Tag Archives: north

It Looks Like Obamacare Is Here to Stay

by MildredRandell Posted on August 19, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Republicans may say that Obamacare is still the white-hot issue it’s always been, and among their tea party base that might still be true. But if money talks, it turns out that Republicans no longer really believe Obamacare is a winning issue anywhere else. Bloomberg ran the numbers in a few battleground Senate races and discovered that GOP candidates are starting to turn to other issues:

Republicans seeking to unseat the U.S. Senate incumbent in North Carolina have cut in half the portion of their top issue ads citing Obamacare, a sign that the party’s favorite attack against Democrats is losing its punch.

The shift — also taking place in competitive states such as Arkansas and Louisiana — shows Republicans are easing off their strategy of criticizing Democrats over the Affordable Care Act now that many Americans are benefiting from the law and the measure is unlikely to be repealed.

….In April, anti-Obamacare advertising dwarfed all other spots in North Carolina. It accounted for 3,061, or 54 percent, of the 5,704 top five issue ads in North Carolina, according to Kantar Media’s Campaign Media Analysis Group. By July, the numbers had reversed, with anti-Obamacare ads accounting for 971, or 27 percent, of the top issue ads, and the budget, government spending, jobs and unemployment accounting for 2,608, or 72 percent, of such ads, CMAG data show.

As Greg Sargent points out, this doesn’t mean Democrats are any more likely to hold the Senate this year. But it does suggest that as time goes by and Obamacare appears to be working fairly well without causing the collapse of the Republic, even the GOP faithful are starting to accept it. More and more, it looks like Obamacare is here to stay.

Continue reading here:

It Looks Like Obamacare Is Here to Stay

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on It Looks Like Obamacare Is Here to Stay

Glenn Beck Tells Common Core Activists They Shouldn’t Mention His Name

by Luz67Wegjv Posted on July 23, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

On Tuesday, 40 minutes into Glenn Beck’s nationally broadcast “night of action” targeting the Common Core education standards being implemented in schools across the nation, a North Carolina activist named Andrea Dillon announced live that her state’s governor had just signed a law directing the board of education to rewrite its standards—a step shy of jettisoning North Carolina from the initiative outright. A murmur went through the audience of two dozen or so parents and kids at the cinema in Ballston, Virginia where I was watching, one of hundreds of theaters around the country that was broadcasting the interactive event, dubbed “I Will Not Conform” (a nod to Beck’s new book on the standards, Conform). Beck offered a few words of congratulation, and Dillon patted her allies on the back: “North Carolina’s got a lot of gumption.”

It wasn’t the biggest political story of the night—that would be either David Perdue’s victory in the Georgia Republican Senate primary, or President Barack Obama’s consumption of multiple cheeseburgers, depending on your point of view. But Tuesday was a big day for opponents of the Common Core State Standards, a set of math and language-arts guidelines adopted by 46 states and the District of Columbia in 2010, and, of late, an object of obsession for Beck and his army of parent activists. North Carolina Republican Gov. Pat McCrory became the latest once-supportive governor to hop the fence in opposition to the standards. Last week, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker called on his state to repeal Common Core, echoing an earlier move by Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal to extricate his state from the standards. (That effort has turned the state board of education and Louisiana’s lieutenant governor against Jindal, and is now mired in litigation.) Meanwhile, in Georgia, where Republican officials in the state have previously been staunch supporters of the standards, an anti-Core teacher holds a narrow lead in the Republican primary for state superintendent—a position with broad powers for Core implementation.

Continue Reading »

Link – 

Glenn Beck Tells Common Core Activists They Shouldn’t Mention His Name

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Glenn Beck Tells Common Core Activists They Shouldn’t Mention His Name

How hot will future summers be in your city?

by RochellCullen Posted on July 10, 2014

A little slice of Saudi Arabia right at home

How hot will future summers be in your city?

By

Fancy spending a summer in Kuwait City? That’s what scientists project summers will resemble in Phoenix by the end of the century. And summertime temperatures in Boston are expected to rise 10 degrees by 2100, resembling current mid-year heat in North Miami Beach.

Thanks to this nifty new tool from Climate Central, you can not only find out what temperatures your city is expected to average by 2100 — you can compare that projected weather to current conditions in other metropolises.

