Monday, January 7, 2013
Morning report: Riverboat to sail from NLR?
Posted by Max Brantley on Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 6:29 AM
Highlights from a slow Monday morning:
* ARKANSAS QUEEN TO LEAVE NORTH LITTLE ROCK: Channel 4 reports that the Arkansas Queen excursion boat docked in North Little Rock may be relocating to a point south.
* ARE YOU READING TOM COTTON?: Some day, if new Republican U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton sticks to his guns about opposing disaster relief without reductions in other federal spending, he'll find himself memorialized in the same way this Republican congressman from Mississippi has deservedly earned attention for being with Cotton in the handful of Republican extremists who opposed Hurricane Sandy relief bills:
Last week, two-term Representative Steven Palazzo (R-MS) sparked controversy nationwide when he voted against relief for victims of Hurricane Sandy, despite representing coastal Mississippi, one of the regions hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina and a top beneficiary of Katrina disaster aid.But in addition to representing the region today, Palazzo was deeply involved in pressing for federal dollars in the fall of 2005. Then acting in his role as a local government official, Palazzo repeatedly appealed for federal funding to help rebuild his battered coastal Mississippi community in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
* WARM ENOUGH FOR YOU? I know most readers here believe more in science than faith that there's nothing extraordinary happening to the planet's climate. You know what those of blind faith say: Keep burning that coal, keep guzzling the gas, this little warming thing will pass. For the science-based, some relevant topics:
Remember climate change? The issue barely came up during the presidential campaigns, and little has been said since. But bringing climate change back into our national conversation is as much a communications challenge as it is a scientific one. Scientist Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, joins Bill Moyers to describe his efforts to do what even Hurricane Sandy couldn’t — galvanize communities over what’s arguably the greatest single threat facing humanity. Leiserowitz, who specializes in the psychology of risk perception, knows better than anyone if people are willing to change their behavior to make a difference.“[A] pervasive sense up to now has been that climate change is distant — distant in time, and distant in space,” Leiserowitz tells Bill. “And what we’re now beginning to see is that it’s not so distant. It’s not just future generations. It’s us and it’s our own children. I have a nine-year-old son — he’s going to be my age in the year 2050. I don’t want him to live in the world that we’re currently hurtling towards.”
Then there's this positively depressing NY Times article from Canada, where communities in the northernmost reaches are having to manufacture ice (bring refrigeration to Eskimos, so to speak) to be able to play hockey.
The Canadian environmental ministry reports that the country is warming more than twice as fast as the world as a whole, with annual average temperatures in Canada up about 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit since 1948. The warming in winter is even faster, almost 6 degrees Fahrenheit over the same period, and scientists have documented a substantially shorter outdoor skating season as a result.A study published last year by climate scientists at McGill and Concordia universities in Montreal warned that natural ice for skating could disappear from southern Alberta and British Columbia by midcentury and be significantly diminished throughout the rest of the country.
Hockey, schmockey. They can just play football like real Americans.
* ARKANSAN TO BE ADDED TO POULTRY HALL OF FAME: Got this from a family member of the honoree over the weekend, an interesting account of the story behind a soon-to-be new member of the American Poultry Hall of Fame. He's Jack England, 91, of Rison, who pioneered the brokerage hatching egg business. He'll join the likes of Don Tyson and Bo Pilgrim among the honorees. Kind of esoteric, maybe, but at its core it's the story of a small-town fellow who came up with a very good idea.
Speaking of...
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Morning report: Leaks, guns and welfare kings
May 14, 2013The morning roundup: * WHEN WILL REP. TOM COTTON PRAISE OBAMA'S JUSTICE DEPARTMENT? Republican mouthpieces are howling about the news that AP reporters' phone records were gathered by the Justice Department in an apparent investigation of leaks about a Yemen-based terrorist plot to bomb an airliner. /more/
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Who wants to be a U.S. senator?
May 4, 2013The New York Times reports this morning on the wave of retirements from the U.S. Senate and a lack of clamor from people anxious to join the filibuster-frozen body. /more/
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Tom Cotton burnishes his warhawk image
April 30, 2013"Media sweetheart" is how this piece in Politico puts it and they should know, having been pumping U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton (R-Club for Growth) since forever. /more/
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Monday night line
April 29, 2013The comment line is open. Final words: * TOM COTTON STATEMENT ON OBAMA: 'MOSTLY FALSE': Politifact has reviewed U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton's overhyped statement on the House floor on terrorism during the administration of President Obama versus what he claimed were zero events under George W. Bush (not counting that little 9/11 thing). /more/
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The Extremism Edition
April 26, 2013A Republican even crazier than Nate Bell, the last vetoes of the session, the latest outrage from Tom Cotton and Bloomberg versus Pryor — all covered on this week's podcast. /more/
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Tom Cotton's 'odd' argument on terrorism fight
April 26, 2013U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton of the Club for Growth was right proud the other day of his rush to make political hay of the Boston bombing by lumping it with some other incidents that he said represented failure of counter-terrorism efforts of the Obama administration. /more/
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Wednesday night line
April 24, 2013Sorry, folks. I've been working on a project and away from blogging duties. /more/
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'The spineless gun vote': Why?
April 20, 2013Joe Nocera writes this morning about the vote to block legislation to expand gun purchase background checks and his pursuit of an answer to why from the four Democrats, including Sen. Mark Pryor, who stood in the way of a vote. /more/
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UPDATE: Ethics amendment defeated
April 15, 2013The legislature has killed a proposed constitutional amendment to strengthen ethics laws. /more/
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Mark Pryor's money talks
April 11, 2013U.S. Sen. Mark Pryor's own messaging isn't always so hot. But he carries a big stick. /more/
- More »
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