What We Now Know

Up with Chris Hayes host, Chris Hayes (@chrishayes) discusses what we have learned this week with his guests John Nichols (@NicholsUprising), Washington correspondent for The Nation magazine, associate editor of The Capital Times (Madison, WI); Michael Moynihan (@mcmoynihan), cultural news editor for Newsweek and The Daily Beast; Betsey Stevenson (@BetseyStevenson), columnist for Bloomberg View, assistant professor of business and public policy at The Wharton School at The University of Pennsylvania and former chief economist at the U.S. Department of Labor (2010-2011); and Esther Armah (@estherarmah), host of WBAI-FM’s “Wake Up Call.”

Bro: House candidate Bentivolio ‘mentally unbalanced’

by Kate Nocera at Politico

The brother of Kerry Bentivolio says the Michigan congressional candidate, who’s favored to win on Tuesday, is “mentally unbalanced” and could end up in jail.

“I’ve never met anyone in my life who is conniving and dishonest as this guy,” Phillip Bentivolio said, according to the Michigan Information and Research Service   (subscription required). “He’s my brother so it’s hard to talk about this, but I believe that if he gets elected, he’ll eventually serve time in prison.” [..]

Kerry Bentivolio is a Santa Claus impersonator and reindeer farmer. He made headlines after old court documents surfaced quoting him saying he had a “problem figuring out which one I really am, Santa Claus or Kerry Bentivolio.”  He’s running against Democrat Syad Taj.

Democrats Press Rivals to Give Source of Akin Ad Funds

by Kathleen Hunter and Greg Giroux at Bloomberg Businessweek

The Republican campaign committee announced it wouldn’t spend money to support Akin after he said Aug. 19 that “legitimate rape” rarely results in pregnancy. Akin is trying to defeat first-term Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill, and Republican leaders abandoned his campaign after his remark about rape. [..]

The source of the funds hasn’t been disclosed. NRSC spokesman Brian Walsh declined to comment on whether the national Republican campaign organization provided money to the state party to help pay for the ads. Akin on the same day spent $300,000 of his campaign money on new ads.

The Artwork That Infuriated Big Coal

by Michelle Nijhuis at Slate

“Carbon Sink: What Goes Around Comes Around” was installed on the U.W. campus in late 2011. Funded by an anonymous donor and by the state Cultural Trust Fund, it consisted of a 36-foot-wide circle of logs from beetle-killed trees, arranged in a whirlpool pattern around a pile of coal. Drury hoped the sculpture would be left in place until it disintegrated, and the director of the campus art museum said there were “no plans to uninstall it.” It was, Drury said, intended to inspire a conversation.

In May 2012, however, just after most students left campus, Carbon Sink quietly disappeared.

When University of Wyoming graduate Joe Riis inquired about the fate of Carbon Sink, a university vice-president told him that it had been removed due to water damage. But emails recently obtained by Irina Zhorov, an enterprising reporter at Wyoming Public Media, tell a different story. After the university announced the installation of Carbon Sink, Marion Loomis, the president of the Wyoming Mining Association, wrote to a university official and asked: “What kind of crap is this?” Both industry representatives and state legislators weighed in on the sculpture, some threatening the university’s funding in no uncertain terms.