The “1,001 Blistering Future Summers” interactive is based on global warming projections that assume the world takes little to no action to slow down climate change. But the nonprofit warns that even if greenhouse gas emissions are substantially reduced, such as through an energy revolution that replaces fossil fuel burning with solar panels and wind turbines, “U.S. cities are already locked into some amount of summer warming through the end of the century.” You might be feeling some of that warming already. Pass the ice cubes!


Source
1001 Blistering Future Summers, Climate Central

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

Source:

How hot will future summers be in your city?

Posted in ALPHA, Anchor, FF, GE, ONA, organic, solar, solar panels, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on How hot will future summers be in your city?

What You Need to Know About Hurricane Arthur, the July Fourth Party-Crasher

by RonnyRhmsqsr Posted on July 3, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

This story originally appeared in Slate and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

July 3, 12:30 pm: Hurricane Arthur is on track for an unwelcome tour of the East Coast this holiday weekend, already raining out fireworks celebrations and forcing beachgoers to flee for higher ground. First stop: North Carolina.

In its 11 a.m. update, the National Hurricane Center said Arthur’s sustained winds had strengthened to 90 mph—an upper-range Category 1 hurricane. The storm should strengthen further before landfall in the North Carolina Outer Banks later Thursday, and is now expected to reach mid-Category 2 status during its close approach there.

The storm is expected to hit hardest in North Carolina, where Gov. Pat McCrory has declared a state of emergency for coastal counties.

A mandatory evacuation of Hatteras Island in the vulnerable Outer Banks was underway on Thursday. With summertime tourism at its peak, and the forecast trending stronger and closer to the coast than earlier expectations, those remaining behind to ride out Arthur on North Carolina’s barrier islands may end up with a bit more storm than they bargained for.

Storm surge flooding is expected to reach five feet above ground level in some locations on the Outer Banks, creating the potential for road washouts. Wind gusts could top 100 mph during the early morning hours of July Fourth.

After its brush with North Carolina, Arthur will spend the rest of the Fourth of July traveling relatively quickly up the East Coast. Arthur’s passage should be at a safe enough distance to keep wind and flooding risk to a minimum, but close enough to create a wave of rain showers and dangerous beachfront currents. Arthur will make its closest approach to New England during the evening hours on Friday: perfect timing to make Independence Day there a washout.

As a result, Fourth of July fireworks will now take place a day early in Boston. Rain should clear out early enough on the Fourth for holiday celebrations in Washington, DC, to continue as planned. The weather will be a bit more borderline on Friday evening in New York City, but the current forecast should still allow for evening festivities. Arthur may also pose a serious threat to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland on Saturday as it transitions to a powerful extratropical cyclone.

This radar animation from Weather Underground shows Arthur’s progression over the last few days. Rain showers were already reaching the coast on Thursday morning:

Source article:  

What You Need to Know About Hurricane Arthur, the July Fourth Party-Crasher

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on What You Need to Know About Hurricane Arthur, the July Fourth Party-Crasher

7 Things We Hate About Belgium

by SanfordTomlinso Posted on July 1, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Our glorious fighting boys of the US men’s soccer team are playing Belgium today in their first elimination match of the World Cup.

We want the US team to win. You should too!

Here are some of the things we hate most about Belgium.

1. King Leopold II
This guy! He oversaw one of the cruelest regimes in history in the Congo. His regime was responsible for 10 million Congolese deaths. If there is a hell, King Leopold is burning in it.

2. Tintin
Sure he’s cute and so is the dog. But he’s a terrible reporter and also Herge was a real racist.

A frame from Tintin’s first adventure, “Tintin in the Congo” Wikimedia Commons

3. The Smurfs
Did you know that possibly the most annoying cartoon franchise in the history of animation was set in a Belgian socialist village? No amount of French fries will make up for that crime against humanity.

4. Dr. Evil
Not only is he evil, and Belgian, but he was a seminal character in one of the most grossly overrated, discussed, and imitated films of the 1990s.

5. Jean-Claude Van Damme
He’s quite good at kicking, but Street Fighter was awful. Also, 1999’s Universal Soldier: The Return, in which “the Muscles from Brussels” has to off a rampaging fight computer-led robot army. Critics were not impressed. As the New York Post put it, Van Damme’s accent “makes Stallone sound like a master of elocution”.

6. Belgian waffles aren’t even a thing in Belgium
“What is known in North America as the ‘Belgian waffle’ does not exist in Belgium,” sayeth Wikipedia.

