Category Archives: Asheville Attractions

Chuck Todd excoriated Ted Cruz on Monday’s “Morning Joe” after the senator questioned the accuracy of a recent NBC News poll about the government shutdown.

The survey, which NBC pollsters said they were “shocked” by, showed Republicans with their worst ratings in the poll’s history, and blamed the GOP for the shutdown.

“Morning Joe” played footage of Cruz saying that the poll was “heavily weighted” with an “awful lot” of Democrats.

Todd didn’t mince words in his response, saying that a Republican “echo chamber” was distorting Cruz’s thinking.

“The problem is two-thirds of the country is thinking something else,” he said. “And that’s what you see in our poll. It wasn’t just Democrats, it was independents and it was the one half of the Republican Party that doesn’t associate itself with the Tea Party wing of the party.”

He called Cruz’s recent appearance with Sarah Palin “odd,” adding, “What planet are you living on here?!”

Also on HuffPost:

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• U.S. Post Office letter carrier Jacob Ribald peeks into the window of the Bureau of Land Management office on Tuesday, Oct. 1, 2013 in Las Cruces, N.M. “I have a lot of mail for them,” said Ribald, “at least I tried, right?”

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ASHEVILLE – Two hikers who were lost in the woods Sunday night were found safe overnight but were charged Monday with ginseng theft.

Derek Vann Whitson, 33, of Mars Hill, and Jesse Daniel Mizell, 25, of Green Mountain, each face a felony theft of ginseng charge, according to Asheville Police Sgt. Dave Romick.

Bond for each was set at $1,000, secured.

Rescuers began searching for the hikers at about 8 p.m. Sunday near the Craggy Gardens Visitors Center on the Blue Ridge Parkway, northeast of Asheville. The pair were found Monday morning and brought out of the woods shortly after 7:30 a.m.

Crews from the Reems Creek and Black Mountain fire departments aided in the search.

Article source: http://www.digtriad.com/news/article/302505/57/Lost-Hikers-Charged-With-Ginseng-Theft?odyssey=tab%7Ctopnews%7Cbc%7Clarge If you need a cheap air ticket, hotel or rental car please visit http://www.airticket.com

ASHEVILLE, N.C. — North Carolina and Tennessee became the latest states to pay to reopen a national park as businesses feel the pinch of the lingering federal government shutdown.

Great Smoky Mountains National park, which straddles the two states, will open Wednesday. The states will pay its operational costs through Sunday.

STORY: States open some national parks
STORY: N.Y., Ariz. dip into state funds to open parks

North Carolina will spend $75,000 and Tennessee, and two of its counties, will spend $305,000 to reopen the park during the peak of

Article source: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/10/15/great-smoky-national-park-reopens/2990561/ If you need a cheap air ticket, hotel or rental car please visit http://www.airticket.com

The 46-year-old man fell from a “very large outcropping” adjacent to Big Falls on the Thompson River, located in Pisgah National Forest south of N.C. Highway 281 South, around 5:15 p.m. Sunday, said Chief Bobby Cooper of the Lake Toxaway Fire Rescue.

It took his female hiking companion several hours to reach the Bad Creek Hydroelectric Plant via the Foothills Trail and call 911, Cooper said.

Emergency responders were dispatched around 10 p.m. Sunday and searched until 2 a.m. Monday, he said. They resumed searching around 9 a.m., with North Carolina teams working south from Highway 281 toward the remote accident site and South Carolina rescuers working north from Bad Creek.

A search team finally reached remote Big Falls, the last of four waterfalls along the Thompson’s rugged course, around 3:30 p.m., Cooper said. Rescuers could see the man’s body at the lower end of Big Falls, wedged between two rocks.

“It’s such a remote area, we’re going to need ropes to set up (a) technical rescue to get the body out, and we’re not going to do that at night,” Cooper said, adding the body recovery would resume at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday.

Relatives of the man were at the rescue scene

Article source: http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20131014/articles/131019920 If you need a cheap air ticket, hotel or rental car please visit http://www.airticket.com

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The Asheville Downtown Association will meet with city of Asheville staff and elected officials Oct. 21 to discuss a number of issues that “can no longer be overlooked,” according to an email to its members. The issues include trash, recycling, street sweeping, panhandling, transients, drugs and topless women.

“We wanted to make you aware of some work we have been doing behind the scenes to keep our Downtown vibrant, clean and safe,” the email from ADA President Adrian Vassallo reads, noting an Oct. 11 meeting between Vassallo, ADA issues

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In announcing the lawmakers’ meeting with Obama, the White House said the president would repeat a vow he has made consistently in recent weeks: “We will not pay a ransom for Congress reopening the government and raising the debt limit.”

The prospect of a default and the possibility of a follow-on recession largely overshadowed the partial government shutdown that has furloughed 350,000 federal workers. Government research labs have been affected, veterans’ services curtailed and much of the Occupational Safety and Health Organization shuttered.

With federal parks off-limits to visitors, the impact on tourism prompted several governors to petition Interior Secretary Sally Jewell successfully to permit the states to finance some reopenings.

The shutdown began on Oct. 1, at the beginning of the budget year, after the House adopted a strategy of conditioning broad federal spending legislation to a proposal to starve the three-year-old health care law of funding.

The president and Democrats refused, and the long struggle began, merging quickly with the fast-approaching deadline for a debt limit increase.

In the two weeks since, public opinion polls have charted a steady decline in Republican approval ratings, and an increase in the

Article source: http://www.citizen-times.com/viewart/20131014/NEWS/310140043/Reid-McConnell-optimistic-debt-shutdown-deal If you need a cheap air ticket, hotel or rental car please visit http://www.airticket.com

I’m no fan of Obamacare, either, mainly because its rules and regulations resulted from a grand bargain between the Democrats and lobbyists for the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. It’s not difficult to imagine the many millions of dollars going into the Democratic campaign coffers in exchange for a seat at the health care law design table.

However, as reprehensible as the process was, it was done within the laws of our nation by those who were legally elected to represent us during the 2008 campaign.

The Republicans’ strategy to defund Obamacare has resulted in the government shutdown, which is causing harm to millions of innocent Americans. They could have chosen to take a legal path to change the law — by winning the next couple of elections and returning to majority power in both houses and the presidency. Clearly they rightfully aren’t optimistic about their chances.

The current GOP strategy nearly guarantees it will never happen. By following the lead of their tea party loyalist members, the Republicans have deeply offended the majority of moderate voters whether registered as Democrats, Republicans or independents. Along with the steadily declining voting power of white Americans and the complete failure of the GOP to attract minority

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