liberal N proud
liberal N proud's JournalWant to know how far back the Republicans want to take the country?
Paul Begala has the answer in this editorial:
Jurassic Republicans
Can the GOP escape from 1955?
Mitt Romney lost in part because his was a vision of Father Knows Best America in a time of Modern Family. Romney, by all accounts a devoted family man, could not seem to wrap his mind around the reality that families today come in a vast variety of configurations. His views on gay rights, women’s rights, and immigration (on which even Newt Gingrich accused him of wanting to divide families by deporting grandmothers who have lived here for decades) seemed hopelessly out of touch rather than charmingly retro. Meanwhile, Barack Obama cruised to reelection on a one-word slogan: Forward.
The Republican National Committee has, commendably, performed an autopsy on the carcass of its 2012 campaign. To its credit, the GOP seems to recognize that it doesn’t just need to moderate, it needs to modernize. You know a party is in trouble when its “celebrities” are has-beens like Hank Williams Jr., Charlie Daniels, and Ted Nugent (who, to be fair, had a big hit—in 1977). As the authors of the GOP report put it: “At our core, Republicans have comfortably remained the Party of Reagan without figuring out what comes next. Ronald Reagan is a Republican hero and role model who was first elected 33 years ago—meaning no one under the age of 51 today was old enough to vote for Reagan when he first ran for President. Our Party knows how to appeal to older voters, but we have lost our way with younger ones. We sound increasingly out of touch.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2013/03/25/can-the-gop-escape-from-1955.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+newsweek%2FTopNews+%28Newsweek+-+Latest+Stories%29&utm_content=My+MSN
So now we know.
Yeah, the GOP really wants to attract hispanic voters...
GOP congressman uses ethnic slur to describe laborers
Amid a hot-button debate in Washington over how to overhaul the nation's immigration laws, Rep. Don Young, a 21-term lawmaker, referred to immigrant workers as "wetbacks" — a term that could threaten to inflame the debate about immigration reform.
"My father had a ranch; we used to have 50-60 wetbacks to pick tomatoes," Young said in an interview with radio station KRBD. He was discussing the number of jobs that have been made irrelevant due to advances in automation. The interview was first surfaced by Buzzfeed.
http://firstread.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/03/29/17509106-gop-congressman-uses-ethnic-slur-to-describe-laborers?lite
The GOP can't change, it is so mired in its own bigotry which makes it impossible for them to change.
Slate: My Train Fantasy Where’s our high-speed rail?
Last month, graphic designer and railroad aficionado Alfred Twu published a stunning map of what America would look like if virtually every last nook and cranny of the country were connected by a state-of-the-art, 220-mph rail network. Twu’s plan for a national high-speed rail system could get passengers from Cheyenne, Wyo., to Albany, N.Y., in just under 12 hours. It captured an old-school patriotic longing among young tech-savvy Americans for big, prestige projects with a design that was elegant in its simplicity. Online media outlets described Twu as a “visionary.” “This Is What America's High-Speed Rail System Should Look Like” was one typically glowing headline.
Some conservatives had a different description for Twu and his map. “High-speed rail supporter Alfred Twu has gotten a lot of attention for having boldly drawn a map of where he thinks high-speed trains should go,” wrote Randal O’Toole of the libertarian Cato Institute. “Twu’s map is even more absurd than Obama’s plan,” he wrote, describing the map, and high-speed rail in general, as a “ridiculous fantasy.”
O’Toole’s reaction demonstrated one of the principal reasons why American high-speed rail has been mostly stymied: One person’s beautiful vision of the future is another’s terrifying government boondoggle. The Obama plan to use $8 billion in stimulus money as a carrot to get states to invest in high-speed rail went down in flames two years ago. It failed largely because Republican governors in states such as Florida rejected federal funds. But if there were some way to get beyond partisan politics and legal battles over right-of-way issues, what would an ideally efficient map of an American high-speed rail system actually look like?
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/the_efficient_planet/2013/03/high_speed_trains_in_the_united_states_is_alfred_twu_s_fantasy_map_too_fantastical.html
Colbert’s “Ham Rove” conference room in D.C. is now official
A campaign finance group in D.C. dedicated the room, complete with a giant portrait of Stephen Colbert
The Campaign Legal Center in Washington, D.C., has officially dedicated a conference room to “Ham Rove,” Stephen Colbert’s brutally murdered, meat-based political strategist.
Dave Weigel reports:
In his long, fruitless, strangely not-Emmy-winning battle for campaign finance transparency, Stephen Colbert has relied on the work of former FEC commissioner Trevor Potter and his Campaign Legal Center. In December, Cobert bestowed the CLC with a portrait of himself holding the FEC ruling that their work had earned him. Last night, the CLC held a small reception to show off the rest of the TV host’s gift: A donation and a plaque, renaming the organization’s conference room after Colbert’s faux, murdered adviser Ham Rove.
In December, Colbert announced that the money he raised with his super PAC would be donated to the “Ham Rove Memorial Fund,” which in turn distributed the funds to charities, as well as the campaign finance reform group. A condition of the donation was renaming the conference room.