7. They are somehow even worse than us on gender equality.
For all the flack the United States gets over gender equality, the US actually beats Belgium handsomely on a few important counts. In 2011, the last year that data is available, 90.1 percent of US women got at least a secondary education. In Belgium, only 72 percent did. In the US, the boards of publicly traded companies are 12 percent women. In Belgium? 10.8 percent. In the US, 57 percent of women were at work in 2012— way above the OECD average of 54 percent, and way, way above Belgium’s rate of 47 percent.

No surprise that a country with fewer women in the workplace also has fewer women overseeing things. In 2008, the last year for which data is available, 13.9 percent of US working women held down some managerial responsibilities—more than double the OECD average that year. In Belgium, only 8 percent of working women were managing anything. Worse yet, that figure has fallen to 4.7 percent as of 2011.

On the other hand Audrey Hepburn is from there and she was the best. Still, all in all, USA > Belgium.

Via ohmyglobyougays.tumblr.com/

Read More: 

7 Things We Hate About Belgium

Posted in Accent, Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on 7 Things We Hate About Belgium

The Kochs are cooking up a new dirty-energy political scheme

by LorrieThomson Posted on June 17, 2014

Kochs in the kitchen again

The Kochs are cooking up a new dirty-energy political scheme

By

Gus Ruelas / Greenpeace

The Koch brothers have seen Tom Steyer’s $100 million bet and they’re raising it by almost $200 million more.

Steyer, billionaire hedge-fund manager turned climate activist, set a goal earlier this year of spending $100 million in the 2014 midterm elections to support candidates who care about climate change. So far fundraising for his super PAC has been weak, but the Kochs aren’t taking any chances.

The Daily Beast reports that “the billionaire Koch brothers and scores of wealthy allies have set an initial 2014 fundraising target of $290 million which should boost GOP candidates and support dozens of conservative groups – including a new energy initiative with what looks like a deregulatory, pro-consumer spin.” Here’s more:

A few Koch network-backed nonprofit groups including [Americans for Prosperity] have long fought against climate change regulations, a carbon tax, and subsidies for renewable energy. But lately, the Koch universe seem to be facing bigger energy threats stemming from Washington, state governments and big liberal checkbooks.

The new energy initiative is the handiwork of Freedom Partners Chamber of Commerce, the Koch network’s central fundraising hub, which was established in late 2011 as a trade group, according to an email to the group’s members from [Koch fundraiser Kevin] Gentry. In 2012, the fledgling group — which claims some 200 members who each kick in at least $100,000 yearly — funneled over $230 million dollars to numerous other non-profits in the Koch ecosystem according to the group’s 2012 tax returns. …

Gentry’s email stressed that liberal donors, led by hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer, have plans to spend as much as $100 million on climate change issues and ads to make it a top-tier issue in the election. He noted that environmental groups had recently run a $5 million “clean energy” ad blitz in Iowa, Michigan, and North Carolina, all of which are considered “focus” states for Freedom Partners and among the states where Americans for Prosperity has spent over $35 million on attack ads against Democratic Senate candidates on Obamacare.

It’s not enough that the Kochs and their pals want to condemn you to climatic misery. They also want to prevent you from accessing affordable health care. Those issues are mostly unrelated but, in Gentry’s email, he links them, opining that the “new multi million dollar campaign by environmentalists is arguably an effort to distract from the failures of Obamacare.”

Because with all of the environmental challenges facing the U.S. and the world, what else would environmentalists want to do but “distract” voters from an affordable health-care law?


Source
Koch Brothers Unveil New Strategy at Big Donor Retreat, The Daily Beast

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Climate & Energy

,

Politics

Continue reading:

The Kochs are cooking up a new dirty-energy political scheme

Posted in ALPHA, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, LAI, ONA, PUR, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments Off on The Kochs are cooking up a new dirty-energy political scheme

What Does North Korea Have to Say About Seth Rogen and James Franco Trying To Kill Kim Jong Un in "The Interview"?

by ShereeSZRpk Posted on June 13, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

“I am incredibly proud and a little bit frightened to present the first teaser for our next movie, The Interview,” actor/director Seth Rogen tweeted on Wednesday. The reason he might have been a bit frightened was because of the film’s plot. Here’s the official synopsis of the movie, which is set for theatrical release on October 10:

In the action-comedy The Interview, Dave Skylark (James Franco) and his producer Aaron Rapoport (Seth Rogen) run the popular celebrity tabloid TV show “Skylark Tonight.” When they discover that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un is a fan of the show, they land an interview with him in an attempt to legitimize themselves as journalists. As Dave and Aaron prepare to travel to Pyongyang, their plans change when the CIA recruits them, perhaps the two least-qualified men imaginable, to assassinate Kim Jong Un.

