Russell Train, a lifelong Republican and one of the country’s foremost conservationists of the last half-century, died this week at the age of 92. He served Richard Nixon as the first chairman of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and later as administrator of the fledgling Environmental Protection Agency – helping shape landmark statutes like the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. His death serves as a reminder of the G.O.P.’s historic tradition of environmental stewardship, a tradition stretching as far back as Teddy Roosevelt, which the party has now repudiated.

Within hours of Mr. Train’s death, Republican leaders in the House brought to the floor a bill called “Stop the War on Coal Act, “ which seeks to weaken and in some cases overturn laws and rules protecting the very things that Mr. Train stood for – clean air, clean water, a stable climate and fair effective regulation of the big polluters, including but not exclusively the fossil fuel industry.

The bill (which the senate will certainly strike down) contains no new ideas. According to a database compiled by Representative Henry Waxman and the Democratic staff of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, House Republicans have voted an astonishing 302 times this year to hamstring the Environmental Protection Agency, weaken clean water and air rules, undermine protections for public lands and coastal areas, and block action to address global warming – all while seeking to make the regulatory climate as favorable as possible for the oil, gas and coal industries. The virtue of the latest bill (I use the word virtue loosely here) is that it contains just about all of those bad ideas in one place –one-stop shopping as it were, for those who haven’t been keeping up with the Tea Party wrecking crew in the 112th Congress.

jerseyhoya wrote:

pacino wrote:there's not really a way for her to prove that her grandmother was lying to her and her entire family since she's now dead. why hit it other than it's a cheap political jab? and everyone at harvard said it played no role in her getting anywhere. she's obviously capable. why harp on it?

/echochamber

She was called Harvard Law's first "woman of color". She started identifying herself as a Native American in publications used in identifying new hires in the 1980s. She stopped listing herself as such after she got the job at Harvard. Her explanation for why she listed herself (if not to give herself a leg up in the job world) was completely laughable. She took advantage of the system by claiming to be Native American, when she may be 1/32nd Native American though she cannot prove this. Beyond her own tortured explanation of the issue, it underlines the complete ridiculousness of affirmative action and Warren's liberal PC world that some woman who could not be more plainly white gets hailed as a woman of color and touted in the Harvard newspaper as a minority woman on the Harvard Law staff.

Andrew Kaczynski ‏@BuzzFeedAndrew
RT @LukeRussert: Boehner tells me reason Romney is behind in Ohio is because Kasich has done a good job w/reforms to keep unemployment low.

traderdave wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

pacino wrote:there's not really a way for her to prove that her grandmother was lying to her and her entire family since she's now dead. why hit it other than it's a cheap political jab? and everyone at harvard said it played no role in her getting anywhere. she's obviously capable. why harp on it?

/echochamber

She was called Harvard Law's first "woman of color". She started identifying herself as a Native American in publications used in identifying new hires in the 1980s. She stopped listing herself as such after she got the job at Harvard. Her explanation for why she listed herself (if not to give herself a leg up in the job world) was completely laughable. She took advantage of the system by claiming to be Native American, when she may be 1/32nd Native American though she cannot prove this. Beyond her own tortured explanation of the issue, it underlines the complete ridiculousness of affirmative action and Warren's liberal PC world that some woman who could not be more plainly white gets hailed as a woman of color and touted in the Harvard newspaper as a minority woman on the Harvard Law staff.

I am not a fan of Scott Brown but I am with JH on this. Warren gamed the system and she is getting called on it. It goes to the integrity of the candidate. Now I am not saying this would keep me from voting for her vs. Brown but people wanted to make a federal case out of Ryan lying about a marathon time; this Warren thing is cut from the same clothe. I am like 1/4 French but I don't go around telling people I am French (who the hell would admit to that anyway, amirite?).

Bucky wrote:meanwhile, the wind power tax credit is due to expire in dec. Mitt says he will let it die. Obama wants to keep it. Meanwhile, we've been giving tax credits to oil for 100 years with no end in site.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/ ... story.html

But perhaps that’s the wrong question. We focus on the question “Are you better off than you were four years ago” because we assume voters aren’t sophisticated enough to vote based on the right question, which is “are you better off than you would have been if the other party’s candidate had won the presidency four years ago?”

The conventional wisdom: Voters don’t do counterfactuals. “It could have been worse” is a losing message. That’s been the Romney campaign’s theory of the case, certainly, and many in the media have bought it. But perhaps we’re not giving voters enough credit.

The new Allstate/National Journal/Heartland Monitor poll tested this directly. First, they asked the standard “are you better off now than you were four years ago?” A plurality said they were not. Then they asked, “are you better off because Obama won in 2008″? A plurality said they were. Here’s the graph:

td11 wrote:

traderdave wrote: Cantor is like "Bitch, please". On another topic, anybody know if that Brown/Warren debate is available online? I think that might be some interesting watching.

it's blocked at work for me, but i think c-span has it

pacino wrote:

traderdave wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:

pacino wrote:there's not really a way for her to prove that her grandmother was lying to her and her entire family since she's now dead. why hit it other than it's a cheap political jab? and everyone at harvard said it played no role in her getting anywhere. she's obviously capable. why harp on it?

/echochamber

She was called Harvard Law's first "woman of color". She started identifying herself as a Native American in publications used in identifying new hires in the 1980s. She stopped listing herself as such after she got the job at Harvard. Her explanation for why she listed herself (if not to give herself a leg up in the job world) was completely laughable. She took advantage of the system by claiming to be Native American, when she may be 1/32nd Native American though she cannot prove this. Beyond her own tortured explanation of the issue, it underlines the complete ridiculousness of affirmative action and Warren's liberal PC world that some woman who could not be more plainly white gets hailed as a woman of color and touted in the Harvard newspaper as a minority woman on the Harvard Law staff.

I am not a fan of Scott Brown but I am with JH on this. Warren gamed the system and she is getting called on it. It goes to the integrity of the candidate. Now I am not saying this would keep me from voting for her vs. Brown but people wanted to make a federal case out of Ryan lying about a marathon time; this Warren thing is cut from the same clothe. I am like 1/4 French but I don't go around telling people I am French (who the hell would admit to that anyway, amirite?).

american indian is different than french in this country. it's also different between the nations themselves allow people of partial ancestry to claim citizenship status. france likely won't let you get yours.

edit: i should add cherokee nation couldnt validate that her ancestor was or wasn't cherokee so she ain't in. but who cares? how does this go to the integrity, in all seriousness??? she claims her grandmother told her whole family she is part indian. everyone is part this or that. she checked a box. so what?

i think people are mostly laughing at paul ryan for being idiotic

pacino wrote:i feel like i care less and less what someone thinks they are, or their motivations or reasons for how htey got there. she checked a box because it's couldnt hurt. maybe she was proud of it at the time? who knows? they stated it didn't help. i don't htink it was anything nefarious. it's a who cares when we have real issues. it's good for two days of talk, not basing an entire campaign off it, which brown has done. obama isnt basing his entire campaign on paul ryan's fat percentage.

fwiw, she also said delaware in addition to cherokee. she is from oklahoma, i wouldnt be surprised if lots of people raised there were part indian. different people place different importance on their ancestry and heritage.