“I just want to say that all of you at the CLC have dedicated your time and talent to ensure that our nation’s campaign finance laws are followed to the letter,” Colbert said in a taped message played at the reception. “So I could not be more proud to learn that you have named this conference room in exchange for a sizable donation of untraceable cash.”
http://www.salon.com/2013/03/22/colberts_ham_rove_conference_room_in_d_c_is_now_official/
Tea Partiers boycott 'too liberal' Fox
Why Tea Partiers Are Boycotting Fox News
Is Fox News going soft?
That is what a number of Tea Party activists are saying, and they are organizing a boycott to protest the conservative station’s coverage, especially what they view as the network’s relative silence in investigating the attacks on a diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya.
By way of explanation, the website reports: “People ask why not all mainstream media? Why just Boycott FOX? The answer, again, is that FOX needs the Tea Party/conservatives more than the conservatives need FOX after FOX turned left, basically selling out the people who made FOX successful in an attempt to earn an extra buck. FOX is extremely vulnerable to these boycotts while the rest of the MSM doesn’t need us at all, to speak of.”
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/23/why-tea-partiers-are-boycotting-fox-news.html
Tennessee health care lottery
Tennessee Race for Medicaid: Dial Fast and Try, Try Again
State residents who have high medical bills but would not normally qualify for Medicaid, the government health care program for the poor, can call a state phone line and request an application. But the window is tight — the line shuts down after 2,500 calls, typically within an hour — and the demand is so high that it is difficult to get through.
There are other hurdles, too. Applicants have to be elderly, blind, disabled or the “caretaker relative” of a child who qualifies for Medicaid, known here as TennCare. Their medical debt has to be high enough that if they paid it, their income would fall below a certain threshold. Not many people end up qualifying, but that does not stop thousands from trying.
“It’s like the Oklahoma land rush for an hour,” said Russell Overby, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society in Nashville. “We encourage people to use multiple phones and to dial and dial and dial.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/25/us/tennessee-holds-health-care-lottery-for-the-poor.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20130325&_r=0
Most unhappy states are in the bible belt
Arkansas
Tennessee
Mississippi
Kentucky
West Virgina
http://money.msn.com/investing/happiest-and-most-miserable-states
.Spring Rain, Then Foul Algae in Ailing Lake Erie
TOLEDO, Ohio — For those who live and play on the shores of Lake Erie, the spring rains that will begin falling here soon are less a blessing than a portent. They could threaten the very future of the lake itself.
Lake Erie is sick. A thick and growing coat of toxic algae appears each summer, so vast that in 2011 it covered a sixth of its waters, contributing to an expanding dead zone on its bottom, reducing fish populations, fouling beaches and crippling a tourism industry that generates more than $10 billion in revenue annually.
The spring rains reliably predict how serious the summer algae bloom will be: the more frequent and heavy the downpours, the worse the outbreak. And this year the National Weather Service says there is a higher probability than elsewhere of above-normal spring rains along the lake’s west end, where the algae first appear. The private forecaster Accuweather predicts a wetter than usual March and April throughout the region.
It is perhaps the greatest peril the lake has faced since the 1960s, when relentless and unregulated dumping of sewage and industrial pollutants spawned similar algae blooms and earned it the nickname “North America’s Dead Sea.” Erie recovered then, thanks to a multibillion-dollar cleanup by the United States and Canada that became a legendary environmental success story.
But while the sewage and pollutants are vastly reduced, the blooms have returned, bigger than ever.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/science/earth/algae-blooms-threaten-lake-erie.html?_r=0
Hilarious North Korean propaganda film depicting life in America
This is the most twisted view of America, out there...
http://msnvideo.msn.com/?videoid=85746905-0ab0-c6c7-c62f-97b5c11eac09&src=v5:share:sharepermalink:&from=sharepermalink
FAA Approves Boeing Plan To Fix 787 Batteries
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A Boeing plan to redesign the 787 Dreamliner's fire-plagued lithium-ion batteries won approval Tuesday from the Federal Aviation Administration, moving the cutting-edge planes a step closer to flying passengers again.
The plan includes changes to the internal battery components to minimize the possibility of short-circuiting, which can lead to overheating and cause a fire. Among the changes are better insulation of the battery's eight cells and the addition of a new containment and venting system, the FAA said in a statement.
The FAA statement didn't provide an estimate for when the grounded planes might return to service. Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., who was briefed by the agency, said that if all goes well, the FAA could give final approval by mid- to late April for the 787 to resume flight.
Boeing would still have to retrofit the 50 planes already delivered to eight airlines in seven countries, Larsen said in an interview. That could mean the plane wouldn't return to the skies until late April or early May, he said.
First, Boeing's redesigned batteries have to pass a series of 20 separate lab tests, Larsen said, then flight tests would follow.
http://www.mbtmag.com/news/2013/03/faa-approves-boeing-plan-fix-787-batteries?et_cid=3137909&et_rid=82488838&linkid=http%3a%2f%2fwww.mbtmag.com%2fnews%2f2013%2f03%2ffaa-approves-boeing-plan-fix-787-batteries
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