In The Interview, the binge-drinking, Kobe Bryant-loving, human-rights-allergic ruler is played by Korean-American comedian Randall Park. Here’s the trailer:

“We read as much as we could that was available on the subject,” Rogen told Yahoo Movies. “We talked to the guys from Vice who actually went to North Korea and met Kim Jong Un. We talked to people in the government whose job it is to associate with North Korea, or be experts on it.” Rogen also said that he and co-director Evan Goldberg asked North Korea experts to check the script for authenticity, because Rogen thought the truth about the dictatorship is “so crazy you don’t need to make anything up.” There is a joke in the trailer about how the regime once claimed that Kim Jong Un doesn’t urinate or defecate; this is based on actual propaganda about his father Kim Jong Il.

North Korean officials could not immediately be reached for comment on the upcoming Rogen-Franco comedy that involves the pair trying to kill their leader. (It’s really hard to get in touch with them.)

But as the film’s release approaches, don’t be too surprised if someone issues an angry statement. In 2005, shortly after the release of Team America: World Police, North Korea’s embassy in Prague demanded that movie be banned in the Czech Republic, insisting that it harmed their country’s reputation. Team America was made by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone, and uses a cast of puppets to satirize the war on terror, as well as liberal Hollywood. A Kim Jong Il puppet is the main villain.

Now, here is the new poster for The Interview:

Courtesy of Columbia Pictures

View the original here:

What Does North Korea Have to Say About Seth Rogen and James Franco Trying To Kill Kim Jong Un in "The Interview"?

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LAI, LG, ONA, Oster, PUR, Radius, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on What Does North Korea Have to Say About Seth Rogen and James Franco Trying To Kill Kim Jong Un in "The Interview"?

Cow causes oily spill; energy companies ruminate over whether to cow-proof facilities

by MiraWLBybkoj Posted on June 2, 2014

Cow causes oily spill; energy companies ruminate over whether to cow-proof facilities

By

Shutterstock

What did the cow say to the tank valve holding back barrels of fossil fuel waste?

“Mooove.”

Last week, an oblivious cow in North Dakota triggered the release of 20 barrels of natural gas condensate, a byproduct of natural gas drilling:

State Environmental Health Chief Dave Glatt … said the cow was either curious or had an itch that needed scratching.

“They just get rubbing along those valves and they open up,” Glatt said. “Sometimes they need to scratch their backs and they open those valves.” …

He said cows have been known to have a taste for petroleum products.

“They like oil and they eat that stuff up,” said Glatt, who joked that the offending cow might have had such a craving and opened the valve intentionally.

“Sometimes they can be the dumbest animals in the world and sometimes you kind of wonder,” he said.

As is so often the case, this was an avoidable spill – this kind of thing has happened before. The department called on energy companies to cow-proof their facilities. “They need to make sure their valves are locked. They should kind of already know that,” Glatt said.

In a statement sent to Grist on Monday, Oneok, the energy company that owns the tank opened by the cow, said “clasps and a closure cap have now been installed” on that one valve. Have similar precautions been taken at other facilities the company owns in cow-grazing territory? That’s apparently going to take some more ruminating. The company said it’s “in the process of evaluating” its other valves.

We call bullshit on the delay.


Source
Cow blamed for causing spill in North Dakota oil patch, The Associated Press

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

Find this article interesting? Donate now to support our work.Read more: Business & Technology

,

Climate & Energy

Original article – 

Cow causes oily spill; energy companies ruminate over whether to cow-proof facilities

Posted in alo, ALPHA, Anchor, FF, G & F, GE, ONA, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Cow causes oily spill; energy companies ruminate over whether to cow-proof facilities

Hurricane Amanda Just Set an Ominous New Record

by RJIDinahhonbocu Posted on May 27, 2014

Mother Jones

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN” “http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd”>

Usually, people living in the United States don’t pay much attention to hurricanes in the eastern Pacific, the other basin where megastorms that can affect North America are formed. Mostly, these storms wallop Mexico, or travel harmlessly out to sea. So, given the standard myopia of the media, we rarely hear much about them.

