political points, but it's very bad policy and it would, if it were to pass, it would actually exacerbate a terribly high unemployment rate that we already have."

But Senate Democrats are not the only ones trying to force tough votes on their opponents.

Last week at the Capitol, National Right to Life Committee President Carol Tobias was on hand as South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who's seeking re-election, introduced a bill already passed by the House. It would ban all abortions after the 20th week of pregnancy except in cases of incest or when the mother's life is at risk.

"We're choosing today to speak up for all babies at 20 weeks and try to create legal protections under the theory that if you can feel pain, the government should protect you from being destroyed by an abortion, which I imagine would be a very painful way to die," Graham said.

Supporters cite recent polling showing nearly two-thirds of Americans agree with them. Still, last week on the Senate floor, Washington state's other Democratic senator, Patty Murray, called this bill co-sponsored by 33 Republicans "blatantly political."

"This extreme unconstitutional abortion ban is an absolute nonstarter," she said. "It is going nowhere in the Senate, and those Republicans know it."

But they also know any vote on the bill could leave some Democrats seeking re-election in a tough spot — just like the votes Democrats are forcing Republicans to take in these pre-election days.

As a general workplace rule, it's never a good idea to fall asleep on the job. That's especially true if you're a member of Congress.

But Democratic Rep. Mike Honda of California's 17th District nevertheless appears to have been caught twice on camera dozing off in public recently — once at a town hall meeting and another time on the House floor.

Honda is far from the first member of Congress caught napping on the job. And the congressman's communications director has explained Honda was not sleeping in either instance — the 72-year-old often closes his eyes when he's thinking.

Still, the optics could prove problematic for the seven-term congressman, who is in the middle of the toughest battle of his political career.

Honda typically sails to re-election — aside from his first race, he's never earned less than 65 percent of the vote. But in 2014, Honda faces a Democratic primary challenge from a formidable — and considerably younger — foe in 37-year-old Ro Khanna, a former deputy assistant secretary in the Commerce Department under President Obama.

Largely thanks to the support he's received from technology industry leaders — the newly drawn district is now home to the heart of Silicon Valley — Khanna is enjoying an early financial advantage in the race. He had roughly $1.9 million cash on hand at the end of September to Honda's $560,000 — no small feat for a challenger.

Khanna, who ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 2004, has also brought on several top Obama campaign officials to his team, including 2012 national field director Jeremy Bird.

The Democratic establishment is sticking behind Honda, though. Obama, Vice President Biden, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee Chairman Steve Israel have all endorsed him.

While Khanna, an Indian-American, is tapping the resources of his allies in Silicon Valley, Honda has deep ties to the Asian-American community, which makes up half of the district's population.

Honda and Khanna will face off in California's June 3 "jungle" primary, where the top two vote-getters will move on to the general election regardless of party affiliation. The district is a Democratic stronghold, and the two are the favorites to advance and go head-to-head again in November.

There's still one election yet to be decided from last Tuesday: the Virginia attorney general's race.

The latest figures released Sunday night show it's about as close as it gets: Republican state Sen. Mark Obenshain leads Democratic state Sen. Mark Herring by just 17 votes out of more than 2.2 million cast.

The results have been constantly fluctuating since the polls closed the night of Nov. 5, as canvassers continue to count provisional ballots and identify errors in areas around the state. At one point last week, Obenshain led by as many as 1,200 votes. Local election boards must submit their final vote tallies by midnight Tuesday.

With the race this close, a recount appears inevitable. If the difference between the two candidates is 1 percent of the vote or less after the Virginia State Board of Elections officially certifies the results on Nov. 25, the second-place candidate may request a recount, meaning the winner most likely wouldn't be determined until well into December.

Whoever comes out on top in what could go down as one of the closest statewide elections ever will replace outgoing Republican Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, who lost a tight race of his own last week to Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the state's gubernatorial election. McAuliffe won 48 percent to 45 percent.

The Democrats also won the lieutenant governor's race in Virginia, as state Sen. Ralph Northam, a neurologist, defeated minister E.W. Jackson by more than 10 percentage points.

International medical tourism is big business worldwide. Countries like India and Thailand lead the way as top destinations for people looking for high quality care at a fraction of the cost back home.

Lately, countries closer to the U.S. are also trying to break into the market — such as Colombia — which until recently was better known for drug trafficking than nose jobs.

Not long ago, when the global economy was booming, analysts were saying Americans were pouring out of the country for medical procedures. One projection said the number would reach almost 11 million annually by 2013.

Colombia, which was seeing huge improvements in safety and tourism, decided they wanted in on the action. Since then, they've been building facilities specifically designed for medical tourists.

San Vicente de Rionegro is a new hospital, less than two years old. It sits on a country road in the lush, green hills outside downtown Medellin. The middle of nowhere, really, except that it's only a few minutes drive from the city's international airport — perfect for international patients.

The facility is massive, but San Vicente only focuses on six surgical specialties ranging from organ transplants to cosmetic procedures, all of which are popular with medical tourists.

