Saturday, February 1st, 2014
Art Swift, - The Gallup Organization
Stephan: This Gallup survey gives real insight into the relationship and relative demographics of conservatives as opposed to liberals.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — Wyoming was the most conservative U.S. state in 2013, replacing Alabama, which fell to 10th place. The District of Columbia was once again the most liberal area in the United States, with Vermont and Massachusetts having the highest percentage of liberals among the 50 states.
Overall, Americans were much more likely to self-identify as conservatives than as liberals last year, though that gap shrank from previous years.
The most conservative states are located primarily in the South and West, while the most liberal states are found on the East and West Coasts of the United States, with the exception of Hawaii. The top 10 liberal states all voted for President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012, while the top 10 conservative states all voted for the Republican nominees — John McCain and Mitt Romney, respectively — in those years.
For the most part, the top conservative states align with the most Republican states in the union, and the top liberal states, with the most Democratic areas. Yet Kansas and Nebraska, two of the most solid Republican states, do not fall among the top 10 conservative states. Similarly, the Democratic states of Maryland, Illinois, Connecticut, and New Mexico are not among […]
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Saturday, February 1st, 2014
KEVIN SIEFF, - The Washington Post
Stephan: As you read this think about the roads in your own town. Think about the bridges you drive over. How is it we had no money to maintain that infrastructure, yet we we could literally throw money away on infrastructure in Afghanistan? This has made a small group of contractors incredibly rich. And has bled money out of the U.S. economy like a severed artery. And to what end?
As you read this also remember we have 17 million kids in the U.S. who have food stress and go hungry, and their is a movement to gut food stamps.
Click through to see video of the roads.
SAYEDABAD, AFGHANISTAN — They look like victims of an insurgent attack – their limbs in need of amputation, their skulls cracked – but the patients who pour daily into the Ghazni Provincial Hospital are casualties of another Afghan crisis.
They are motorists who drove on the road network built by the U.S. government and other Western donors – a $4 billion project that was once a symbol of promise in post-Taliban Afghanistan but is now falling apart.
The Post’s Kabul Bureau Chief Kevin Sieff reveals what drove him to become a foreign correspondent and the challenges of covering a war that is changing hands.
Western officials say the Afghan government is unable to maintain even a fraction of the roads and highways constructed since 2001, when the country had less than 50 miles of paved roads. The deterioration has hurt commerce and slowed military operations. In many places, the roads once deemed the hallmark of America’s development effort have turned into death traps, full of cars careening into massive bomb-blast craters or sliding off crumbling pavement.
‘There’s been nothing. No maintenance,” said a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly.
Since 2012, the United […]
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