But this year, perhaps, we ought to be paying more attention. The eastern Pacific hurricane season started on May 15, and already, with its first storm, it has set an ominous record. The hurricane in question, named Amanda, spun up south of the Baja California peninsula Thursday, and on Sunday it attained maximum sustained wind speeds of 155 miles per hour—just below Category 5 status. Or as National Hurricane Center forecaster Stacy Stewart put it when the storm reached its peak strength: “Amanda is now the strongest May hurricane on record in the eastern Pacific basin during the satellite era.”

This record is notable for two reasons. First of all, even though there remains a great deal of uncertainty and debate about the relationship between hurricanes and global warming, the fact is that in many hurricane basins across the world, new storm intensity records have been set just since the year 2000. Amanda therefore fits into this broader pattern.

Second, there is growing evidence that El Niño conditions—characterized by an eastward shift of warm water across the great Pacific Ocean, with global weather ramifications—are developing in the Pacific right now. The latest forecast from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration now gives us a greater than 65 percent chance that El Niño conditions will develop by this summer.

In El Niño years, we tend to see a great firing of hurricane activity in the eastern Pacific, and a suppression of these storms in the Atlantic. In fact, the strongest storm ever recorded in the eastern Pacific, Category 5 Hurricane Linda in 1997, occurred during the last super-strong El Niño year.

So if El Nino does occur, Amanda may not be the strongest storm that we see in the Eastern Pacific this year. That’s potentially bad news for Mexico. In fact, there is even a tiny possibility that during an El Niño year, a storm might be able to travel as far north as Southern California (albeit in a pretty weakened state), as Hurricane Linda was at one point forecast to do. In fact, recent historical work on past hurricanes has revealed that in 1858, San Diego was struck by what appears to have been a Category 1 hurricane.

As of now, Hurricane Amanda has weakened and is not expected to affect land in a serious way. But this is definitely a storm whose significance extends well beyond its immediate impact.

Link:

Hurricane Amanda Just Set an Ominous New Record

Posted in Anchor, FF, GE, LG, ONA, Radius, The Atlantic, Uncategorized, Venta | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Hurricane Amanda Just Set an Ominous New Record

Why Was the Right Caught Flat-Footed By Cliven Bundy’s Cranky Racism?

by Kelvin85Yxpqhdj Posted on April 24, 2014

Mother Jones

By now I assume you’ve all heard about Cliven Bundy’s remarks to the New York Times yesterday? In case you’ve been vacationing on Mars, here they are:

“I want to tell you one more thing I know about the Negro,” he said. Mr. Bundy recalled driving past a public-housing project in North Las Vegas, “and in front of that government house the door was usually open and the older people and the kids — and there is always at least a half a dozen people sitting on the porch — they didn’t have nothing to do. They didn’t have nothing for their kids to do. They didn’t have nothing for their young girls to do.

“And because they were basically on government subsidy, so now what do they do?” he asked. “They abort their young children, they put their young men in jail, because they never learned how to pick cotton. And I’ve often wondered, are they better off as slaves, picking cotton and having a family life and doing things, or are they better off under government subsidy? They didn’t get no more freedom. They got less freedom.”

I don’t have anything to add that (a) isn’t obvious and (b) hasn’t already been said by someone else, but I do share Paul Waldman’s reaction: “Is anyone surprised that Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher who has become a Fox News hero because of his stand-off with the Bureau of Land Management, turns out to be a stone-cold racist?”

That’s a good question. Is anyone on the right surprised by this? (I think it’s safe to say that exactly zero lefties are surprised.) That’s not a rhetorical question on my part. Look: conservatives should never have rallied around Bundy in the first place, but if they’re even minimally self-aware about his particular niche in the conservative base, surely they should have seen something like this coming and kept their distance just out of sheer self-preservation. But apparently they didn’t. They didn’t have a clue that a guy like Bundy was almost certain to backfire on them eventually. They seem to have spent so long furiously denying so much as a shred of racial resentment anywhere in their base that they’ve drunk their own Kool-Aid.

On a tangential note, as near as I can tell Paul Ryan never embraced Bundy publicly. Does anyone know if that’s right? It’s one reason I think he could be a dangerous presidential candidate. Despite his “inner city” gaffe of a few weeks ago, he’s smarter about this stuff than most folks who have managed to stay on the right side of the tea party.

See the original post:  

Why Was the Right Caught Flat-Footed By Cliven Bundy’s Cranky Racism?

Posted in FF, GE, LG, ONA, Uncategorized, Venta, Vintage | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Why Was the Right Caught Flat-Footed By Cliven Bundy’s Cranky Racism?