"If you want to be one of the best hospitals in the world, you have to start with a facility like this one," says Dr. Sergio Franco, the head of cardiovascular surgery at San Vicente.

Franco says foreign patients come here to get the same quality services that they'd find in the U.S., but with a more caring approach and at a fraction of the cost.

One patient said a heart surgery he needed would have cost as much as $286,000 in Houston. In Colombia, it was only $26,000.

Those savings also attracted Jeff Daniels to Colombia. He's a Brooklynite in need of some serious dental work not covered by his insurance.

"I'm getting a dental implant and several crowns; I got two root canals," Daniels says. This is his second trip to Medellin in a month and he'll be back a few more times before he's through.

On his first trip, Daniels says he was nervous. He doesn't speak Spanish and he'd heard about drug cartels and crime, not to mention the ongoing internal conflict that's killed hundreds of thousands of people — mostly civilians.

"I expected it to be kind of like a warzone," he says. "Just the opposite was true. I find it to be no more dangerous than New York."

That is exactly the message that Colombia wants to get across. They've handed out big tax breaks and have pumped millions into ad campaigns.

As a result, tourism is way up, and medical tourism is growing too. New hospitals and clinics are popping up all over the country, usually with affiliations to big-name hospitals in the U.S. A new facility in Cartagena just broke ground a few months ago. They're even going to have a beach resort right there for patients' families.

But the numbers aren't as promising as the analysts projected back in 2008.

"From what I've been looking at, less than 20,000 people a year. This is not millions of people," says K. Eckland, an American nurse who has interviewed hundreds of surgeons in Colombia and written three guide books on medical tourism.

Eckland thinks the option to go abroad for people without health insurance can save the lives, but she's also worried about the cost to Colombians.

"When you attract your top surgeons to an exclusive destination tourist facility, you have them there and the people who come to that facility will get it," she says, "but you've also robbed everybody else of the opportunity to be treated by the best and the brightest."

Nonetheless, these types of projects keep moving forward in Colombia. And, at least for now, there's no telling if their bets will pay off.

International medical tourism is big business worldwide. Countries like India and Thailand lead the way as top destinations for people looking for high quality care at a fraction of the cost back home.

Lately, countries closer to the U.S. are also trying to break into the market — such as Colombia — which until recently was better known for drug trafficking than nose jobs.

Not long ago, when the global economy was booming, analysts were saying Americans were pouring out of the country for medical procedures. One projection said the number would reach almost 11 million annually by 2013.

Colombia, which was seeing huge improvements in safety and tourism, decided they wanted in on the action. Since then, they've been building facilities specifically designed for medical tourists.

San Vicente de Rionegro is a new hospital, less than two years old. It sits on a country road in the lush, green hills outside downtown Medellin. The middle of nowhere, really, except that it's only a few minutes drive from the city's international airport — perfect for international patients.

The facility is massive, but San Vicente only focuses on six surgical specialties ranging from organ transplants to cosmetic procedures, all of which are popular with medical tourists.

"If you want to be one of the best hospitals in the world, you have to start with a facility like this one," says Dr. Sergio Franco, the head of cardiovascular surgery at San Vicente.

Franco says foreign patients come here to get the same quality services that they'd find in the U.S., but with a more caring approach and at a fraction of the cost.

One patient said a heart surgery he needed would have cost as much as $286,000 in Houston. In Colombia, it was only $26,000.

Those savings also attracted Jeff Daniels to Colombia. He's a Brooklynite in need of some serious dental work not covered by his insurance.

"I'm getting a dental implant and several crowns; I got two root canals," Daniels says. This is his second trip to Medellin in a month and he'll be back a few more times before he's through.

On his first trip, Daniels says he was nervous. He doesn't speak Spanish and he'd heard about drug cartels and crime, not to mention the ongoing internal conflict that's killed hundreds of thousands of people — mostly civilians.

"I expected it to be kind of like a warzone," he says. "Just the opposite was true. I find it to be no more dangerous than New York."

That is exactly the message that Colombia wants to get across. They've handed out big tax breaks and have pumped millions into ad campaigns.

As a result, tourism is way up, and medical tourism is growing too. New hospitals and clinics are popping up all over the country, usually with affiliations to big-name hospitals in the U.S. A new facility in Cartagena just broke ground a few months ago. They're even going to have a beach resort right there for patients' families.

But the numbers aren't as promising as the analysts projected back in 2008.

"From what I've been looking at, less than 20,000 people a year. This is not millions of people," says K. Eckland, an American nurse who has interviewed hundreds of surgeons in Colombia and written three guide books on medical tourism.

Eckland thinks the option to go abroad for people without health insurance can save the lives, but she's also worried about the cost to Colombians.

"When you attract your top surgeons to an exclusive destination tourist facility, you have them there and the people who come to that facility will get it," she says, "but you've also robbed everybody else of the opportunity to be treated by the best and the brightest."

Nonetheless, these types of projects keep moving forward in Colombia. And, at least for now, there's no telling if their bets will pay off.